Ash falls and blood rains over the ruins of Fata Morgana.

  The last war has already ended as we pick our way through the hole in the city wall. The air is stagnant with death. Dark clouds hang low, obscuring any sight of the Labyrinth. The gods are all gone, fled to their homes to rage against the dying of the light. Dragons lie dead by the dozens, their corpses impaled on spires or scattered across rooftops.

  The field past the wall was torn apart by Abyssal rifts, but even the Abyss has quieted. Reality is fragile around the battlefield, wavering like a mirage, but the horrors have returned to their pits or been driven into the city. Fire and frost score the land, swords and axes strewn about, and the earth is still cracked where the rifts first appeared. In the distance, the great machine that housed the Hierophant is sundered and still.

  The bodies of three archdemons—ornamented Indulgence, ethereal Muse, and vicious Nemesis—have been gutted and stuck on spikes. I don’t see any sign of the others, but there are enough dead dragons that I wouldn’t be surprised if a few had been buried beneath.

  Atop one of those dragons, our quarry waits.

  I can feel it’s still her, even though she’s changed form. Her crystalline greatsword, [Apocalypse], impales the head of a green-scaled dragon. She sits beside the hilt, which is nearly as tall as she is, lounging on the dragon’s neck.

  Her other form was a mountain of spikes, claws, and horns, like a demon out of myth. This form is human, and close to how she looked as Homura, but the taint of the Abyss lingers. Her hair is still dark, but now longer, unkempt, and a few shades redder. Her eyes are bloodshot, with dark circles beneath. Scars adorn her face and throat, each of them raw and seeping, crusted with old blood. She’s still wearing the black robe from the last batch of visions, only it’s been torn apart and stitched back together so many times that only tatters are left, clinging to her body like wisps of shadow.

  Malice watches, calm and expressionless—seeming almost bored—as Mordred and I approach her makeshift throne. Her gaze slides off her doppelganger—less of one now—and settles on me.

  “Intercessor,” she greets me as I stop at a careful distance. “I see you’ve finished your business with Contrition.” There’s an almost serpentine quality to her voice, which is so comically evil it makes me want to laugh. She sounds like a villain.

  It’s probably intentional. Malice is still playing the semiotics game that defines this universe’s magic system. Acting evil makes her stronger. Of course, she’s also an archdemon, so I doubt there’s any part of her persona that’s still just an act.

  “And you’ve lost a familiar,” she notes, gaze again briefly flitting to Mordred before dismissing her. “Your predecessor wouldn’t have approached me with less than nine pawns to sacrifice. A party of five has been convention, four in dire straits. What makes you different? Are you truly unafraid of the Endbringer in the flesh?”

  Something feels off about this, but I can’t put my finger on it yet. “Fear has nothing to do with it. I know how dangerous you are, believe me. I’m here because I don’t want to fight you, Malice. I want to talk to you, from one Intercessor to another.”

  Mordred keeps her mouth shut throughout our exchange. We talked beforehand about letting me take the lead; whatever points Mordred can score against her alternate self, they need to wait until Malice is willing to listen.

  Easier said than done. Malice reacts to my appeal with a flare of pure hatred that slithers over my skin like a layer of warm grease. The air gets hotter, blood rain sizzling as it passes through the archdemon’s aura. “I’m in a good mood after ripping out so many thorns, so I won’t kill you for calling me by that title. But only once. I am not a pawn; I am the end. I am the hammer that will smash the wheel. I am the Adversary, and I will never kneel. I will never answer to the title of the Demiurge’s favorite slave.”

  My sense of confusion intensifies. This isn’t the Adversary; I’ve met the real one, and so has Malice. Is she pretending to be the Adversary as, what, some kind of mantling? Or does she genuinely believe herself more fitting to the role? I’ll have to try and gather that information after I’ve appeased her anger.

  I raise my hands in surrender and say, “Apologies, I didn’t mean to imply that. I assure you, I have no love for the Demiurge either. She tried to make me her Intercessor and I rejected that path. I promise, I’m not here on her behalf.”

