Chapter 6: Chapter Five: Answer by the Gibbous Moon

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Episode Five: Answer By the Gibbous Moon.

(Moonsilver)

It's been a day for strange and striking tableaus. Here's another to savor: a witch who might be a demon, could be a demon, would be a demon if every instinct wasn't screaming at her that no one wants demons anymore, that demons had their day and now they're good for nothing but the long endless unbeing of the Void.

A pair of dolls who had always been dolls because they were dolls right then and there, and in a thousand years they will always have been dolls, because they were dolls on the day that won't have happened for a million years ago when they stood with a witch of whom it is written that she was doomed, for in her heart she was becoming demon, and a demon is always becoming a demon but never quite is a demon but will never again be anything that isn't a demon.

And of all creatures the most powerful here is a human, but he's too powerful to truly be a human, he will walk streets under sunlight and greet faces he knows by the names they use to pretend that they're something more than faces, and he will buy his food from their counters and be invited to their parties but he will never be human like humans who don't have lightning in their hands, humans who know how to walk between realms and tickle new flesh to fill wounds and it was infinity ago back before the heat-death of his former people that a tall figure in a gown of vaporized dreams took him by the arm and...

Why am I thinking like this? Temporal dissociation? Is that even possible?

(Ardel)

"Madam witch? Are you alright?"

(Moonsilver)

"Uh... maybe? I think I was having some kind of seer's trance. Or I'm hallucinating due to catastrophic existential trauma."

(Ardel)

"I'm not familiar with witch anatomy. Is that like physical or psychological trauma?"

(Moonsilver)

"I mean, I don't think there is one unified witch anatomy. We're not from the same class of organisms as humans are. As you can, uh... clearly see from the fact that my blood is silver."

Somewhere, under layers of flesh, ripples of incoherent lightning dance along the synapse-map to the place where the blind idiot voice lives. "Oh, I'm a mess, aren't I? It's getting everywhere."

Amaranth, you're bleeding. You're bleeding your own blood all over.

(Ardel)

Sable spires, you are still bleeding!

(Moonsilver)

"Yeah, um, if you have some kind of compress, some bandages or something, that'd be good. That hunter really fucked me in all the wrong ways."

Ragged witch-flesh stings wonderfully under my probing fingers. The wounds seem as though they're sealing, just way slower than I'm used to. Or is that only because my sight's shrinking with my consciousness? How long before it all shrinks down to one bright pinpoint?

(Ardel)

I can do you one better than that.

(Moonsilver)

Poorly-chosen words and well-woven magic find, alike, their unmaking in me. The glow of Ardel's hands pours warmth, hovering along shining gashes and the puckered impact craters of the hunter's gun. Bliss wells up and makes me melt for just a moment... and then it's gone, sucked away into cold emptiness that seems all the more endless.

"Good effort, um... Master Illuminator? I think it helped a little. No need for more."

Lies, lies, oh how I've always hated lies! But I'm pretty sure if I tell Ardel that I like the vibes of walking around, bleeding and battered like it's the most normal thing in the world, he'll think I'm crazy and insist on healing me more.

Which is, to be fair, crazy. But I don't want him to think of me that way until he's ready to see it as something to indulge in rather than, say, sending me to therapy for.

(Ardel)

"Master Illuminator? My, my, Madam Witch! How proper. What's your name, if I may ask? If you're already think of me as a kind of wizard-cop, well... can't blame you for keeping quiet."

(Moonsilver)

"I'm still American enough to kick you in the crotch if you go smarmy on me.

And it's Moonsilver. Amaranth Moonsilver? Yeah. That feels right enough."

(Ardel)

"Sorry. Bit of an old habit, I'm afraid. From my, er... teenage years. Which, as you can imagine, I'd rather not talk about. Well then, Amaranth, it's a pleasure to be formally introduced."

(Moonsilver)

"Likewise, pretty boy. A pact of mutual non-explanation? Thank fuck. Listen, Ardel, if you couldn't tell, I'm a bit of a mess. Not a great person, right? Just an absolute disaster. I'm talking... uh..."

His silence is as politely un-pointed as the aversion of his eyes. His pretty, pretty eyes...

(Ardel)

"Right. Anyway, er... I'm still reeling over, you know... I hadn't processed you as injured until you called attention to that. I think you might be some sort of psionic."

(Moonsilver)

That's mind powers, right? I'm not exactly up-to-date on pop culture for... reasons."

(Ardel)

"Reasons covered under the Gura-Moonsilver Pact of 2024."

