“Grab hold?”



“Okay, there’s going to be a chain, with handles, going fast. You need to grab the handles, because if you grab the chain it’ll just rip your arm off. Then squeeze the handles to slow down before you hit the end of the chain, and then you can take one of the ones that’s piled up on you to help you climb up the chain.”

Relax, it’s simpler than it sounds.

“It’ll make more sense when you see it. Get ready!”

In the time it’s taken her to say this and me to be confused by it, the ship has taken on the precipit­ously approaching aspect of a landing airliner. It’s moving too fast and Lyra is tugging at my hand too much to get a good look, but it’s maybe a hundred feet long, made of sea-green wooden-looking planks and black riveted iron hardware binding it all together, but it’s nothing like a sailing ship from Earth: the hull is long and thin, a tapering needle-pointed shape with a shorter taper at the stern collapsing the cross-section to a flat vertical rudder with a scalloped trailing edge and stylized ‘fingers’ reminiscent of a bat’s wing. From the sides of the hull, two sets of massive wings or fins made of canvas sails stretched between round masts like fingers project, folded back like the wings of a diving bird and held in place with great metal half-circle clamps, and glinting Eyelight here and there seems to indicate the glass of windows. At the bow, a long, metal spike projects, still glowing white-hot from its adventure.

Lyra’s tugging at my hand, pulling me toward the edge of the raft, but I’m rapt, listening to the impossible song this design is singing to me: long, narrow hull, more conical than the thing it’s got to stay inside. Foldable wings, for the same reason. Long spike at the front, to move the shockwave even further forward, still blazing from aerodynamic heating. And it’s a sailing ship, the nature of the wings and rudder and lack of other visible propulsion shout that idea out loud. A flying, hypersonic, sailing ship.

“Master!”

Fuck! Sheath! Where? There.

“Catch!”

Lyra tosses me Cleavage’s sheath, and I instinct­ively throw the strap over my shoulder, still distracted by the design of the ship, trying to take it all in at once as I used to do as a kid watching planes on the approach to Logan.



“I expect we’re about to meet people. I’d offer you my shirt, but...”

“Heh. Not going to be a thing Master, don’t worry.”

Surprise level: 0.00+-0

Right, it’s a hypersonic sailing ship we need to catch. It’s slowing, as it passes over us, but still going fast, angled to dive cleanly to the sea on the far side of the raft. A spray of something wispy and silvery bursts from the stern as it passes over our heads, I suddenly I understand Lyra’s cryptic instruct­ions, and, taking her hand, dive off the edge of the raft.



She pulls us under as soon as we’re in the water, diving deep. When the turbulence clears, I force my eyes open, startled to find them un-stung by the salty water, and watch Lyra swim. She’s graceful, on land, but in water, she’s a revelation, swimming with the easy, simple grace of a seal, toes spread and wings pumping, driving us downward with vertiginous speed, so fast it feels like—

A peal of thunder roars through the water, rattling the both of us, and then I see the ship ahead of us, not landing in the water but diving into it, bow pointing almost straight down, the sound of the impact reverber­ating in our bones like a rocket launch. It passes, perilously close as Lyra swims urgently for it, and I make out details as they rush past trailing bubbles: iron-rimmed windows glowing with a purple light, Infernal text emblazoning (I assume) the ship’s name, the unmistak­able tapering shapes of hydrofoil fins folded flat against the hull, something large and flat and dully glinting held in place with chains, and then it’s past and Lyra is letting go of my hand and reaching for something: the chains that have blossomed, hundreds of feet long, from the stern of the ship. There are dozens, splaying out, evidently driven apart by some clever feat of hydrodyn­amics. They blur past, but I can make out fittings at intervals with projecting rings the size of dinner plates: the handles.

Lyra hesitates, waiting for me to take hold first, and I snatch at the next ring that comes near, catching it with a lurch. It slides along the chain freely, but there’s a lever like a bike brake along the inside of the ring, and when I squeeze the mechanism that’s sliding along the chain grabs hold gently and slowly begins pulling me up to speed with the ship. It’s the first time since this started I’ve been more than a few inches from Lyra, and the lack of her presence makes my heart drop, but when I look around she’s clinging to another chain, keeping pace with me and grinning wildly.

Further handles pile up against mine as the chain runs past me, helping me to brake, and then suddenly I’ve come gently to a ‘stop’, the water tearing at every part of me with the speed of our dive.

Use the ones that pile up to climb the chain? Oh. Grabbing a second handle, I alternate braking and sliding each one, climbing up the chain toward the stern of the ship, and as I realize with relief that someone inside is retracting the chain at the same time, doubling or tripling my progress, a touch at my elbow nearly startles me into losing hold or taking a lungful of Seawater, but it’s just Lyra: she’s been keeping pace and the splay of the chains has brought us near enough for her to loop her tail around my arm, affectio­nate, and then the ship is upon us, the chains winching us into an alcove at the stern, bright with golden-white pinprick lights. Brilliant calligra­phic luminescent-purple arrows indicate a direction to go and a handhold to grab, so I take hold and pull myself toward the door, green-planked and iron-riveted, that they indicate, and then there’s a water-muffled bang behind me as Lyra closes the other door of the airlock, wrapping herself around me as soon as I turn to her, searching for kisses I return desperately.

Sade’s rope rack, that was what, like ten cubits apart? And if one of us had messed up the other would’ve just let go too? And it felt like the length of the Sea. I really hope we turn out to be able to do Hollow Heart Summoning, I don’t think I’m good at separation.