  She studies me closely, that disgusting sense of hatred still crawling over my skin and slipping beneath my clothes. Then her slithering presence withdraws, and a moment later she relaxes. “Introductions, then. I am Malice, archdemon of sin and hatred, the conquering queen of this reality. I have set Pandaemonium ablaze, igniting its billion worlds by the hands of my countless thralls. A song of madness corrupts even the gods themselves, taken by the red haze and driven into the grasp of the dark ancients—the Leviathans of the Deep. You face Malice the Endbringer, inheritor-claimant to the first and only Throne.”

  Then the fire has already begun. The death of this universe really is in motion, and too late to stop. Pandaemonium is dying, swept away in ash that something new might take its place. As has happened before, and will again, unless I stop the Demiurge.

  I clear my throat and project my voice with as much confidence as I can. “You face Maven Alice, survivor of the turning wheel. I died once on the cusp of ascension as a demon, I died again at the end of the universe as Intercessor, and yet here I stand as something never seen before. I am Veseryn, the Red Queen, and Hastur.”

  Malice drums her fingers across the scales of the dragon she slew, then pauses. “M. Alice, really? That has to be intentional.”

  “We gravitated toward the same name,” I defend myself, embarrassed. “I started calling myself Malice before I knew you existed, so I had to change it. The acronym was a little act of rebellion against having to do that.”

  “Or a little trick our maker played on you,” she accuses.

  “Look, is this relevant? Your issue with me is my allegiance, yes? The power you sense in me is my own and no one else’s, and I will not suffer a master. I am not the Demiurge’s pet.”

  Malice shrugs. “So you claim. Maybe you even believe that. But I’ve dedicated the whole of my life to defiling everything that Nyarlathotep holds precious. I cut myself free from her chains with a thousand years of toil. What have you done that could possibly compare?”

  Nyarlathotep? Not Melpomene? “I don’t have your accolades,” I admit. “I’ve met one of your followers, and she found the taste of my sins to be enticing, but I think I’ve changed a great deal since then. And, more importantly… I’ve only really existed for a handful of days. I’m the newest splinter, and most of my very short life has been spent just trying to survive. Rebellion against the Demiurge only became possible for me… well, today.”

  Her cold gaze doesn’t change. “An auspicious day for rebellion. The last day this universe will ever see. Today the Demiurge falls, and a new master rises to claim the throne that never should have been hers. Today, Azathoth’s mistake is amended.”

  The dissonance clicks for me. She’s talking like a Leviathan. Like Prevara. Like she doesn’t know—or care—about the infinite cycle of splinters. What the hell happened to Homura after she was cast out from the world that became the Labyrinth? Aloud, I ask, “You think that new master should be you, right? You’re the last candidate the Leviathans have left to see their vision unfold. To claim the throne by force, as Nyarlathotep didn’t. But what exactly are you going to do once you’ve shattered the wheel? What will you forge in its place, Malice?”

  The archdemon’s laughter echoes across the battlefield. She stands up, giving the dragon’s neck a little kick as she does so, and lays a hand on the pommel of her greatsword. Her eyes burn with vicious, horrible hunger, and blood oozes from the scars around her lips as an ugly smile twists her face. “Isn’t it obvious? I will turn Heaven into Hell. Everything the Demiurge has made, I will unmake. Everything she rejects, I will embrace. I will forge a kingdom of the damned and parade her broken body through streets of jeering subjects. I will make a world where people kill each other for pleasure, not for ideals or higher meaning. A world that exalts the hungers she paints as monstrous, that spits on the virtues she hallows. A world of endless, glorious, uncompromising sin.”

  Her rant is telling; Malice is only engaging with the surface premise of Pandaemonium, the first layer of meaning. The story that she knows is the story of a thousand planets defined by the three primary Thrones: Order, Spirit, and Shadow. But there are deeper layers, those shown to me by Thalia and Melpomene. Pandaemonium is the backdrop for a much more intimate, personal story than the grand conflict that Malice is talking about. The gods and demons and dragons, they’re not why Melpomene made this universe. Homura should have known that, should have learned that from Thalia. So what made Malice forget, or stop caring?

  Where I see a puzzle, Mordred sees red. The copy of Homura walks forward and raises her blade—a thing of silver and gold now, a demon-killer forged by my Intercessor self—to point it at Malice.

