Chapter 27: Chapter 28: The Lady, her handmaidens, and a turn in the tide

The petitioner clears her throat. Neat little creature. Crest of antlers, body of translucent lapis lazuli. Wings of silver fire. Normally I'd love to meet a demon like her.

But she’s rushing the Lady. Never goes over well. She's Seurchraig right now, so it's triply stupid. Well, technically Kairliina's using the name of Seurchraig for some inscrutable kind of therapy. Something about how the old bitch kept trying to mix their identities up, so Kairliina has to play the role of Seurchraig for a little while, so she can put everything she knows about Sech in context, distentangle their pieces, and make it easier to be herself.

That's how we get the Dread Empress Reborn. Rosy nova, a relatively modest four of Kai's ten horns--the upward pair of receptivity, the low large pair of outward irradiation. Robes of molten metal and dead universes orbit her cross-legged, hovering figure. But she also wants us to call her Su or "Reborn" because the idea of actually being addressed by Seurchraig's name and titles evidently retraumatizes her instead of helping, and...

Well, trauma's complicated. Fortunately, demons are used to accepting the truth for what it is instead of screaming at it because it fails to conform to rationality, you know sometimes you can just shut up if something isn't hurting you, yes I know the paintings were horrifying but I was never actually going to do those things to real people, and--

--okay, step back. I know all the triggers and harmful behaviors I need to avoid. There's nothing more for me to gain by retreading my past. Distance and new joys will heal me.

God, this crystal bitch just keeps going and going and going, but she's not saying anything new! She's just repackaging the same points in different words. Are we any better, though? No, hey, fuck that! This is our home! We already add enough to it. Antlers and abstractions over there is the one who ought to bring something new to the table.

Awesome. Yet another infuriating moment I just have to hurry up and wait through.

It's hard, sometimes--knowing I've already done everything I can to speed my growth. The rest lies outside my control. I took the medicine. Now all I can do is lie back and let it work. Kairliina struggles with the same feeling. Sometimes I see it in her eyes, or the way her tail lashes when she's sitting on her throne waiting for something to do: how frustrated she is, how much she wishes for a one-and-done fix. Carag are, I think, demons of decisiveness. Happiest when they're chasing that far horizon called the future.

But for now, she needs rest. This current guest is not helping.

I'm standing attention as a handmaiden does: with my sisters, to one side of the buttressed causeway approaching the throne. And I do mean "a handmaiden" not "a Handmaiden." I'm one of the handmaidens who has reclaimed her I, and likes the concepts of thinking, feeling, and acting for herself, but genuinely prefers spending eternity as a nameless handmaiden.

Visitors to Machrae Diir seem to sense it--that spark of volition beneath my veil. It feels like something other than coincidence that I'm in the room right now. Well, of course it is. Kai--I mean Su--is a reality-warping eldritch super demon. Her causality arranged this.

"So?" the petitioner prompts.

"So what?" Su asks.

"Do you think it's a good idea?" the petitioner pushes.

"To achieve what purpose, exactly?" Su pushes back. "Specifics help."

"Can't you see the future?" the younger demoness demands.

Su gives me a long-suffering glance.

"Yes," the Reborn finally answers, her pain evident in her hypnotic voice. "It is a chaotic sprawl of a thousand different timelines beginning and perishing in continuous shockwave nexuses spawned by your every minute twitch of indecision. Please pick one."

"Can't, uh..." the petitioner says. "Can't you pick for me?"

Okay, so she knows her idea is dumb but wants to force Su to be the one to point it out. That way she can throw the suggestion back in Su’s face, and milk the story of the Lady's supposed cruelty for sympathy whenever someone criticizes her. Neat. Not to say our dear guest admits to herself that she wants that. She does, though. It's not subtle.

Not by Machrae Diir standards.

There's nothing I adore quite as much as a bleeding heart. Truly. I just love moralists so, so much. Why yes, I am catty! Handmaidens don't talk, so--

"Handmaiden," Su says, rubbing her manifold brows and opening whole cave-systems of hollow frustration into her form, "please explain to the honored guest why that is a terrible idea." I have no eyes, yet I must squint at my mistress.

You evil bitch. I see that subtle lip-quirk.

"But--" the petitioner starts.

"Sometimes a handmaiden happens to speak in answer to other influences than the Lady's, if the Lady wishes her to be open to other influences," I say. "This is known."

"This is known," Su echoes me.

"This is known," the other handmaidens echo her.

Behind our guest's back, I stick my tongue out at Su. I know for a fact she's fighting back laughter, I can feel it, but I can't see it. I bet she's cheating by swapping out her form from this timeline for a form from a timeline where she isn't laughing.

Terrible woman. I love her beyond all reason.

