Bina plows into Saoirse, bowls her to the ground, and with a vicious spring trap bite, tears her head from her shoulders.

  The rotten flesh in her lupine mouth flowers explosively, and spreads filaments of fungus across her muzzle. They crack wide into blackened canyons of decomposition. In a moment like a carrion time-lapse, her head is stripped to bone; she collapses onto her elder sister’s corpse.

  “Shall we call that one a tie?” Saoirse calls from her seat in the stands.

  “That is so cheating,” Bina protests. “That should be a win for Bina.”

  I survey her ruined manifestation. “I do think it’s a tie, actually. Sorry, Bean.”

  Bina huffs and crosses her arms. “My next war-form is gonna be metal or something.”

  “You don’t actually have to Saoirse-proof your design,” I say. “We’re gonna be taking on Ganea in the field, not each other.”

  “Still worthwhile to practice rapid adaptation.” Salome stands with a shimmery scraping noise. “Ganea’s sure to be adjusting on the fly. I’ve seen it done before.”

  “How many times have you fought her, anyway?” I ask.

  “Five hundred fifteen,” she says. “And ninety-four little skirmishes I’d barely count.”

  “And how many of those have you won?”

  “Oh, who can remember. You ready to take a turn, Irene?”

  I stretch my power down from the bleachers into the arena’s pitted sands. My war-form twists into being from fibrous tendrils, dripping photonegative ichor in rivulets onto the ground. The trick with these things is you have to make them quick and numerous. Like our scout-forms, we field scores of them at once. We’re starting with a few one-on-ones to work out the initial designs; I haven’t manifested one of these in decades.

  My current design is a bigger, nastier version of my humanoid manifestation. My limbs are ropy and tentacular, my teeth and claws sharp as scimitars, my hair barbed and hooked.

  “Irene.” Bina giggles. “It has lady hips.”

  “I’m used to them by now, all right? Lower center of gravity. Better explosivity.” And if I enjoy being sexy, so what. Bina has those totally vestigial moth wings on hers.

  Salome reaches out a pointed hand and her war-form manifests like a crack in reality’s windowpane. It forms a ferrofluid blob, reflective and rippling.

  “Very creepy-minimalist, Salami,” I say. “Very you.”

  “Thanks, babe.” Salome twists her wrist, and the blob crystallizes into an enneagonal prism, twirling on its tip like a top. “I’ve been working on a new one.”

  “What’s it do?”

  Her wink carries across the arena like a bell chime. “Come at me and find out. If I win, you never call me Salami again.”

  “It’s always the food names with her,” Bina says. “She’s a monster.”

  I pour my focus into my war-form, up to her limited capacity. Kill. Tear. Destroy.

  I crouch back on my haunches and snap forward into a charge. Prism-Salome gives a tensile tremble; one of her panes extrudes with bullet force. I barely twist out of the way in time to prevent it from blasting my head off my shoulders.

  The prism whirls. The pistoned-out facet, still tied to the main mass by a ribbon of glistening flesh, slaps into the floor of the arena and anchors in place. The rest of Salome’s mass whips outward like a wrecking ball. She carves a fountain of sand from the floor, then whistles into me and carries me off my feet, cracking half my ribs.

  I snarl and choke ichor out from my toothy maw. My limbs wrap around Salome in a bear hug and scythe the anchoring pseudopod from her in mid-air. We go tumbling across the arena. I pry at the panels of my sister’s war-form; she smooths and spikes to deter me.

  I rip her open and eviscerate her crystal entrails. She sea-urchins outward and perforates me in a dozen places. We die locked together, our intermingled blood befouling the sand.

  Salome claps. “Another tie, then?”

  I loosen the tension from my shoulders. Truth be told, reader, I’d assumed I was going to lose. Salome has more practice at this than I do. Perhaps Cas has rubbed off on me. “Looks like we’re all pretty evenly matched.”

  “I think it’s time we move on to the group stage, don’t you? That’s what we really need to practice.” Salome melts her war-form’s corpse into quicksilver. “Bina, would you do the honors?”

  “You got it.” Bina limbers up. “Don’t cheat this time, Sersh.”

  “I’m going to cheat, dear.”

  Bina harrumphs as she dilates her arena like a telescoping iris. I cling to a banister to keep my footing. Whipping tendons form scar-tissue floor. Sand churns up between their lattice. When she’s finished, the tight arena has become the size of a football field.

  “Two dozen each to start, yes?” I holler to be heard over the new gulf.

  “Two dozen,” Salome confirms. “All four of us. Last sister standing.”

  Shadow and sinew erupt before me and form a small army of war-forms. My third eye flares with effort. Come on, Irene. Get back in lethal shape. You’ve fielded a hundred of these things before.