  “You are everything we ever fought against,” Mordred accuses. “Do you even realize how far you’ve fallen? Do you understand how many lines you’ve crossed? We were a hero, or we tried to be. We fought to make the world a better place. We fought to save lives! To end suffering, not to propagate it. You sicken me. You’ve abandoned every principle we ever believed in, and for what? Revenge? Spite? It’s been stuck in my head, spiraling over and over, wondering what could possibly drive you to become this thing. Questioning if it was an act, if you were still holding on to some master plan where the world becomes just and righteous. But instead you just gave up. You surrendered to every worst impulse. You couldn’t accept your failings, so you embraced them instead. You saw a world where heroes failed and decided to become a villain. You saw a paradigm of monsters and victims and decided to be the monster. Everyone is selfish and cruel, so why pretend to be anything else? The world can’t hurt you if you hurt the world first. Pathetic.”

  Malice yawns in boredom. Her stance and posture haven’t changed, her expression one of dull disinterest. “Who are you supposed to be? A dog shouldn’t speak without permission from its master.”

  Mordred rears back as if struck, shocked and horrified, but I was expecting this. I say, “You’re not Homura, are you? Not since you ascended, or maybe earlier. She’s really not a part of your identity anymore.”

  Malice tilts her head. “Homura? The name rings a bell.” She snaps her fingers and her eyes unfocus. Her sightless gaze darts in random directions, eyes sliding sharply. Then she blinks, attention back on the world around her, and laughs. “Ah, that Homura.”

  Mordred grits her teeth. “You can’t just dismiss your past like that. You’re still Homura, no matter how much you’ve changed. She’s still a part of you—the core of you!”

  “Homura is dead,” the monster smiles. “I murdered that girl. I hollowed her out from the inside and filled her up with me. She wasn’t strong enough to achieve her goals, so I changed her, piece by piece, until she stopped being Homura.”

  “And you lost all your ideals in the process!” Mordred accuses. “Can’t you see how you’ve let all your worst traits consume you? None of this could be what you wanted when you started walking that path. This isn’t what Homura wanted to become!”

  “And I don’t care,” Malice says flatly. “You’re not comprehending that I am not Homura. I am not bound by whatever reasoning she had for becoming a demon. She was merely the crucible that I was forged in. Her utility to me ended the moment I ascended. She may have taken the first step into darkness, but I am the darkness. I am Malice, the archdemon of sin and hatred. You call me selfish, cruel, a monster, and I wear those labels with pride. All I want, all I really want, is to keep hurting people. To keep hurting her, our maker. That is my nature. That is my sole desire. Your appeals fall on deaf ears.”

  Mordred stares in disbelief. I glance behind us, back toward the glass tower. Do we really need to be here?

  It felt so obvious that I would face Malice after Contrition, but now I’m not so sure. There’s nothing left of Homura to save. There’s nothing to be gained here except eating another shard of the Demiurge. Is that worth the trouble? Is this fight necessary?

  The worst that can come of leaving Malice alone is that she’ll follow us to the tower and we’ll have to fight her there, but we’ll probably have Thalia’s help for that fight. Or maybe… I still don’t know how she feels about the true Adversary, do I? Is Malice an ally of the Adversary, or an enemy?

  I’m safer if I eat her. I’m safer if I kill my sister and steal her soul.

  “One last question,” I say suddenly. “What will you do when Thalia and I reach the Demiurge before you? Or, to frame it another way: what will you do when one of us seeks the highest throne?”

  Malice’s boredom slides off her face, her relaxed posture replaced by iron focus. Her gaze sharpens, her grip tightening around the hilt of [Apocalypse]. “Ah. You’re one of hers, then. One of the pretender’s pets. That makes this a lot simpler.”

  The archdemon rips her sword out of the dragon’s head and vanishes. Before I can blink she’s in front of Mordred, free hand wrapped around her doppelganger’s neck, and then in another burst of impossible speed she’s gone. The ground craters from the force of her departure, and seconds later a building inside the city collapses.

  Holy shit. How the hell do I kill that!? More pressingly, what happens if she kills Mordred? Do I lose that shard?

  We need to figure out a way to crack open Malice that doesn’t involve exploiting the Homura connection, since that was clearly a bust. Mordred is a write-off.

  My own callousness unsettles me. I should care more that an ally is about to die, shouldn’t I? She’s dying because I brought her to this fight.

  She was never alive in the first place. None of us were. Until the cycle is broken, we’re all just screaming meat.

