Chapter 48: Chapter 49: Assignation by the Void Ignited, Part Nine (Final)

Kairliina’s expression turns dry for a moment. Then, with a sigh and a roll of her eyes, she steps back and drapes her hand over her sword. Her radiance grows, and grows, and grows. The sword reverberates with a rolling metal hymn in its scabbard. “Thanks, kid. For giving this old hag a chance to unchain her abyss, I'll show you Cascade Evisceration.”

A kaleidoscopic mandala of Kairliina blooms out, encases Vmot in a hollow undulating sphere of silver armor and nova fangs and dancing eyes, and convulses into the younger demon. Every sense fills with the scents of wood smoke, hot iron, incense, blood. The onslaught-demon's psyche blooms into the promise of knowing, brushes the intoxicating borders of the outer succubus, and receives her blossoming mutagen–

–Vmot is spinning midair as slowly as the day-cycle of a planet, a passive passenger in her own existence. One blink: cobalt light warps her form from within. Her outer layers fission away into blue-white sunbursts spiraling all around.

Two blinks: she is surrounded by thousands of herself–herself fawning, herself weeping, her self pleading. The mind’s-eye throne of a purple-fire figure and a palace of spikes and spires, too shadowed to see color in.

Third blink: buzzsaw blues ripple through, every shear-wake’s outer zone spawning off-angle mazeworks of secondary slashes. Seams flicker open in every manifest self. Faces. Horns. Limbs split. Every divide hosts a wire-thin glint. The negative space of dismemberment ignites, and washes everything to vapor–

–and Vmot falls into Kairliina’s arms to the inverted echo of a sound between crashing cymbals, breaking glass, and wind chimes.

They’re surrounded by a behemoth sculpture of intertwining, crystallized Vmots, caverns, structures and blurred mistress-outlines, all merged into a massive gestalt by blue, white, pink crystal wakes enveloping the void spaces left over from spatial cleaving.

“Holy… oh my…” Vmot sputters, as the Lady eases her to the ground. The younger demon clutches her head. “That was… I don’t…” She flops backward, whooping, laughing, giddy beyond all belief. “This is the best day of my entire life! That was so awesome!”

“Just remember,” Kairliina, says with a smile in her voice but a little hint of iron still shining in her eyes, “it’s our little secret.”

“Are you kidding me?” Vmot interrupts. “Steal a technique like that? I hope the disgrace would make me fucking eat myself!” A beat. “Also, I still have no idea how to do that.”

Kairlina’s smile widens. “I’m glad to hear it. It’s always very affirming, you know, when I invent an attack I’m pretty sure is incomprehensible, and I hear my instincts are right?” Her expression sours for a moment. Then, with a regretful sigh, she releases her bluefire blade and diminishes back into her larger human-like form. The duelist in the black dress.

“Well, Vmot,” she says, “it’s been a madcap day. I’m happy we met, and that I and some of the other denizens could help your journey reach a better end. But it’s time for me to seek my rest in full.” She looks up towards the sky, once more umbral. “Time for Machrae Diir, and me, and everyone else to just enjoy ourselves at last.”

“That sounds just fine, Kai…” Vmot says. She gathers her sword into her lap. “Thanks for everything. I’m just going to stick around Saingediir for a little while, if that’s okay? I think I understand this place. I can use it, that certainty. Get certain about myself. Get my head together before I spend time around other people. “It’s…” she fumbles for words.

And the Lady grins. “The only thing I know for real?”

“Yeah,” Vmot laughs. She settles to the gore-soaked ground. “Guess so.”

“Mind if I take the crystal that parasite wanted you to stab me with?” the Lady asks.

A pause.

“Why?” Vmot asks. Not resistant, just confused.

“It’s associated with her,” the Lady answers. She grins. “I’m going to pull the little snit through it and devour her whole. If she wants my power that badly, so be it.”

Vmot pulls it from her pouch. She considers the smoky flaws within. “Weird,” she mutters. “The flaws make the crystal so much prettier. More interesting to look at. What’s everyone want flawless crystals for, anyway?”

“They’re easier to project into,” the Lady answers, with a certain dry cutting in her voice. “Little relics like that, purporting to steal your own power and turn it against you... they're a little like explanations. They only have as much power as you give them.”