  But that was against the Father. Now I’m sending them charging toward my sisters, something I swore I wouldn’t do. I picture Caspar and all the sacrifices he’s made in his code for me. It’s my turn to sacrifice for him.

  My foremost war-form lets loose a ululating roar as it meets one of Bina’s slavering maws.

  ???????????

  “What you wanna do is tip the nose down, actually, riiight before it hits.” Williams demonstrates with his hands. “Get it on about a thirty-degree angle. And extend the boarding ram. It’s designed to absorb shock. You hit it just right, let that take first impact, ride the bounce, and then ya pull waaay way up to level out. That’s how they taught us in basic.”

  Caspar taps his chin. “Huh. You ever practice it?”

  “Just on simulation. They wasn’t itching to let us crash real aerostats. Anyway, you’re still walking, so it must’ve gone fine enough.”

  “Sure. Bumpy landing, big skid, but we’ve all got our heads screwed on, still.” Caspar lines his nail up with the joist. “Gonna miss that bird, though.”

  “Oh, yeah. A real dream to fly.” Williams sighs. “You think the Kingdom’ll have airships?”

  “I’ll put the word in with Miss Irene, see if she’d allow it,” Caspar says.

  Lieutenant Davis points at the deceased pilot from her spot on a tree stump, where she’s parked her useless self ever since she arrived. “You’re fraternizing with the enemy, soldier.”

  “Blow it out your ass, LT.” Williams has been waiting a very long time to say that.

  “Is the Archbishop still alive, Cas?” Aaron is keen to know.

  “Yessir.” Caspar lays a hand on Aaron’s shoulder and considers whether to huck a brick labeled infidelity through his comrade’s perfect glass image of their religious leader. He decides on the gentle route. “Little shook up, but he’s still kicking. I’ll treat him kindly.”

  His promise helpfully elides the conduct of Jordan Darius.

  They’ve all agreed that tents are well and good for a camping trip with the boys, but with their number only going up and some ladies entering the mix, it’s time they constructed sturdier lodging.

  Degmar is doing what he always does, which is jawing off with Alys, the security guard whose throat Caspar slit. His attempts to get in her pants she receives with warm dismissal; she figures she’ll give him another half-dozen cold shoulders and then plant one on him. They’re both quite curious what sex is like in the afterlife.

  “And what do you think Gabor says?” Degmar asks. “While I’m actively cleaning his puke off the roulette?”

  “Lemme guess,” she says. “Smiles for miles, buckets of ducats.”

  “Buckets of fuckin’ ducats. That’s right. And then get your ass back to work. Like I’m the drunk one.” Degmar chuckles. “Father above, did I hate that slogan. Reckon he came up with that?”

  “Probably. Fucking Gabor.” Alys nails a crossbeam into place. “The worst supervisor.”

  “Oh, by far. Little toad man.”

  “Warlocks shoulda killed his ass.”

  Caspar returns to the furthest-along scaffold, which is already free-standing. This is the one he and his Rogarth neighbors are tackling, and he feels a ludicrous civic pride at their efficiency.

  “We’re beating the airship folks, Ed,” he calls up to his old teacher, who’s high on a ladder framing the roof.

  Edgar shifts a nail to the edge of his mouth. “Go a lot faster if you just got your goddess to magic this stuff up.”

  “She did.” Caspar gets to work on an interior wall. “We just have to put it together.”

  A brassy bong issues from the grandfather clock inside the taphouse. Sam the bricklayer squints up from the log he’s debarking. “That thing always been there?”

  “Reckon that’s my cue, fellas. Warlock business.” Caspar turns his hammer so the handle’s sticking out. “Who’m I giving this to?”

  Caspar hands his work off to Florin—who’s been a space case lately, for some reason—and heads into the treeline. He has no particular destination in mind; I’ll take him where he needs to go. As he wanders the brakes and beeches, he unhurriedly scans the golden foliage. Stephen, the truck driver, ran off into the woods the first day he wound up here, and nobody’s sure where he’s ended up.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  (I know, of course, and I’ve been intermittently summoning hyperlocal rainstorms on his pathetic little shelter. Stephen’s a total twit, and he hit my man with a truck. He can come out of the woods whenever he damn well pleases, but I’m in no hurry to guide any search parties to him. Vindictive, sure, but I didn’t eat his soul, so I’d say I’m being a good girl.)

  Crispy leaves crunch under his aimless feet. He steps over a low stream, burbling and clear. It’s all so pretty out here. He wonders if lightning bugs will come out when the sun’s finally down. Suppose that’s all Irene’s decision, he thinks.