You’re not either, they way we’re kissing right now.

There’s a creak and a deafening gurgle and bubbles surround us as the airlock cycles, emptying of water in seconds, and as soon as the surface drops past our heads I break our kiss to take a gasping breath, realizing I’m grinning the same stupid grin that’s still plastered over Lyra’s face.

“Woo! I’ll tell you one thing, the Hogwarts Express has nothing on this.”

I hadn’t known that making out in an airlock while it cycles was on my bucket list, but it was, and motherfu­cking check.

“Hah! And that wasn’t even the interesting part. Come on, let’s...” Pfech, argh!

“I wanna get inside and dry off.”

As if on cue, there’s a clank of retracting deadbolts and hiss of breaking seals, and a strange, shocking-pink creature opens the door.

No. I’m in that one scene from Out of the Silent Planet. This is a human girl, age unguessable, strangely, almost inhumanly broad-featured and yet disconce­rtingly pretty, long black hair tied into neat, asymmetr­ical braids to accommodate the short-shorn patch on her left temple. Her skin is pale, but she’s not Caucasian or any other ethnicity I can make out, not even developed-world mutt, and as she leans into the airlock to mutter a string of syllables I can’t parse and rakes her eyes over the both of us while she talks, unabashed and appraising, it comes to me that she’s nearly as naked as Lyra, wearing masses of extravagant gold or silver (the monochro­matic light makes it impossible to tell) jewelry, elaborate sandals that twine thin black leather straps nearly to her knees, and nothing else. There’s the sudden expected instinct to cover myself, but my hands are full of succubus, so instead we just kind of stand there, mid-makeout.

«Quietly, we seem to be overrun with aftercare. Welcome aboard the Changepurse.»

With this, she swings herself out of the entrance again and stands aside, gesturing us inside.

«Where are you two headed? I’m cruising along the Breath of Charybdis—this is my ship—right past the Throat, if you want something more interesting than just doorjumping your way home, or you can look through my scrying-table at homes if you’re new.»



In the instant before I remember not to ogle I get an impression of a sort of trim grace, understated curves and small taut breasts. An expression of vague disappoi­ntment passes over her face when I look back to it, and then I turn to Lyra because she’s starting to respond in the language that I recognize on her tongue as Infernal, and the room goes sideways for a moment.

Right duh Master doesn’t speak Infernal.

«Um, thank you, need to ask my Master-who-doesn’t-speak-Infernal.»

I’ve been hanging out with a monster all night. It’s only been hours, but apparently that’s long enough to totally recalibrate my sense of beauty: I haven’t seen it for lack of anything to compare to, but now I have this human for comparison and though her features are strange and unearthly, she’s still just a very beautiful human, only looking so alien and unreason­ably pink because I’ve gotten used to staring at Lyra’s unlikely proportions and pale-grey skin. A soft purple light the same color as the markings that light up the airlock glows from behind new girl, giving a her skin a lurid tinge that ironically softens the shock by making her look more alien.

“Master, where do you want to go? She’s offering to drop us off near the Throat, which is this place that—”

«What if I let you aftercare along with everyone else until ve can think again? I’ll come find you in a half-watch or so.»

Lyra...well. Her body’s beautifully impossible, proportions unreason­able, and now I realize her face goes just as far, goes further, as if it’s built around pegging the parameters of whatever in me measures prettiness rather than anything to do with biology or heredity. Those big impossible eyes actually are bigger than you’re going to ever get on a human. Those sweet fuckable lips aren’t something evolution was ever going to produce. It’s a beautiful face, but a fey face, magical and impossible, something ripped out of the best kind of hentai. The girl who’s answered the door has definitely hit the genetic-lottery jackpot herself, but Lyra’s something else, almost...­crafted, a grammar-flouting poem about feminine beauty like animate artistic license. Just looking at her like this makes me want to pin her against the wall behind her and kiss her until we fall through because of proton decay.



The strange woman’s gesturing us in as she turns to clear out of the door breaks my reverie. There’s a susurration of quiet voices from behind her, the low noise of a quiet but crowded room, and I realize with a start that there’s no hint of engine noise or any kind of life-support thrum.

You know you’re a scifi nerd when you worry at the quiet your very first time stepping out of an airlock.

“What did she say?”

They’re speaking in hushed voices, so I follow the peer pressure.

“We should be quiet because everyone’s aftercaring, and then she asked if we want to like rest before she helps us figure out where we’re going. Oh, and she’s the captain of the ship and it’s called the Changepurse.”

The stranger is stepping inside, casting a look over her shoulder as if to see that we’re following, and then smirking at me fraction­ally when she sees that my gaze has fallen to her nicely-toned ass.



I glance to see if Lyra’s caught me looking as well, but she’s looking, if I didn’t know better, in the same direction I was.

Following the stranger over the threshold, the deck is, incongruous to the wooden structure, made of some shiny black poured stone, unbroken by seams but embedded with flecks of mica or something else dully sparkling. Inside the door, it’s inlaid with more silver lines in a complicated, curving pattern that reminds me of the design on Cleavage’s blade. Same subject matter, if I could get an overview, likely as not.

Man, they really are overrun with aftercare. I wanna curl up now too...

«You were on the Lost Virgin’s Rest. What happened to you?»

«We just came from Earth - fucking...­hell of a ride...n­ever seen so many perfekti. The Shadows put us right next to it, like not even half an aslu.»

«Sade’s Balls, the blessing actually works?»

«Apparently?»

