Chapter 22: Chapter 23: Of goths, the Lady’s temper, and a very good dog

"So what's with the blue?" the seeker asks, folding her arms. "I thought you were, like, a goth. Where are all the black curtains and skulls? The silver doesn't feel goth to me. And yeah, the fires that don't actually light anything up are eldritch, but are they goth?"

The six-horned silhouette upon the Manifold Throne, umbral dissonance carved out against the redolent nova blooming at the utmost heart of the Galespire in Zul, the Ashen Trance, clenches the iridescent blade arms of her throne.

"You call yourself occultist," the Lady sneers. "Listen to the dredge-mind skimmings spilling over your rotten little flesh-lips." Her lambent maw gouges wider into her silhouette. Her eyes multiply, two cobalt nova pinpoints becoming four becoming eight. "Idly regurgitating the same stale, over-reified, bilge-brain--"

A slightly shorter figure, still towering far above the occultist, passes her to approach the throne--a shadowed hound wreathed by infernal fire.

"--copy-and-paste tripe about what a goth looks like, how a goth acts, all the fetishizing offal that--"

A settling. A slow thumping.

The Lady's silhouette trails off. Her implicit head inclines, horns snapping into alternate shapes across her self's continuum, until she realigns to consider the hellhound resting her head in the Lady's lap.

"Uh..." the Lady says. "... was I angry about something?"

The outer demon sits for a while, mesmerized by the wagging of her beloved pet's tail.

"So," she finally says, recovering her wits enough to address her guest, "anyway. I'd like you to leave Machrae Diir until you have a more nuanced understanding of goth identity." She unfolds a taloned hand. "One that goes beyond idly screaming 'goth!' every time you see a dark color palette would be a good start."

She points to her maw. "I have fangs. I am a new and terrible kind of succubus, a self-shaped cosmic horror that assimilates its sexual partners, spawned by the Information Age yet speaking in romantic-era poetry. Consider that."

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"You're so hot when you're sarcastic," the hellhound says dreamily.

"Awwww, darling!" the Lady gushes. "You're really hot when you're being sweet!"

"Okay, but like--" the occultist begins.

"My girlfriend's head is in my lap," the Lady interrupts. "If you're still standing there within the next ten seconds, I expect my dear hound to take it as an invitation to claim a new toy." Lambent talons scratch behind a soft, velvety ear. "I do so love watching her play with a new toy..."

The occultist, evidently a coward at heart, turns and sprints out of the throne room.

The Lady considers. "Well, that's almost disappointing... but then again..." She gently lifts her dear hound's chin enough to change posture. A glowing length rises between the Lady's hips.

"Er, Lady," Handmaiden Chyorzhiir says. "You do have other petitioners today."

"I know!" the Lady says, with a barely-stifled gasp and sigh while her hellhound sets her tongue to work. "They know the rules. They can..."

She moans. "They'll just have to deal with it."

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