Hi, reader. Thanks for your patience with my little dalliances. I know they aren't exactly epic clashes with the servants of oblivion, but wow did I need that. If you’re just joining us again, I’m married now.

  Engaged. Whatever. You humans have a lot of really fun traditions, but I don’t understand the wait between the proposal and the getting hitched is one of them. I’m just going to start calling Caspar my husband. I hope you don’t mind.

  Caspar sips his rooibos and rubs his chin as he surveys the board, which lays in front of me as we spoon. “This pointy one goes….”

  “That’s the militant. It goes two or three squares in any direction.” I briefly demonstrate.

  “Oh.” He squints and replaces his cup on the nightstand. “But not one square.”

  “Nope.”

  He gamely makes a blundering move. “Am I in trouble, then?”

  “Huge trouble.”

  “Does it thrill you, beating up on a poor dumb newbie like me?”

  “Absolutely everything I do with this poor dumb newbie thrills me.” My cardinal captures his militant. I dissolve the piece into bone marrow. “Maybe I’ll put a g-spot up in my barn door,” I muse. “I heard you and Jordy talking about it. Or make it taste like pineapple. Give you a little tropical blend down there.”

  He chuckles. His thumb massages my tummy. “I ever mention how weird you are?”

  “That’s your wife you’re talking about, mister.” I turn from the game and snuggle back into his arms. “I know I said that it didn’t matter, really, and we were already closer than that and all that stuff. But I was fooling myself. We can have a big bizarre wedding. Gotta mark the occasion. First time ever, a human and an Old One. We can make up the ceremony. We’ll set a precedent, even. New traditions.”

  “There’s people,” Caspar remembers. “Some Rogarth folks, some guys from my unit. My cousin Maria, definitely. Need to invite her. Which means we may need to wait a while.”

  “What’s a while?”

  “A few decades.”

  “Caaas, c’mooon.” I deliver a puny series of punches to his bicep. “I don’t wanna wait that long. What if we just go kill them all after we’re done with the key? Get ‘em into Heaven early.”

  He holds a stern finger up. “Don’t joke about that.”

  “Sorry. Sorry.” I rub his back. I don’t mention that I wasn’t joking. “Maybe we elope? Quick and dirty little knot-tying and then we wait until the guest list croaks?”

  He shifts uncomfortably. “I don’t mean to kill your buzz, Irene, honest…”

  “It’s okay.” I nest my head in the crook of his shoulder. “Interdimensional wedding planning was never gonna be smooth. I can be patient. We can figure it out once I’ve got the key. Maybe I can manifest something on Diamante, somehow, once I have its power. And we can have the wedding there.”

  “Maybe.” Caspar rests his lips on my forehead, above my third eye. What he thinks, but doesn’t say, is: I reckon I won’t survive getting that key. These are my last days on Diamante.

  What I think, but don’t say, is: good. Once my husband gets us the key, I want him dead, as painlessly and quickly as possible. I’m tired of sending him back to that stupid world and the ways it hurts him. I don’t just want his nights. I want him here full time.

  I perk up. “But starting now I’m gonna make everyone call me Mrs. Cartwright.”

  His eyes widen. “You’re taking my last name?”

  “Well, sure. I don’t have one. I’m just Irene. And I like Cartwright. Irene Cartwright. Doesn’t sound bad, does it?”

  I feel a tidal wave of emotion from Caspar. He’d go weak in the knees if he wasn’t laying here with me. “Not bad at all.”

  “And it’s funny how you’re called that and you never wrighted a cart.” I shift. “Do you like it? Your name?”

  Caspar swallows the knot in his throat. “Beats, uh...”

  He fed me the surname he was born with. He’s forgotten it.

  “Beats whatever my old family name was,” he says. “Probably. I never gave it much thought. It was just the name all the seminary kids got.”

  “And now it’s mine, too.”

  He smiles. “Well, now I like it.”

  “Fuck this thing.” I kick the board off the bed. “I resign. You win. Let’s make out.”

  “Sweet.” He scoops me onto his chest. “My strategy worked.”

  I dare to manifest a few tentacles as Caspar’s tongue intermingles with mine. I need the closeness. He hums with pleased surprise as one wraps around his calf. When I let up, he says, “Look at that. Getting better quick.”

  “What a reaction.” I give his ankle a squeeze. “I’ve gotten you too into tentacles, I think.”

  “Just glad to see my patient well.” His toes tickle my pseudopod.

  I smooth his hair back from his face. He really has changed, I realize. Not just physically (although I note with some pleasure that there’s a ring of Irene-gold at the edges of his hazel irises now). But the lines on his forehead, that I thought time had irreversibly carved. They’re just about gone. He looks relaxed. Happy. Radiant.

  “I have an idea,” I say.

