Chapter 13: Chapter Twelve: Star-flung Ardor Beckons

(Kairliina, higher pitch)

The esteemed listener is reminded that the Analogue Ruins podcast does not contain content warnings. Please stop listening immediately, and look to your own mental health if at any point you feel discomforted. No story is worth sacrificing your well-being.

(flamboyant)

If you’ll excuse me, dear ones, I do believe I hear the summons to the stage. It’s time for a proper Saelvur debut!…

(small, frightened)

Oh, cinders, I’m terrified. I do apologize for this panicked reflex, my urge to fake confidence I don’t feel. It’s an old, bad habit. I’m trying my best to overcome it. Please be gentle.

Episode Twelve: Star-flung Ardor Beckons

(Aekarii)

My dreams since coming to Metronome House are dark and blissfully gothic. Sometimes I rise into lucidity. Often for sex, and occasionally for odd portents. Of those I most hope to see, those I hurt, those I wish to apologize to and help if I can, I see nothing.

But there’s lust aplenty. I’m happy for that. Passing the threshold from mortal life unto death was terrifying. That terror lingered long after it sank in that my being would persevere, that I would know passion, sensation, and sweet ecstasy for eternities beyond the car crash that mangled my body one scorching afternoon in July. Was it only two years ago? Yes… July 31^st, 2022.

I know that those numbers corresponded to feelings, once, to places and calendars and humans whose lives I shared in. They flitter through my memories and dreams. Vague and hazy specters glimpsed on winter nights of a distant childhood, once upon a December. It feels as though a century has already passed. Flesh-death left me with new pains and worries to overcome. In crossing over, I opened the black box of my buried memories. I embraced finally and forever that Seurchraig, and the war she brought upon us, and the near-extinction of my people were real. Yet flesh-death also annulled the strange seal within my psyche that cut me off from lucid dreams, and from witnessing the supernatural.

Flesh-death has set me free, and for that, I am forever grateful, and thus I dream. I dream of the breaking of the foundations of the Earth. I walk through phantom sprawls of figures wielding hasty magic, and unfamiliar powers, against anomalies that twist city skylines into disintegrating spirals, that transmute flesh into crystal encasing bones that remain bone, that distort and swallow and burn and gouge and imbue with mutagenic radiance.

I witness frantic battles between factions thrown together in a panic, as opposing cults of personality pit swarms of minions against each other. Precious few live out the power trips they expected from the day real magic returned to the world. Most find, as I found, that violence is frightening, and chaotic, and even when all the advantages lie in their favor, their enemies so often manage to turn the tables by the most unexpected means.

I wanted their world to understand what I’d gone through. But not like this! It’s so wrong. It’s all so hateful and wrong. Even in the apocalypse, abusers manipulate and hide away, pitting their victims against each other in exchange for a warped parody of love. I remind myself that yearning for change and freedom does not mean I somehow caused this. I’m too at risk of a relapse to help. The last thing they need is a rogue Onslaught Guard in the throes of psychosis, killing everything that moves.

It’ll take decades to fully recover from the distortions the war forged in my psyche.

They don’t have decades, these poor ones. They can’t all be the main characters. They can’t all win. But they can ensure that everyone loses, that everyone must experience defeats and humiliations and falls-from-grace. So I walk as a wraith amid Armageddon, manifestations now and again blasted away by the lucid power of a psychic, a mage, or some other sensitive who perceives my ghostly presence.

Pull tight the curtains of dreaming. Pass through without feeling anything, besides a faint and bittersweet curiosity. I concentrate my feelings in myself, in my own experience of my birth-world’s ending. Even as it happens, it’s becoming the distant past. There. That’s bearable. Now I can find rest in the chaos, and give myself the chance to be what I will be.

Always, I find my way to the islands of baited breath amid the bedlam, the chambers where fearful hearts hide away. Stolen penthouses and family bunkers, crumbling apartment blocks and college campuses half-overrun by the creeping tendrils of eldritch flora. I give what succor I can with the escape of sex. For a few minutes, my lovers of a moment know mind-breaking climax, and forget that all around them the world is ending.

This much, I can do. This much helps me, too.

My every orgasm lulls me back to the feverish depths of incoherent dream. Free to wander and rest in the psychic abysses of slumber, embracing clarity only long enough to savor the hedonism of being. Sensations like the way my belly swells for the cock of the centaur I become a centaur to breed with, the way his legs brace against my flanks, the way his heat spikes and my heart thunders as he fills me with our foals. He’s another of my dreams. Still, a very sweet one. Perhaps it will be real one day.