(Moonsilver)

Exactly.

(Showpiece, whispering)

"What the fuck is happening?"

(Hazard, whispering badly)

"I think this is how straight people flirt."

(Moonsilver + Ardel)

"I'm pansexual."

(Ardel)

"Anyway. Psionics have a tendency to radiate their perspectives, if you will. What the Illuminators refer to as passive overwrite. The average mind is much more reliant on external stimuli to regulate its sense of self and the priority it gives different factors in its environment than most of us like to admit. Normally I have a reasonable amount of resistance."

(Moonsilver)

"But not in my case?"

(Ardel)

"No. You said some (clears throat) some things that made me much more malleable to your influence."

(Moonsilver, clueless)

"Like what?"

(Ardel)

"You can't be serious."

(Moonsilver)

"I am, though. I just don't have any idea what I said that... ohhhhhhhh."

Revelation is manifest in the figure of an outcast witch craning back to look at the sewer ceiling, her full lips parting to give voice to enlightenment. "Oh, right, I said I was crushing on you. Ardel, are you weak to girls?"

(Ardel)

"Wh-d-bu--have you seen yourself, woman?!"

(Moonsilver)

"Well, yeah, I guess I'm pretty attractive but I'm not used to people processing that as sexual attractiveness. Girls flirted with me fast enough in college, and sometimes that went as far as sex, but it never felt like they were actually attracted to me, you know? Just some vague idea of 'oh, Amaranth's a witch, that's so cool and milquetoast-evil." Me myself, the person I am, the way I look? That's always been something they treated more as, 'oh, look at Amaranth, she shines like the virgin marble of the Hellenes! Let us fix her upon the pedestal where none are to touch her, lest they sully her majesty!

Those old statues weren't pure white in their heyday either. And I like being sullied, Ardel. I don't want to be pure. I want to be filth."

If I keep going like this, I'll make my first human kill when Ardel chokes on all the words he can't get to leave his throat.

"Oh. Oh, right. Passive overwrite. I didn't see myself as sexual, other people saw that I didn't see myself as sexual, misinterpreted that as a lack of desire to be seen sexually... wow. Feedback loops are awful."

(Ardel)

"If your psionic gifts had any presence on Earth--there's some evidence that passive overwrite wasn't entirely constrained by Earth's mundanity--that probably didn't help.

(Moonsilver)

"Are you saying my own unrealized power was clamjamming me?"

(Ardel)

"It's a possibility."

(Moonsilver)

"Awesome. I'm going to kill everyone now.

... not really. So, a, erm... a professional acquaintance of mine called me an abyss witch. Is that like a kind of psionic witch?"

(Ardel)

"Possibly. There are many different names for the same arcane forces. Or she could have misinterpreted the outward signs. It's not always easy to tell different power-types apart, especially not early in a practitioner's development... but we need to get moving. I do have one last question of my own, if I may... are you, er... you seem very invested in sexuality. Do you have anything in common with a succub--"

(Moonsilver)

The irony of our deepest volition, the choices that come from the most innate and unknowable reaches of the truth we build within ourselves, the truth of ourselves we fall into, is that they come so quickly and so irresistibly that we seldom realize they are choices at all. Choice is something others teach us to see in ourselves. But, they can only know we've chosen something when we do it slowly enough for them to see the choice happening.

There is a deeper choice. The deepest of all. It is not a thing of thought, for thought comes from it. It is not thoughtless, for thoughtlessness comes from it. It's that sense of rising in the morning. It's not that you don't know why. You rise because you rise. You aren't pushing on through the biting cold under skeletal bending boughs in the depths of night because you expect to find something on the other side.

You do this simply because you do this. This is your reality. This is where you are, and who.

This upward rupture of glittering silver fangs shot through with silver veins, concentric rings of glittering teeth exploding out from the humanoid figure with flaring eyes and wild-flying strands of pink hair... this is abyssal.

Not all creatures are abyssal. But the sort of creature I am? Yes.

"Let's..." My hands press the air to either side. Pushing against the doorframe of reality to hold myself upright, to stop myself from falling into... what, exactly? Well, that's just the fall I'm not ready to take. "Let's not talk about what kinds of established entities I remind you of, okay? I'm sorry, it's... it's a bit of a sore point. When I'm growing, when I'm taking the risk of embracing myself, I don't want to be compared to things that are already firm in themselves. I don't to be crushed by that opposing force, okay?... sorry. For exploding."