  “Seven o’clock! Think fast!”

  Caspar spins around and I careen from the underbrush, leaping into his chest and latching like a diving hawk. He grunts with the impact and snaps his arms around me before I fall.

  “Hi, Mr. Cartwright.” I wrap my legs around his waist. Being picked up, it turns out, is addictive.

  “Hi, Miss Irene.” Caspar’s hands support the bottoms of my thighs.

  “How was work, dear?”

  “Not so bad. Crashed a blimp, hot-wired a truck, let the little deer out in the woods.”

  “You rescuing that deer is the most Caspar thing I’ve ever seen.” I titter. “I heard you talking to Williams about the airship, by the way. ‘Uhhhh I’ll put in the word with Miss Irene.’” I do my best imitation of his deep, twangy voice. “Like I’d ever tell you no. Big goof. Do you know how cute you were, getting all excited about flying?”

  Caspar kisses my forehead, right next to my blinking third eye. “The others are trying to have a meeting, y’know.”

  “Mmhmm.” I rub my face against the side of his jaw like a cat. Prickly.

  “So maybe we oughta get our butts in gear and meet up with them.”

  “Yep.” I lick his ear.

  Caspar chuckles. His knee comes up from below to boost me further into the air and he solidifies his grip on me. “Something’s telling me you’re okay with making ‘em wait.”

  “I’ll live with it.” I wrap my forearms around his trapezius. “We each decide how fast your perception of time passes in our own demesnes.” I nip his earlobe. His flinch bounces me in his grasp. “Mine is going nice and slow.”

  “Does that mean you want us to go nice and slow?”

  “Hmmm.” I rake my nails along his neck. “Maybe.”

  An insistent bump against the back of his calves and he loses his balance, falling backward onto the king bed that just slid into him like a bumper car. My hands and knees cage him. “Maybe not,” he observes.

  My forefinger claw extends into a sickle blade. With a jagged tearing hiss, I liberate my warlock from his clothing. “Maybe not.”

  ???????????

  The meeting’s set in Bina’s demesne. Caspar’s never seen the place and professes his curiosity. Good enough for me. Salome offers her spawning room, but Bina, Salome and I are unanimous in our polite decline. I can’t imagine my warlock would love the ambience, and I’m not trying to dig parasitic spores out of his skin.

  I create another tumorous winged limo for us, prudently tinting the windows out to Heaven as I lead Caspar by the hand into its plush interior.

  “Do you think I’ll ever be able to handle seeing you?” he asks, as we lurch and detach from my prime form. “The whole you?”

  “Some day,” I say. “After you die. About a century to get your eldritch sea-legs. And once I know you won’t get the ick when you see it. Old Ones can be something of an… acquired taste.”

  “Oh yeah?” He lays his hand on my thigh. “You think I’m acquiring it?”

  “I don’t know.” I slide my calf between his. “You wanna taste and find out?”

  Our limo docks at Bina with a puckering squish. Its wings spread and anchor against the keratin mesh of Bina’s hide. I give my warlock an urgent pat on the top of the head. “Babe we’re here. We’re here.”

  “Mm. Shoot.” He sits back and wipes his mouth. “Can’t slow time again?”

  “We’re in Bina’s demesne. It’s all her now. Hold still a second.” I brush my fingers through the knot of his tie and tug it back into tidiness. “Sorry, love. Oh, hell. You smell like peaches.”

  “Reckon anyone who’d care’ll just think I was eating peaches, Miss Irene.” He kisses my knee and stands up.

  “Oh. Right. Duh.” I shake the haze out of my head and accept his offered arm. I step back into my panties as he opens the limo door for me. “You are such a gentleman, you know that?”

  “I do my best.” Caspar follows me into Bina’s demesne, examining its crumbling masonry and its decaying grandeur as we pass. Standing in an ivy-draped archway is Jordan Darius, sunglasses on, decked out in the same smart suit and black riding boots she was wearing when Caspar killed her.

  “Welcome to Bina, lovebirds,” she says. “Boss wants to know what cocktails you’d like.”

  “Howdy, Madame Inspector,” Caspar says. “Whiskey sour, please.”

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” I say, and a stalactite drops from Bina’s cavernous roof, transmogrifying into an old-fashioned glass as it lands in my palm. I take a sip. “Is that a double?”

  “My mistress has a heavy pour.” Jordan lowers her sunglasses. “Perk of the gig.”

  We follow Jordan out of the crypt onto a windswept highland cairn, upon which a slab of granite sits, crowded by wooden stools. Bina waves at us from her perch upon one. “Hi, Irene! Hi, Caspar Cartwright! Do you like your drinks?”

