(Kairliina, deeper/incubus pitch)

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A slayer of half-kindred once asked this question: “If our positions were switched, would our fates be different? Would I have your life, and you mine?”

In some questions, it’s the way we seek that makes the answer meaningful.

Episode Ten: Witch-Queen’s Repose

(Carrie)

Magma mutters from chasms below,

and forces rumble long unknown,

in deepest Sarkosch,

In forge-light’s glow.

Empty tables attend all night,

empty vigils greet all light,

in deepest Sarkosch,

In forge-light’s glow.

And still my breath uneasy stirs,

my dreams to me remain obscure,

in deepest Sarkosch,

in forge-light’s glow.

Usually, composing poetry puts me in a dreamy mind. Now it’s making me more awake. Ever since our encounter with Moonsilver—no, damn it, our encounter with Amaranth!--I can’t seem to settle my nerves. I tell myself over and over that this is all she does, that she built her previous life on mind-tricks to make traumatized women ask themselves, ‘do I doubt because I’m wrong? Can she teach me better?”

Still, I doubt. I lie on my back, staring up at the etched, polished stalactites, and the ribbing carved into the ceiling between them, and the paintings and reliefs of colorful ancient demons. Many of these faces, faint and phantasmal in the gloom, once walked the halls of our home. Cousin-spirits alight in hellish radiance to brighten any abyss.

All cinders, now.

The demon of my heart sleeps easy beside me. Where would I be without Mero, these mace-flange horns, the soft gray glimmer of her pattern-welded steel skin reflecting the light of the crystal lamps that glow red and jade above our bed? I risk a loving trace over her brow, toying with wavy hair-strands of emerald flame, and rejoice in her pleasant still-sleeping sigh.

She’s so steady. I don’t understand how she finds the strength to stare at so much despair, to confront so many horrors everywhere we walk, and still smile to herself at the good times we share. She watched most of the old kindred die. She suffered centuries of astral-projected mockery and hatred from religious zealots. She lingered on as empires rose and fell, as all the world was broken.

She survived her desolation only for swarms of mortal imitators to boil up in these last few decades, happy enough to wear the aesthetic of demons now that the messy, unpalatable reality of Merovingia’s people has been driven to the brink of extinction. Mundane humans wear the appropriated memory of her slaughtered siblings as cheap masks, generic villains, as nothing more than a brand to capitalize upon—the copy-and-past caricatures of one Vtuber after another. How does she endure all that, and still sleep so soundly?

Perhaps when I’m three thousand years old, I’ll possess the same kind of strength. Tonight, I’m restless. The covers prickle my skin. Creamy, silky covers so fine I thought I’d melt into them the first time I cuddled up with Mero. And the first time we had sex…

It’s been months since we had sex. We’ve both been so busy. Reading the signs of the coming apocalypse in the ether of the world’s dreaming unconscious. Scrambling to hold things together as the boundaries between realms collapse. I’ve been too tired to initiate, and Mero’s always been careful of taxing my energy. She’s told me so much about how succubi are more than just sex demons, about their deep relationships to witches and magic. I want to transcend these vulgar preconceptions. I want to grow past the point where I worry that our love is missing something because she doesn’t pounce on me the way she used to.

Be that as it may, tonight the covers stifle. It’s like they’re eating my skin with crushing warmth. I whisper a soundless spell so I can slip free without waking Mero. I might as well wander for a little while to clear my head. Sarkosch served Merovingia as a palace in the ancient days. She entertained other demons of Hell, succubi as well as stranger beings, and creatures from all the magical and mundane realms of Earth as it once was.

It’s a labyrinthine place, full of nooks and crannies. Whole wings of abandoned servant’s quarters, disused kitchens, reading alcoves and overgrown gardens of fronds inset with fleshy slits and bulbous growths. Vestiges that evoke sex organs without ever quite looking like them.

I should ask Mero about those sometime, about whether she’d like me to destroy them. It’s awfully horny decoration by her standards. That makes me wonder if she only created it to appease others: playing to their expectations of succubi as hypersexual one-track minds, for fear that they’d reject her if she tried to present herself as a three-dimensional being.

I guess even Mero was young, once, and vulnerable to social pressure.

All this emptiness somehow evokes the splendor of lives I’ll never know. There’s comfort in that. It helps to think that even after we’re gone, the color we brought to the universe lingers in the spaces we leave behind. Shaped to fit our fullness. If the right being shows up to fill our places, and their shapes match up to the hollow impressions of our passing, it’s a kind of rebirth.