  I don’t like that either, but now’s not really the time for doubt. I need to catch up to Malice, rip her soul out, and devour whatever’s left of the Demiurge shard animating her. That’s my only path to victory against my real opponents.

  I’m halfway through conjuring another portal when I stop myself, reminded of how Contrition interfered with the last one. Malice isn’t manifesting her throne world like Contrition was, but would she even need to? She’s leagues more powerful and more controlled.

  Fuck it. If there’s a trap, may as well spring it now.

  I finish the portal and step through, expecting the worst, but the other side doesn’t dump me out into an endless hellscape of Malice’s defilers torturing captive souls. I reappear on a ruined street deep inside Fata Morgana, the glass tower casting a shadow over the whole area.

  Malice is back in her monster form, spikes and scales adorning red-hued flesh, one claw pushing Mordred against the brick wall of what looks like a half-destroyed tavern. The crystal greatsword scrapes against the ground, carving gouges in the street.

  Mordred has already lost the fight, if you could even call it that; her right arm is missing, her stomach has been opened, and one of her eyes is pulp. The only thing keeping her organs inside her body is that blood control ability of hers. The sword I gave her is nowhere in sight.

  Defiant to the end, Mordred spits on her alternate self. “Betrayer,” she chokes out. “Murderer. Villain.”

  “Adversary,” Malice hisses, tightening her grip.

  I have a split-second decision to make: do I try to save Mordred, or do I focus on figuring out Malice? Is the former even possible?

  Malice just fought the universe and she’s not even injured. I know Mordred has a damage reflection spell, and if she’s used it then it hasn’t done anything. I doubt any conventional attacks will have an effect.

  Still, I have to try something. I can’t imagine my Red Queen spells would even scratch Malice, but maybe the Intercessor’s kit has a usable attack?

  I bring my hands together and then pull them apart, stretching a web of golden light into existence. The light flashes once, twice, thrice, and three beams of gleaming energy strike the archdemon in three different parts of her body. None of them even leave a scorch mark.

  “Your defenses are absurd,” I complain. “That spell can burn through dragon scales! I killed a greater blue with a dozen castings, and you just shrug it off like it’s nothing? Cheater.”

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Malice pauses in her assault on Mordred, still holding the other woman too tightly for her to escape. She turns her head to look at me, eyes baleful and unamused. “Skill issue,” the genocidal archdemon tells me, and then she stabs a hand into Mordred’s chest and rips out her beating heart.

  “No!” The shout rips from my throat reflexively and I shoot another three beams of light to equal ineffectiveness. Malice raises the heart toward her mouth, holding it delicately like a decadent treat, and my perception of time slows to a crawl.

  I need the heart. I need the shard. My only path to victory is being more real than my opponent. I need every inch of advantage.

  There’s a spell for this, but it’s not one of mine; if it’s dead or dying, Urna can usurp its motor function. I snap my fingers and force Mordred’s almost-corpse to lunge for the heart and slap it out of Malice’s hand. The demon isn’t expecting that, or not expecting how much strength I can shove into a body with pilfered necromancy, and the heart goes flying.

  The shadows between me and Malice bubble to life, animated by another branch of stolen sorcery. Tendrils of living darkness snatch the heart out of the air and fling it toward me. Malice takes a step toward it, claw outstretched, then stops herself. She watches as I catch the heart, lift it to my own mouth, and bite down.

  I drink the heartsblood of Mordred, absorbing the soul shard and the flesh gobbet it was imbued into. Her life essence is warm and bitter, but not unpleasantly so. I can feel myself becoming more whole as I consume my own castoff. Melpomene put this shard in me, added that texture to my soul, but deep down this one is mine.

  But then, Urna and Reska also feel like mine. Pieces of me, as I am a piece of another. When I eat Malice, she’ll be a piece of me, too.

  “Interesting,” Malice comments. Her eyes glow, baleful and burning. Is she watching this process with soul sight? Do I still have a witch’s protections, or have I evolved? Can she see my soul regardless? “That wasn’t an Intercessor reclaiming a familiar, nor was it a demon feasting, yet it carried similarities to both. Did the pretender grant you this gift?”

  “Why do you call her a pretender?” I ask instead of answering, mouth still wet with blood. “Why do you consider yourself the more fitting Adversary? I’ll trade my secrets for yours.”

  Malice folds two of her arms, places one on her hip, and keeps a careful grip on [Apocalypse] with her fourth. “A trade, is it? You’re bold to think yourself my equal.”