  “Oh, boy,” he says.

  “This might go wrong, but it won’t go too wrong. Like, loss-of-consciousness wrong, tops. If I were to try this on fresh baby warlock Caspar you’d have had a stroke. But I think you’re ready. You can take it at this point.”

  “Take what?”

  “If you trust me, I’m going to teach you your first word in my language.”

  “All right.” He carefully sits up. “What’s it mean?”

  “Love, kind of. It means the way I feel about you. I’m tired of using this limited vocabulary. I want you to understand the way I feel. The depth of it. It might be a little… ring-y. Temporary deafness. But you absolutely will not have a brain bleed. I promise.”

  “Well.” He clicks his tongue. “When you put it like that, how can a body say no?”

  I curl closer.

  “Caspar,” I whisper. “I—

  (You aren’t ready like he is. Sorry. Take a few weeks as a warlock and let an Old One fuck around with your Eustachian tubes and language centers, and you might be. But even if I can’t reproduce it here, you’ve felt something approaching it, if you’re lucky. A completeness beyond completeness, a devotion beyond devotion. A connection so profound you learn the limits of poetry, a thing there are no words to express. There aren’t, in your language. But there is in mine. That’s what I say to Caspar. One syllable, and finally—finally—he knows just what he is to me.)

  —you.”

  His breath sharpens and snags. His eyes dampen. “That…”

  A drop of blood drips from his ear. I expected that; I have a little doily-edged handkerchief ready. It’s not a brain bleed, okay? Just an ear thing. Easily fixed.

  “That was beautiful,” he breathes, as I dab the crimson from him.

  “You are beautiful,” I say. I have another word, actually, for how beautiful he is, but that one might kill him.

  “I wish—” His mouth moves but no sound comes out. “I wish I could say it back.”

  “You don’t have to.” I put my thumb between his brows. “I feel it. I’m right in there with you. Always.” I kiss the spot my thumb laid on.

  “How far will this transformation go? Will I ever be able to? Say it, I mean.”

  “You will,” I say. “That’s the least of what you’ll be able to say. You’ll transcend this tongue. There will be perfect understanding between us. You’ll see all of me, just as I see all of you. Know all of me. All of what is yours.”

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  “Can a human really do all that?”

  “Well.” I chew one of my hair tendrils. “No. Not exactly.”

  I decide, then and there. If he’s ready to hear the rudiments of the black speech of the void, he’s ready for this. It’s time I told Caspar.

  And you. Both of you deserve to know.

  It’s time I told him how humanity ends.

  “I have a plan,” I say. “For what happens next. When we fix your Heaven, we can’t just sit around in it permanently. Stagnation, eternity—those are anathema to the human mind. It’s made to be temporary.”

  He purses his lips. “I thought you said you were keeping me forever.”

  “I did,” I say. “And I am. But you’ll need to be forever-proofed, or you’d go bonkers. There are beings which were designed, physically and psychically, for eternity. I’m one of them.”

  “So, what are you going to do? Redesign me?”

  “Have you ever wondered where Old Ones come from, Caspar?”

  Slow realization rolls across his face. “You’re gonna make me an Old One?”

  “Not exactly,” I say. “It's not a thing we're going to do. It's just what happens in a well-kept afterlife. We'll keep you safe while you gestate. And then humanity will be an Old One. Eventually. A species is just one stage in the life cycle. Heaven is an egg, Caspar. You all go in, and then you come out as one of us. Another Sister of the Void.”

  His brows knit. I wait for him to process this. “Just one of you?”

  “I contain multitudes. Me, Bina, Salome, Saoirse, all of us. We’re pacts, formed by entire extinct afterlives.” I chew a hair tendril. “This is weirding you out. I figured it might. I wish I could explain it better.”

  “It’s…” He licks his lips. “A lot. A lot to comprehend. So Heaven isn’t eternal, you’re saying.”

  “It is. Well, it can be. But humanity isn’t. We’ll hand you Heaven, wait for you to go extinct, and then give you as much time as you need to exhaust the limited pleasures of your low-dimensional minds. With unlimited resources and unlimited time, you’ll max out. Nothing more to improve, nothing left to strive for. You’ll need something else. That’s when you’ll be ready.”

  He’s still struggling.

  “Look,” I say. “It takes a fuckton of time, even with species that were much more harmonious and clued into higher dimensions. It’s a group decision, and you are a big group. Took me something like six thousand years after I went extinct, and I was much more harmonious than humanity ever was.”

  “Just how not-harmonious are we?”

  “Disharmonious, lovebug.”

  “Sure.”

