“[Carrion Swarm]: ordinary ants.”

The spell takes effect and a swarm of those nasty, horrid monsters rises out of the dirt. The incarnations of pure evil mill about randomly, puttering along on their disgusting legs, feeling for each other with those sinister antennae. It is without a doubt the vilest sight I have seen since being brought to the Labyrinth, and I shudder in revulsion at the true nightmare I have unleashed.

Checking the mall directory revealed the existence of an atrium made to resemble a park, complete with dirt and grass and trees, so I took Cheshire there after stopping by a knick-knack shop to grab a key item: a centipede preserved in amber.

I have a plan: I’m going to make another artifact. Cheshire told me that spells leave behind lingering resonances, so if I can stack a bunch of castings of [Carrion Swarm] in the same area then I should be able to pour those resonances into the chunk of amber and make an artifact that will do… something.

Of course, there’s the slight problem that I get the shivers just looking at most any bug up close, but I can work through that. I do maintain a nice solid twenty feet of distance from the ants I’ve summoned, but that’s just a reasonable precaution.

“Stop moving,” I command the ants, and they do. What feels like maybe half a colony’s worth of ants suddenly stops in place, all those little specks of brownish reddish whatever. Now to begin my first experiment.

I focus my will, trying to reach for the ants and command them mentally. Form into a ball, I project in their direction. Nothing happens. I try to reach for the spell instead, that background radiation prickling feeling. I know I can dismiss active spells like this, so surely I can give new instructions through the link, right?

Form into a ball, I command more insistently. Still nothing. “Form into a ball,” I say aloud, and immediately the ants start crawling on top of each other. The ugly, wretched, horrifying little beasts grab at each other and come together until I’m looking at a literal ball of ants. Wow! I hate it!

Okay, so, lesson learned: once the swarm is summoned, I have to command it verbally. I suspect we could change that if we had Cheshire crack the spell open and make some modifications, but the fact that she didn’t enable such a feature in the first place suggests it might be more expensive than it’s worth. So we could do that… or I can make an artifact that lets me bypass that restriction.

“[Carrion Swarm]: fire ants.”

More ants crawl out of the dirt, these ones redder and even more disgusting. I shiver at all the little bodies appearing. Why am I doing this to myself? I hate this so much. Of course, there’s a perfectly logical explanation: [Carrion Swarm] is at least partially Fear-aligned, so summoning creatures I’m afraid of should theoretically help with what I’m attempting.

I’m pleased to see that the first group of ants aren’t unsummoned by the arrival of the second group. Well, actually, I think I’d be quite happy for the both of them to pop out of existence, but it means good things for the spell itself. I attempt another mental command that doesn’t work, so I’ll have to verbalize the next step.

“Both groups of ants: murder each other.”

The conflict that ensues is–oh. Wow. Okay. Uh. Nope. Goodbye. Nope! Not looking at that! I turn around and look at literally anything else because hahaha that’s horrible. I hug myself and shudder. I hate ants I hate ants I hate ants!

Cheshire taps me on the shoulder after a minute has passed. “They’re done, if you want to turn back around. Just bodies and a few straggler fire ants.”

“Thanks.” I examine my handiwork: a field of ant corpses littering the dirt. I wish I could find some satisfaction in that, but all it does is bring back a different set of traumatic memories. “You know why they creep me out so much, right?”

Cheshire nods. “I do. Though, if you want to talk about it, that might be good for you.”

“Yeah, sure. Let me just clean this up first. [Carrion Swarm]: an even mix of black widows and brown recluses to eat the ants.”

And then there are spiders everywhere, and I have a much more sensible reason to be terrified and trembling. Oh gods, that is so many spiders. I can see their spindly legs twitching, those distinctive color patterns, and the way they just harvest the dead… horrifying, genuinely. Look, spiders are cute, they’re lovely, they’re wonderful creatures, but those spiders are the two kinds of scary dangerous spiders that were common in California and Washington so it’s kind of programmed into my brain to be wary of them.

I dart behind Cheshire, completely unashamed of my cowardice, and the catgirl pats me on the head as she bravely stands between me and a swarm of spiders that are technically under my complete control. “So anyways,” I say, now looking away from the spiders and resolutely into Cheshire’s eyes, “the thing with ants. Who are definitely not as dangerous as spiders, but still freak me out.”

“They also serve an important ecological role,” Cheshire points out, “and are reviled despite their service, just like spiders.”

