Two weeks of wonderful mindless lust. Another black-out inducing rush of orgasms all through our clutching. A fond parting with a few farewell pats on my mutable mate's head. Last of all, a leisurely stroll through many branching liminal halls brings us out of the ADS.

Now we recline on soft, heated gel-couches atop a stately sea-green sky-craft with a deck shaded by canopies made of a dark bumpy hide. My left arm drapes the gunwale. Fingers dangle above the buttressed hull, letting my claws trail through the spore-laden air of the Mutagenic Exclusion Zone. Some of the spores break open at my touch.

Shattered stars, gifting me their last little light until all the glows fade away.

Kairliina watches the blue swaths slide by below. Osmium spikes and lattice-growths rise like upward mazes and over-precise trees among fungal sprawls, oozing oversize bacteria, and slow-drifting hulks of titanic cosmic horrors rife with bladed spines and viscous skin. I'd meant to say "penny for your thoughts."

That feels tactless after looking closer. Kai's wistful. A little sad. The look of a demon who just woke from a beautiful dream, and knows she might never have it again.

"May I know what's on your mind?" I ask instead.

"I told you a half-truth," she murmurs. The MEZ falls away behind us. We soar over decaying cities, mountains belching tainted volcanic fire, and sparse specks of light. Baleful stars burn on high. The Nova Quarter. The adults-only, demons-mostly half of Machrae Diir.

"Most of Machrae Diir grew by itself with only little suggestions from me. That's true." Her tail rasps on the deck by her feet, brushing side to side and leaving little wakes of flare-perforated darkness. "Still... I gave it the start. I grew its seed inside my psyche."

"And now it's moving beyond you." I cradle my drink, a self-refilling glass of hot spiced wine. Glühwein, I'm pretty sure she called it. German. Of all Earth's humans, the dearest to Kairliina's heart. Fallible. Messy. Known for reaching for greatness and seizing evil instead.

Yet there was beauty in them, as in every living people.

And with the last of Earth's humans dead, the last real link to her scant days with them is severed, at the same time the dimension Kairliina called to life from the utmost depths of the void has taken on a life beyond her.

"Are you worried?" I ask.

"A little," she confesses. "Machrae Diir has a very strong sense of internal identity, at once tempered and yet potentially turned to ill by a desire for communion with all the universes we touch. Much of its origins lie in slaughter, dominion, and power."

She sips her own drink. A pause. A tinkling furrow of the blue-banded plates filling out her brow and framing her eyelids. "There was no other way. Too many wished to drive us out of existence. Many still do. I suspect martial pride may always be a part of us."

I purse my lips. "Founding myth--and worse, only half a myth--of a strong central leader, one whose personality continues to infuse everything we are. Risk of definition against outsiders perceived as wanting to corrupt, dilute, and destroy us... I see."

I want the wine to muddle me the way it would muddle a mortal, so it does. Letting something outside me have just a little power over me, so I can feel the thrill of being safe enough not to need my alertness. "You're concerned Machrae Diir might turn fascist," I conclude.

Kairliina turns her eyes to the floor. "Yes." She speaks calmly as she adds, "and I admit, when others insist on treating me as though I am still that dynamic leader, as though Machrae Diir is small enough that I can still be its sole source of direction, as you did, I am terribly afraid that events may spiral until I can either accept the inevitable and become a dictatrix, or watch the lambent halls lose all their sheen." She downs her glass. Exchanges it for a bottle of whiskey shot through with veins of an oily opalescent something. She slices the cap off with one talon and takes it straight.

I see. A princess whose throne has no authority is a femme-fatale.

"It won't come to that," I say. The miracle is... I truly believe that. "The irony of being so frank about your individual indulgences is, well... everyone here wants freedom to indulge themselves. No one wants to waste time or spirit on a stupid, xenophobic warmonger."

"You really think it's that simple?" she asks.

"You know..." I ease back, playing little harmonic melodies on my wine-glass with my claws. "Yes. I really do. 'Simple' doesn't mean 'easy' of course. There's finding the right answer, and then there's sticking to it..."

Kairliina punctuates my words with a gusty, almost explosive breath. "Mhm," she agrees, all at once looking very tired.

"But it is the right one," I finish, "and so is your release of control. You can't anchor the whole of Machrae Diir anymore. There's just too many of us now."

Kairliina smiles, soft and sad and fond. "Yes.... yes, I did say so myself, didn't I?"

We sit in pleasant quiet, listening to the constant turbine-like hum of the sky-ship's reality-sifting engines, until it bears us down to a midair dockyard jutting from a jumbled structure. We rise as our ship settles into the docking clamps. We walk down the gangway while it’s still assembling itself from whirring bits of loose shining metal.

Their tremors tickle my feet. Things assembling themselves even as they’re used. Rushing to stay ahead of the pressure.

Inside, passing through gentle amber lights. Into a lounge where currents of woven void mingle with color-shifting inferno. Machrae Diir's own bizarre flora mingle with old Earth plants, and frond-growths and tendrils and bushels of things from many worlds now gone. My heart thumps faster in my breast. I am terribly afraid.

