Acid ate at the fragmented shards of Gwen’s soul. She was trapped in the darkness of her own mind, only herself, her hallucination, and the endless keening wail of Morgan’s spell to accompany her. She was, all at once, herself and her hallucination twice over for each.

She shrieked at herself, a thousand years of torment distilled into each word.

You stupid, arrogant little slut! You thought you were a prophet, thought you could do magic, thought you could sin with impunity. Thought you could make a weapon out of your iniquity. Now we are here, trapped, failing by inches as Morgan’s lackey comes for us. That’s ok, though. You’ll just fuck him, or maybe bespell him. Is that it? Are you a succubus now? Willingly ridden by a demon on top of all your other evils? You are scum, and you deserve everything that happens to you!

“No.” As if in a dream, hard, angled steel filled Gwen’s left hand.

She suffered the lash of the cloud of evil. Every regret she had hammered into her all at once. Her mother and father, killed while she attended boarding school, dying without her, because they didn’t want her there. Mary judged her and found her wanting, like she had done so many, many times. Lane walked away in terror from her unnatural lust. Mary did the same, running to a demon, armoring herself, diving into Hel, choosing rape and death over Gwen. Her foster parents committed suicide by troll rather than spend another moment caring for her.

“No.” The nails of her right hand pressed against her palm, and she clenched her fist.

She remembered the first time they met. He was so handsome, a king still new to his power, much as she had been new to hers. Theirs had been a diplomatic match, but she loved him anyway. She loved him long before she met him; she dreamed of him and fell in love with the dream of him. He was in love with his dream. They were a perfect match. She had never been certain, until the end, that he loved her.

She was never certain until she killed that love as certainly as she killed him. The dreams came again; dreams of death and defeat on the field at Camlann. Every night she awoke screaming, seeing her husband’s bastard running him through, taking his crown, and taking her king’s land for his own. The crown she cared nothing for. The land, even less. The man, his life, for that she would do anything.

After a week of dreams, she started to ask what if. What if this, what if that, what if the other. Each night when she closed her eyes, her King and her Knight rode to battle, the general and his invincible warrior. Each night she awoke screaming, seeing the bastard kill her husband. A thousand nights she slept, a thousand times she saw his eyes glaze, a thousand times she screamed.

In the end it was too much. She took to drink to drown the dreams. One night, gulping down her first bottle of wine, she shuddered with the thought of how much worse it would be if her King didn’t have her Knight to protect him. That night she slept the night through, awaking with the image of her King’s sword cleaving the bastard’s chest.

There had been only one way to get her Knight banished. In the end, she knew her King had loved her. Betrayal of state would have made him cold. Betrayal of his love had made him furious. Betrayal by his friend had made his fury wax to berserk rage. Without armor, without weapons, without the blessing of God or the Saints, the Knight had still tried at Camlann. Her King had triumphed. Her husband had died. Catastrophe, and all her fault.

“No.” The faintest sound, slow, thick dripping. The faintest feel, warm and wet in her lap.

A voice, neither hallucination nor her, spoke within her. Who would you be?

“Does it matter? I’ve lost. Time after time I’ve shot for the stars and not even hit the moon. I’ve lost.”

That is the past. That is who you were. Who would you BE?

Curiosity sparked, damped immediately by infinite tears, “Who are you?”

I am Becoming.

Anger flared, frustration at the lack of information.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Becoming what?”

Who you would be. The voice became insistent, compelling. Who. Would. You. Be?

Gwen’s hand lifted, guided by instinct rather than thought. Faintly, through black mist thicker than primordial night, she felt a cold, hard, flat surface. Her fingers, wet, warm, and sticky, dragged a thick, short, unseen line from left to right.

Who would you be? What would you be? What are you becoming?

Still without thought, not even visualizing the image in her mind, she placed her open hand, palm outward, on the surface above the line. Her left hand clutched at something heavy and metallic.

Show me your future. Show me who you will be.

Her fingertips touched just above where her fingers had ended. The symbol bubbled to the surface of her mind. Her right hand grew cold. Her left hand clutched at a rough metallic grip like a lifeline. The blackened mist thickened about her eyes, tearing at her with guilt about her past, about her present.