“This is fair and true,” I admit. “And yet, this does not change my desire to see all ants eradicated from time and space. They are the bane of my existence. My eternal foe. The Morbius to my Spider-Man.”

“Laying it on thick, sweetie,” the catgirl teases me.

“And like any great rivalry,” I continue dramatically as if she hadn’t said anything, “there is a tragic backstory behind our modern conflict! Once, when I was but a fledgling, a terrible pox fell upon my house: a plague of ants, invading those spaces I thought safe, creeping like the tendrils of some antediluvian sea beast! They crept inside the fridge, into the cupboards, into the dog food and the cat food and every room of the house! And though we fought them back with traps and bleach and bug spray, every year they returned in greater number. Because, y’know, my father refused to take the long-term preventative steps that would keep the ants from being a recurring problem so instead it was just an endless tug-of-war with the local ant colonies. Forever.”

“Until they were replaced by flies and gnats,” Cheshire adds with a grin.

“Yeah, I do not miss living in that house,” I mutter darkly. “The flying bugs were definitely awful, though I still think nothing compares to the time my dad ate an ant-covered donut to prove they were harmless. Who does that!?”

I shudder, and this time Cheshire shudders too. The geist says, “Yeah, no, that memory was awful. Totally get the revulsion for ants after that much exposure to them.”

I glance over at the spider-ant nightmare party and decide that the spiders are taking too long. “[Carrion Swarm]: centipedes to eat everything that’s left.” The latest batch of creepy-crawlies pops into existence and starts dutifully chowing down. “I have to wonder, do the summons get anything for eating each other? Can you get nutrients for eating something summoned? Is it one of those ‘the calories vanish when the spell ends’ things, or like, because conceptual reality, is the act of eating enough for it to be real?”

Cheshire claps her hands together excitedly. “Loving these questions, Allie, you’re really getting the hang of this setting. So, the answer here is a bit complicated. Broadly speaking there are two types of summoned entities: phantasms and homunculi. Phantasms, unlike homunculi, lack an anchor and are considered less ‘real’ by Pandaemonium. They’re like illusions that can throw a punch, pretty much, and they’re tagged with a whole bunch of emptiness and falsity oneiros that would sabotage any attempt to draw sustenance from them. Imagine the difference between eating cotton candy and eating a candy bar; one is mostly air. It’s not nothing, but it’s close.”

“Noted.” The centipedes are still in the midst of their feast, and I can see plenty of spiders remaining, but all the ants are already gone. I’m fairly certain none of the bugs had time to eat all those ant corpses, so it seems they’ve vanished like the bodies of the birds back in the club. Typical summon rules, I suppose.

“What are you up to, anyways?” Cheshire asks. “I’m going to guess you’re doing this to make an artifact, but what kind? What do you want it to do?”

Hmm. What’s the most fun way to explain? “Have you read Worm?”

Cheshire gives me an amused expression. “No, since you haven’t read Worm, but I know what you know about it.”

“Mm, fair. Well, consider this my attempt to play at being Taylor: I want this artifact to let me mentally control my summons and share their senses, and I’m wagering it’ll be easier to accomplish that if I restrict the effect to only bugs, which includes spiders under the broadest definition. Think it’ll work?”

“The logic is solid, and I can confirm that restricting an effect usually makes it comparatively stronger. I don’t know enough about your power to say it’ll do exactly what you want, but the theory sounds right.”

“Good enough for me!”

I breathe deep and gather my will. I close my eyes and imagine the resonances left behind by my castings of [Carrion Swarm], picturing them as clouds of green light in the shapes of ants, spiders, and centipedes. I think of stories I’ve read or watched where a character could control bugs, a swarm of skittering insects answering a higher will as a collective mass or as individual critters. A single hyper-venomous spider guided like a missile to bite down on my opponent’s neck. Flies and ants going unnoticed and feeding back crucial information on an enemy’s plans. A swarm of wasps orbiting me like buzzing bodyguards.

I open my eyes, hold up the amber-preserved centipede, and give the artifact a name: “[Swarmheart].”

It worked! It–

In the atrium park, some twenty feet away, all of the remaining bugs but one melt into a disgusting slurry of goop and guts, and then that slurry is drawn into the last survivor: a single centipede that grows in size as the slurry is absorbed. When the process is complete, the swarm of centipedes is replaced by a single dog-sized centipede.

Okay. Uh. Uhh???