The Catholic initiates huddled in a half-shattered cathedral—is this Aachen cathedral? Yes, I believe it is! I remember, I visited this place when I was a demon-child sealed in a human vessel!--in Aachen Cathedral I embrace the Catholic initiates who succumb to my charms one by one. At last I induce them all to gather around, rubbing their cocks against me, drinking deep of my lips and the flowing purple milk of corruption at my swelling breasts… oh, now these sweet souls are all very real! Though not, as it turns out, all very masculine.

Seeing one fledgling sister’s lips swell, her cassock burning away from her swelling breasts, her cock growing and studding with spines and wonderfully-burning spirals as she enters me a second time… a succubus becomes so powerful when it just lies on its back, flaunting its beauty, inviting all that look upon it to join it in rapturous ecstasy! I lose myself in the wonderful heat of cocks pulsing against my hands, of desperate fingers clutching my horns to pull my head around so a new shaft can force open my cum-soaked lips, in every centimeter of me caressed by scorching-hot members coating me with rope after rope of wonderful musky cum.

Lest any still think me lacking in Sapphic savor, the next time I turn lucid, I dreamwalk my way to a nunnery where the huddled sisters find the comfort in me that their god no longer affords. So many nervous hands learning, or remembering, what a soft delight the warmth of another woman can be. So many bodies squirming, so many pussies becoming so very wet around my testing fingers and upon my tongue.

Here, too, a handsome lad who drinks of my folds awakens to himself as my brother in lust. Seeing his shapes shift, his waist broaden with his shoulders, his breasts draw back and expand into pectorals almost as impressive as the blood-red shaft that blossoms out of his one-time clitoris… it stirs me in ways I didn’t expect.

After all that I awake in a bed of luxuriant lilac silks, under a headboard engraved with leering skeletons and cavorting concubi, with a loving rendition of the Grim Reaper at the center.

When I stretch I witness the silky obsidian fur covering my limbs, and feel my long snout quirk in curiosity. It stands to reason, of course. I’ve felt a spike of jealousy anytime I saw some other wolf anthro getting attention. I’m far too fascinated by furries to be anything other than a furry myself. A wolf succubus… it feels like such a natural fit it’s almost cliched, even though as far as I can recall I never saw a single one before the moment I see my own reflection.

That in itself is such a strange coincidence. Surely I can’t be the only being to think of putting them together! It wouldn’t be the first time my causality has shrouded me from being exposed to mysteries I want to explore on my own, from parts of myself I want to discover without feeling that I’m just copying someone.

Saelvurs are such natural-born prima donnas. We can be very hard on ourselves, always trying to be one of a kind in a multiverse so vast and rich with life. The odds are against us. But then, that’s also what gives the dance its savor.

Metronome House places so little weight on its residents. It shelters us from the crushing demands of other realities. All the extra energy makes growth and mutation so much easier, so much faster.

I spend many happy minutes preening before the mirror. It sits in its own thorn-engraved alcove at the center of the black iron bookshelf across from my bed. Row on row full of unfamiliar tomes and strange stories written by the City’s denizens. Note to self, make time to read some of these! For the moment I’m too busy admiring the glitter of my dark fangs. They show such sweet oily sheens as they refract the violet fire filling the back of my throat. I play with my newly-fluffy tail, and get a feel for the way my wolf features interact with the silhouette of my wings and horns.

Such charming lines of motion I can create just by angling my ears—oh! And I can’t wait to hear the sounds of my own tongue and chops at play the next time I give oral pleasure!

At regular intervals, rings of purple fire pulse from my heart in a miniature explosion of radiance through my skin. They expand along the delicate bristles on my breast and diverge across my body, burning away layers of fur. The instant they pass by new tufts sprout in their place. I’m always trailing an ash-wake that smells of hot iron and sweet feral musk. I retain the same mazelike patterns that adorned my limbs and belly in my old humanoid form, now doubling as cutaways in my fur that vent further violet inferno to expand my outlines.

How do you like that? I could almost pass for a succubus that knows how to flaunt themselves. Venturing out of my room leads to a discovery: many of Metronome House’s other residents are more flustered by my earnest, bubbly flirting than they were by my dominant facade.