I wander the couch-lined platform where I first met Marrow, trailing my fingers along the low safety wall, looking down on staircases leading to promenades carved from igneous rock. Their rails and balustrades stand mere feet above the rivers of magma below. My wistful thoughts turn sour. Mero’s opened up to me since we confronted Amaranth—Moonsilver—damn it.

I understand Hannah’s perspective, but I just can’t bring myself to believe Amaranth actually wants to be a succubus, or even knows what that means. She’s a witch trying to escape from guilt for her past wrongs. I’ll give her that much. She wields real magic and she believes in the magic of others. She’s become something other than a fraud. But just using shapeshifting magic to grow horns and wings and bigger tits doesn’t make her a demon! Demons are born of Hell, Demons have lineages, their own unique cultures, their own moral codes.

That’s much of what Merovingia explained to me. She was wary of denying Amaranth’s demonhood at first. It seemed like a heinous thing to do. But after her emotions settled and we both had to time to reflect, she confessed that she wishes she’d spoken up.

Maybe Amaranth’s a creature of the abyss. Maybe. Mero seems ready enough to believe that. I’m skeptical. Underneath it all, Amaranth still felt like the same Amaranth from Westhavelland. She’s become more pathetic, more pitiable, but that’s all. After I blasted her, even when she manifested the magic to pull herself back together, it just intensified her aura. How do you like that? In Amaranth, even magic becomes mundane. If she’s really become a demon, then why does she feel the same as she ever did?

There are lots of human stories where humans temporarily take on the shapes of supernatural beings. We all understand that they’re still human inside. Or at least, I’ve always understood that.

Anyway. Mero’s told me that abyssal beings love trying to steal the word “demon” for themselves. It’s a word imbued with rich power. But that power comes from the legacy forged by the demons of Hell in their long war against Heaven. Without that heritage, it’s just a word. It’s clear enough to me that Amaranth, whether she’s still human or something else, is just trying to steal from demonkind. Haven’t they suffered enough? Why can’t she create anything of her own?

Tickling, nagging doubt keeps creeping up, and I keep shoving it back down. Doubt that whispers, “what if it’s true? What if, all along, she was a succubus?” Merovingia already told me she’s not. Succubi are more than sex, and from what we’ve learned about Amaranth in the last two days of scrying, it sounds like sex is the only thing that’s real to her.

Succubi are defined by their bonds with witches, just as we witches are defined by our bonds with them. Without that personal weight, what do any of these words mean?

But now I’m just repeating our fight from 2022. Then, as now, Amaranth drooled out pretty but vague words about a goddess, and blurred the lines between concepts. She tried to convince me that orgasms were magic, that they were signs of divine presence moving in our bodies! Just the same petty tricks as charlatans throughout history.

If a false mystic convinces people that their ordinary, everyday life is magical, and that only the mystic knows how to use that magic correctly, it’s easy to make the jump to controlling a gullible victim’s personhood. It’s always under the guise of keeping them safe, or guiding them, or working for the greater good. Yet, somehow, it’s always the victim who has to keep giving things up, changing themselves, sacrificing, and their so-called mentor who keeps demanding new concessions, trampling boundaries… if their magic is so powerful, why can’t they carry the greater burden? If they’re so great, why is it the mundane stooge who always does the work?

Magic is magic. It transcends mundane experience… okay, enough, Carrie. You’ve been over all this a hundred times. Move on. Stop letting that horrid woman drag you back to the past.

Center yourself in the now. The more you think about Amaranth, the more her hooks will work their way into your mind. Keep your head clear. You’ll settle this when you blast her… blast her to… dust…

The way she bled… silver sheens and black bones… I’ve never felt my stomach churn like that… and that cold spike unfolding like a shatter-cone of razor shards in my brain, screaming that killing her is killing myself...

Enough. Focus. Center. Drink the sounds, sights, and scents of home.

Home. I’ve lived here for two years. Two years since that night of desolation turned to joy. When I laid alone upon the ancient altar in a shrine just unearthed by mundane archaeologists. When Merovingia’s ancient gateway happened, somehow, to open for me. We’ve never been able to figure out what made that night special—why her magic was able to bridge realities again, just that once.

However it happened, I passed through. I found Sarkosch. I found her. A few days later I drank an elixir of eternal youth, and we settled into domestic bliss: just a witch and her succubus.

Two years I’ve lived here in Sarkosch, and in all that time I’ve never walked down these ramps to explore the chambers on magma’s far side.

Well, why shouldn’t tonight be the first time? My slippers clap, hollow and tinny, on the hot porous stone of the descent. I speak a ward against heat. This is one of my best, easiest spells: a lot of humid Michigan summers taught me to wish for magic air-conditioning. All that daydreaming turns out to be a sort of training. It offers a lot less return on time spent than hands-on practice, but zoning out my entire life added up to powerful thermal manipulation magic.

