Chapter 39: Chapter 40: The Lady sets out for home

The next few weeks are fun. Cathartic, though I'm wary of that since it is actually unhealthy. I drag my two companions, the angel girl and the monstrous doll of wooden segments and overlapping sawblade mouths, on a gleeful romp through the backyards, back alleys, and mildewed sluices of existence, solving problems with no violence.

Or at least, minimum violence.

After every monster-meeting I put everybody in silly normal-person disguises and we go hang out at coffee shops, at bars, at restaurants. After all the philosophizing, turns out that biting into a schnitzel made by some German expatriates and then bursting into tears is all I really wanted from this whole 'atonement with humanity' shtick. I'm still so bad at embracing experiences without needing a bunch of philosophy and big life lessons to justify it. I'm sure back in the empty spaces days they'd have said that meant I was an angel.

I don't think that's true, though. There's a difference between an angel, and a demon in the habit of pretending to be an angel because she's afraid to be fucking murdered.

The funny thing is... the more time I spend away from places that remind me of the responsibilities I used to hold, the less I think about them. That's the one downside of my Saelvur instincts. I want to tackle my problems head-on, onslaught style, cleave them out of existence with sheer zeal. But some problems will exist as long as I believe I have to overcome them--like whether I'm respected, like whether I can explain myself, like whether I've achieved things great enough to deserve to do the great things I want to do.

The answer is to stop trying to solve problems, and just do what makes me happy.

There's so much to enjoy in this big, wide multiverse. How many centuries did I spent trying to prove I was a big shot, trying to reach the top of some imaginary hierarchy? An angel, no. A devil who hated every second of being a devil? Yeah. I'll take that.

As far as dealing with others monsters without Machrae Diir to back me up, things get cyclical fast, but that's the curse of finding a good approach: one does end up repeating it a lot. The flayers in the glassine towers? I let them all cut me once--thank you, masochism!~--and use the soul-link their attention offers to wedge empathy into their minds.

Of course, that's oversimplifying. I can hypothesize countless continuities where they focused more on growing themselves and possessed the power to repel my influence, but I'm beginning to realize I went about ten layers ahead of everyone else.

Anyway, yes, the E-bomb. It starts to feel direly unfair. The witch in the labyrinth with all her threads disguised as stories? I pull her through the other ends into the agony of the lives she's trying to unravel. I later decide this constitutes significant violence, and sigh.

I find that the more militant angel-girls are actually quite easy to deal with if I just let them win. The less militant ones are mostly dealing with themselves; I make note of a few I might invite to Machrae Diir after all the self-inflicted performance breaks their spirits. Eventually I have to take a step back and recognize I've started thinking of all this in terms of problems to solve--a sure sign I need to go home.

That's what brings us to this moment: me, still dolled up like the belated manifestation of a creepypasta gamejam's collective unconscious, glitching through myself to face my companions. The funny thing is, with the red sunset falling through the skeletons of old factories around us, I look surreal rather than ridiculous.

How do you like that? I guess, even at its silliest, the paranormal can still be heartfelt.

"Well," I conclude, "it's been a fun experiment. I've learned a lot, and I'm ready to return to Machrae Diir."

"You get restless quickly," the angel-girl observes.

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"Yes, that's the price of growth," I agree. "I outgrow new surroundings quickly. I used to mistake it for a linear process. I conceived of each new continuum that challenged me as being more 'powerful' than the others." I stretch purely for the conceptual enjoyment of the idea of a stretch at the journey's end. "Easy association to make. I'm always getting more powerful." I grin hypersaturated rainbow smears. "I have to remember that I'm a genetic freak, and I'm not normal."

The angel girl groans.

"Anyway," I shrink from the witch-queen's gangly nine feet into the duelist's shapely five-foot-five. Once again black-haired, blue-eyed, bedecked with dark makeup with a sword at my side. "I'm going home to the Azure Diamond Sarcophagus. Doll, I'll send you back ahead. I want to complete this journey's final leg in solitude. The beginning and the ending, those are the moments when I always want to be alone again. With the churning of my abyss..." I'm still halfway into Karlotta-mode, so I produce a sticky note and slap it to the many-angled wooden maws, intersecting jaws, clattering claws of my monster-doll.

The note reads simply, "nu fr13nd, wit luv frum K."

"I'm sorry," I say, meaning it. "My own circle's already grown as large as I feel up to managing for a long, long time. But the other denizens will find a place for you. Promise."

"Do as thou wilt, mistress." The monster-doll clatters. "I will be myself either way."

With that, I fill my palm with blue glows, let the heavy dream of the lambent halls pour out along my arm, and meld into the monster-doll's segmented body. It streams away, melting into the rose-tinted ere, and a distant ripple of curiosity reaches me from the faraway dimension of my heart's desire.

Not faraway for much longer. I'm so, so ready to go home.

I stop the angel-girl with a raised hand when she approaches. "The angels of Machrae Diir must have true agency. You have a lot to learn to create that in yourself, and at this point, I'd rather turn to enjoying eternity, and maybe to coaxing the early growth of fellow Carag, than take on yet another pupil. I'll commend you to a certain hive master. When you've finished your time with him, Machrae Diir will be there should you still wish to join us, and you'll be assertive enough to make friends, to find your place, on your own."

I frown. "Look… For what it's worth, you will still serve me in a sense. I will be asleep, most of me. Dreaming deep in the Sarcophagus, awaiting the right age for my awakening. I'm remembering how to enjoy a journey vicariously. But whatever you do in S.T.E.R.N.'s hive, you must do it for yourself, and yourself only."

"So... if I do it for you or a reward, you WON'T enjoy it?" she asks.

"I'm very non-codependent that way," I agree. "First: learn to like your place for your own sake. Dronification can teach that."

She has no words. Good start!

As for me? Time to return to Machrae Diir, cuddle my loves, and sleep.

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