(Ardel)

"Nothing to apologize for. I understand. I, er... I grew up in a prestigious family of Illuminators, longstanding mages. Everyone around me was already doing what I wanted to, doing it better than I could ever imagine doing. Trying seemed futile. Even after I transitioned, it took me a long while. So I can't say I understand in full, but I understand why you don't want me to... touch on things."

(Moonsilver)

"Thank you. We should, um... we should get back to Metronome House. You can take a little while there to readjust."

(Ardel)

"Right."

"So... how does this work? Is there a portal, or a ritual you do to open a path, or?"

(Moonsilver)

"I don't actually know."

(Ardel)

"Ahhhh. Right. Yes. Still learning your powers, very fair. A kind of 'sink or swim, find out when I get there, at least witches can't starve' sort of thing?"

(Moonsilver)

"Yeah, like that!"

"So, um... I laced my suite back at the House with pieces of myself. I had a kind of instinct that if part of me was still there, it'd be easier to get the rest back, y'know? Something to do with, oh, well, I can heal..."

Witchly spite pours out of witchly eyes at wounds that haven't done much healing at all, yet.

"... so I can grow towards myself."

(Ardel)

"Right. And you have the power to... make things emerge?"

(Moonsilver)

"Not quite? That was more of a, er... a defensive response. My main thing is unraveling."

Showing off feels so good, so right. Making the stone floor of the sewers dance upward to meet my fingers, liquefying and disintegrating stone."

(Ardel)

"Oh! I see... hm. Well, maybe think less in terms of creating a bridge or a portal, and more in terms of unraveling the space between you and the other pieces of yourself?"

That's ridiculous. That's just plain loopy. The very idea... gives me a sudden sense of things between. It's like I'm feeling through the boundaries of being. There's a threshold in the empty air between me and the sewer walls ahead. I stretch forth. Pushing into it. Give like rotting wood, like wet paper ripping apart, like flesh parting under my nails.

Soundless, oily, space eats itself open for me. The red curtains of my living room unfold into being. A surreal rip right through the portrait of the place we're standing. I walk around it, and find it's invisible from the other side. No, more than that, I can walk through the space where it should be from the other side. And when I turn around, it's still there from this side.

"Firstly, holy shit. Secondly, Ardel, just for that I'll owe you an hour for free anytime you want."

(Ardel)

"An hour of what?"

(Moonsilver)

"I'm a prostitute."

I'm getting very good at making Ardel splutter. It's cute! I'm on the verge of stepping across when I glance back to the ashes Ardel made of the hunter, and I see something poking out: a black leather case, smaller than before, and hints of a shining red handle.

"Hey... that hunter's gun is still here."

Hurried steps, stone clicking under my shoes, and an unraveling of ashes to lay the weapon bare.

"Ardel, do you know what this is about?"

(Ardel)

"I might? It's sometimes the case that a hunter's weapon persists after their death. Some notion of being earned or 'won' from its wielder by the one who killed them. But I have no use for a firearm. My lightning answers me just as fast as any trigger's pull, it's more flexible, and admittedly, it makes me feel much cooler than a gun would."

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(Moonsilver)

"Well, it's not disappearing. Can you, like, bequeath it to me?"

(Ardel)

"Do you want a gun?"

(Moonsilver)

"You know... I think I do."

(Ardel)

"Take it, it's yours. There. Looks like that worked."

(Moonsilver)

By that exchange's end, the holster and the belt turn to a pink just as pastel-saturated as my hair. The belt fits snugly over my hips. The revolver's still a big piece, hanging heavy over my right hip, and I have to admit... I kinda like it.

A few seconds later we're all in my room, looking the other way across the hole I tore in space. Which is a thing I can do. I tear holes in space. With my mind.

Is this soaring feeling, this brainless childish joy, euphoria? I think it must be.

"That's really satisfying. So, uh... how do I close this thing?"

(Ardel)

"Well... as counterintuitive as it may sound... can you unravel the unraveling?"

(Moonsilver)

"Okay, c'mon, that's bullshit. That's never going to work."

The ragged aperture comes apart in frozen slime, in stale static cling, in waves of multicolored darkness under the sensation-sight in the middle of my mind. Strands of the other side tear off, winding away like the streamers of a maypole, and it shrinks to a tunnel, shrinks to nothing.

"No fucking way. Ohhhh, Ardel, do you realize what you've done? You've just taught me to defile the boundaries of space and time! Free, free, free, Moonsilver is free, Moonsilver will walk unchained in the void between stars... I'm going to have your babies for this!"