The past cannot be changed. The present gives no direction save reaction. Have you decided who I will be?

“Yes.”

From in front of her, came the faintest noise of metal on metal, of creaking leather. Months of training had turned actions into instincts. Her left hand lifted; her right hand braced. Her fingers wrapped around the trigger and squeezed.

The shock of the sound woke her, the pain of recoil in her arms cleared her eyes. Morgan’s cry of surprise became her new target. Gwen shifted her aim as her hands came down. She squeezed the trigger again once, twice. Amused guilt brought her aim back to the armored figure still falling to its knees. A double tap to the chest blew him backward to the ground.

Putting up her gun, she focused on Morgan. The sorceress lay crumpled on the ground, the energy of spells writhing and twisting about her. Her mouth formed a single word, amplified by the unnatural geography of the place. “How?”

The bitter laughter in Gwen’s voice should have surprised her, but it didn’t. “Despair? Please. I’m a homeless, handicapped, Black lesbian and my soul mate is a rich, straight, white debutante. Despair? I live here, bitch!”

Her final round flew straight and true toward the sorceresses' forehead, only to stop in midair inches from her. Gwen swore, vehemently, but realized it shouldn’t matter. Blood leaked from Morgan’s mouth, and magic leaked from every opening on her body, her wounds included. Gwen slid her gun back into the holster on her chair arm, then brought up the spell that allowed her to interpret magic. She had to undo the spells on the girls, get them back out of here.

The moment her spell came up, her priorities changed. The magic swirling around Morgan wasn’t dissipating. It congealed, powering itself from Aeric’s fading life force, lifting something from Morgan whole, carrying it incorporeally to the pedestals. Keyboards rattling as she tried again and again to interfere, Gwen watched as Morgan’s form laid itself over Ms. Williams. By the time she managed to get anything past Morgan’s shields, Ms. Williams sat up, stretching, a look of cool disdain on her face.

“Oh, bother. The old one. Still, I suppose it’s not likely to have that bleeding problem. Now, where were we?”

***

Morgan looked out from the Williams creature’s eyes, surveying the even dozen girls. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the young witch who had killed her last body. Kidnapping an actress had been difficult. Keeping her even marginally attractive had been nigh impossible. One of the reasons Morgan always kept extra resources on hand was times like this.

The little witch needed to die.

Her wrist flickered, her will focused, a word of power spat from her lips, and an ornate knife lifted from the actress’ corpse and slammed point first through the chest of the girl nearest to her. Power blasted outward, drawn back to the pedestal and then to the dagger jammed into it through the girl atop it.

“Padma!”

The witch’s screech was unbecoming. If the girl wanted to be a real manipulator of power, she would need to learn to control that. Nimue had never learned. When Morgan had informed Mort and Nimue that she only had room for one of them, Nimue agonized over whether to save herself or her lover. She wasted valuable time trying to curse Morgan, spent even more damning her to Hell for all eternity. She still had a vaguely surprised look on her face when Mordred brought Morgan her body.

The spell finished sucking all the life force from the girl’s body, concentrated it in the knife. Morgan gestured, and the power leapt across the distance to her. She frowned; some of the power seeped away. Perhaps this body wasn’t the best choice. Some mortals were incapable of holding power well.

She dismissed all that with a shrug. A moment’s thought brought the spell she wanted to mind. Her own voice echoed from the old woman’s throat when she spoke, “Turned by moon to hunger for flesh, called to me by power’s mesh. Take form here for all to see, come werewolves, now to me!” With a flick of her hand she indicated a spot on the expanse between her and the witch.

Four wolves formed almost immediately. Nothing like them had ever existed on the world of her birth, but people believed in them. In this place that was almost as good. The wolfmen looked to her, snarling. She bent her will to her connection with them, beating their savagery to her ends with her will and the power remaining from the girl’s death. In moments, they bared throats to her and turned to her enemy.

That enemy was no longer alone. The girl spoke with two armored, mounted figures. Morgan recognized the symbols on the surcoats, red cross on black and white. Templars.

So, the little witch wanted a summoning duel, did she?

Morgan gestured again, and the dagger flashed to the next pedestal.