All told, it’s a wonderful morning right up to the moment Head Doll Hue stops me for a talk.

Our confrontation takes place in a green-carpeted hallway of Metronome House between phantasmagoric busts of many monstrous figures. I face this tall doll in magenta robes, with hair and skin of shining burnished gold, and empty black pits for eyes, while she casually tells me that she believes I am my own abuser stealing my identity.

Seurchraig often impersonated other Carag, those she or her servants slew.

(Hue)

“I wish to be clear, Great One. My sole interest lies in the preservation of Metronome House and its tenants. I am willing to make whatever accommodations you deem necessary, and of course, if there is any favor you would ask I will happily fulfill it. Is there prey you would ask me to help you ensnare?”

(Aekarii, strained)

“I want you never to ask about this again. And for the record, if I was Seurchraig, you would just have earned my eternal disdain. Setch believed herself to be a fundamentally good person. She had ideals. And quite the victimization complex, if you can believe it! She despised double-dealers. You would be one of the very first she annihilated when she escalated to moving in the open, understand?”

(Hue)

“Oh.”

(Aekarii, venomous)

Hue is incapable of fear. But she registers severe professional humiliation, and that’s almost the same. Serves her fucking right. That the esteemed Head Doll is so sure of her conclusion as to dismiss any possibility that I am truly who I claim, and therefore one of the tenants she exists to “preserve…” the fact that I’m so accustomed to being treated like this only makes it more painful.

Carag are the bottom-feeders of the cosmos. Even when we achieve something, the universes we visit find ways to remind us where we started. We’re scum. To most realities, scum is all we’ll ever be.

(Hue)

“Right. Since I have only just now had a chance to speak with you, your suite’s number is—“

(Aekarii, smug)

“Scattered Graphite Whispers Ruin Against the Old Iron Fastness, yes?”

The head doll radiates perturbation. Quite specifically perturbation. Hue would never be upset, taken aback, or agitated. But perturbed? Perhaps. Yes, I would say that Head Doll Hue is perturbed. I’m hurt enough to be reminded of Seurchraig, even here in this sanctuary, that I fold a wing coquettishly around myself, and flutter my eyelashes in false-apologetic fashion.

(Syrupy, sarcastic)

“Sorry. I have a terrible penchant for showing off.”

(Hue)

“It is unbecoming of one with your… legacy.”

(Aekarii, dry as a desert moon)

“My Earthly legacy of dying in a car crash after a life of constant disappointment? Or my Axiom-born legacy as a former child-soldier from a species that narrowly thwarted our own genocide? Hmmm… no, I’d say it’s very becoming of me. Insist, if you must, that I’m Seurchraig in her latest hollowed-out skin. From a pragmatic standpoint, it’s hard to blame you. She used ploys like this more often and more cruelly than you can comprehend. But please stop bringing your suspicions to my attention.”

(Hue)

“Of course, Mistress Aekarii.”

(Aekarii)

“Thank you.”

Hue turns and hurries off, doubtless to tell her favorites among the other dolls that Seurchraig gets very upset if you call her bluff, so be sure to cater to the old mass-murderer and pretend to believe she’s really Aekarii. I do my best to put that certainty outside my thoughts. It’s one of many such sorrows I knew I would face. Best focus on my own path, and the paths of those that truly believe in me.

Still, I’m stung. Hue soured my day. I want something to sweeten it back up.

I’ve only walked a few meters up the hallway before an approaching presence, bubbling with chill electric panic like an injection of perforated green nausea, comes careening through the halls. A tide of splorching inky shadow gushes around the corner and hurtles to within half a meter.

(Enrazhug)

“Hey, do you know where I can find a succubus named—OH FUCK IT’S YOU!!!”

(Aekarii)

I’d like this tableau a great deal better if I had some squirming, groaning toy pushed up against the wall, so I could pop their cock out of my mouth and wipe their cum off my cheek with my claws as I stood up, sucked it down, and acknowledged the shadow-demon. For I do feel it: that sly, quiet knowing in my breast that sings of liaisons in a dark and half-remembered realm. The knowing that touches my heart when I stand in the presence of a fellow demon, be they hellish, abyssal, earthly, or something else altogether.

(Wryly)

“Oh? Which me am I this time? The fallen heroine, or the old tyrant that ate her?”