I can now confirm that centipedes only get creepier and grosser when they’re massive, as looking at those wiggling legs and segmented carapace is giving me the heeby-jeebies. Why did I pick a strategy that forces me to look at the creepiest kinds of bugs up close!?

Whatever, it’s kind of cute when it wiggles its antennae. I wave at my new pet. “Welcome to the family, Mr. Wiggles.” Then I turn to Cheshire and say, “Right, well, it’s nice to make a new friend, but I am mildly disappointed the artifact didn’t give me what I asked for.”

“Mm, it still might. Every artifact has two abilities: one active, one passive. [Ashthorn] caught on fire when you activated it, but it still did something when you were just holding it,” Cheshire reminds me. “This seems like the active, so what’s the passive?”

“Hmm.” I try to issue mental commands to the mega-bug, but still nothing. See through its eyes? Nope. Drat. “Whatever it is, it isn’t the control ability either.”

“Try casting the spell again,” Cheshire suggests. “More centipedes, maybe.”

I shrug. “Worth a shot… though I should really refill my mana after this, I’m sure I’ve used a ton. [Carrion Swarm]: centipedes!”

The spell fires and more centipedes arrive… a lot more, actually. Like, not quite twice as many, but quite a few more than last time. Cheshire whistles at the sight. “You got a multiplier! Nice. Oh, hey, see if you can sacrifice those guys to the big one!”

“Ooo, good idea.” I adopt an imperious expression, hold out the chunk of amber, and arrogantly declare, “I call upon the power of this artifact: [Swarmheart], make my monster grow!” I try to will the artifact to supersize the existing Mr. Wiggles rather than one of the new centipedes.

The freshly-hatched swarm of wigglers is reduced to biological slurry and siphoned into the growing body of Mr. Wiggles, who goes from being the size of a Dalmatian to the size of a Great Dane. “Wow. Holy shit, that is one big centipede.”

I walk over and tentatively give Mr. Wiggles a few pats on his weird, flat bug head, and then I try not to freak out over the sensory experience of touching a gigantic centipede. Yeah, no, let’s deal with this later. I dismiss the spell and watch the monstrous insect turn into black mist that quickly disperses into nothingness. I do look forward to unleashing you on my enemies, Mr. Wiggles.

“Well, that was an interesting lesson. More experimentation is required, but first I think it’s time to top up on mana.” I do a quick check of [Exsanguinate] and determine that I still have enough mana to cast it, which I imagine has to be thanks to the slow trickle I’ve been getting from the day’s activities. Still, more never hurts. “Let’s look for someone to eat.”

I don’t have to go far; there’s a human in the atrium with me, a guy in hoodie and jeans who’s been enjoying the pseudo-park as I’ve played with magic. And by human, I mean figment, because a quick flash of soul vision confirms that his soul is empty and he’s held up by strings.

Hoodie Guy is leaning against a tree, hands in his pockets, cheerful expression, whatever. I don’t really want another repeat of the Lena scene so I’m not going to bother learning much about this dude beyond the absolute minimum. I stroll up to him and flash my fangs. “Hey! Hi there! It’s me, Maven Alice, your friendly neighborhood doll-vampire-demon-girl weirdo. Lovely to meet you.”

I offer a hand and he takes it, seeming confused by my introduction but still overall cheerful. “Uh, hello! Nice to meet you, I’m Cameron.”

“Great, good, that’s all I needed.” I hold his hand gently and give him my best apologetic smile. “Would you kindly stop pretending to be a person for a few minutes? I’m a bit parched, so I’d like to drink some of your blood.”

Cameron smiles back placidly, says, “Okay!” and then all the energy and personality bleed away from him until he’s just standing there, arms at his sides, staring blankly right through me.

Oh, okay. That’s. Oh boy. Okay, Alice, just focus on feeding. “Stop me if I’m about to kill the poor bastard,” I mutter to Cheshire, and then I go for the throat.

My fangs sink into tender, vulnerable flesh, and I drink deep of a savory crimson. The taste is different this time; still meat and wine and manic energy, but… duller. A lighter shade of red. I drink his blood and every drop of it is better than the meal I had this morning, but it’s still nowhere close to the pure experience of drinking from Lena.

The red sates my hunger well enough, but that lack of visceral ecstasy makes it almost easy to withdraw when I’ve drank my fill. I still hesitate for a second before pulling out, but it’s no great loss; I was eating, and now I’ve eaten.

Unbidden, as I lick my lips, I think of Lena. I remember the taste of her blood, the fire of it, the glorious burning need that coursed through my body as I pierced her deep and drank her essence. I feel hungry again just imagining the flavor of her vital fluids.