  “Delicious, Miss Bina. Thank you.” Caspar takes a seat. I stand behind him and lay my hands on his shoulders, my fingers straying to his chest. Jordan pulls up the stool next to my man, casting him a needling grin. He awkwardly ignores it.

  Saoirse is already here, occupying herself by growing little spotted amanitas out of the mossy slab of stone. Salome and Adaire take up the lithic table’s far end. My origami sister gives me a look. I return it. “Hi, Sal.”

  She indicates my handsiness with a glance. “You and your warlock seem cozy.”

  “We’re very cozy.” I squeeze Caspar’s arm. “Something to mention, actually. Caspar recently became my lover and consort. Which affords him a measure of respect.”

  Salome frowns. “According to what?”

  “According to Irene,” I say.

  Salome and I have a tendency to butt heads. It’s because of how similar we are. We share a certain confidence.

  She provides an illustrative example of what I mean. “And you’re not concerned that fraternizing with your mortal might influence your judgment?”

  “Nope.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Oh, I do. I’m just not concerned about it. I want his influence. His and Jordan’s. You should, too. They may not have our capacity—no offense, Cas—”

  “None taken, ma’am.”

  “—But they know Diamante and they’re far cleverer than you give them credit for. Caspar and Jordan’s plans have gotten us this far.”

  Salome gives Caspar a probative look. “As have their mistakes.”

  “Hey.” I tap a claw against the table. “Whose warlock captured whose? Humans are good at rolling with mistakes. They’re a flexible species.”

  “What does your rationality cluster think of these arguments?” Salome asks.

  “Even if I wasn’t convinced, the Caspar manifold has a supermajority,” I say. “And can we please not talk about my rationality cluster in front of my boyfriend.”

  “We can’t afford to put this kind of stock in them, Irene. Mission’s always first. Warlocks are disposable. They have to be.”

  Adaire ahems.

  Salome turns to her. “I’ve been perfectly clear on that with you, Daire.”

  “True enough. And yet, mistress, here we sit.”

  “Because it’s tactically advantageous.” Salome furrows her quicksilver brow at Adaire’s responding shrug. “It is.”

  “That’s our old way of doing things.” I trail a talon across Caspar’s lower back as I sit next to him. “And it hasn’t worked. We mistakenly thought that because there’s always more, we can treat them interchangeably. But we can’t just keep picking the biggest and scariest-looking cultist and giving them acid breath. We need to select for quality. We get transparent about the situation and provide a virtuous alternative, and we can expand our selection to talented candidates who wouldn’t normally give warlockery a chance. That’s what Bina and I did, and it’s paid off in cooperation and competency.” My hand strays into Caspar’s and my fingers intertwine with his. “Humanity can save itself if we work with it. Give them something to believe in, not just obey.”

  “So what. The new way of doing things is screwing them? Is that your proposed strategy?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it strategy,” I say. “But it’s a great time.”

  Saoirse chuckles. Bina crosses her legs.

  Salome casts a look at our sisters. “If I’m really the only one concerned by this, I’ll drop it.”

  “Really, Sal,” Saoirse says. “Irene seems sober enough to me. I think it’s rather darling. Like having a little pet.”

  “At first, I didn’t understand what was with the saving souls thing, but that’s the reason I ended up with Jordy here. So I’m supportive.” Bina reaches across the table with a pseudopod and pats his head. “Good job, Mr. Caspar.”

  He flinches a little. “My pleasure.”

  “Fine, fine.” Salome screws up her mouth, flashing facets of light across the table. “I’m outvoted. Keep sleeping with your warlock.” She nods to Bina. “Let’s talk about Ganea and her little mortal monster.”

  Bina twitches her wings. A granite statuette rises from the slab at which we sit. A figure in spiky full plate, a beetle-like crest protruding from his grilled helm. “This is the Iron Butcher. Ganea’s warlock and total freaky bastard. The deadliest warlock, uhhhh, probably ever. Do you guys think?” she asks the Sisters.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Oh, certainly,” Saoirse says.

  “He’s deadly enough, I suppose,” Salome says.

  Adaire’s lips thin. “He and I are familiar.”

  “You’ve met him? And lived?” I whistle. “How’d you pull that off?”

  “Desperate, abject retreat,” Adaire says. “While he ripped through the dozen men I’d brought like tissue paper.”

  “And how do we mean to not get tissue papered?” Jordan wants to know.

  “We have a plan,” I say. And then I tell her what we’re going to do in this dimension, and where the Iron Butcher is, and the way our warlocks will have to draw him out, and the place they’ll need to fight him.

  “Ah.” She sips her Jungle Bird. “We’re fucked.”