(Ardel)

"That's, er... there's no need to go that far."

(Moonsilver)

"Standing offer, handsome! Ahem. Right, uh... anyway. Just a sec."

Again the peeling the crunching and the ragged-making. Again, the chamber marred by scorches, by silver witch-blood, by the hunter's ashes.

"Aha! Just as I thought! I bled in that room. There are pieces of me all over. So anywhere there are parts of my essence left behind, I can return to at will."

The thought strikes home and I slump down on the couch. Weary, yes, and dizzy, but mostly just from a drunken heavy pleasure.

"I... I need some time to process this. Uh, Haz, can you speak to Head Doll Hue on my behalf and get a room for Lisbet?"

(Hazard)

"On it, mistress!!!"

(Moonsilver)

The vampire is a sallow animation of sunken eyes and slumping shoulders. Equally empty of threat and potential.

(Lisbet)

"Not to sound ungrateful, just... I can't be any kind of friends with you. The worst day of my life got you a new power and a human boyfriend. That's who you are to me now. The girl who made the deaths of my friends into a chance to be horny. I have to hate you for that."

(Moonsilver)

"Yeah. That's fair. You can pick a fight later if you want. Just don't take it out on the dolls. And I'm not gonna kill you, got it? So don't go pinning expectations on that."

(Lisbet)

"If I decide I wanna die I'll do it myself. I'm not that weak."

A red-headed doll and a little brunette vampire thump out.

(Ardel)

"I should get back under way. We, er... ate up more time than I can strictly afford. You're a dangerous sort of creature, Amaranth Moonsilver."

(Moonsilver)

"Only to the cute ones, Mr. Gura."

The diligent figure of a Gravadan Illuminator--whatever that means, wherever Gravada is--straightens, bows himself out, and hurries into the hall.

(Showpiece)

"Will he be able to, uh... find his own way out?"

(Moonsilver)

"Most likely. Hm. You know, I should probably have given him a vial of my blood, or something... oh, gods of anti-grace, it's getting everywhere.

Wait, I already had that thought.

Show, I think I'm getting delirious."

(Showpiece)

"Mistress, would you please sit down?"

(Moonsilver)

The savaged pink-haired icon of a witch allows a diminutive blond doll to guide her to a couch. She is the heavy settling of suddenly-sagging limbs.

"Show, can you, like... hug my head? I feel like I'm barely here."

Ceramic can be soft and yielding by the standards of silver blood and black-metal bones. Ceramic can be warm and comforting when that's the Purpose bestowed on a doll by the witch who chose to claim her.
Ceramic can be the only solid thing in a universe that feels like spinning strands all around me, or maybe those strands of feeling are just nothingness seeping into the negative space where I'm still, slowly, falling apart.

(Showpiece)

"I think you should've let the nice human heal you more."

(Moonsilver)

"Yep."

(Showpiece)

"Why didn't you?"

(Moonsilver)

"Because I'm starved for lasting, deep bonds with another person, the kind of bonds that might, for example, be formed by a prolonged nursing-back-to-health, and at this point in my life having my wounds rapidly mended would only feel like yet another way in which the universe denies me the powerful emotional attachment I so deeply desire."

(Showpiece)

"R-really?"

(Moonsilver)

"Yep."

(Showpiece)

"If it's really deep and true, aren't you supposed to be unable to put it into words, that kind of thing? Isn't it weird to be able to... y'know... say that, unless it's about someone else?"

(Moonsilver)

"Not for someone who was never allowed the luxury of being unable to explain herself."

(Showpiece)

"Even when you're hurt this bad?"

(Moonsilver)

"Especially when I'm hurt this bad. I had to have the words to justify the burdens my mother took on when she tolerated my ill health."

(Showpiece)

"That's awful. That's fucked."

(Moonsilver)

"That's my childhood."

Reentry by a doll of blood-red hair and pale plastic. Hazard's alone and unstained by blood, so it seems likely that Lisbet didn't invoke its help in a sudden suicide. Two dolls clinging to a witch to stop her falling out of their world.

(Hazard)

"Is there anything we can do, mistress?"

(Moonsilver)

"Probably not. Just gotta ride this out. It's like... like a depression spiral expressing itself as physical injury. I'll heal when it ends. Or when my mind's recovered, my form will follow? I don't know. I'd, uh... I'd hoped for more time to figure this stuff out.

Guess that was naive. Fantasyland's been dead for a long, long time. Now the bad guys just kill you."