And yet, when I glance at the bloody pinpricks in Cameron’s neck, there is no intensification of that hunger, no yearning to return to my food source. In fact, as I stare at this figment’s neck, I feel… unsatisfied. Detached. Perfunctory. And something about that disturbs me, but I don’t know what.

I raise two fingers to his neck and feel for a pulse. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. He seems fine, as far as I can tell. He’ll live, whatever counts as living for a figment. Regular humans can lose a fair bit of blood before they really start to suffer for it, and I don’t think I took enough to cross that threshold.

So my victim is fine, and I certainly didn’t learn enough about him to get attached, so this can’t be a moral foible making me so uncomfortable. Or, is that it? I didn’t get to know him, so there was no intimate quality to the act of feeding, so it wasn’t as satisfying?

He didn’t taste like Lena. His blood wasn’t bad, just bland. Lena was so delicious I nearly killed her, that’s how badly I wanted to drink her up. But this Cameron just wasn’t my flavor. Not my taste in…

…Oh. Oh no, no no no, we are not making this into some weird psychosexual feeding-as-sex bullshit. Nope! That is not the kind of vampire that I am!!!

“Cheshire let’s get lunch,” I suddenly declare.

Cheshire raises an eyebrow. “Blood bag not enough for you?”

“I have a diverse palate. To the food court!” I start power-walking away from the scene of the crime. It was probably just something about his blood! Maybe it’s because I told Lena to act human and Cameron to stop being a person. It’s nothing to do with my sexual preferences because that would be weird and I am… okay that line of reasoning doesn’t help.

I scurry to the nearest food court (there are multiple, wildly) and order a pomegranate smoothie and some sweet waffles. Cheshire orders nothing, and when I sit down with my meal she gives me a look.

“What? I was hungry.” I sip my smoothie. Mm, fruit.

“Sure. And this definitely has nothing to do with you freaking out after feeding on that guy, yeah?” Damn nosy cat.

I glower at the catgirl and swallow another bite of waffle before answering. “What do you want me to say? Yes, whatever, it was weird and I felt weird, but the evidence is inconclusive! There are too many uncontrolled variables, and you can’t expect me to calculate results with only two points of data.”

Cheshire smirks. “It’s cute that you hide behind your ‘Little Miss Robot’ act, but we both know you felt something there. What was it? How did that feeding make you feel?”

I grimace. “Nothing. I felt nothing, it was nothing. It doesn’t matter. Who cares?”

Cheshire’s expression turns hard, and when she speaks next her voice is cold. “If you are unwilling to face even this slightest of contradictions, then you will never be an archdemon.”

I recoil as if slapped. “Wh-what? Where is this coming from?”

Cheshire leans in, her intensity only increasing. “Do you understand what you are, Alice? Do you understand what you’re going to be? You cannot hide from yourself any longer. The weak of will do not ascend. The divided do not ascend. Every contradiction must be resolved; every belief must be challenged. My role as your geist is to interrogate every piece of your soul–to help you find yourself by bringing the disparate pieces of yourself into conflict, because it is through conflict that we rise. That is the lesson, ideal, and inheritance of the Leviathans.”

Them again. Okay. Let’s try something. I take a long drink of my smoothie, breathe, and let the brainfreeze bring clarity. “Fine, but I want something from you: if I tell you how I felt, you have to tell me about the Leviathans.”

At once the intensity vanishes and Cheshire leans back with a wink and a laugh. “You don’t have to bargain for that, babe. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, whenever you ask. It’s just up to you if you feel like reciprocating.”

Bleh. Clever little shit. Whatever, I think it should be obvious by now that I’m not going to win the game by out-talking her. I wolf down the last waffle, wash it down with smoothie, and wipe my mouth. “Alright, let’s make one thing very fucking clear: I mean it when I say that I don’t have enough data to work with. I reacted to Lena one way and I reacted to Cameron a very different way, and that probably means something but I can’t be certain what it means.”

“But you have a guess,” Cheshire prompts.

“I have a guess,” I admit. “It’s possible that, because he was a guy and not a girl, I didn’t enjoy it as much. Which suggests there’s some creepy sexual aspect to my form of vampiric feeding, which is displeasing me.”

Cheshire giggles. “Does that really surprise you? That’s just vampires, babe. Can you genuinely name me a piece of vampire fiction where vampire feeding isn’t at least in part a metaphor for sex?”