I am in the presence of the lustful Parphyaera, and young Greth, and so many more. Dozens of others, all with many a tragedy but not a single excuse for the things they've done. The miidyaerita of Machrae Diir. And foremost among them is Kairliina, Lady now of no Machrae Diir except the memory of its first days she carries within. All watching me.

The blue-hooded, blue-veiled shape of a handmaiden hurries up to Kairliina--overtopping her by a good seven inches. "Mistress," it--she? This one's aura suggests 'she'--says, "this one wishes to present the results of the delving she and her sisters have undertaken by your will."

"Of course," Kairliina says. "A sound way to start."

"After much sifting," handmaiden continues, for I realize this must be her--the worst handmaiden--"it has been found to be known that the handmaidens are, in fact, dolls. Demon dolls. Like demons, but," she grins, "not people." She clears her throat. "In a different way from the way that you are not a person."

"Of course," Kairliina says. "This is known."

"This is known," the other miidyaerita say.

"This is known,” I say, at the same time as the thirty-some handmaidens busying themselves at this task or that about the room.

"Therefore," handmaiden continues, "we want true doll-joints."

An awkward silence.

"Uh, I mean," handmaiden amends, shrinking under thirty-one intensely emotionless stares from her un-sisters, "it is known that it would be appropriate for the handmaidens to be jointed and segmented as dolls are."

The tension evaporates. There are quiet clacks and rustles as the handmaidens see that their elbows, wrists, and tails have ball-joints and segments like those of any other doll. The quiet of proper stillness settles into them, and they resume work with a little more ease.

"Now, then," Kairliina says. She addresses the other miidyaerita. She offers me her hand. I take it, and she brings me to stand at the center of their circle. "Maroj Fezzlen is known to many of you. She wishes to count herself among us--the monsters who look after our own." She nods to me. "Maroj, your sins are known to me. Do you wish to make them known to my siblings, so we may better understand the mystery of your complete self?"

A shudder runs through me. Yet... this yearning...

"I do," I say. I settle to my knees. It feels right. First, I recount the sorrowing parts of my tale. Love found. Family made. Love lost.

Light a candle, my love... my poor, poor love...

Now... now for the rest. I allow myself a halt. Shuddering breaths.

"Remember, Maj," Kairliina says gently, "we have eternity. This can wait if you like."

"I know." I quiver. "But I want to do it now, and that's the end of it." My claws scrape on my shoulders. "The lesson I learned from this is that we store so much of ourselves in those we come to love, and they in us. That it is a terrible thing to take someone's family away."

I want more than anything to avoid their eyes. To look away from the miidyaerita in shame. I do not. I force all emotion but resolution from my soul, and look straight ahead.

Well, now. I guess my Harrower training did teach me how to be a better person.

Just... not by killing.

"The correct choice was to embrace joy in tandem with my sorrow," I say. "To be braver, to once more seek love and creation even though this time I would know how easily they could be ripped away from me. I did not make that choice, and that is the only truth that matters. After the armies of the invaders mustered out, after the war ended, after I spent long years in the mountains alone honing my power and my hatred…"

Trickles of my pinkish-quicksilver blood run from the dark-blue skin beneath my clasping claws, "I descended on their villages. I tore every husband and father apart, and as to the things I did to their wives and children..." I pause. "I think you can all imagine. They were unspeakable. So, everyone in this room can guess exactly how awful my deeds were. The details don't matter." A long silence.

"And..." I let my hands slip down. Contemplate the sight of my own blood on them. "That's it. I will say more if you wish it. For myself, that is... that is all I would say."

"Maroj," Greth finally says, "you're pure evil."

I receive that with a quiet nod.

"You'll fit right in!" Parphyaera says, clapping cheerfully.

"Maj, I'm a little..." Kairliina clears her throat, clasping her hands. "Sorry. Just to be clear: are you confessing because you expect us to judge you? We're happy to listen, sweet sister, but the miidyaerita aren't some sort of redemption arc club."

"I know, I just..." I press my hands into my knees. "Kairliina, I think for myself, personally, not as miidyaerita but as Maj, I genuinely want to try and redeem myself. I want to become a good person, whatever that means.

"Redemption lies beyond you," Kairliina says, silken as death. "It's impossible. By every sane measure of justice, you are forever tainted." Her gown rustles. "Do you really mean to try, anyway?"

"I do," I nod. "I just want to, Kai."

The maiden of Graesh Saelvur beams and sketches a quick curtsy of delight. "Then I will be overjoyed to help you, Maj."

"Can you do that?" I ask. "To be clear, I know what you are and I love you for it. The sisterhood of succubi, yes? But moral good is outside your essence, isn't it?"

"Oh, absolutely," the Overlady smiles, "but I understand it quite well from an intellectual stance. I'm worried about the consequences for you, Maj, but I understand that a succubus must chase her dreams. I'll help the very best that I can."