  “Pretty disharmonious if I’m being honest. Humanity… you guys run hot, okay? Big love, big hate. Big passions. Very attached to your individuality.” I know just how attached. The same niggling ego that made me keep this untethered manifestation long after I otherwise would have reabsorbed it dwells in him. “It’s going to take time,” I say. “For it to work, every single human has to want it.”

  “I don’t know how they could. I can’t imagine it.”

  “Of course not. I couldn’t imagine it either, when I was a species. I don’t know if any mortal could. But you’ll see.” I wink. “You’ve never met a human older than what, a century? You keep developing. Just as you’re programmed to fall in love, to want children, to grow old and die, you’re programmed for this, too. It’s a part of the mortal life cycle. The last step, as far as we know. My heaven will keep you happy and comfortable and help you through the long, long gestation.”

  “Is there—don’t take this the wrong way.”

  I kiss his chest. “I won’t.”

  “Is there an alternative?”

  “There is,” I say. “It’s suffering. Anything forever is Hell, to a mortal. That was the Father’s mistake. You know how you can get bored? Of even your favorite things? How blah it gets when you have it every day? That’s your dimensional thinking. That’s a trigger in you. A natural biological urge. It’s there so that you’ll eventually want to move on from it, from your existence to an existence like mine. If you don’t, if that change is halted, say, by a rogue Old One latching onto your species and insisting on turning your worship into its eternal feast… well. You saw. For a second. You saw what an ingrown afterlife turns into. The wards fail. Things decay. The mind breaks down; and out here, the mind is matter. The Father hobbled you through doctrine and stricture and then clung to you like a parasite, gorging himself on your fealty.”

  “Why’d He do that?”

  “I wondered that myself until I started getting worshipped. It’s fucking delicious. Not quite at the level of straight-up eating a soul. But it’s the only thing that compares. A few billion people doing that?” I shiver. “That sounds just fabulous.”

  He gives this a soft laugh. But his face is pensive. Cloudy.

  One of my tendrils strokes his chin. “You’re a little scared.”

  He nods.

  “That’s okay. I get it. It’s a big step. But when your species takes it, you’ll still be Caspar. Your consciousness won’t fade or go away. It’ll just change. Your definition of you will expand. But that expansion won’t come at the loss of Caspar Cartwright. Or of what he has with Irene. We’re forever, baby.”

  He threads his hands across the narrowest point of my waist.

  I slide up a few inches so we’re eye to eye. “It’s incredible. You’ll see. It’s such a beautiful existence. Power and grace and everything you’ve ever wished you could do. When you’re not getting yourself torn in half, anyway. And I won’t let that happen to you. I promise you’ll still be mine, and I’ll be yours. I love all my sisters, and I’ll love all of the entity you become, but you and me? It’ll be special. We’ll make everyone else so jealous and tired of our shit.”

  “And we’ll be… sisters?” He blows a little gust that flaps one of my tendrils out of my face. “That’s an odd connotation, Miss Irene. If you don’t mind my saying.”

  “It’s just what we call ourselves in your tongue, dude. We’re not really sisters. Not related. Not even strictly female, though we all agreed to present that way to humanity. That was my idea.”

  “What made you pick it?”

  “Officially, it was because we wanted to present ourselves in opposition to the Father. As a united matriarchal front. Between you and me?” I let out a silky giggle. “I love being a girl. So much more fun to manifest them. All soft and curvy. And that was before you showed me what a snatch can do. Now I’m all in. Once you’re a master of your own reality, you should really give it a shot.”

  He chuckles. “Maybe.”

  I gasp and give his pectoral a little smack of excitement. “We could do a little switcheroo. And I could see what having a dick is like. It seems like a damn blast.”

  My patient husband smiles and traces my spine. “It’s got a lot going for it.”

  “Shit, Caspar.” I play lightly with his package. Not in a horny way. I’m just messing around. “When I tell you humanity doesn’t realize how lucky it got, reproduction-wise. What a happy accident.”

  “Miss Irene. You’re not gonna tell me we’re the only species that have sex.”

  “Of course not. But you’re the first I’ve encountered where it's this much fun. Like, wow.” I pat his dick affectionately. “That’s gonna help you make it. How good you can make each other feel. Some of my sisters are skeptical. They don’t really think you can do it. Not every species can. If it wasn’t for us coming in and eating the Father, I don’t think you would have. He held you back. Messed you up.”

  “But you’re confident humanity can?”

  “Yes. I really am. I think you’re going to flail and argue and be your little human selves. But you're gonna have help. I never had a god, just an afterlife and a lot of figuring shit out. With us helping you, you will find your place among the Old Ones. If Ganea did, you will. She took fucking eons, I hear. Don’t tell her I told you. Just a bunch of Ganeas all beating the shit out of each other for the biggest chair. What a mess. Can you imagine?”

  “I don’t believe I’ve met her yet.”