(Showpiece)

"Does that make you the good girl, mistress?"

(Moonsilver)

"Ha... no, huh. No, I'm afraid it doesn't. Bad girls just fuck before we kill. Sometimes."

Hm. There's an idea."

(Hazard)

"That's not a good idea! There's no way you're healthy enough for sex!"

(Moonsilver)

"My gut's telling me to give it a try."

(Showpiece)

"I don't think that's your gut."

Look at these shiny tan-ceramic fingers, so close and warm against my cheeks. Look at the neat sculpted nails. Showpiece just had this hand replaced. What happens if I do my cheek-splitting grin? What happens if my tongue curls out and pulls a dollish digit into my mouth, and it's caught between the teeth hardening out of the seams in the sides of my face?

"Alright, dollface. If you're so against the idea, I guess you'd better pull your fingers out."

(Showpiece)

"I-I mean, I didn't say I was against it. I think if you want to, we--"

(Moonsilver)

Just a little more pressure puts the first crack in Showpiece's pretty pinky finger. Let's do it right, this time. Let's gather the moaning morsel into Mistress Moonsilver's plush, warm lap. Get her leaning back over my shoulder so I can feel every squirm that shudders through her, get my fingers under her skirt and between her legs. And what's this? Something soft and warm that's getting quickly harder.

So, not all of Showpiece's clay has been fired. Well, I don't mind having something to mold...

"Hazard. This is an order from your witch. You stop using that tongue to question me, you get underneath Showpiece--that's right, squirm until she's practically sitting on you--and you start eating me out."

(Hazard)

"B-but--"

(Moonsilver)

Haz, if you don't obey, I'm going to give you nothing but flat stares for an entire week. You'll never be able to tell if I'm angry or just bored."

Dirty tactics, but they get results, and the thrill of seeing that painted pink flush spread over Haz's face, the thrill of demanding obedience and receiving it, the thrill of every tickle and quiver while it writhes to get it head where I ordered her to put it... it's so very worth it.

Let the witch-tongue dance on the doll-fingers, let Showpiece tremble and tense her legs so that every little squeeze crushes Hazard further down in the couch. Cold little doll-hands brush their way along my thighs underneath my gown, brush through the narrowing cavern of my curves and the cave-roof of Showpiece, until they find my clit and mine the first gasp out of me.

When Hazard's tongue lays the first eager lick on my folds, hot and dripping with something that's not quite saliva, my tremor sends my teeth crashing through Showpiece's finger. I work my way over her hand, sucking her ring finger up to the second knuckle with my lips before biting through oh so slowly, then gnashing off the last inch with a single sudden clash of witch-fangs.

Let's work down this hand piece by piece, taking more and more. Showpiece is so easy that every bite gets another dry orgasm out of her. Each one leaves her more empty-headed than the last, a stuttering twitching wreck of a doll who would shove her arm down my throat to be devoured faster if only she could muster the motor coordination for it.

She can't, and the more her cries of delighted pain echo in my ears, the less I feel like I'm in control. A quaking, groaning, desperate pile of girl-things straining to get closer to each other, to plunge deeper, to fall over that final brink--

Climax isn't a peak but an unmaking. Bodies slumping together, eyes staring wide from panting faces that keep twitching to look but never manage to finish the move. Spinning down, heating up, condensing to the rush between two legs where a groaning mouth drinks greedily. Showpiece, armless and pretty close to brainless, keeps making sounds but not words and rubbing back against me, staring over her shoulder with needy adoring eyes.

(Moonsilver)

"Good dolls..."

Hands that might've belonged to me a few minutes ago--I can't remember--slacken enough to let Showpiece fall aside, and without her pressure, Hazard slides out to the floor where it just lies in a heap, fingering itself to keep its cum flowing as long as it can.

(Hazard)

"That was amazing... that was so good..."

(Showpiece)

"Love you love you love you love you love you love you--"

(Moonsilver)

"Ha... That's a good doll. Mistress loves you too."

Witch-lips press blond doll-hairs, leaving specks of spit-slickened ceramic behind. Ease back on the red leather couch among the black velvet pillows, curled up with two very good dolls. Showpiece will need repairs before we go anywhere. Given the state of her, I'll have to send Hazard to arrange things... but that can wait for a minute... I'm lust-drunk and only bleeding trickles, now. Just enough to have the dolls lick later, if I want.

It does feel as thought there's something I'm forgetting... I can't quite remember what it--

"Wait! Fuck! We were supposed to go to Earth!"

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