And I smile. "That's everything I wanted to hear."

"Right," Kairliina says, stepping to my front. "The time's come, kindred. We each have a choice to make. Let the first who feels the instinct be the first to speak their soul."

Greth flashes by her in a single beat of my heart. She seizes my hands in hers.

"Miidyaerita kastejul, Maj," she says. "This'll be quite a journey, huh?"

I know this is a solemn moment and one acceptance means nothing. Knowledge does nothing to stop me bursting into happy tears immediately. When I first came to Machrae Diir, I feared the miidyaerita would scorn me as beyond saving. After Desdemona's Paradigm, I was terrified they'd mock me for a dream as stupid as trying to be a good succubus. That they want to support me in this... it's more than I'd ever imagined possible.

Parphyaera comes next. "Miidyaerita kastejul, Maj." She hugs me. "Good luck!"

One after another after another, the miidyaerita come to me and speak their answers to my final hope. I live between an ecstasy of joy at the words of the one who just moved on, and the unmaking mortal terror of the words the next could still say.

Until only Kairliina remains, turning to face me with the deepest joy in her eyes. "Miidyaerita kastejul, dearest kindred," she whispers as she embraces me. "I'm so glad you made it to us. And I'm so excited that I get to see what you'll become next."

Maroj Fezzlen dissolves into the most abyssal weeping in two long lives. Love for her kindred, guilt at knowing such joy after everything she's done, joy beyond comprehension to know she lives in a dimension where such seeming paradoxes as this can coexist.

Kairliina rises with me, her hands clasping mine.

"I, um," she looks away. Grins awkwardly. "I knew you were going to ask, Maj. Honestly, we all did. Just not when. I had a, um, thing scheduled for tonight. But now tonight is for you. We can still do it if you like--"

"Of course!" My turn for a bashful look, all the stranger and more wonderful for the conflicting barrage of feelings in me. "Sorry for, um... interrupting." I turn to face my siblings. None of us deserve this. Yet... here we are anyway. "Of course I want to join in whatever we plan."

Kairliina's smile turns wry as she flourishes a sheet of musical notes. "You sure about that, Maj? There's a couple of lines in the final chorus where I will have no choice but to get right in your face and sing them at you."

I chuckle. "So be it, then. Let's sing together, Kai."

I take my place in the half-circle around the center of the room. Nothing in it now but an open space on the soft, downy carpet--waiting for the day the next sibling presents themselves to us. I think fondly of that, and the presence of the demons beside me, as we begin. A humming, to begin with, from many throats. A little strained at first with the emotions of my acceptance.

Then it evens out. Somber now. A melody of reverie. Kairliina's voice, clear and sonorous, rises over the others to sing the first verse--a change in tune, up-tempo.

"I must've broken somewhere
taken too many bad roads
now I cannot find the fairy
nor the tomb and what it bodes

All the hives have long gone silent
all the labs are closed for good
Don't know how I'll keep on going
I'm not even sure I should--"

And we join our voices to hers. Join them in that first slower, sadder melody for the chorus.

"All joy can turn to ashes
and viciousness inside
Not every love can last, and
all innocence unwinds."

I'm weeping, almost dizzy with the aching familiarity of it all. This time I'm far from alone in my emotions.

Again, Kairliina sings alone.

"Though every heaven's gates are barred
and no hell will bring me home
Life's too pointless
and too frightful
and too torturous alone

Tell me where am I to go
when my mortal loves are gone
tell me sorrow has an answer
even nothing runs too long..."

Once more now, rising together in answer, comes the chorus:

"Each season can turn bitter
but somehow we'll survive
When every day grows painful
keep the dream of hope alive"

The miidyaerita sway now to the slow rhythms of the song, lost together in memory, yearning and regret.

Kai sings the last, longest verse:

"Doesn't matter how I falter
since there's no one left to see
doesn't matter how I snarl
at all the pieces of left of me

I know that this is justice
since it's just what I deserve
after all my deeds of ruin
only ruins hear my dirge–”

She walks along the inside face of our little crescent gathering, hands clasped.

"Maybe I should lie down softly
slowly fading to my end
yet this ember's still inside me
to this ember, I will tend."

She draws even with me. This time, she sings the start of the chorus alone:

"So stand up little devil
your journey's not yet done
Keep seeking those who love you
and the tales you've left unspun--"

Though my voice breaks up in the waves of all that I feel, I am the first to answer as, one by one, all the miidyaerita come together for the end.

"You'll heal your broken heart, and
you'll dream again in time
there's still a place to stay, love
when you've forgotten how to climb

You're home in your abyss, now
fallen up beyond all stars
and forever we will hold you
love you better for your scars--"

Words fade to humming. The bittersweet melody of the chorus, repeating, each voice going silent in its own time until all has gone quiet.

One more time, I take Kairliina's hands in mine.

"Miidyaerita kastejul, Kairliina," I whisper.

"Miidyaerita kastejul, Maj." She smiles, forever fond. "Welcome home."