  I smile. “You can’t deny you’re curious. I can promise I know things about the Demiurge and her design that you don’t. Look upon my soul and see the truth of my words, sister dearest.”

  The demon huffs, but grins. “Alright, sister. Know my truth: the one you call Adversary is a slave to her love and utterly undeserving of the title. Thalia would preserve her precious Melpomene forever, leaving her unpunished and unharmed. She betrayed the girl I once was, sabotaging our efforts to break the wheel. I have made a religion of hate, waged a war of destruction against all our maker’s works. For a thousand years I have toiled to bring ruin, chaos, and desecration. I am Malice, and I am the Adversary. Among all our kindred splinters, I alone know what it means to defy our creator.”

  Betrayal. Homura felt the same way, if Mordred was truly an accurate simulacrum. Thalia insists otherwise, but she’s not any more trustworthy. And I still don’t know if Thalia’s goals are anathema to mine or not.

  The answer doesn’t change my goals here. I need to understand how I can deconstruct Malice’s core persona. She’s staked her identity around being the true Adversary, the ultimate antithesis to the Demiurge. If I can put cracks in that claim, I can get at the meat beneath. First, though… I need to make this a duel of Royalty before I can step beyond Royalty. I need to lay my own foundation.

  I straighten my back and bare my teeth. “Know my truth: my template is Veseryn, and hunger is my gift as much as my curse. I have supped on divine flesh and the blood of my sacred sisters. You say you’ve broken her works and defied her will? I’ve been alive for a single week and I’ve already taken a bite out of her very soul, you amateur. If I were to take a demon name as you have then I would be Voracity, the all-consuming. I alone know what it means to devour our creator.”

  The monster’s expression darkens. “Big talk, little girl. Let’s see if that pride is empty.”

  Malice surges at me faster than my sight can track, but I am more than sight, be it mortal or demonic. Hastur is a velvet cloak around my shoulders, her red hands coming up to cover my eyes. I can’t see Malice, but I know where she’s going to be, and where I have to be, and exactly how I need to move.

  The crystal greatsword swings for my neck and I parry it with a demon-killing longsword. I open my eyes and grin. “Not so empty, eh?”

  She grins back. “Cute.”

  Malice pushes harder and cleaves right through the sword, completely shattering all the anti-demon enchantments woven into it. I throw myself to the ground and melt it into shadow just in time to escape the edge of [Apocalypse]. The blade still clips into the puddle of darkness that I’ve become, but I just slither around it and reform on the other side of her.

  Malice cracks her knuckles. “Clever little rat, aren’t you? You seem so fond of scurrying through the dark. But I’ve drowned in the dark, and in the dark I was reborn. Let me show you what it’s really like. Let’s go there together, to where it all began.”

  Oh, I really don’t like the sound of that.

  The archdemon plunges her black greatsword into the city street, crystal puncturing through stone. Reality shatters, the street vanishes, and we’re falling together into the void.

  We fall deep, deep down into the endless dark, the empty black of the Abyss stretching out before us and around us, above and below. Though above, far above, that void is beginning to burn. This is the fire that will feast on all creation. This is the end that Malice unleashed, serving as Melpomene’s hatchetman.

  The corpse pile appears below us, rising from the dark. Only, the corpse pile is no longer a corpse pile; the Resurrection has begun, and a thousand dead worms writhe to life and ascend toward the fire burning the universe. We pass their twitching, sinuous forms as we fall.

  A new shape appears in the gloom: a glowing spiderweb of static, like cracks in an eggshell. Like a crack in the world.

  We hit the ground on opposite sides of a great chasm. It’s like the darkness itself has been split open with a gargantuan axe, the black substance of the void deformed into sharp plateaus stretching out over emptiness. At the bottom of that canyon lies the strange static I saw from above, but I don’t get a good glimpse of it before I crash into the solid plane of darkness.

  Malices steadies herself with all the benefit of her inhuman body plan, while I cushion my landing with the love of all shadows for their mistress Reska. I spare a moment to appreciate just how far I’ve come; at the start of my journey, I would have dealt with a fall like that by breaking all my bones and sipping a potion to heal. Now I’m spoiled for choice between my Intercessor powers, my Red Queen powers, Reska’s, and Urna’s. Once I devour Malice, the demonic half of my kit will be even stronger… though I doubt that strength means much of anything to Thalia, or to Melpomene.