  ???????????

  “For the record, I don’t think we’re fucked,” I tell Caspar, as our ride cuts back through Heaven’s corpse to my demesne. “The Butcher is deadly because of Ganea’s power. He’s reliant on it. You and Jordan are greener, but that means your combat training is untainted by our magic. Without his mistress in his corner, the gap between you won’t be nearly so large.”

  “Will you be able to be in our corner?” Caspar asks. “Won’t your magic be tied up with the Ganea fight?”

  “It’s four against one.” I broadcast the confidence I don’t feel. “And we’ve had plenty of run-ins with Gan. I might cut in and out depending on how it goes, but I have a better feeling about your evocations staying steady than his.”

  Caspar runs his thumb across my wrist. He studies my eyes. “I’m worried about you. Not really used to worrying about you.”

  “I’m extremely used to worrying about you. It’s time I got some skin in the game on your behalf.” I raise his hand to my lips. “I can’t promise I won’t get hurt, lover. But I promise I’m strong. Let me use my strength for you.”

  He cushions my cheek in his workman palm. Nothing more needs to be said. I hear it all. We put our mouths to better use.

  Back home, we sit on a bluff overlooking the rising village at the forest’s edge, wiling away the time before Caspar needs to awake in gentle procrastination.

  I’m finding out how the other half of the head/lap equation feels. It has its merits. Caspar shifts his leg to give my neck some more cushion. “I didn’t realize you’d be so… transparent,” he says. “About us.”

  “Why not?” I open my eyes. “I’m not embarrassing you, am I?”

  “Never. Tell the truth, I was concerned about the other way around. Old One with a human and all.”

  “Don’t be silly, Cas. I’m gonna show you off every chance I get.”

  He strokes my mantle. “Oh yeah?”

  “Of course I am. You’re a talented warlock. And a hunk.”

  “I suppose I thought of myself as beneath you.”

  “Dude, you’re a mortal,” I say. “I’m not a worthwhile metric to judge yourself on. I’m an Old One and you’re a warlock. We’re in different categories. You’re not beneath me. Well, only when you want to be.”

  He snorts. “Knew you’d say that.”

  “You set me up for it, mister.” I pick a few blades of grass and start arranging them on his thigh. “You’re beside me. That’s how warlocks and their mistresses work.”

  “Still.” He clicks his tongue. “Little pet?”

  “That’s Sersh being Sersh.”

  “Seems to me they think it’s undignified.”

  “Oh, I imagine they do. Not Bina, but Salome and maybe Saoirse. But they’re wrong. And they’d better get with the program.” I cross my ankles. “An Old One and a warlock should be a package deal. We need mortals we can be proud of.”

  “You’re proud of me, huh?”

  “I’m achingly proud of you, Caspar Cartwright. Of course I am. You know that.” I tap a finger on his forehead. “And I know you know that, by the way, dingus. You just like to hear me say it.”

  He breaks into a grin. “I like to hear you say just about anything, Miss Irene.”

  “I’m going to be even prouder of you when you kick the Iron Butcher’s ass.” I sigh and sit up. “Okay. Time to go, I think. The gals and I need to get into fighting trim if we’re going to screen Ganea for you.”

  Caspar takes a moment to himself. A deep inhale and a bracing of his muscles. I watch him shed the softness and the warmth of his time in my dimension, and it knocks a hairline fracture into my heart. He opens his eyes. “I’m ready.”

  “My brave man.” I sit across from him and cup his chin. “You’ll be back soon. You’ll get this done and be right back with me.”

  He nods.

  “And someday soon. Someday really, really soon.” I stroke a thumb across his lips. “Someday we’ll be like this forever. Okay?”

  He tries to keep his grim facade up against the gale-force longing I’ve blown through him. “Okay.”

  I lean forward and kiss him. And I kiss him, and kiss him, and if I don’t stop kissing him soon, I’m going to end up keeping him. It’s only going to get harder. Forcing myself to banish him back to Diamante is like leaping into a frigid lake. I take the plunge.

  I open my eyes, and Caspar is gone.

  ???????????

  My warlock is the first one awake, jerking back to consciousness in the passenger seat of their hot-wired van. Archbishop Tilliam is in back, head laying on Adaire’s shoulder, snoring like a rotary saw.

  And there’s a continuous clack, clack, clack noise from outside.

  Caspar cranks his window open and pokes his head into the chill of the forest. He looks down. The fawn he caught and released is tapping its hoof against the side of the van. It looks up at him with big, dewy eyes. Caspar raises his eyebrows. “What are you doing here, little guy?”

  “That’s what I’m asking, motherfucker,” the fawn says.

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