I pause, actually giving that some thought. Uh, it’s definitely sex in Masquerade. Elder Scrolls had that whole grossness with Molag Bal. Carmilla, Dracula, Hellsing, Dresden Files, Buffy, and the list just keeps going. We can automatically disqualify basically any teen romance vampire media. Although… actually… “Twilight. The feeding in Twilight is completely unsexy, and even an arch-conservative reading of it as, like, ‘sexual desire that has to be suppressed’ doesn’t work. There’s the ‘wait until after marriage’ thing, except that Bella gets bitten in book one by the baddie and Edward has to bite her to suck the venom out, which, what, did he ‘unfuck’ Bella? And after they get married, he still doesn’t bite her until she’s literally giving birth which would be the weirdest pregnancy sex metaphor ever written.”

“So your counterexample is Twilight?” Cheshire asks with a raised eyebrow.

I blink a few times, then wince. “Okay, yeah, you win that one. Fine, feeding-as-sex is the norm for vampires.”

“So what’s the issue? Why does it make you uncomfortable?”

I hesitate. “Because… because they can’t–because it makes me into… a predator. That kind of predator.”

Cheshire tilts her head, adopting a look of innocent curiosity. “You’re a vampire, aren’t you? Vampires are predators. What makes this worse?”

“Because it’s weird and it’s gross and I don’t like it!” I snap.

“Alice,” she says gently.

“Oh, fuck off. You know exactly what this is about, you know what goes on in my head, you’ve dredged my fucking memories like a goddamn brain-eater so stop playing dumb! I don’t want to be that kind of monster.” My hands are balled into fists.

Cheshire leans back. “Then what kind of monster do you want to be?”

The flash of anger turns cold, and I look away from Cheshire as I hug myself. “I don’t know. It’s… it’s all so different from a fantasy. I killed a man. I nearly killed Lena. I treated the guy in the park like he was just food.”

“Neither he nor Lena were really people,” Cheshire points out.

“So what!?” I hiss. “People suck! I’d rather empathize with an object any day of the week. People are garbage, and liars, and traitors; a stuffed animal won’t stab you in the back, and a toy just needs to be useful to justify its existence. So I don’t care that Lena and Cameron were figments–no, I do care, and that makes it more important that I don’t just dismiss what I did to them.”

“Why?” Cheshire presses. “Why do you feel the need to be moral? Who’s going to judge you for it? Are you a demon of justice, Alice? A vampire with a conscience? Is being a good person more important than living forever?”

It isn’t. It can’t be, because eternity is my highest priority. Nothing I do with my life matters if I can’t make that life last forever. And yet. “I… there has to be a line. Somewhere. I have to draw a line somewhere, okay? To live with myself.”

“Perhaps,” Cheshire muses, “but the question remains: what kind of monster do you want to become?”

“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I think I’ll have to learn by doing, in this.”

“Well,” she says, clasping her hands together and grinning, “let’s get to it then. What’s next on the docket?”

I take another sip of smoothie and consider my options. “I think we’re good on shopping, but I kind of want to see if this place has a good library. I’m curious what kind of nonfiction I’ll find there. And, of course, I want to hear about Leviathans.”

Cheshire cracks her knuckles and rises. “Then let’s get walking, and I can tell you how it all started: the beginning of everything, in the realms of dream and shadow.”

We get directions from a passing figment and head out of the mall, and as we walk I finally get a taste of this world’s deeper cosmology.

“Once upon a time,” Cheshire begins, “the dream of a shadow cast the shadow of a dream, and two worlds were born that had never not existed. Two intertwined realities were locked in a causal loop, forever the paradoxical origin of each reality’s twin, yet kept separate and ignorant of the other’s existence: the Shadowlands and the Dreamlands.

“The Shadowlands embodied individual will and persistent essence, while the Dreamlands embodied collective consciousness and mutable form. Each inhabitant of the Shadowlands was its own distinct entity, possessed of unique drives and desires, while each inhabitant of the Dreamlands was bound to the greater whole, like single cells of a vast world-body. Our story begins in the dark, and within the Abyss.”

Shadow and Spirit, seems like, or I guess a precursor to those Thrones. The recursive causality is wild but it fits the eldritch angle. This is exactly what I’ve been craving since I got here: a deep dive into the deep lore of this setting.