"The honored guest mentions a notion of transition states," I continue. "When is this begun in the proposed process?"

"Uh... I mean, I already told you, we're going to transform them," the petitioner says. "A crystal bath. That’s the transition. They go in and after the crystallization process breaks down their mortal bodies, they’ll be crystal demons, like us. It makes them really happy and they leave all their problems behind."

"That is replacement," I answer. "Embracing total loss rather than dealing with the weight of responsibility you take. Believe me when I say that deep down, your patiens will feel that dissonance. It will gnaw that them. What is your plan for rehabilitation? How does this process equip your patients to understand how they became traumatized in the first place, avoid it in the future, and regain the ability to move forward? What happens to them if you and the other program leaders are no longer able to give direction?"

"Look, you," the petitioner says, whirling to yell at Su while her hair-trigger brain starts to fire her pre-planned "you're a bigoted closet fascist who just doesn't undertstand how this useless idea is sacred and useful" speech. "I don’t know what you’ve done to them--"

"Sound off." I interrupt. I blow out an exasperated puff of air. "Ladies, who here is actually incapable of independent thought?"

"In Su's house?" another handmaiden asks. "Dude, I just came here for therapy after an ugly death. I'm not looking to get perma-vored by sky mommy."

"No kidding," a third chimes in. "A completely receptive psyche around her? I don't wanna kin the Carag. I'm in robey eldritch slut therapy precisely because I don't handle power and ambition well. That's a high pressure zone. Love it for her, but not my scene."

No one puts her hand up.

"Did you think she actually erases our personalities?" I ask. "How are we supposed to learn to be ourselves again? It's more like a very directly-applied form of hypnosis."

"It's actually--" Su begins. She halts. "Er..." The Reborn cracks an eye open for the first time today. The scorching rose-pink haze of her vision-cone spawns igniting phantoms and the broken-up outlines of jagged crystal cities. Poor gal. The frustration's pushing her to ideate again. "Who here feels like a spontaneous five thousand word thesis paper on induced abyssal psyche, self-remission, and a bunch of other psi-jargon?"

"Hey, I would totally read that," I say, and mean it.

The other handmaidens are split about 50/50.

Su takes a deep breath. "Right. Now that we've cleared the air a little, I'll state my own thoughts. Sometimes beings need to put themselves aside for a while. You're suggesting a sustained dissociation into a new mode of existence as a method to achieve that."

"But?" the petitioner presses.

"But," Su says, tilting her head to one side, "if you want to know how effective I think it will be for rehabilitation, er..." She rattles her claws on her control-rod throne. "Well, to be frank, I think all the other points raised are moot." She looks to me. "Which doesn't mean I consider the time spent on them wasted. I thank you all for stating your perspectives."

Su smiles that smile. It's the most intoxicating smile you could ever imagine. When she smiles like that, she's every maiden in every tale who was ever released from an evil spell, every femme fatale whose bad feels so good, every spirit of wonder and fantasia beaming with gratitude for her freedom. It's the smile that says, "Thank you for helping me become myself." A dangerous smile. A smile that can lead someone far astray, lead them to obsess over having the smallest role in helping Kairliina grow.

But in measured use, with just enough nudges, it's also the smile she uses to say, "You helped me grow. Now use what you learned to help yourself grow." Without that smile I'd have been lost.

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"Your ideas have given me a foundation to speak from," Su continues. "All of you. Here's my own contribution: this crystallization program is doomed from its inception. No matter how much kindness you fill it with, you're creating a community of beings who see from the start that broken things must be thrown away rather than worked on. Day by day, the terror will worsen--how far many mistakes can I make before my friends see me as broken? I recognize that you're starting with noble intentions, but by definition, the space you seek to create will cause trauma."

"That's ridiculous!" the crystal idiot snaps. "And anyway, I don't see you suggesting any better alternatives!"

"Drones are very in right now," I add. "I learned that from a witch who visits tomorrow."

"She whats, WHEN?" the petitioner demands.

"Machrae Diir time is great," I say. "Things always seem to happen right when we're ready to deal with them."

"Drones," Su says gently, "would be a good alternative. Machine-beings carry connotations of repair, upkeep, maintenance. If a gearbox needs oiling, if a CPU needs dusting, if thermal paste must be replaced, do we throw them away? Surely not! Sometimes machines need new parts and yet, in your hearts, they remain the same things." She nods. "I suggest communing with a drone hive and contemplating how to create a demonic equivalent." She shifts, tail brushing her throne to help stimulate her thoughts.

She weaves miniature nebulae--or full-sized nebulae contained in spatial distortions that make them appear miniature by letting them fit inside the throne room, it's always hard to tell with Su--around herself while she considers her choice of words. "I also suggest compartmentalizing the parts of your process. Separate those meant to offer shelter to someone who needs to ride out negative emotions, from those suited to beings who've begun to recover and need a controlled space to learn self-actualization in."