The nature of a witch’s power: her spells come from her being. What she does, thinks, and feels will drive her nature, shaping which spells she can wield and how powerful they are. Then casting those spells shapes her nature in turn, opening all-new pathways...

As for active, intentional threats, I’m sure Mero would’ve told me if Sarkosch held any dangers in its depths. Even if something’s slipped through, I’m no longer the tremulous waif that fled Westhavelland Park one German summer. I’m a full-fledged witch of the old ways.

The Urhexen incarnate. Where safe haven fails, my power will see me through. Just in case, I prepare five bolts of red lightning and seal their trembling energy in my flesh: ready to spring out with a flick of my fingers, and make vapor of my enemies.

A soft silver envelope glows about me as I reach the lowest terraces and walk side by side with molten rock. It froths, bellows, and churns. What a marvel it is to sense charring heat just outside my magic, and remain cool and soothed inside. Occasionally, a burst of superheated gas casts scorching fragments on the walkway. It’s been so many centuries since this promenade was cleared that accumulated rubble creates miniature hills. Its weight has broken through the balustrades in many places.

In taking stock of the damage, I also see how far the magma-channel extends both up and downstream. Downstream it continues past the end of the chamber, into a low tunnel where the walkways no longer have protective balustrades, and squeeze too tight for most humans to walk upright. Crawlspaces. I wonder who used them?

Upstream, it pours from a cavern inaccessible on foot, one so thick with fumes and infernal spouts that I can barely make out a tower like a massive drill in its center: the nexus of several walkways at different heights. What purpose did that serve? Is it Merovingia’s creation, or someone else’s?

So much history here. So many demons have left their marks in a language I’m not equipped to read: the language of things that simply are what they are, of natures that exist without the burden of explaining themselves.

Note to self: come down to this terrace sometime to clean it. I’ve never found much to appreciate in rocks and sediment, so stoneworking’s one form of magic I can’t wield at all. But I can generate force, and detonations, and call the wind. I can improvise well enough to move all this stone in my own time. From down here, it’s easy to see the platform on the other side of the magma river, hidden from above by the overhanging igneous cliffs, where a starkly-carved doorway stands illuminated by a single pale blue torch. I could try flying across, but Mero’s warned me about that in the past: magma emits huge amounts of heat and gas. The air currents above its flows and lakes are treacherous, prone to turbulence and sudden dead zones.

A good way to get smashed against a wall, or drop right into the river and splatter myself on the surface. It’s easy to forget that molten stone is still stone: it’s only liquid by stone’s standard. It’s still hard enough to shatter any flesh-being that crashes into it.

With rapid whispers, I leech all the heat from a patch of magma a meter wide and a meter deep. I focus the glowing current of thermal energy into a cone and blast it back into the magma further upstream. I’m left with a swift-cracking bridge that lasts just long enough for me to hurry across.

And I do hurry. My kinetic magic’s okay, but I wouldn’t trust myself to repel the weight of so much burning Earth if the bridge gives way, and I’m pulled into the void as the river fills it in.

What a strange, foolhardy death that would be: crushed to death on a midnight excursion while my unknowing girlfriend sleeps hundreds of feet above. How tragic. How Gothic.

Ugh, Carrie. Sweetheart. You shouldn’t be getting horny about that. How many times, now, have you and Merovingia talked about these self-harming fetishes? You’re a human woman, and sadly that does give you reason to associate death with sex, but you need to fight that. Be better than internalizing a misogynistic snuff kink.

I hop off the bridge’s other end as it breaks apart behind me. Only now do I consider that there’s no reason my portal magic has to be long-range. I’m used to thinking of it that way because I need to be intimately familiar with a place to create a portal to it, and most of the time that means returning to Sarkosch, but it also applies to moving within Sarkosch. Mental blocks. I need to be more aware of my mental blocks.

Once I pass through that doorway, the stone quickly shifts from dark volcanic rock to pale greys. It at last transitions to a fine blue-streaked marble unlike anything in the rest of Sarkosch. It’s carved in grandiose, soaring shapes, more like a Hellenistic temple. There are many alcoves with empty pedestals and once-elegant engravings in a language I can’t read nor recognize. It’s all covered in layers and layers of black igneous ash and dust, but wherever my feet track, they brush away enough to reveal those same shining patterns.