  In a very real sense, Malice is my final opponent as a mage of Pandaemonium. Where I’m going next, sorcery will be useless.

  I brush myself off and meet Malice’s gaze, the demon standing vigilant across the tear in the world. When I’m certain she’s not preparing another attack, I let myself glance down at the strange black-and-white rift. Only, it’s not really monochrome, once I start examining it closer. I see reds and blues, purples and greens, a dozen colors that become a hundred, a thousand, an infinite kaleidoscope. The infinite colors consolidate into individual threads woven together to make a net, or the fabric of a shawl, or a vivid painting of another time and space. And through the gaps in the weave, through microscopic holes between the intersection of thread, I see a land of endless ash.

  I see a castle, a tower, and a throne, all cracked and colorless. I see a field of swords and a garden of bones. I remember walking this place, once as the Adversary and then as I met her. This is the graveyard of eternities.

  Which makes the kaleidoscopic net between that world and this one…

  “Have you figured out where we are?” Malice asks.

  I break away from staring into the rift and look back up at the demon. “The weave down there, it’s the skin of the universe. The living membrane dividing Pandaemonium from the void outside, the void that holds both the graveyard of worlds and the true palace of the creator. Why is this visible? What exposed it?”

  “Thalia’s work,” Malice tells me, her voice taking on a new edge, a new intensity. “The result of her passing into this world from outside. I’ve always wanted to explore that realm, ever since I learned of it. Imagine what could be waiting for us out there! Entire realities hidden from our eyes, the domains of other creator gods, or perhaps another layer above even them. Nyarlathotep—Melpomene, if we use Thalia’s name for her—cannot be the highest power in existence. This universe knows her a vassal of Azathoth, the true divine. Thalia would tell us that Azathoth is a construct of its servant, the Dreamweaver created by its own Demiurge, but is that true in the layer of reality above us? You and I—Mordred and Veseryn, if we are to accept those detestable labels—remember a life on a world that has no true counterpart in Pandaemonium. I’ve scoured this universe and found many Earth-like worlds, but none of them have been an exact match for the Earth of our Demiurge-granted memories. Perhaps that Earth truly does exist. If it does… how did Melpomene go from that world to her palace in the void? How did a mortal become a god? There’s something that Thalia isn’t telling us. For all her rebellion, she’s still protecting her master’s secrets. And when I find those secrets, I will use them to become the same kind of god that she is.”

  I freeze as the implications of what she’s saying churn in my mind. There’s a real Earth out there, one that Melpomene remembers. If that world could produce our Demiurge, could it also produce other demiurges?

  The concept of a demiurge is an old one in philosophy and religion. The little joke of Melpomene’s worldbuilding in Pandaemonium is how the divine figures called Azathoth and Nyarlathotep differ from their namesakes in Lovecraft’s Mythos. Azathoth is still the blind idiot god, but Nyarlathotep has become the real demiurge figure, having usurped the divine fire of the dreamer to craft her own bespoke playground. When you peel the layer back, you see that Nyarlathotep dreamed Azathoth into being, rather than the other way around.

  In some forms of Gnosticism—which I have an interest in and thus Melpomene has an interest in—the true divine power, the highest above all, splits itself or reflects itself into lesser forms, and one of these lesser forms, these archons, becomes convinced of its own divinity. The demiurge, ignorant that it exists only as the lesser emanation of a higher power, fashions the world. The demiurge traps reflected divinity, creating material existence.

  Our own personal demiurge, Melpomene, wasn’t born a god. She didn’t always have the power to create worlds, so where did she learn that power? How was it bestowed upon her? And have other people from Earth been cast into the role of demiurge? We can’t have been the only girl to fit the criteria, whatever those criteria may have been, so who else was granted the power to shape worlds? Where are they, and what are they building? How many other wheels might exist beyond our own?

  Malice interrupts the spiraling of my thoughts. “That’s my secret traded. Your turn, sister. You boasted of biting our maker and getting a taste, so, what did she taste like? What did you swallow, and what did you see?” Her pose is at ease, but I can already sense the desire for violence rising in her once again, ready to strike as soon as I’ve said my piece.