My companion continues, “The Shadowlands were once a diverse ecosystem populated by a variety of intelligent life, not all driven by hunger and conflict, but one-by-one they all fell prey to the ceaseless voracity of the Leviathans, a species of apex predators born of the deepest layer of the Shadowlands: the Abyss. Slowly, over timeless eons and thanks to the ever-reaching hunger of the Leviathans, the Abyss grew to swallow the entirety of the Shadowlands.

“Deprived of food, the Leviathans turned on each other. Each Leviathan was an amalgamate entity composed of shards of pure resonant will, like notes of music coming together in a violent and discordant song. When two Leviathans clashed, the violence cast off certain shards like torn scales from a snake, while the resonant core of the loser was devoured by the victor. The sundered shards were never reabsorbed, for they were seen as weakness excised.

“In time, conflict born of necessity gained an almost religious quality: the Leviathans came to believe that conflict itself was divinely righteous. Their forever war, the Eternal Conflict, was not merely a means for them to feed upon each other but instead a search for one of their number with the strength to devour all others. This all-consuming Leviathan would claim the mythical ‘Throne of Creation,’ and when it sat upon that Throne it would become God. The creation of God, then, became the purpose of their endless violent hunger.”

Fascinating. “Azathoth,” I say. “You’re talking about Azathoth, right? She’s the entity they were searching for.” Who sits upon a Throne, but not one of the five Thrones I’ve been told about. The Ur-Throne?

Cheshire grins. “From one point of view, she is indeed the divine champion of their legends. But from another point of view, Azathoth is the arch-heretic of their nightmares. For there was a taboo among Leviathans: the consumption of sundered shards was considered the highest act of heresy, both because they are impure and because they are essential to the life cycle of the species.

“When a Leviathan died and its shards were scattered, those shards that went uneaten would eventually draw in dreams from the twin of the Shadowlands, and in time they would give rise to newborn Leviathans. Those new Leviathans were born of weakness but reforged by dreams and given a new chance to seek the Throne. To eat an impure shard was to consume an unborn child and defile the Eternal Conflict. And so it was their highest taboo, and no Leviathan would dare dream of performing the accursed act… except one.”

“Azathoth,” I say again, enraptured.

“The Leviathan that would become Azathoth,” Cheshire corrects. “Long before the era of the Dreamweaver and the Demiurge, the creature now known as Azathoth was once the lowliest and most wretched of Leviathans. They called it Scavenger, Heretic, Defiler, Betrayer, Abomination, and Carrion-Worm. It was born at the very edge of infinity, where a single lonely patch of Shadowlands still existed untainted by the Abyss. The Scavenger’s first meal was the last survivor of a species driven to extinction by the Leviathans, and it learned much from that meal.

“The Scavenger learned of fear, for its prey had long dreaded being discovered by a Leviathan. The Scavenger learned of curiosity, for it wondered as to the fate of its prey’s kindred, and when it learned that fate, it wondered how a single creature had survived. The Scavenger stayed in that hollow for a long time, contemplating its first and only meal, until at last it grew hungry once more and was forced to leave its sanctuary.

“It emerged to find an Abyss filled with violence and death, and unlike its cousins, the Scavenger knew fear and had made fear a part of itself. It ran from conflict rather than seeking conflict, and it fed on scraps in violation of taboo. The Scavenger cared more for self-preservation and discovery than the act of sharpening and the progression of the Eternal Conflict. It did not seek the Throne, and for all these reasons it was reviled.

“The Leviathans took sadistic pleasure in hunting their smaller, weaker sibling. It lacked their purity of strength, so it could never prevail against one of them in a true fight, but it was quick and clever and learned of secret paths through the Abyss that allowed it to evade its hunters… but not forever. And so it came to pass that, within the infinite darkness of the Abyss, the Scavenger was caught, shattered, and consumed.”

I blink a few times. “What? It died? But, it became Azathoth, you said. So it came back?”

Cheshire giggles. “This part is one of my favorites. Yes, the Scavenger died. But, the Scavenger was ever-fearful and ever-curious, and it had learned how to do something that the other Leviathans never could or would; the song of a Leviathan was a song of clashing notes, music turned against itself to reveal which notes were weakest and which could be heard through the clamor, but the Scavenger made itself into a harmony, every note–every shard–weaving together to form a single resonant chord.