«A lost planet. I thought your human looked newly abducted. And likes femmes? And by the way ve’s looking at me I’m the first native he’s seen?»

«Yeah, why?»

Yes, I’m wearing a Hollow Heart Amulet. Wouldn’t you rather ogle my breasts though?

«I don’t want to embarrass myself with a redundant greeting. You’re both Hollow Hearts, yeah?»



«Yeah. Wait, fuck, don’t kiss, he’ll freak! Earth is mono-normative!»

Fucking traditio­nalists.

«Relax, I’m not going to get myself spiked or tangled up in a Hollow Heart I don’t know. I’m not a child.»

Lyra’s urgent and bristling—I even catch the English word ‘fuck’ in her exclamation—but the worry seems oddly to be directed at our interloc­utor instead of me as I might expect in this situation.

The stranger turns to me, extending a hand as if to shake, but when I take it she clasps my hand warmly with both of hers and brings it to her lips, kissing my palm like...

Okay, I will say, Master needs a set of silver rings like that. Especially doing thin ones on the thumb so you can still fit two like on the fingers, that’s creative.

Creatively unf. Time to make with the music lessons.

Sorry, I’m fresh out of metaphors. I’ve never met something formally flirtatious before, especially not at a volume I can hear with any clarity. It’s actually weird, being touched sexually by a human, almost incestuo­usly familiar after Lyra’s alien thrill.

«Welcome to Pandemonium, fellow Sade.»

Huh. Shouldn’t I be going full Yandere here? I guess I really don’t mind. I really thought Viktor was going to be wrong on that count. Interesting.

Oh fuck dammit, guess I’m gonna lose that one. I’m so claiming new Master’s prerogative on that bet, you’ll totally let me out of it when you find out what the stakes were.

When Lyra finishes translating, the alien human—girl? Woman? Her age is a lot more than unguessable and I realize that for all I know she might be thousands of years old—lets my hand drop, and then without transition pulls two (presumably, the monochro­matic light now that we’re out of the airlock stomps all colors to shades of purple, red, or blue) deep-purple towels from a shelf, tossing one to each of us.

FUCK YES TOWELS NO MORE SOGGY UNDERBOOBS!!

The familiarity and mundanity of the artifact is surreal after the rest of the night. It’s just purple terrycloth, luxuriously thick and nice, no magic, no unreason­able overengi­neering, not even a weird material (right? Please let this just be cotton), the only interesting thing about it that it’s near big enough to be a bed-sheet.



«Enjoy the aftercare toys. Anything not being used or claimed is there for you to play with. I’ll see you in half-a-watch-about!»

With this—and without waiting for Lyra to finish translating, our host strides off.

Toweling off instead of drip-drying again is almost orgasmic. It’s rather nice having some cloth to do something with.

“That was...in­teresting. Am I actually that hot, or is that some kind of formal thing?”

I probably should have expected etiquette to be a bit epic in the land of the kinky demons.

Tell me about it. Not that I’m disagreeing with her taste obviously, I mean I’m sure seeing the potential, but why be so intent on molesting my poor newbly and nectar-shy Master? Surely if you’re feeling homosubs­tantial there’s plenty of experienced...

Oh. Derp. I bet she lives for moments like this, that’s why she bothers to captain a ferry.

“It’s an old formal welcome for new humans, but you definitely just got hit on hardcore. I think she’s into virgins.”

What.

“I hope you’re not mad that I let her flirt with me like that. I didn’t really know what was...”

I’m actually glad there’s a Serious Relation­ship Issue to stop me falling into the endless abyss of ‘just missed that boat’ puns.

“Shh, relax. I know I’m yours. I’m sure you could figure out how to make me jealous if you really wanted, but that’s sure not going to do it. I know noone’s going to displace me.”

So what if I am totally cheating on that one?

“Good.”

Unfff. Towel. I swear it’s even scraping off the salt. So good being back to civiliza­tion. Whoever said many waters can’t quench love hadn’t seen the shower I’m going to take when we get downstairs. It feels like I’ve never had one in my whole life.

“Anyway, I’m pretty sure she was trying to flirt with the pair of us, not just you. So.”

This last comes disinter­estedly out of the towel that Lyra has draped over her head as she dries her hair. Really?

“You’re not sounding...­that’s not weird here, huh.”

There’s an odd squeak: she’s polishing the salt off her horns.

Erk, ow. Need wax so bad.

Oh my fuck you hand me the best lines sometimes.

“Everything’s weird here. You get used to it.”

“Heh.”

“Make s...” Blech. MRF. Really? Umum. “The sea-salt is purifying, but now it’s going to be full of dust from Earth it drew out of you and it tastes gross to me. I’ll like it if you wipe off as much as you can.”

So awkward. This had better not be becoming a thing.

“Of course.”

When I open my eyes from giving my face a final wipe, Lyra’s drying her wings, folding them around herself and pulling the membrane through two fistfuls of towel. I throw mine around my waist, doubled up so it doesn’t drag on the floor, and am about to offer to help when she finishes.

Ahhh. Well, kind of unsalty, at least. Please let there not be any mirrors, I don’t want to know how my hair is doing.

Toss the towel...no? That fuzzy taste again? Oh. I get it. Dunno what Master wants, so gotta ask, even if I meant to do the slutty thing. Is the instinct always going to shout so loud? I can be Henchey on my own, I just need to get used to it, it’s not like it doesn’t feel good...

“Am I putting this on?”