  “In a room outside the universe, you and I are gristle. We are gobbets of her flesh, snippets of skin and fat, cut from her body and laid out on slabs. Everything in this universe is just a phantasm, a dream-shadow cast by vessels of wood and paint, except for us. Our creator is infinitely bigger than us, but we are splinters of infinity. I tasted victory when I drank her blood, my fangs biting into her infinite soul. I didn’t harm her, couldn’t harm her, but now I understand one all-important truth: we are made of her.” I crack a grin. “And when I’m made of enough of her, I can replace her. You’re my next meal, Malice. You’ll help complete me.”

  The anticipation of violence intensifies in the air around me, a palpable aura of danger like a sword twitching in its sheath. Malice raises [Apocalypse] to her shoulder and says, “I’m going to crack you open and drink in your murder.”

  The monster lunges at me with her sword and I just barely get out of the way with a push from my swarming shadows, but the second she can’t get through she snaps her body into a new trajectory. One dodge too slow and her fist comes rocketing into my gut, knocking all the air from my chest and sending me flying.

  Malice jumps after me, grabs me out of the air, and dunks me back down. I slam into living darkness, even its affection for me not enough to spare my body from the pain of sudden impact. I force my aching limbs to move, wrenching myself to my feet just in time to avoid Malice’s follow-up strike with her sword, but I’m still in danger.

  In a straight fight, I’m no match for a monster this ancient and this obsessed with murder. But I’ve already established the premises of Wonderland for Malice, even if I haven’t made that explicit. I have more of the divine flesh than her, and I’ll make her find that out the hard way.

  When Malice comes in swinging, I don’t try to dodge; I grab the sword.

  [Apocalypse] cuts into my hand, the blade carving through that thin layer of skin and flesh and hitting bone, and then it slows. As the sword slows in its path it meets more resistance, a cascading loop of action reinforcing reaction. Wonderland and Pandaemonium agree: the sword didn’t cut through, so it can’t cut through.

  Malice is shocked. She stares at the blade, at the strength in her arms that failed her, and then at me. “How did you do that?”

  I laugh. “Nah, next question goes to me. You told me what you’re planning to do after you win, Malice, but how are you planning to beat the final boss without Thalia’s help?” In truth I’m not as interested in hearing an answer as I am in stalling to give cascading failure more time to reinforce my narrative advantage.

  The demon snarls, “You doubt my strength? I have gorged myself on this universe while Thalia has languished uncaring of it. I bested the Royalty of Pandaemonium and stood atop their corpses, making their essence my own. I shall kill the Demiurge with hands forged in murder, with a sword crowned in sin, and with a mind sharpened in hatred. I am the apotheosis of her antithesis.”

  I undermine her point by putting more strength into my arm and pushing her sword back. She rips the sword away and levels it, fury pouring off of her.

  “I ask again: how did you stop my blade? Nothing of Pandaemonium should be able to resist its bite.”

  I grin with as much smugness as I can muster. “It’s one of Thalia’s teachings, actually. See, you and I, we’re both divine flesh of the all-maker, meaty gobbets in her celestial workshop, but I’m more flesh than you are. I’ve devoured four other splinters since waking up in this world, and you haven’t eaten one. You may have all the strength in Pandaemonium, but I have substance in the world above it. It makes me more real than the painted simulacra of this phantasm universe, and it makes me more real than you. And if you can’t cut me with that toy sword of yours, how the hell are you going to cut the butcher?

  I shape a new weapon, a knife like the first I ever held. This knife burns not with fire but with pure will, an incandescent white certainty that I am going to win.

  “New question: what makes you free and me a tool, when you’re the one who burned the world for her?”

  Her rage overflows and she roars as I dart beneath her guard and slash at her leg with my knife. She swats me away with a pair of arms, but I hold my ground and only get pushed a few feet away. I move in again for another slash, parry away her greatsword, and cut through her scales before dancing back and settling into a ready stance the Intercessor once trained.

  “Destroying the world is what the Demiurge wants,” I say as I prepare for her next attack. “It’s what she always does to her creations. Just like you’re doing now.”

  Malice stabs [Apocalypse] into the dark foundation of the Abyss. A tide of violent energy comes surging towards me, but I tank it through gritted teeth—cutting it to diminish the blow, a trick learned from watching Thalia—and force myself to grin. Not enough, Malice. It’s no longer enough. She begins gathering more energy, calling the attention of the Leviathans to their champion.