“When the Scavenger was shattered, only its core was consumed, for to consume its sundered shards would be taboo. Yet every shard of the Scavenger contained the totality of its being, and as those shards fed on dreams they did not give rise to a new Leviathan but instead to a rebirth of the Crafter of Harmonies. The Scavenger was reborn, and again it was hunted down, but every time it regrew quicker, cleverer, and stronger… until there came a day that a Leviathan tested itself against the Scavenger and lost. And in that moment–”

Cheshire suddenly breaks off and freezes in place, staring wide-eyed at… is that an owl? There’s an owl perched on a currently-dim street light, its big round eyes staring right at us. I think it might be a barn owl.

“Fuck,” Cheshire swears under her breath.

“Uh? Cheshire? Care to explain the significance of what looks like a perfectly ordinary owl? I was enjoying your story.” She looks nervous, and that makes me look nervous, so I’m mostly just babbling to fill the air. “Should I be scared of the owl?”

“It’s not an owl,” she says, and then she slides the charm bracelet off her wrist and presses it into my hand. “Send this to your throne world, and don’t take it out for any reason, okay?”

“Uh, sure, yeah.” I teleport the charm bracelet to my bedroom. “Seriously, what’s with the owl? It’s just watching us.”

“It’s not an owl,” she says, and then the catgirl transforms into a giant wolf again. “It’s an owlbear.”

My train of thought comes crashing to a stop. “What? No. You are fucking with me. That’s not. What!?”

“Grab on!” Cheshire snarls, and on reflex I follow the command and grasp at her fur. The second I’ve got a good grip she bolts, sprinting down the street back the way we came, through a side alley, just running as fast as she can on her wolf legs. I cling to her as tightly as I can, terrified and exhilarated in equal measure as our surroundings blur together.

And then a bear drops out of the sky on top of us.

Holy Jesus fuck that’s an actual fucking bear! I scream in my head as a gigantic mass of fur and fat and muscle plummets out of the sky and slams into Cheshire, flattening the wolf against the street. At the last second before it hits I’m flung from Cheshire’s side and roll across the ground, breath forced from my lungs, bruises rapidly forming.

For Cheshire, it’s worse, and I see blood and viscera for only a moment before her wolf body melts into shadow and she reforms at my side, once more lacking in physicality. She coughs and shudders and says, “Say hello to your first owlbear. Can you move?”

I can’t respond. My lungs are still empty, still struggling to suck in air, and my limbs move too slowly, barely moving at all. I need to move. I need to move. I need to move. I scrabble against the asphalt and push myself to a half-sitting position, and I finally manage to gasp out, “Ow.”

The catgirl sighs. “I was afraid of that. Sorry, guess I threw you a little too hard. Okay, try not to die.” Then she’s running at the bear, and shouts, “Hey, ugly! You missed!”

The bear, which had been pawing at the flattened carving left by Cheshire’s disincorporation, now looks up at the catgirl and growls. I’ve heard bears roar so many times in video games, but it’s never been this terrifying to hear.

“Ignore it,” commands a new voice. “Whatever you’re seeing, it isn’t really there.” Deep, calm, almost lazy. “Pin the demon.” Shit.

The bear rushes me, passing right through Cheshire’s insubstantial form, and before I’ve managed to back up even an inch the bear is towering over me. One powerful claw rams into my chest and slams me against the ground, knocking the breath from my lungs once again.

Pleasedon’tkillmepleasedon’tkillmepleasedon’tkillmeplease–

The bear looms over me, saliva dripping from that terrifying maw, brown eyes staring down at me. My gaze is locked on the bear, my body frozen, but I hear footsteps. Step, step, step. Two sets–no, three.

“Is this really the bitch that killed Shane?” asks a scratchy, nasally voice. “She went down like a chump.”

“That’s what Shane thought, too, right before she killed him,” says a familiar voice. Female, sharp, but the mocking edge is gone. Bitterness, now. Anger.

Mahiri. My blood runs cold. Shit, shit, shit. They’re with fae boy. Averrich. King’s Carnival. I am so fucking dead. I don’t have a spell that can save me here, I’m trapped beneath a giant fucking bear!!!

Scratchy laughs, then says, “I guess we should kill her to be safe!”

“Not happening,” Lazy Voice retorts before I can panic-cast [Carrion Swarm]. “The boss wants her alive.”

“But that’s boring,” Scratchy whines. “I wanna kill a demon.”

“Are you going to take that up with Averrich?”

The only reply I hear is wordless grumbling. Step, step, step, and I can feel a shadow fall over me, but I can’t tear my gaze away from the brown bear.

“Hey there, demon girl. You’re probably freaking out right now, but don’t worry; the boss just wants to talk. He’s a generous guy like that, even after the stunt you pulled in his club.”