How optional is clothing here? I look around the room for the first time since coming in. I’ve gotten disoriented as we entered: from outside it’d looked like the airlock led into the belly of the ship, but we’re on top. This shouldn’t really be surprising: the deck is level under my feet, meaning we must not be diving anymore, and the only time the ship could have rotated with my noticing is while we made out in the airlock.

The timber curves around over our heads so that the hull is an arching roof, meeting the floor in sloping walls like an attic room, long and taperingly narrow with the pointed shape of the ship. It’s dimly purple-lit, the light emanating from the corners where the thick green timber ribs that line the inside of the green-timber hull meet the hull. Green and purple are complime­ntary, and the floor is black, with the result that the only thing that the purple light really illuminates is the furniture and its occupants, making us all seem to float in a black void. Other colors glow from the walls: the iron-rimmed portals I saw from outside, showing glimpses of some otherwor­ldly glowing vista under the Sea.

The furniture is easily described, a riot of mismatching, gothically ornate couches, chairs, and scattered or piled cushions of all sizes up to and including good-sized mattresses, much of it worn or threadbare, but all lavish and comfortable-looking in the way Victorian furniture never is on Earth: we’re in a very old, very expensive, very well-used room.

The occupants of the furniture, not so easily. It’s as if we’re in the aftermath of some happy cataclysm. Almost everyone is comforting or comforted, wrapped in blankets and watched over by a solicitous caretaker or sleeping in someone’s arms or being held and caressed and spoken to with soft words. It should look like a roomful of refugees, but while there are tears or the obvious recent memory thereof in streaks of mascara or black (and maybe other colors? The light once again makes it impossible to tell) succubus tears here and there, these people seem to just feel safe, some seemingly unwinding from something terrible and intense, others glowing with the satisfac­tion I saw on Lyra’s face as we lay together on the raft before, but all happy and content and peaceful.

And of course, only about half the crowd is human, if that. It’s dim and many of the pairs or groups - collections of three and four obviously all together are common, and there’s at least one gang of five all resting in a pile - are under blankets or in shadowy corners or partly obscured by hanging curtains or all three, so it’s hard to see detail, but horns of various kinds, fur or scales, wings feathered or batlike, draping tails, even lazily splayed tentacles abound. Near us two masculine figures recline against one of the pillars that brace the hull, a big muscular one enfolding his obviously male but extravag­antly made-up human in dark-feathered wings.

“Master?”

I blink out of my staring around. Lyra’s standing there, holding her towel uncertainly in front of her, sort of carefully not covering herself, a few steps away: I’ve wandered a bit further into the room in my reverie, trying to get a better look.

Right. How optional is clothing here? Really optional. More of the crowd is naked or dressed in what I’ll call the opposite of clothing, than not.

“Sorry. Nope, in the hamper with it.” There’s a bin beneath the shelf, an unfolded towel hanging over the edge, another incongruous island of normalcy poking out of the sea of madness.

In response, she balls the towel and tosses it expertly to the bin, and then slinks slowly up to me, clearly showing off for the passengers who’ve noticed us as much as for me.

Mmm exhibiti­onism. Yeah you all wish you were my Master, huh?

Whee!

Which is, I’ll admit, sort of my point, but it’s still a bit weird how much I enjoy it when I realize I’m succeeding in displaying her. I put out my hand as she approaches, and she takes it, but then raises it above her head and pirouettes as if we’re dancing, grinning cutely and then falling against me so that she’s facing outward, head lolled back against my shoulder, looking up at me with happy eyes, and lets out a mighty sigh as I put my arms around her.

There’s a quiet old-metal creak I parse as the clamps that held the wings or sails in place letting go, and then the deck shifts under our feet with accelera­tion and vibrates with the soft, slow, rhythmic thuds of some great engine driving the wings to push us onward.

Never thought I’d be so glad to hear that sound.

“Almost home now.”

“I can’t wait to see it.”

Oh! Windows? C’mon windows. No, good windows, not the dinky round ones...

“There’s probably a window at the front, wanna go see?”

“Lead the way, and give me a show while you do.”

Getting hit on by a likely-millenia-old ship captain should probably bother me, but in truth it’s rather made my day (saying something, for an event to even register as good or bad, compared to the rest of today) and left me in a bizarrely playful mood.

Hehe. “Yes Master.”

When I let her go, she stretches spectacu­larly, arms in a knuckle-cracking square stretch, back arched, wings spread to their limit, and then sways off in the direction of the bow, tail lashing in rhythm with her steps. I’m tempted to catch up and grab her ass, but then I wouldn’t have this view.

Sure enough, this end of the room is dominated by a wide, almost floor-to-ceiling (though the ceiling is claustro­phobically low, this far forward) plate glass window, sloping steeply with the slant of the hull like a car’s windshield. More impossible stuff, this time it’s material science that’s getting spanked: the window is unreason­ably clear, inches thick but without the green tint of glass or the fuzzy distortion of acrylic. It’s flanked on either side by staircases leading down into the floor, railings against the wall.

When she reaches the window, Lyra settles onto her elbows on the waist-height railing that runs in front of it, bent over just enough to show me her pussy, and I’m little taken aback at myself when my reaction isn’t ‘shame we’re not alone’ but ‘I wonder if we’d disturb anyone having sex here?’.

Come on, you know you want to...mmm. Coo. Well, that’s a start.

And then I see out the window, and content myself with a hand on her ass, fingers trailing against her warm outer lip.

There are stars in the Sea.