"You don't do that with the handmaidens!" the petitioner protests.

"The handmaidens comprise part one of the program," Su says, dry as a desert moon. "Part two comprises reclaiming one's I, and if desired one's name, and journeying Machrae Diir without the dissociative pretense that I'm telling them what to do."

"Like, grim dark secret, oh no, scary," says a third, "but deep down we all know full well that the Lady only eats our names. The handmaiden program is a demonic innovation of the old empty spaces doll-witch paradigm, in which Kai--I mean Su, sorry--"

Su smiles. "No harm done, dear. Apology accepted."

My sister nods and continues. "--Su gives us the pretense of servitude so we can choose on a deep, innate level how much weight to give our own agency. This is a therapy program for beings who've been repeatedly traumatized because we let the wrong beings see parts of ourselves that are precious to us, but which we can't neatly explain and justify with language, with rational ideas."

"It's why most graduates emerge as demons," I put in. "Just feels right, by then."

"Wait, the eating names, thing, that part's still literal?" the petitioner asks, aghast.

"Super literal," I agree. "I don't remember my name and I don't want to. Makes sex WAY hotter."

"Names exist within language's confines, and being goes far deeper than language," Su presses on. "I'm still exploring what it means to be abyssal. So many labyrinthine layers of myself that I never dared embrace, before, simply because they defied easy words, defied the demands of those who wanted me to prove my desires were safe and virtuous."

"And you're all... you're all just okay with this?" our guest demands. "This is helpful? All this weirdo vague mystical bullshit?"

"It's not bullshit!" I snap, starting to lose my patience. "We always know where we stand with Su. I mean... I like your idea aesthetically, and that's it. I feel like you really need to separate the things you do to make yourself feel good from the things you do to help other beings, because right now, this sounds like a familiar disaster in the making. Before I came to Machare Diir, I got embraced by a lot of communities. I played the whole fit-in game. 'Fake it 'til you make it,' they said, 'if you smile, sooner or later you'll feel happy!'"

I toy with my tail. "Never healed, though. Just mashed it deep down in my psyche under all this social pressure and hollow affirmation. I could ad-lib my own essays about the paradox of being told that I had a place where I belonged, precisely because I wasn't me."

"How... how did you all learn all this?" the petitioner asks. What is her name, anyway? Su probably knows, but hasn't seen fit to share it.

"Oh, well, we actually listen to Su's monologues," I say. "She loves hearing the sound of her own voice, so she gives wisdom away for free."

Our guest fidgets. "So... should I or should I not? The crystal therapy, I mean?"

"You should weigh the considerations and concerns we've discussed,” Su says, “and then drastically alter your process." She braces herself. "If you continue on your present course, you will draw countless vulnerable beings to you, and you will hurt them terribly--"

"What the fuck would you know about it?!" the petitioner screams, flapping her wings with the speed of rage. "Everyone knows what a terrible person you are! I only came here because I felt sorry for you, and I thought maybe if I talked to you, you would understand how you're self-harming with this whole horrible, dark, ugly place, and you'd get off that stupid throne and join my program so I can fix you--"

I wanted an excuse, but not at this price. Not at the cost of the rigid, cold set to Su's brow that I know means she's trying to keep calm despite unbearable pain. So when I leap at the petitioner I leap hard, hard enough that I outpace two of the other handmaidens who have exactly the same idea, and it's all I can do to stop myself from tearing this whore's throat out right here and now?"

"Nobody." I dig my claws into the front of her stupid crystal-formed vest, grating, piercing, fracturing, and haul her in close enough that my fangs graze the tip of her nose. "Nobody in the whole fucking omniverse gets to talk to Kai that way in my presence. Count yourself lucky her Hound's playing a game with some other guests right now, or you'd have been annihilated the instant you raised your voice."

My tail lashes to my fellow handmaidens. "C'mon, girls! Let's give Her Excellency a personal escort out of Machrae Diir!" I whirl back and force my veiled forehead tight against her antlers so she can feel the star-fire on my breath. "And you're gonna let us if you know what's good for you. 'cuz if you're alone, here, when word spreads that you tried to hit our Lady in her triggers, you'll be a dead woman in seconds, do you fucking understand me?" I slam her to the floor. "Miidyaerita kastejul, you awful tenderqueer bitch."

I lead a tight envelope of handmaidens, marching with the force of silent fury, as we seize the petitioner by her lapis lazuli limbs and frog-march her to the nearest portal. No need for a count-down or any calls of heave-ho. We just hurl her, hurl her so fast and hard with fury that she releases a sonic boom on the way over the threshold. I've never been so happy to slam my hand down on a rune-switch see a portal blip out of existence.