I swallow nervously. When I speak, my voice is croaking, wavering. “Ha, yeah, that sure was a stunt. Uh, so, you’re not going to kill me? ‘Cause that would be mighty appreciated, let me tell you. I really like not being killed. Please?” If I summoned [Swarmheart] to my hand, could I make enough bugs to keep the bear from killing me? I wish Cheshire were still manifested. Can I manifest her nonverbally? Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Scratchy scoffs and complains, “What kind of demon begs for her life?”

I hear a sound like flesh against flesh, fist against face, and Scratchy cries out while Mahiri snarls, “Take this seriously, damn it! This is exactly what she pulled on Shane. She’s stalling for time so she can set up her moves. Keep watch for that fucking wolf.”

Great, and now that plan’s shot. I am so dead. “Hey again, Mahiri,” I call out with a pitiful excuse for a smirk on my face. “How’s the eye?” What? No!? Why are you antagonizing her you stupid idiot!?

Step, step–wham, a stabbing pain in my side as her boot connects with my chest and probably breaks another fucking rib! I scream and clutch at my abdomen, wishing I could roll over but still pinned beneath this stupid terrifying bear.

Lazy Voice chuckles. “Mouthy, isn’t she?”

“Just cast the fucking spell, Kado,” she snaps.

Kado sighs. “Yeah, yeah. Hey, demon girl.”

“Alice,” I cough. “Maven Alice.”

“Sure. Do yourself a favor, Maven, and take a nap. [Enchanted Slumber].”

His words echo, and I feel a blanket of drowsiness begin to fall over me, but it’s like there’s… distance. Detachment. I can feel the effect, I can feel how it’s supposed to feel–a tidal wave of soporific comfort–but it hasn’t hit yet, not really. I fight it. I’m scared, and I don’t want to die in my sleep, so I fight against the spell and when it finally hits me it breaks like the tide crashing against rock. The spell dissipates, leaving me just as clear-headed and panicked as before, if not more.

“Weaver damn it,” Kado mutters. “I hate dealing with scions.”

“What happened?” demands Mahiri.

“She resisted it, because that’s just something she can do, even if it’s the wrong move for her. Hear that, Mavie?”

“I’m not dying in my sleep,” I hiss.

I hear another exasperated sigh, and then Lazy Voice crouches down next to me and I finally turn from the bear to get a good look at my other assailant: a gangly dude, looks I’d describe as something East Asian if we were on Earth, choppy beard, and lots of laugh lines around the eyes. “You get you’re under a bear, right?” he asks me.

I grimace at the bear, then back to him. “I’m aware. Still not dying in my sleep.”

Kado rolls his eyes. “We just wanna take you to the boss. You’ll be fine.”

“Then take me there while I’m lucid. I wanted to have a chat with Averrich anyways.”

Mahiri scoffs, but Kado holds up a hand to stop her from interfering. “That’s great to hear! But, the boss has his orders: we don’t want you trying something on the way there, and we’d rather you not see the path we’re taking. So let the spell happen, we’ll take you to Averrich, and then the two of you can talk this out.”

I don’t see a way out if I refuse, but the idea of being unconscious in the custody of this trio still freaks me out. But before I can dig my grave deeper, Cheshire is next to me, leaning on me, Kado not reacting to her presence. She leans in close and whispers in my ear, “Get him to swear by the Weaver. That’ll ensure your safety, and then I can spy the path while you’re asleep.”

I have to stop myself from nodding in agreement. Out loud, I say to Kado, “Fine, but I need something from you: swear by the Weaver that you’ll do me no harm while I’m under the spell, nor will your compatriots.”

In the distance I hear Scratchy complain, “Do we really have to take this?”

Kado shoots a brief glare in that direction, then turns back to me and nods. “Deal. While the slumber holds I shall take no hostile action against you, Maven Alice, nor will I allow any of my compatriots to take hostile action against you, Maven Alice. This and these I swear by Azathoth, Dreamweaver, All-Mother, Origin. Weaver take me if I forswear.”

For a moment his expression tightens and he stops breathing, but then it passes. I feel the barest trace of Azathoth’s presence, like a soft finger brushing over the skin of my arm, and then she’s gone.

I breathe in, then out. “Okay. Cast your blasted spell.”

“[Enchanted Slumber].”

The tidal wave rolls in, and this time I let it take me, and everything falls into darkness.

END OF PART TWO