No. But lights, yes, in all colors, pure whites and menacing reds and eerie greens and everywhere the fusion-flame purple that seems to be the trademark of this place. Some tiny, some wavering, some brilliant and almost blinding, glowing against mountain ranges and tendrils and filaments and thickets of dark shapes of every size that are too hazy with distance even in the impossibly clear water of the Sea to make out from here.

And it goes on out of sight, in all directions, fading away in the clear water.

Pretty cool, huh?

Arm around you, wing around you, tail up the arm that’s grabbing my ass, snuggle up and nestle into your hand. Sade’s Balls so comforting, getting felt up by someone who’s really into me tastes awesome. There really is a reason it’s never far enough for Hollow Hearts until it’s too far.

“Welcome home, Master.”

“This is amazing. Is it as big as it looks? How many of you are there?”

“Sade? We think maybe a few hundred trillion, give or take. Might be lots more. Nobody can really be fucked to count, even the Capricorns don’t organize stuff that big.”

“Holy fuck. I was expecting...I don’t even know. This is insane. It’s bigger than it looks, huh.”

Nod.

“Capricorns?”

“You know, spreadsheet fetishists, org chart sluts, people you really shouldn’t play first edition DnD with.”

Sure. Why not? It takes all kinds.

Wait, Lyra knows enough to make a DnD editions joke? Who is this girl?

“So what happens in half a watch, and how long is half a watch?”

Fuck, of course you don’t know that.

“Half a watch is about an hour, Master, and she wanted to know where we want to go, and offered to show us homes we could claim with her scrying-table for if you don’t want to wish for a new one, and then I guess decided we needed to aftercare before you decided about all that and said she’d come find us in like half a watch.”

I consider this for an instant—

“I’m sorry Master she didn’t really ask and she went so fast. If you want to go look at homes now we could try to find her—”

“No, she was right, I need a minute to think.”

We’re quiet for a while, watching the vista before us inch closer, basking in each others’ embrace, and eventually the settling peace lets me remember that most important question I had.



“That reminds me, you said you’d explain to me where succubus babies come from. I’m guessing I was...in­volved somehow, in your case.”



“Well...you know that thing with the angel and the demon on your shoulders and they argue about whether you should be good or awesome?”

“Yeah...”

“Ever wake up horny in the middle of the night and feel like you maybe weren’t quite alone and only had the demon?”

No way.

“Every single time.”

“Ever notice that some of your fantasies were maybe a little more vivid than other ones?”

She was...

“...yeah.”

Wave wave.

“Hi.”

“You weren’t just watching.”

“Nope.”

“You were...i­ncubating. Inside me. I thought I just had specific taste, but no, it’s you I was seeing. I dreamed about you even. You...what? You grew in me?”

“Yeah. Well. Kinda. ‘Grew’ isn’t really the right word. My friend Viktor who specializes in this stuff says it’s more like ‘built’ but not really that either.”

Implanted. Built. Incubating. Seeing my fantasies. Being my fantasies.

Fantasies, dreams, fragments, abstract things, faceless girls, the nights of my adolescence like a wave-function I never had the courage to collapse suddenly hurtling inward, becoming, shattering into wholeness like ice touched to supercooled water that becomes the twin rings of purple fire that now look softly back at me, luminous in the ship’s cozy gloom.

Pieces...

The pieces slam home, and the terrible question I’ve been leading up to turns itself inside out with the violence of a black hole inverting.

“Did I...did I make you?”

“Hi Daddy!”

Holy FUCK.

Pain again. I’m biting the same finger as before, much harder this time.

She’s just looking at me, still bent over the railing, smiling nervously.

Yes I know it’s not that simple but fuck it this is romantic can’t I just believe in something romantic? It’s not that inaccurate.

Say something please say something come on...

Her eyes are...pl­eading. Pleading for love.

I seize her by a horn and pull her face to mine to be kissed with the violent, desperate, consuming passion that is the only thing that can answer this moment.

...mmmmmfff oh my fuck okay I love you too...

I’ll give it, little one, I promise. You’ve seen how I want you.

“I...how? Not that I’m complaining, but how? What am I, Lyra? I thought I understood at least some of this, but...”

Alright, alright, details. Just...just keep looking at me like that.

“You’re a kinky human boy who got lonely enough to attract a Sade seed. It implanted in you and together it and you made me.”

“It and me?”

“Well, building a soul’s pretty complicated, you’re smart but nobody’s that smart on their own, so there’s kind of a...so ghosts are like fragments of a soul, right? One really focused, like, thought or drive, right? It’s called the seed-ghost, and it’s like, smart enough to figure stuff out and think but it doesn’t really have feelings or think on its own, it just makes sure I get built right, makes sure you get what you...”

“...actually want. It makes sure you come out how I want. No matter what that means.”

Holy fucking fuck.

All of the monsters we’ve just walked past look radically different from each other. Horns and wings are common, but not by far the only inhuman feature - they’re all over the map, stuff that couldn’t possibly all be one species. But...

“These are all succubi around us. The non-humans.”

“Yeah. I mean probably, but you never know, maybe some are actually humans or are transplanar or whatever. It’s rude to assume unless you know or they’re flagging in a system you can read.”

I’ve always had a hentai habit. I’m not embarrassed beyond the usual making sure I feel guilty enough about it that God doesn’t punish me by making sure I never get an actual girlfriend - a ship which has now not so much sailed as proceeded straight out the plane of the ecliptic at maximum warp - but at some point, as I grew up, things...­changed. My usual search terms on konachan, more and more instead of just the usual stuff like ‘pussy’ and ‘bikini’ with okay maybe a ‘bondage’ or three in there, started to include things like ‘horns’ and ‘wings’ and ‘tail’. It’d scared the hell out of me, made me wonder if that dream was the beginning of some kind of psychose­xual breakdown, or, ironically, if some kind of demon was possessing me, twisting me to be into monstrous things sexually.