Then we hurry back. Back through the Lambent Quarter, back through the howling blue gales of the Maelstrom where sky-islands and multi-bodied, thousand-clawed horrors silhouette themselves with silver lightning-flashes. Back beneath the fungal towers and ever-growing osmium spines, the spatial-distortions and rotting mineral formations on the borders of the Mutagenic Exclusion Zone, back to the quiet ever-drifting ashes and the silvery gateways into the Citadel of Zul.

And at last we past through the gateways into the interior of Kdalthach Carogdem, the Galespire, and find Su slumped on her throne. I approach, squeezing her hand.

"Hey, pretty girl." I smile. "Anything we can get for you?"

Su immediately bursts into tears. "Girls... girls, what else could I possibly ask for? I never thought... I never thought... I'm sorry, I should've asked for help..."

I squeeze harder. "Hey, no apologies needed, mistress. You've been through a lot, you're used to tanking it on your own. That's not stubbornness, it's just habit."

"I only..." Su sniffles. She slides down off the control-rod throne as it returns to its normal bladework forms. She shrinks from ten meters down to one-point-five, turning pale and blue-dressed and black-haired, and she's Kairliina again. Crying corium tears, snotty, with dark blue circles under her azure eyes. "I only accepted that horrible woman's visit because I thought, you know... if I told her to piss off, that Machrae Diir is a home for evil and we owe no explanations to anyone, she'd run to her awful friends and make up lies, spreading fear of us until a coalition gathered to invade. Self-hating demons like her are the the most dangerous to those of us who know how to love ourselves, you know? And I'm still recovering from everything with Sech, I'm too tired to fight a war, I--"

"Then I'll fight it!" I place my other hand on hers while my sisters crowd around her, murmuring approval. "There's a limit to the price I'll watch you pay for me, mistress. Today was that limit. You've done enough. You fought and fought and fought just to get strong enough to build Machrae Diir at all. You've grown so much, and you've shared that growth with us. You taught us well. I know you, Kai. I know that in your mind you're still the lonely demon, stuck on Earth, surrounded by humans who thought she was just a crazy woman with a really weird form of psychosis. But that's not where you are."

"You've literally trained multiple armies!" another handmaiden chimes in. "You told the Cobalt Immortals to keep recruiting and that's what they've been doing, did you forget that?" Silence descends, and she adds. "Oh, Kai... you actually forgot, didn't you?"

"It's so much," Kairliina whispers. "It's so much, all the time..."

"Come on, Kai." I pull her away from the throne. A protective circle of handmaidens, we gather close to our Lady. "I think you need some space from that thing. Let's keep you off of it until you remember you're supposed to sitting up there for fun, okay? Just for the vibe of the sexy demon on the throne. That's it. Let the higher purpose go. That's not our way."

"Yeah," Kairliina sniffles, rubbing her eyes. "Thank you."

One more comforting squeeze, this time to her shoulder. "You did good work. Artful. Your people will be proud when they look back on these days. They'll say, 'only a maiden of Graesh Saelvur could've brought forth Machrae Diir.'" I smile up at her. "And they'll be right. You did your work. Now please, trust us to continue it. You've done enough."

"Yeah." Kairliina trembles, crying harder still from relief. I know those tears well: the tears of a demon who's finally begun to feel free. "I... the handmaiden program. I'd still like to induct new sisters sometimes. It's so nice, you know? To draw infinity signs in the air before their shining eyes, to coax them deeper, to see the painful parts begin to feel safe, see how they relax once they're in the robes and under the veil. But the rest... and the inductions too, for now..."

"We've got a solid core of permanent sisters." I stop to hug her. "We've got this, Kai."

"Yes..." she breathes. "Yes, I... I suppose you do."

Suffice to say that our honored guest did, in fact, go forward with that whole crystal demon TF project of hers. Eventually it occurred to Kairliina to tell us that our guest's name had been Vella. And a day after she told us that, we heard that Vella chose to ignore all our advice while making many oblique remarks to "evil cowards who don't believe in the power of a smile." Over the next few months we watched from afar while the Crystal Dreams program gathered vulnerable beings from multiple universes, luring them with the promise of safety, warmth, and joy, then broke them by surrounding them with happiness they felt unable to connect with.

And when it all came crashing down? Oh, I think you know whose crest of antlers I saw, whose body of translucent lapis lazuli, for just a moment before she morphed under Handmaiden Ametra's touch, morphed to the snowy skin, the protruding tail dappled by blue scales of one more handmaiden in the lambent halls of Machrae Diir.

Yeah, she's a wretched, evil, manipulative bitch. That's good. She'll fit right in.

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