Vmot nods, rocking with enthusiasm. "That makes sense! Sounds kind of familiar, like... oh…” Her voice trails to a halt that becomes razor sharp the moment it turns into silence. Four slitted pink eyes widen. “That fucking bitch. That awful whore.”

“Still think she deserves the capital letters?” the Lady asks.

Vmot snorts. Tosses her the crystal. “I don’t think she even deserves my sword in her spine. You want to eat her, be my guest. Might as well be eating a single molecule of rancid meat, though, if you want my opinion.”

A gleaming grin. “I do enjoy consuming diseased things. I’m made of filth myself.”

“Fah.” Vmot stretches. The Lady’s still holding the crystal, staring into it.

“Actually, I…” her expression softens. “I change my mind.”

“What?“

“This pitiable thing crouching in the deep, sending streamers of herself out, using others for her schemes because she fears to stand on her own… I feel it. That irrational affection, blooming in my heart.” The outer succubus shrugs, helpless. "I have to let that love linger. For my own heart's sake, never mind hers."

Vmot grunts. "Seems kind of hard to be a succubus, sometimes."

Kairliina laughs ruefully, and rubs the crystal with her thumb. “Yes. It can be. I’ll put it in on a little plinth somewhere outside the Sarcophagus. And I suppose I'll see if the day comes that this love in my heart calls me to give her a chance.”

“Oh.” Vmot rubs the back of her head. “I think I get the idea, now that you explain it.”

“You’re welcome,” the Lady says. “I say I hate explaining things, but... like I said. Have to let my guard down sometimes, yes, so I can chase joy?" A self-satisfied grin. "For that matter, how else will I get praised for how clever I am."

Silence while the onslaught demon absorbs that. “Uh, before you go, can you–“

“Nope!” the Lady beams. “I'm the only the Overlady now. A purely aesthetic role for my own enjoyment. Machrae Diir's grown way too large for me to be personally involved with every relationship. You've got to make your own friends from here on in, dear kindred. This will most likely be the only time I seek you out on purpose, but,” she shrugs, smiling. "We'll have many chance encounters around the dimension. I do look forward to that much."

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"Make my own friends, huh?" Vmot laughs. “Yeah, I guess it’s just getting codependent again if I can’t do that.” A pause. Such coldness in her belly after all that fire. “Uh… why does this feel just as hard as nerving up to the duel did?”

“Social anxiety," the Overlady answers, "is the awareness that you must hand strange beings your own desire to live as part of them, and hope they don’t reject you.”

She turns on her heel and walks toward the war-torn night. “Take your fear like a needle: plunge it in before it has a chance to hurt. Oh, and Vmot?” She glances over her shoulder. “Shot in the dark, but you can be strong and still submissive. I’m an order of magnitude more powerful than Raven, and I sub for him all the time. You should play submissive just because it makes you happy… like a bad, filthy slut who needs to be,” Kairliina quivers, “contained.“

And on that thought-provoking note she’s gone, and Vmot is alone in Saingediir. She brandishes her sword. Breathes the auras of battle. Well, surely a little procrastination can’t hurt? Ease her way into it. Puff up her confidence…

… no. She sees now. That’s the trap.

“Alright, V,” she whispers to herself, hurrying through the burning streets towards the distant spiral ramp that corkscrews up and up and up towards the rest of Machrae Diir. “Be a good girl. Face your fears, apologize for sneaking in, get accepted first. Do all that and you can come back to Saingediir later.”

She looks back longingly at the blissful promise of violent abandon in the contorting spires behind her.

“As a treat.”

***

And so it passes that a shadow comes in among the sleepy figures in the near-lightless depths of the Azure Diamond Sarcophagus, and for just a moment her horns cut the backlighting of an irradiant groove running along the ceiling of a room it’s too dim to illuminate. Then she lies down. A soft rustle of fabric.

Stillness for a long time.

"You know, my darlings," a dulcet demon whispers, drowsy yet clear, "I've been thinking... Urwollust is German. It translates literally to 'primordial erotic lust.' A potent concept, but... for centuries, I used it because I could conceive no other words that would get at the notion of timelessness I desired. Recently, though, as I've contemplated what it meant to reclaim my dreams of my people from Seurchraig, I've thought... why not conceive a Vulshiir word that means what I desire? So I did, quite literally, create words that mean my desire. From tonight onward, I am Kairliina Saelvur Zlaetasrul."