But no. I’ve debugged some things in my day. I can tell when I’ve got a causal arrow facing the wrong way.

“Your...you look the way you do because of me. You could have looked human, but I didn’t actually want that.”

“Yep. This is all you, Master, you’ve got yourself quite the monster-girl thing.”

Dude. Baby. This is all you baby. Seriously what the fuck, can I just not call you anything else now? How does that work?

“So I see.”

I’m not exactly in a position to argue - once you’ve gone down on someone’s tail without a second thought, and then followed up with using their wing as a handle to hold them down, you’re no longer allowed to question your monster-girl fetish.

“But I get it. What better way for a creature that lives off sex to get sex, right? Why bother with trickery and seduction and manipula­tion and stuff when you can just be someone I’ll love so hard I’ll never want to do anything ever again but have sex with them for the rest of time, even if it means you end up as a monster sex slave?”

Hey now...

“You make ‘monster sex slave’ sound like a bad thing. I’m having a good time so far.”

“No, sorry, I know you’re into it, I just...I’ve been thinking all this time you must have made me kinky somehow, like, well, seasoned me I guess, so I’d be better prey. But no. I made you kinky.”

“That’d be some seasoning that could turn a vanilla kinky. But you can start from scratch and get just as kinky as you want.”

“Which is apparently pretty kinky. Is...are...I hope you like how you came out. I hope I didn’t...”

Is this a self-centered question? I’m trying to focus on how Lyra feels, but it’s kind of hard when everything comes back to me because I fscking created her.

Oh my fuck so glad I tasted your tears before, I’d be so hurt right now otherwise, if I didn’t know how I look to you. You’re just worried I don’t look that way to myself.

“Shhh, it’s okay, Master. All Sade are weird, that’s the whole point of us, I mean look around. If I was gonna want to be normal I wouldn’t have implanted in you in the first place. I like being a freak, it’s fun, normal is for Lilim and Vena. I’m all kawaii and yet I still get to have fangs and these totally metal wings and dude, seriously, tailgasms.”

“Good. I just hope when you look in the mirror you like what you see as much as I do.”

“Aw! Can’t, though, I don’t have a reflection.”

Keep a straight face. Keep a straight face. Keep a straight face.

She sounds serious and melodram­atically sad, but her face is a laugh waiting to happen.

“You are the worst liar ever.”

“Apparently.”

“And this is why you speak English already but you have to learn Infernal. You got it from me.”

“Yep. ‘s pretty much a straight copy of your language skills.”

“You sound nothing like me, though. I mean, I like it, don’t get me wrong...”

Shrug.

“I don’t give a fuck about sounding clever, and you think it’s cute when girls cuss.”

Well, that’s disturbi­ngly insightful, even from someone who’s seen my id from the inside.

“Why me? I’m not complaining, but, why would the seed-ghost pick me?”

“You picked me, Master, my seed-ghost didn’t even exist until you created it by looking into my seed.”

“I think I need you to explain this from the beginning.”

“Okay so like, I started out as a seed, except not actually, it’s more like you looking into a seed made me real—”

“Where do the seeds come from? Are you like, a plant?”

“Hehe, sorta, I guess? I’ll flower when I’m old enough to make seeds. It’s different for everyone, but supposedly you just know. And get super horny—” Heh, that face, I know, I know. “—like, relatively speaking. You get super horny and you find yourself thinking about the porn you could make with whoever—it can be any combination, as long as there’s at least one human and one succubus—and then the seeds come out attached to the porn and shaped by who was involved and what kinda porn they made and you can get them through anything that’s an experience that’s enough like it.”

“Get them how?”

“A seed is...it’s hard to explain because it can so be anything. Do you know what I mean if I say an experience can be a place, Master? Like, you can sort of go there by having the experience and usually the only thing that’s there is the experience itself, but that doesn’t have to be true, if you’re looking for more than just the experience. That’s what succubus seeds are like, they like...when they get made they get left in an experience-as-a-place, and then anyone who has an experience that’s enough like it can like be close enough to reach the seed and look into it. So like, the experience can be anything that’s right for a potential incubator to wish for something more than the experience, but usually it’s porn of some kind because that’s the best stuff for making that happen. Does that make sense to you so far, Master?”

I stare through the world for a moment, absorbing this.

“Yeah...wait...so then like, potentially any piece of porn anywhere could have a succubus seed? So long as there’s other porn somewhere with a succubus seed that’s kind of like it?”

“Yup!”

“Holy fuck. Okay, go on.”

“So then like, you wish, and when you wish for the person that experience makes you imagine and want with all of your soul, you find the seed, and if you stay and really mean it about wanting the person you’re wishing for to be real it’s like the seed copies itself and makes a seed-ghost for you and your seedling—it’s a seedling now because it’s alive and not just waiting to exist—by copying the parts of you that would be able to create a succubus, and making them like infinitely experienced like it figures out what you’d need to be to make the succubus you’d really be happy with and creates that but it only copies like skills and stuff which is why it’s the seed-ghost and not the creepy not-you-you who’s like a duplicate. The seed-ghost is you, but like the alternate-universe you who can build a succubus, but isn’t a person. It’s called looking into the seed because you’re actually the one doing the copying because you’re looking so hard because you want it so bad that you like, unfold the seed in your mind and a seed-ghost and baby succubus come out except it’s unfolding the seed that’s in your mind, not the one you saw. Master i don’t like my explanation. Do you understand?”