The corridors stretch on and away. At first, they’re only branching, curving or breaking away at diagonal angles from the main corridor where I walk. I could always take a portal back to the main platform if I get lost, but that won’t do me much good at learning to navigate this part of Sarkosch. I’d better stick to the center path until I know the layout. Eventually, I get deep enough that there’s barely any dust. The air hangs still, and heavy, and stale with forgotten time.

What’s the story of this place? Golden rollers on the walls for long-gone banners and tapestries. Empty pools and channels, a whole swimmer’s maze of filigreed pillars connecting vaulted ceilings to bench-strewn islands. They stand between channels filled with tile in aquatic patterns, but despite little foot-bridges to carry visitors from one island to the next, the whole maze is empty of water. Sometimes I pass bedrooms full of gilded frames for missing paintings.

What kind of guests did Merovingia entertain here? Why are these rooms cut off from the rest of her palace? Were these quarters for human magicians and practitioners from other mortal species? That would explain why they’re so far from the magma caverns, and why the furnishings look so Earthly.

Questions for later. For now, I’m best off focusing on finding my way.

It’s with that thought that I duck into an old dining room, full of tables well-preserved by the desert dryness of the air, and come face to face with the amorphous sheens of a tumbling, multicolored haze. A cross between slime and oil, complete with sickly rainbow hues, that falls upward from the floor only to condense back down.

I freeze, considering whether to hurl lightning at it.

The etherous form wafts, writhes, and thickens. Taking colors and shades: yellow gathering into gold at its peak. Pale pinks infusing alabaster tones. Blue gathering in off-white orbs, shadows solidifying into black powders and lipstick. Realization comes to me a heartbeat before it finishes its transformation. I whisper chants of silent warding, and summon lightning into my sinews. There it gathers, red arcs buzzing around my fingertips, while the other becomes my reflection: a second Carrie Rider, complete with my lacy, black, silk nightgown.

Almost. It, or she, is hazy. My simulated eyes distort, melting sometimes into my doppelganger’s nose. And it’s only half my height, staring up at me and flapping its hands around its waist.

“Your imitation is good, but it would be better for us both if you changed it a little. A different hair color, perhaps? Make your dress and the shapes of your face a little different?”

The pseudo-Carrie tilts its head, features wrinkling, contorting. It tries to match my expression, the same furrow of focus, the same calm eyes, while also uttering discordant sounds that only match my pitch and tone.

Millennia of myths become clear to me in the blink of an eye. This strange little shapeshifter only seems frightening and inhuman on accident. It might grow into something monstrous, but right now… right now it’s experiencing its own kind of childhood. And what do children do to learn how the world works? Imitate their elders.

It takes everything I’ve got to hold back tears that this little one knows too little to understand. The poor little things. They’ve only ever tried to speak to us in the only way their instincts know—shapeshifting. They don’t mean to steal. Imitation is the only kind of connection they understand.

Alright, then. Let’s see. An incantation to create an effigy it can adapt…

“Mirror of my second self,

mirror of my heart,

write for me a rose-hymn,

together we’re apart.

Sculpt for me a shadow,

sculpt for me a sign,

sculpt a second sister

to keep herself as mine.”

As I chant, a miniature Carrie of my own creation takes shape below my downturned hand. It rises higher until its red-haired scalp presses against my palm. My little homunculus has purple eyes rather than blue, and her cheekbones are a little sharper, her lips smaller but perkier, her face rounder.

She’s the image of a human child, with a human child’s shapes. That’s more for my comfort than the doppelganger, because I very much doubt it understands concepts like ‘adulthood’ and ‘sex’ yet, but my comfort matters too, and the little one can always alter its form again as it learns and grows.

I’ve mentioned kids to Merovingia once or twice. She’s said she just doesn’t understand the appeal, and cautioned me against the instinct to judge myself by human standards of romance. Nettled me. Sometimes she’s too overprotective that way, too quick to assume my unfulfilled desires are merely symptoms of socialization. But she’s also pointed out that sometimes, in good relationships, we have to let the little things slide.

As for the doppelganger? By the time I’m done with that tangent, it’s recolored and morphed itself to fit the effigy I’ve created: redheaded, rosy-cheeked, purple eyed with a delicate round face. Then, with a narrow-eyed look, it slides across the floor—little creepers and goo-seeps carry it forward, dissolving from the soles of its feet—and absorbs the effigy I created. In doing that it becomes more solid.

And then, though with staggering steps, it starts walking. It smiles at me, looking for approval.

Of course. In manifesting that effigy, I manifested all my ideas of a human child: ideas that also include the ways humans move, the ways we emote. I regret that a little bit. As unnerving as a mundane human would find the little one’s solution to movement, it hinted at such a unique perspective. A reminder of how broad existence can be, how many simple discoveries we miss when we take anything for granted—even the simple statement ‘feet are for walking.”