"Whoa..." a drowsy hound's reverent whisper. "That sounds so cool, darling. What does it mean?"

Blue eyes flare briefly in the dark, blue nova pinpoints. "'Zlaeta' means 'lust.' 'Srul' means 'forever new.' On into the future, that's me: the Lust Forever New."

"That is really cool," a dry-voiced wolf-bird drawls.

"Thank you, my darling Master!" Ghostly wakes of blue plasma trail from a frisking tail, briefly illuminating tangled limbs, wrinkled sheets, a sleeping vampire, and an outer demon with a goat-nose twitching in dreams. "That said, I do still like 'Urwollust' as a pen-name! Books are a... a construct the author projects into the past, yes? In the moment of their completion they already feel ancient, primeval, even, so as an author my name should reflect that nebulous threshold, that within my writing I, too, become a thing of the past--"

A massive hand moves across the lights towards a horned head. "Hey, Kai?"

"Yes, my darling Raven?"

A thump, a splutter, and then a long blissful moan muffled by something warm, hard, pulsing. "Suck on this and go to sleep, you fuckin' bimbo."

"Hold on," a drowsy hound groans. "If she's giving you oral... Imma give her oral..."

For a long time exultant, exultant licking, lapping, sucking. Rising pitch, sighs of ecstasy, a moan and the creek of a bed under bucking hips. Joyful whimpers, and after a brief pause, the cycle begins again. Until the groans of the wolf-bird become desperate. Until the hound keens with excitement in her lapping. Until a last high, muffled cry of ecstasy makes eclipse-rays dance on the outlines of ten bladed horns, stokes the cobalt nova in slitted eyes, and brings them to the peak in turn. Panting, subsiding, the rustle of forms tucked in.

Then? The long, easy exhalations of blissful slumber.

Above on the streets of the Lambent Quarter, an uncertain demon–broad shouldered, broad chested, and for all that as nervous as a new schoolgirl–staggers off the white-marble rampway leading down, and down, and down into the depths of Saingediir Fathom. She looks around, manifests a back-scabbard for her sword–learning as she goes that it needs a lot of modification to let her get her sword into or out of it–and stiffens at the sight of a five-eyed succubus leaning on her blood-soaked spear and chatting to her friends.

Well. That’s a sign if ever there was one.

“Oh, new in town?” the succubus asks.

“Uh… sort of?” Vmot answers. She scrubs the back of her head sheepishly. “We met. Down in Saingediir–sorry, am I allowed to talk about Saingediir?”

“Of course!” the succubus answers. “Nothing’s taboo in Machrae Diir, except in front of the children. And the dimension mostly handles that itself these days. Rearranging and distorting space so they can have their own adventures, hidden away, and emerge into the adult realms when they're mature and ready. Though, the only other demoness I remember meeting is… oh!” She grins. “Hey, dear! You really figured yourself out down there, huh?”

“Not completely,” Vmot says. “Actually, I think I just started. Um…” she gestures. “I was hoping to stick around. I don’t know anybody. Maybe…?”

“Sure!” the succubus answers, extending an elegant hand. “Midenzi Oth.”

Vmot takes it. “Vmot Tangediur.”

“C’mon,” Midenzi says. “The girls and I are picking out outfits to wear to the Battle of the Bands tonight. Voroboros is playing against Anomalous High Orbit Sex.”

“W-what genres?” Vmot asks.

“Voroboros is Machrae Diir’s first original metal band,” Midenzi says. “All lust-demons. Anomalous High Orbit Sex is all outer demons. They play, uh… outer demon music. It’s…” she frowns. “Huh. Now that Kairliina’s asleep, I think we’re going to need to brush up on our language skills. I actually have no idea how to describe it. Anyway.” She tugs Vmot along in her wake. “You’re girls. You’re coming with us. Also, my friend Zlyeyush wants my input on xyr splinter-movement to Unselfism. Xe’s calling it Anti-Selfism, and–“

Vmot hurries along with the bubbly succubus, watches the joy in the other demon’s eyes with every word, and feels the start of a strange, melting happiness she’s never known before.

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