Chapter 31: Chapter 32: Maroj regrets her decisions

"Regret regret regret regret regret," I babble, quivering with a rictus grin against continuous waves of agony roiling over my blistering, charring limbs. Days, weeks now, it hasn’t stopped, I can’t make it stop. It’s not fun anymore, there’s no more ecstasy in the agony. The bar-tables blacken and crackle in a radius around me. Fire-mantled phantoms writhe up, curling figurines made of splintered black wood, and burn. "Study the Deep Power, she said! Be the usurper of gods and the envy of primordial archdevils, she said!"

"I told you not to do this to yourself." Now that we're out of uniform and off the line back in Machrae Diir, Sarge is named Alth Femni again. A big, green, bull-horned onslaught demon with burning gold eyes and a wry look.

"No one told me about Morgul Responses!" I whine.

"Harrower Delzhuk literally talked about it every day of basic." Midenzi's nine-horned and black skinned but for the raw red muscles exposed in her skinless cheeks. "I understand that you're desperate for an outlet. The fact remains you have no right to blame the Immortals, and you definitely can't blame Kairliina."

"I wasn't blaming the Lady," I mutter.

"Well, Delzhuk's non-binary, so," Midenzi shrugs. "I suppose the only other demoness who could be this 'she' you rant at is yourself, now isn't she?" Her five golden-slit eyes, the fiery maelstroms of their sclerae tightened in focus, are on the deep-space poultices she applies to my backlash-burned form. Soothing psychic waves of drifting on the solar wind, a dapple of nebular gas to foster healing with promises of ease and discovery.

"Okay, but thlrt thr shlm..." Wet clogging makes me give up with a sigh, while violet blood splatters forth from the dozen jagged slashes that sieve open across my throat.

"'roj, are you... are you okay?" Andrila asks. She's young. Blond, a fledgling's easy indulgence in her form. Just two horns, a small spaded tail, and an hourglass figure that’s a little too perfect in its ample curves to read as human. I know she transcended recently, after her death at a very old and lonely age. She claims she was involved in some obscure adventure Kairliina once had. Something about a whimsical town where Andrila used to have an estate. She's mentioned she wants to take up magic tricks again, but that's all I've had time to hear. She thinks every succubus of any experience at all is forever above her.

And with that, I've exhausted every Andrila-fact I can use to distract myself.

With a wry look, I gesture to my gushing throat. I do open my aura, though. I don't want to milk concern from my kindred, but I don't want to play it cool to the point of idiocy either. Thunderclap pulses of lilac pour out of me, mixed with silver and dissonant cyan.

"You're scared you'll die?" Andrila asks. "How can you have all that fear and just... just act like this?"

"We didn't get to be old guard out in the cosmological boonies by folding easy," Alth says. "There's a reason we wouldn't rally to anyone until Kairlina called."

I wrap my fingers around my throat, nodding, and fight to hold my essence in.

The response ends. The soul heals. The form follows suit. The response ends. The soul heals. The form follows suit. I anchor myself in these truths. A dream-demon born in an age of endless nightmares, that's me. Psychosis made manifest.

If I couldn't function, couldn't keep control, couldn't hold my psyche together despite the infinity of frigid fears clawing through my everything, I'd have met the void many centuries ago. Kai taught the Immortals this strength. She gave us the key to wielding it.

Still, the Morgul Response takes its toll. I'm hazy by the time it passes, a mirage of half-faded colors and a core of staccato flickering.

Midenzi gathers me into her lap and strokes my hair. "Easy does it, Mar," she whispers. "Good girl. You're still here. Rest easy."

"You good to hear an update?" Alth asks.

"Affirmative," I answer. "Long as there's nothing in it I have to deal with."

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"Opposite," he says. "Got word just before your Response. After pulling the Lady in to advise, Command's decided the Immortals aren't ready to function outside Machrae Diir."

"But--" I shudder. Grimace. "Okay, that's fair."

"Verdict is, we've got the striking power, the gear, the tactics," Alth continues, pouring us all shots, "but not the endurance. It's going to be attrition out there, they think. Long haul. One of us against any ten hunters, easy win, but what about the next day?"

Midenzi takes the liberty of holding my shot-glass up to my lips, cradling my head to help me drink. I whimper a little, quivering, teary-eyed. Just grateful that I’m still here. Whiskey--or the idea of it--muddles striving's pressure away. When I can muster words again, I say, "She's right. But, who's deploying instead?"

Alth smiles. "Communique just quoted Karliina, and I quote in my turn, 'my brave boys always hold the line.'"

I quiver. "Poor bastards."

"They'll do it." Alth insists.

I laugh. "Oh... I meant the hunters."

My mind’s eye finds them, gathering under grim banners in the midnight depths of Saingediir: ghost divisions marked by shoulder-patches of leering skulls and shattered shields, every fissure filled with violet fire. Demons need to make it personal. Every hunter band has to be its own landmark battle. Throw us at a god, an angel, a lone mortal hero. That’s where we belong. Cycles, endurance matches… we don’t handle those so well.

That’s why we’re not the only soldiers of Machrae Diir. The Lady has older champions.

What enemy could be more stubborn than a living human?

Somewhere far away and far below, an officer with emerald light glowing in his eye sockets, his skull leering through the crevices of ever-bleeding flesh where a shellburst tore the left side of his face off, checks his pistol and barks his orders. Rank on rank they shoulder old rifles and machine-guns with long, perforated rectangle barrel-jackets, eerie shades backlit by green-tinted searchlights cutting the smog of the drill yard.

The stark shapes of ill-omened helms. Everyone knows who they once fought for. Everyone knows why only the Lady was brazen enough to give them a second chance.

What’s more stubborn than a living human? Why, a dead one, of course.

I rest no easier in the weeks after that, but at least I’ve no longer got fear making it harder. Fear I’m failing everyone. Fear that enemies will steal the night from us while I grapple with my soul-state.

A month later, in passing, Alth informs me that the Shattered Shield Division has eradicated the hunter threat, and the Immortals are formally standing down from war footing. Easy as that: there was never any doubt.

Now there’s nowhere left to hide.

No fear I can fixate on to shield me from myself.

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