(Little one)

“Thanks, mom!”

(Carrie)

Two words take all the wind out of me. Two words send the tears I fought so hard to hide in sudden trickles down my cheeks.

“Of course, sweetheart. If there’s anything else you want--”

The doppelganger’s eyes pop, and it—she—disappears. Jade glows spill down the hallway, heralding a rapidly-approaching presence. Mero’s familiar aura envelopes me: sensuous whispers, forge-heat, crackling power. It seethes with unfamiliar fear, as well as anger. Her claws arrive first: wrapping around the doorway in a snarl of pale green fire, setting blazes on the splinters and chips they crush out of the marble frame. The demon of my heart whirls into view and stalks towards me, eyes flaring.

“I’m sorry for scaring you, Mero. I should’ve spoken to you before I went wandering.”

(Merovingia)

“Oh! I… yes. Yes, you should have.”

(Carrie)

As my words sink in, she stops in her tracks and calms, breathing deep. Her fires ebb. She glances at the mauling she gave the door-frame with an embarrassed flash of fangs.

(Merovingia)

“I forgive you. It’s my fault, too. I assumed you would sense the abandonment of these floors, and the foreboding it gives off, and know better than to wander them by yourself.”

(Carrie)

Taken literally, those words would anger me. They still do, but I need to remember that however old and learned she may be, Merovingia still has the right to her feelings. She’s only venting emotion. She doesn’t mean to hurt or belittle me as a witch.

“So they’re abandoned for a reason? There’s danger down here? Would you like me to help clear them--”

(Merovingia)

“Yes, there is danger. No, Carrie, I don’t want you to help clear them. I want you to stay out. I want us to stay out. Dangers will keep appearing in our lives. We must learn to accept them.”

(Carrie)

“Yes. Right. Of course. I’m sorry, Mero.”

(Merovingia)

“I… I forgive you. I’m sorry for raising my voice. Please be careful, liebchen? It would destroy me if anything happened to you. Without you, without my witch, I am nothing.”

(Carrie)

“And without my succubus, I am nothing. Of course, Mero. I understand.”

(Merovingia)

“Hm… I suppose it’s my fault, anyway. You’re pent-up and looking for something to do with that energy, ja? I should’ve found an outlet for you by now.”

(Carrie)

To my shame, my thoughts leap to the idea that she might mean rekindling our sex life. All gods damn you, Carrie, try to be a little less shallow. There’s more to love than being a slut.

(Merovingia)

“So, if you’re struggling to sleep… a sleepless night is an excellent time to act when we would normally be idle. A good way to catch our enemies unawares.”

(Carrie)

“We have enemies?”

(Merovingia)

“What else would you call Moonsilver, and anyone who stands beside her?”

(Carrie)

“An abuser? And look, Mero, I understand how infuriating she is, but the girls she leads astray are victims. I’m not going to blame them for falling under Moonsilver’s—under Amaranth’s—thrall. I fell under Amaranth’s thrall once. I know how hard it can be to see past her sheen.”

(Merovingia)

“True, though… at some point, adults are responsible for their own choices, ja?”

(Carrie)

“Of course. I’m just saying we should give them a reasonable chance, first. Offer them freedom, push them a little. Maybe we’ll still have to fight them in the end, but we should try to avoid it. We should talk to them enough that they’ll understand surrender is an option, and hopefully none of them choose to die fighting instead. That’s all.”

(Merovingia)

“Fair enough, I suppose. Come, then. Let’s to the City. Hannah’s been scarce for many days.”

(Carrie)

“Hannah’s her own person too, though.”

(Merovingia)

“Hannah is most likely paranoid, afraid, and grappling with a severe depressive fit. She’s self-isolating. I understand your desire to respect her boundaries, but we should still check on her, ja?”

(Carrie)

“Oh… yeah, that’s a good point…”

Useless, Carrie. Two years of training may have made you a stronger witch, but you’re still a shitty girlfriend. Only good at getting gangbanged and discarded.

Mero, dear sweet Mero, settles her hand on my shoulder and squeezes, pulling me out of my miserable thoughts.

(Merovingia)

“I am three millennia old. You are still young, not even fully in your prime yet, and you have much to learn about other people. You might never match my insight. That’s alright, Carrie. It’s normal. Stop trying to do everything yourself, and let me take the lead where I am superior. Alright?”

(Carrie)

“Yes. Thank you, Mero. The City, then?”

(Merovingia)

“The City.”

(end)