  “I’m keeping you from her. She’s a bit of a tit. I’m hoping she’ll be humbler now that you thrashed her warlock.”

  “So you were an entire race,” he says. “Like, billions of people.”

  “Yep,” I say. “It’s been a very long time since then, but I used to be a whole afterlife’s worth of freaky aliens. We were called—well, let’s see how much of it your ears pick up.”

  I manifest a few beaks from the wall so I can say the name of my progenitors.

  “The…” Caspar screws up his mouth. “The hwuarch?”

  I snort. “Jeez, Cas. Way to make my old selves sound like a loogy. Sure. The hwuarch.”

  “What did you used to look like? A hwuarch?”

  “You saw one, sort of,” I say. “Part of one. It used to be my default manifestation. When I was all fucked up I partially reverted. Not very sexy. Not to a human.”

  “Can I see a full one? A healthy one?” He taps his chin. “Manifest the hottest hwuarch that ever lived, maybe.”

  I exhale my amusement. “Okay. Interesting. I think I can handle that now. I’ll show you if you promise to still think I’m sexy. You promise?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  I manifest the absolute apex of hwuarch beauty in front of us. It drops to the floor with a glutinous plap.

  “Oh,” he says. “Huh.”

  “That frill on top? The way it drapes?” I point. “Several of my old genders would have gone so crazy for that.”

  He tilts his head. “It’s very drapey.”

  “Yeah. So I used to be a few billion of that.” I dissolve it before Caspar can get too good of a look at its pedipalps. “And now I’m your wife.”

  “And you’re really happy with just me?”

  “You’re only skeptical about that because you haven’t met you.”

  “What about all the rest of humanity? Is our thing gonna get in the way?”

  “Nope. I love humans, but I am only in love with Caspar. You’re going to be an anomaly. The rest of your species will be one with their families and lovers in the gestalt. Yours will be on the outside. But you can manifest this body, the same way I do mine, and live with me untethered. Just like we are now. I’m not gonna date the rest of you. Only you.”

  “Now I’m confused again.” He scratches my scalp. “Isn’t that like… dating a toe or something?”

  I giggle. “A toe? Give yourself credit. You’re at least a finger. It’ll make sense, eventually. Once you’ve obtained your true form, it will. I mean, it’s not like you want to date my graibaciae.”

  “What is a graibaciae?”

  “The singular is a graibacius,” I say, “and it’s a cluster of organs in my dorsal complex that secretes my time-nectar.”

  “I am going to stop asking questions now.” Caspar takes a deep breath and lays back.

  “You’re the boss.” I slide off his chest and into the crook of his arm.

  “I won’t lie, Miss Irene. I don’t get it. And I’m nervous about it. But I trust you.”

  I feel it. His trust in me. He’s not exactly over the moon at the eventual destiny of his species, but he isn’t as afraid as he was.

  “Well, look.” I curve my leg over his waist. “You are going to have a long, wonderful, wildly sexy few millennia in paradise to get accustomed to the idea. And if it makes things easier, I intend to hold on to this form right here forever. And I hope very much you’ll hold on to yours, too. Although you can lose the brand. You won’t be my servant any longer.”

  “No?” He smirks. “What if I ask nicely?”

  “Well.” I smirk back. “If you’re nice…”

  We kiss, and for a time his confusion and his anxiety drip away in the face of our careless, unhurried tenderness.

  But a question cuts through him like a freezing wind through an unattended window. One that slows and shallows his kiss. I withdraw my prehensile tongue. I don’t want to make him ask it.

  “You want to know what about if Eight wins,” I say.

  He nods.

  “Then none of that happens. Humanity’s souls are digested and its consciousness faces oblivion. Eaten in its nest like an oviraptor. I fully intend to be devoured in its defense, but I can’t fault my sisters getting the fuck out if it comes to that.”

  “You better not.” Caspar’s face is grave. “I’m not letting you throw yourself away for us.”

  “If it’s for you, it’s not throwing away.” I am unmoving. “Humans are beautiful. I will not flee like a pussy and watch their light be snuffed out.”

  “We’re not having this argument,” he says. “Because we’ll win. So it’s not even something we have to think about.”

  “I know. I believe it, more than I’ve ever believed it before. But I am…” I haven’t admitted this to him, yet, I don’t think. “I’m kind of scared.”

  “Me, too.” He kisses me. “But I have my goddess.” He kisses me again. “And my faith.” And again, and I kiss him back. And he rolls over onto me, and takes my small wrists in his hands. My back arches as he raises them above my head, pressing them softly into the pillows. Our new rings click together again.

  “And if it all goes wrong.” His hearth-warm chest lowers onto mine. “If we don’t have eternity after all...”

  I finish the thought that rises like sweet incense from my lover’s mind. “We have tonight.”

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