I’ve had some version of this conversation many times already. None have prepared me for the ancient to spread himself across the floor in supplication, migraine-impressions of many red eyes staring down from the murky ridge of his upper body. Focused on the floor.

(Enrazhug)

“You’re the young Carag, right? I-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fuck you over, or Moonsilver, either. By the time it came up that she’s awakened, I’d already…”

(Aekarii)

A condensing. His shadow-masses retreat like a receding tide.

(Through her fangs)

“Already what, kindred?”

(Enrazhug)

“The traitor Merovingia, and her pet witch. I told her Moonsilver’s staying here.”

(Aekarii)

The tongue of my people spills from my lips, every word calling splashes of color and roiling light like smoke bursting underwater. Every splash splits, then hardens into phantom figures, structures, vistas breaking open above my head.

A strange and wondrous thing. I’ve only known Vulshiir in its present form for two years. I only published its finalized fundamentals a week before my death. Yet, under stress, it already comes more naturally than English. It mollifies me that the old demon’s folly has raised up this mystery to cherish.

It mollifies me a little.

(a little too controlled)

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“Gorozh vand… faem Ir, praet, kaz Moonsilver.”

(Enrazhug)

“Uh, sorry, I don’t speak Vulshiir…”

(Aekarii, fuming)

“Look at the auras, you useless idiot!”

(Enrazhug)

“What?”

(Aekarii, as though explaining to a very small child)

“The colors. That appear. Above my head when I talk. Let’s try this again, shall we? Gorozh vand. Faem Ir, praet. Kaz Moonsilver.”

At the first two words, a horned figure sitting placid and sipping their morning coffee bolts up right, clawing their scalp, staring with eyes of violet fire at some appalling sight. “Faem Ir” manifests a two-tone impression of myself and the shadow-demon, two black silhouettes trimmed by purple rays. “Praet” raises a whole throng of shapes horned and winged, bladed and smooth and slimy, tails long and spiny as well as short and tufted. Many limbs, many claws, many fanged maws full of terrible light.

And lastly, “kaz Moonsilver” manifests hazy impressions of we two walking toward a blue shadow wreathed in bubblegum pink fire.

(Enrazhug)

“Oh.”

(Aekarii, mocking, and more so as she continues—like chiding a toy)

“How can you know that Vulshiir is the Carag language, yet be ignorant that every Vulshiir word manifests its meaning when spoken? Sin and slaughter, did the idea of interpreting my words with context clues not occur to… enough. This isn’t really about your conduct. I am frustrated because things have been quite restful around here, and yet again, right when I start to let my guard down, someone throws a mess at me that I have to deal with.”

(Enrazhug)

“Isn’t this Moonsilver’s mess to deal with?”

(Aekarii)

“It would be if she possessed the power to defend herself against Merovingia, and the skill to use it. She does not. I vowed to help her. Carag iirast felgan tchuti vukat.”

Images manifest of retainers with oddly-wrought swords by their sides, rifles at the ready, of star-demon scholars clutching their tomes tight and hurrying to catch up with a figure walking towards some far horizon, of artisans at work crafting uncanny devices and starships of metal fused with flesh.

“I’ll translate this one for the savor of repeating it: Carag always attend our vows. Therefore, when my sister would fail, I fight in her stead. Let’s go.”

It takes little time to arrive at Moonsilver’s room. I’m tempted to stretch my senses, to meld my distant touch-feelers with the always-rearranging layout of Metronome House, but that feels rude. I know it’s always changing its dimensions. If the House wanted me to know how, I’m sure I’d find placards. Besides, isn’t the mystery half the fun?

Be that as it may, we come to the glossy door with rose-pink highlights. It’s warm against my knuckles, lingering warmth like a lover’s beating heart, as I knock on it. A brief wave of frustration pours out, like a hip snagged on a corner or a slip and fall onto unyielding ice.

Moonsilver, her gown torn off one shoulder, opens the door. Her mood lightens when she sees me.

(Moonsilver)

“What’s up, Aekarii—oh! You’re a furry now?”

(Aekarii)

“Always was, I think, but you know how denial can be.”

(Moonsilver)

“Ah, yeah. Well hey, that’s pretty cool. How’s the apocalypse coming?”

(Aekarii)

“It is pretty cool, I... “

My wings cocoon me, muzzle-fur tickled by their inner webbing. My ears fold back, adrift and forlorn.