Of course a symbiotic sex demon starts out as a nonlethal basilisk. Eubasilisk? I mean, obviously.



“I think so. You’re saying someone else could find the same seed I did, and like, incubate your sister, I guess?”

“Yeah! So that’s called implanting. I kind of want to find out what seedmates I have when we have time, and see whether we like knowing them.”

“Sure. If they’re anything like you I want to meet them.”

“They might not be, seeds are just starting-places. You change hugely during incubation.”

“That just makes me more curious. Um, what does implanting usually feel like for the human? Would I know?”

“The seed-ghost decides right away how secret it has to be. Ours probably decided it had to be really secret because Earth, so probably not, Master. Sorry.”

Dammit. I was so hoping to find out.

Oh well. It’s probably how I exist at all, so not complaining.

Much.

“Yeah, that figures. If my parents had found out about you...an­yway. What happens after implanta­tion?”

She’s goes on, getting up her adorable—and infectious—nerd-out excitement.

“Uhuh! Incubation is where I was inside you getting built by our seed-ghost and you—the seed-ghost makes sure I can be a person, and keeps you from like making me a cute vanilla human girl when what you actually want—remember what I said about nectar before—is a cute kinky monster girl. It’s like being someone’s fantasy at first—but pretty soon you start realizing you’re an actual person who’s real and you just don’t know who you are yet but that’s okay because the best person ever is shaping you into who you need to be by making you into all these different people in like different dreams they’re having and it’s fun changing all the time and you’re so hungry to get shaped but eventually—it can take years or just a few months, and it’s hard to tell because time is weird when you’re a seedling—you start being more like, stable I guess and stay the same or mostly the same more but that’s okay because the reason is that your incubator is fantasizing and dreaming about you and not anyone else—unless you have like sisters but most people don’t incubate multiples—and then all of a sudden your incubator has the best sex dream or wank session ever and you incarnate from the human-nectar they’re putting out as part of it—there has to be some physical essence that means lust to get you started with a body—and bamf you’re physical and with your incubator and if you’re not already in Pandemonium you know how to get them there if you don’t already have a place you want to live together.”

“So why didn’t that happen for us?”

Maybe I could repress incubating her, or her seed-ghost could bury it in my subconsc­ious until the time was right, but there’s no way I would forget giving birth to her.

“I don’t really know, Master. I was incubating and it did feel like I was getting born and then suddenly I’m waking up on a bed that—weird.”

“What?”

“Now that it’s out of my mouth it feels like a dream, Master, like one of the fantasies I was in while you were incubating me, but I was in Rl’yeh Sade I know I was, but...it feels like it was real and yet I was incubation-dreaming at the same time. Could I have been journeying—um, there’s another name for that in English astral traveling that’s it—it feels like that...yeah, whoah...”

“Incubation-dreaming?”

“Oh, sorry Master. When you’re incubating it’s a little bit like you’re always asleep, and having all different dreams, except just like with dreams sometimes you wake up without waking up and know you’re dreaming sometimes while you’re incubating you wake up and know you’re a seedling who’s incubating and you can like hang out with your incubator by dreamtal­king and fantasizing or lucid-dreaming with them, which is great for bonding before you get born—”

“Dreamtal­king? Wait, you said that’s like channeling before, yeah?”

“Uhuh! Channeling’s just like, dreamtal­king plus saying what the person you’re dreamtal­king with is saying with your physical mouth. It’s mostly useful on lost planets where dreamtal­king is hard or people don’t know how to do it.”

What was I expecting, telepathy to not be real?

“Can anyone learn to do it?”

“Yeah! Want to practice? I bet I can teach you.”

Or we can wait until you meet someone else who can teach so I can finally get off the mentor throne...but it’s too useful I have to offer.

“Hell yes, but...if you were astral-traveling instead of actually there, what does that mean?”

“Master I don’t know. I think it was to let me learn what I needed to learn to come rescue you like I did, but then...R­RRRR it doesn’t make sense Master!!!”

I squeeze her shoulder comforti­ngly.



“We’ll figure it out together. Tell me what you know.”

Okay phew I can do that.

“I know I’m really standing here. I know my nectar is already changing you which usually would mean I’m born. I know I didn’t get born. OH! I know I’m evoked, too, because I felt like being far away from you was SO WRONG when we were boarding with the chains and you were on another chain than me, and just like, I can feel it. I bet you could invoke me too but I’m scared to try until we figure out what’s up with this.”

“I felt that too. What’s ‘evoked’ mean?”

“When you’re incubating you can kind of like, fantasize that I’m there with you physically even though I’m not born, and it’s like any other fantasy you have with me in it. I can come into it so that like you’re imagining it but you’re not imagining me so we can actually hang out. Usually that just means I’m a ghost or like only you can see me or whatever but that’s obviously not true now, so it’s like I’m evoked but also born at the same time.”

“Okay, so you know you’re born, but you never went through birth, and it can’t be that you just don’t remember because you’re experien­cing stuff that can only happen if you’re still incubating. I can see why you’re confused. Are you sure the feeling weird about being apart is being evoked and not something else?”