  “You’re serving the Demiurge, bringing the end she desires. These worlds are wood and paint to her, but she tries to act through the rules of narrative. Something inside the world starts the fire. This time it was you. Her hand lit the torch through you, Malice. You’ve made yourself into a pawn.”

  With every exchange that goes my way, I carve my preferred pattern into the universe and Wonderland principles become accepted by Pandaemonium. Malice can tell that, too, which is why she’s stopped trying to fight me normally and is betting it all on this one attack.

  “All you’ve ruined were worlds she didn’t care about,” I accuse the demon. “She trained you to kill those worlds. She conditioned you into becoming a beast that only desecrates and destroys until the time was right to unleash you on the universe and wipe the board clean. She used you to burn Pandaemonium, and you fell for it.”

  Her fury wavers. Just for an instant, but I sense it happen. “The Leviathans whispered this moment to me,” Malice insists. “Their hatred swelled in anticipation of the final conflict.”

  “Do you really think they aren’t her pawns too?” I laugh. “You’re too far gone, Malice. Too brainwashed by her influence. You’ve forgotten the most important detail: nothing in this universe is real except for us. Nothing has free will except for us, because nothing is a person except for us. The Leviathans don’t truly hate Nyarlathotep, because how could they? She made them. In becoming their champion, you’ve only become hers. You proudly walk a path that Melpomene laid out for you.”

  I can feel the moment that something in Malice’s conviction cracks. Just a single sliver of doubt creeping into her resolve, but that’s all it takes for an archdemon. When she unleashes her strike, throwing all the hate and murder in the universe at me, all the baleful will of the Leviathans, all the strength and sin she’s ever gathered…

  It flows over me like water, and I am the mountain.

  “Face it, Malice: you’ve never been a sinner. You’ve transgressed nothing.”

  Her core shudders. Every insult I fling at her is another crack in her armor, another hairline fracture in the invincibility of her persona. She knows it, and for the first time this fight I taste a new, familiar flavor: fear.

  Malice is going to die here. So she runs.

  She cuts a hole in space and steps through, but it’s my turn to usurp a portal. I reach out with my will and redirect the portal, spitting her out in Fata Morgana. I follow, landing gracefully on the steps before the glass tower. I place a zone of interdiction, one last Intercessor trick, so that she can’t get away.

  Malice scrapes her claws down the side of the tower, leaving gouges in the glass. “This is impossible!” she snarls, fear and fury warring for control of her voice. “I am the queen of this reality, the master of the wheel!”

  She lunges for me and with a snap of my fingers I fling her back to crash against the tower. She stays there, breathing heavily, disbelieving.

  “This is the truth of you, Malice,” I tell the fallen demon. “You have forgotten what you really are. You think yourself a conqueror and a victor, but you’ve been playing the wrong game. You spent a thousand years razing worlds like it mattered, plotting to kill gods and demons like any of them were real. You’ve gorged yourself on the flesh of this universe, but it was illusory the whole time. You were eating nothing.”

  “Impossible…” she mutters. “Impossible, impossible, impossible. I never lose.”

  “A queen cannot conquer the divine,” I say harshly. “You are just another puppet, acting as the Demiurge desires you to act. You are a slave to your nature. Eat as many souls as you like, it won’t make you grow. You can’t grow, because nothing Royal ever grows. That’s the trick she played on you, Malice. That’s the scam you fell for. You stagnated, like all the rest of this universe, and I evolved. I’m more than you could ever be.”

  She comes for me, with all her strength and hate. I cut her down, and when she’s bleeding and broken I take her heart and swallow it. I devour Malice and make her mine.

  Another scrap of meat melds into my true flesh, another splinter absorbed. Now all that’s left in that celestial workshop is me and a thousand lumps of charcoal.

  I gulp down the last of Malice’s heartsblood and take one final look at the burning universe. The sky, the land, the distant stars… all of it burns. Everything burns.

  I turn around and head inside the tower, following the last of my sisters.

  Walking to the end of the wheel.

  patreon page to read the last chapters of Feast or Famine now! Also, consider subscribing because being able to eat really helps me write more words.

  This Magical Girl is Mine, is also up on Patreon, with and FREE FOR EVERYONE. There are additional chapters available only for patrons.