“The apocalypse is handling itself. I feel so foolish and awful for saying all that. I can’t pretend any longer that I’m happy about it, all the devastation and loss and collapsing cities, but it is inevitable. It’s time for that reality to end. The age of mundanity is over. The more Earth’s peoples try to return to the past, the more suffering there will be.”

(Moonsilver, solemn)

“Those are my conclusions, too.”

(Aekarii)

“All that said, it’s no longer my world or my future to shape. I was looking for another great struggle out of pure, dumb habit. A habit a spiteful old tyrant forced my kind to learn. Now she’s nothing, so…”

I conjure glittering gray ashes, sparkling with lilac accents. I toss the handful toward the ceiling. They evaporate in a gout of pink fire, and cease to be before they hit the floor.

“… that’s what mythic heroes and their so-called higher purposes get you. As for me?”

As the words emerge, my mood lightens, my wings loosen, and I dare to look up and smile at my sister.

“I’ve had my fill of work and strife. I’ve hurt beings I cared about, too. I have things to atone for. I’ll put in the effort to do better, but once that’s all settled?”

I fold my paws before me, claws clacking together, and beam with joy.

“I just want to be a weird excitable slut, exploring strange places and fucking my way through infinity.”

(Moonsilver)

“You too, huh? I’m glad you’re easing up on yourself. You seemed so intent on playing up your power when we first met. It’s wonderful to see you so happy and sincere--”

(Aekarii, sympathetic)

The shadow-demon has little choice but to interrupt, for it seems we succubi find each other’s joy contagious. Babbling with Moonsilver makes me so happy that I’d likely forget all about his reason for being here if he remained silent. Likely as not, I’d forget that he’s here at all! Still, he earns himself a pair of sour glares when he simulates the clearing of a throat he doesn’t have. Then I remember myself, blinking with startlement.

(Embarrassed)

“Oh! Right. Yes. I’m here because this kindred, who claims to have met you, has something to say.”

I step aside, revealing the shadow-demon.

(Enrazhug)

“Right, so, uh… I was wearing the horned shape when we met. It’s not really how I see myself, but mortals tend to get more talkative if I play to the cliches a little. My real name’s not Cam, it’s Enrazhug. I’m an udug, yeah? A demon from ancient Mesopotamia. And I… um… I…”

(Aekarii)

I stand, paws still clasped at my waist, while Enrazhug babbles out a confession of his mistake, laced with multiple double-back apologies for trying to use her, for choosing to take her at face value as a human even though his instincts told him that there was more beneath the surface. Moonsilver stands silent and rigid for many breaths. Then her blue hand whips out, pink claws flaring with rays of raging power, and delivers a loud gouging slap to the udug’s amorphous face.

(Moonsilver, snarling)

“You asshole! I showed compassion for you, even though you were clearly trying to manipulate me, and you repay me by ratting me out to the two women in the universe I least want to meet? You…”

(Aekarii)

She balls up her fists, tight by her sides, and flaps her wings in agitation. Their tip-claws scrape with repeated clacks across her door’s frame.

(Moonsilver)

“So this is what it’s like from the other direction, huh? Fine. Fair. I’ll accept that. I’m not going to hold a grudge, but I don’t want to talk to you again for a long time. Fuck off.”

(Enrazhug)

“Right, yeah, I’ll—“

(Aekarii, lascivious)

“I might have a use for you, actually.”

(Moonsilver)

“Really? I mean… attraction is irrational, and all, but… never mind. I’m just pissed off at him, I don’t really believe in statements like ‘you can do better’ where casual sex is concerned.”

(Aekarii)

“His sleazy energy appeals to me. He’s perfect in his own seedy way. As for Mero and Carrie, I’ll deal with them today. You rest easy and finish what you started with your dolls.”

Her claws rasp on her door. She leans against it, torn between guilt and temptation.

(Moonsilver)

“You sure?”

(Aekarii)

“I promised to help you, didn’t I?”

(Hazard)

“Mistress, are you coming back soon? Show’s not as good at fingering as you are!”

(Moonsilver)

“Yes, I’ll be right there!… thank you, Aekarii. I’ll owe you one.”

(Aekarii)

She closes the door before I can object. That’s for the best. I should start expecting a favor for a favor. Burdens are still burdens, even if I carry them for a sister. With that in mind, I’m left alone in the corridor with a nervous, delightful-looking specimen of a shadow-demon.

Time to sample him, and see how well he’s aged…

(End)

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