“I think so because it feels like it Master like I said but also because it’s you or noone like if I got separated from you I would have just sleeping-beautied until someone else I would consent to wanted me which is NOONE EVER OOOH MASTER I GET IT it’s you Master or noone and our seed-ghost would know that so it did something really insane to make it so I could find you and fix the stupid lies that made you think we shouldn’t be together whatever they were I know you wouldn’t actually decide to send me away if you knew who I was so something or someone must have tricked you or made you think like it was the only way to protect me or something or that I didn’t even actually exist and you should stop pretending—that’s something lost planets always teach people I bet it was that and I bet you thought I wasn’t real and that’s how they made you try to send me away except there was a little part of you that wanted me even if I was a fantasy and so you didn’t entirely send me away and so I was like kinda stuck almost-away from you and our seed-ghost could use that to make it so we could get back together by giving me a dream-life in Rl’yeh Sade that would teach me all the stuff I would need to come find you but it knew that when I did I would also have to be physical so you’d know I was real! And now here I am and I did find you and I’m incarnate, but I haven’t been born yet I’m still your seedling too but somehow I have a real actual succubus body so like I’m like getting a preview or something I guess because we needed it to get you off Earth and OH MASTER THIS IS SUCH A RELIEF!!”

Her voice cracks as she runs out of even her impressive lung capacity. I blink, trying to absorb her torrent of reasoning and guesswork.

“It is?”

Nod nod nod!!



“If I haven’t been born yet it means my birth wasn’t what got messed up by that stupid spiking rapedusty lost planet you were stuck on it was just you fighting it to be able to incubate me and my seed-ghost decided you needed some super-ultra help and it knew I would want to give it and would be sad if you were helped by someone else so it didn’t just make it so I could call for help it made it so I could help you myself which is so better anyway because I bet if it had been like my friend Viktor or one of my moms you wouldn’t have trusted them with your life like you don’t know them but you know me which is why you would kiss me and jump out a window with me and listen to me about wanting to just live with you and be yours instead of assuming they were like going to eat your soul or whatever Earthlings even think about succubi—”

She runs out of air again, and notices my amused smile.

“...um, sorry Master, it’s just really blowing my mind like it makes sense of everything I’ve been confused about!!”

She’s practically vibrating with excitement. At some point during her soliloquy, we’ve turned to face each other and are holding both each other’s hands tightly.

“Master do you get it do you understand?”

“I get it, and I’m relieved too, but if you already have a body now, how can you get born again?”

A beat passes, as we both realize what I’ve just asked, and then—

“BWAHAHAH­AAAHHAAAHA—”

We collapse against each other, shaking with laughter, and I reach around her head, to pull her to me as comforti­ngly as possible, and find my hand on her ear.

Hehe, mmm, yeah pet my ear.

Hey, waitaminit, that’s the one with the notch, where’s the...where’s the notch?

Her soft fingers find mine, tracing the outline of the ear, and we laugh together, breaking down into silent paroxysms that we stifle as best we can that have as much to do with the residual tension of an entire night of near-deaths as they do with any actual joke, and then she stiffens momentarily—

Hah! “It’s gone! Fuck’s sake, I really was a drop short! I am gonna make Viktor feel so bad for making fun of me!”

“Huh?”

My friend Viktor is kind of like a doctor, and he gave me a lot of help...or at least I dreamed he did but like he must be real a seed-ghost wouldn’t make me think I had friends and then be like ‘nope just kidding they were fake the whole time’ so anyway he’s kind of like a doctor sorta except succubi don’t really need medicine except—sorry, Master. He checked for like trouble and stuff with me to make sure I was like okay because I was confused about how I got born, and found that notch in my ear and officially he said it was probably just something you’d like but I was like ‘no my Master wants me whole I know it’ so he was always joking that it meant I’m literally a drop short of a load but duh of course I’m not complete till I have you. I bet my heart would have been literally hollow if it wouldn’t have ruined my cleavage.”

Not complete...­that’s the sort of thing you’re Not Supposed To Think, but the feeling is mutual and so that makes it okay, right?

“It’s nice to laugh with you.”

Nod nod.

“I...I’m still incomplete.”

“What? What’s missing?”

“The rest of my...my constell­ations...” HOLY FUCK BLUSH “...I’m supposed to have constell­ations Master like in my sparkles but you have to figure them out and trace them on me until I have enough for you to say it’s time...”

She trails off, blushing deeply.

“Time?”

“...for me to be born. It’s so you can choose, Master, when I get born. I’m like this, born and not-born, so you get to fill in the like, finishing touches of me yourself...”

Mmmmmfff kissssss...

This is a tender moment—I can feel the heat of her blushing as we kiss, and there’s something tentative in her way that’s not usually there, so I speak softly when our lips part.

“That’s the most beautiful gift I’ll ever be offered. Is it what you want?”

Serious eyes I mean this lots NOD NOD NOD NOD MM Kiss mmf tongue ooohoh...mmm...

“Okay, but we’re doing this right, and unless you’re suffering without them we’re going to take our time about it. Are you?”

Shake shake.

This makes me feel so quiet and blushy...

...and the magic of her seed-ghost is that I don’t need her to explain to me how this works. Looking down at her face, it seems so obvious, to pick out images in the arrangement of her freckles, and tell stories of their meaning the way people do about the stars in the sky. It’s just that, for her, those will become more than stories, if I write the correspo­nding constell­ation on her with even just a finger tracing the lines.

“You’re a dream come true, you know—”

Wait. How did I not see it the minute she explained about incarnation and physical essence?



There are so many questions to ask, so many conclusions to draw, but this one blows them all away, somehow sums up the night perfectly.

“Holy...a drop short. Dreams. You’re literally—”