I stare at my phantom doppelganger and a question tumbles from my lips, slipping out without thought at the shock of her visage. I ask her, “Are you real?”

The words come out smothered and lifeless, the dead whisper of a broken, exhausted husk. Stupid question. Why even ask? I laugh, though it’s more of a bark. The hideous noises that pass between my rotting lips echo off stone walls and return to my sensitive ears. I run a finger over one ear and am briefly reassured by the faintly pointed tip, but then even that sours as I wonder to what dissected piece of her I owe that senseless craving.

The figure of Homura—a specter, perhaps, or a vision bleeding into the real, or Demiurge or Emissary or whoever else wearing her face—does not seem offended by my thoughtless question, nor does she dismiss it with a quick and pithy, “Of course I’m real, you mad little freak.”

Instead she licks her lips, bites the corner of her mouth, and takes the question with a strange depth of contemplation. She watches me with those burning, inquisitive eyes that dart across my form before sweeping over her own. She splays both hands, the red orb sticking midair unaided, and positions her thumbs and forefingers as if to frame me for a photo.

“Are you?”

The question sounds innocent, guileless, open, yet how could it be? You always were an excellent liar. She must be mocking me, laughing to herself at a punchline only she can hear. Why am I even entertaining the idea of having a conversation with this traitorous monster? After what she did to us?

“Why should we listen to a word you say? You cannot be trusted,” I hiss at the lying whore. My skin is itching, prickling, a tension building and burning the longer I stay here beneath her gaze, vulnerable. I push against the cold stone floor with a sudden motion, trying to rocket to my feet where I can at least die standing, but the second I put any weight on my limbs they buckle and snap like cheap twigs and I am meat and bone and blood, vivisected and screaming, just a gobbet of flesh crying out for the awful pain to finally stop.

I shudder and heave, bile dripping from my lips, but is that real? I lift an arm, unbroken and whole, and drag trembling fingers across my mouth. No bile, no blood, just cracked skin. I am alive, and I am more than meat, I am more, I must be more, I must—

Homura’s voice, low and confident and smooth, intrudes upon my fraying thoughts. “You should always listen, especially if you don’t trust who’s speaking. I never trust; I verify. Even good liars sometimes let slip a few precious truths.” Her fingers are laced behind her head now, and she’s grinning.

I laugh and cough and crumple, beaten. What can I really do, anyways? Could I beat Homura at the fullness of my power? Is there any point left to resisting? Go on then, kill me. “Go on then. Let’s chat.”

How absurd. Homura wants to chat. Homura Annatar Bloodfallen, my doppelganger, my dreaming lover, my savior and murderer, wants to chat. I am lost and alone and crumbling at the seams and here she comes wishing to chat, wishing to speak her pretty words and deceive me, but I have been warned. I was warned, in my dreams, and I haven’t forgotten the warning: don’t believe her lies.

But I’m still curious; how could I not be, when faced with a figure that has haunted my every resting moment since my arrival—my cruel, confusing birth—in this cage of colored glass? Intercessor or Adversary, angel or devil, lover or betrayer, I need to hear her story and place her in this puzzle. I need answers. That need burns in me like the white star burned in my chest when those awful hands picked me apart and tried to put me back together. What secrets can you show me, Homura?

I wonder if she’s thinking something similar. She watches me with those burning red eyes, those eyes that have always seen too much too quickly. Her curiosity was always like a hunger, something darker and more demanding than idle interest, and she fed it like one feeds a furnace. She knows so much, and I crave that knowing for myself. And yet.

She stretches, arcing her back, and I can’t resist the way my eyes dart over her form. Her arms are toned, strong, so unlike my weak noodle limbs. There’s a danger to her presence that is so easy to be mesmerized by, a casual lethality to her every movement that might make me shiver if I wasn’t paralyzed with fear. With those firm hands of hers she could easily take a life, my life. She has.

Homura crouches in front of me, holding my gaze, and says, “Here’s why you should hear me out: you and me, we’re crabs in a bucket, and we don’t have long before the water gets hot. Alone, we both go up in steam, but together we stand a chance. We need each other. We can help each other. I can help you, if you let me. You game?”

You can help me if I let you. You said those words before, beneath a parasol’s shade on a hill beside a castle. You promised. You lied.

You lied and lied and lied and I loved you and I miss you and I wish that you would die—the sight of her sickens me—but those beautiful eyes make my heart ache and burn and splinter and yearn—Homura, the monster of my dreams, is offering to help me—Homura, Homura, Homura—she was always so compelling, like the sweetest of poisons—you lied and I believed you because I could never resist you and I—and I—

—loved you, and you killed me, and that I could forgive but you lied I could be loved and like a puppy I believed you. So now I know with all my bones that you will lie to me again and I will falter and believe you till my fingers char to stumps on the pyre that you make of me, and again, and again, and again.

Unless I pluck your lying tongue from those lips I still desire.

She’ll betray me if I let her, she’ll lead me and deceive me and then she’ll break me into pieces, just like before, just like always, so I have to kill her now and kill her quick before she opens that pretty mouth and hurts me one more time. I have to do this, don’t I? Is there any other way?

The shadows know. The shadows swirl around me, thick and heavy in the gloom of this unfamiliar chamber, cast into evident form by the crimson light of her cursed magic, but always present and lurking. The shadows steady me, they cradle me, they pull me to my feet. Their presence at my back, more solid and true where her red light can’t reach, keeps me focused on what’s in front of me. Their presence all around, come to nuzzle at my side and lick my tender fingers, goads me onward and urges me to do what must be done. The shadows love me like she never did, and they yearn to rend flesh that I once worshiped like a priestess and a whore and a fool. Oh, what a fool I was. What a fool I still am. But just a word from me, just a thought, just a whisper of permission, and they will free me from this witch.

The red witch watches me with upturned lips, her grin almost manic, her breathing hitched. “Fascinating. What are you?”

I lance her with darkness through heart and throat and each and every joint, killing her like she killed me. I release my shadows like plucking a bowstring, solid night my arrows, and in thorns and spears and gnashing teeth the dark swallows Homura. I make a wish, and my murderer dies.

Or so I vainly hope. But instead, my shadows impact nothing and tear through empty air. The light goes out, but then it flickers to life once more just behind me and I whirl to face Homura, unharmed and unbothered, her expression unchanged at the attempt on her life.

She tilts her head, her gaze full of frenzied calculation. “Fascinating,” she repeats, like she’s just observed a new species of butterfly and yearns to puzzle out its phylogeny. Would she pluck my wings and make me scream to sate that burning hunger? I know the answer.

What now? With racing heart and leaden tongue, I try to find my speech. I have to say something, I have to distract her so I can try again, but I can’t speak. What kind of pathetic excuse for a princess can’t orate? I know. I know!

“Homura,” I whisper, and then the pain of her name upon my lips sends a spasm through the darkness and a wave of night consumes the vision of my lover and tormentor.

But again my shadows are denied their rightful kill. Again she escapes. How? Has the witch of glass and blood carved a third edge to her soul? Or am I just facing reflections?

I close my eyes and let the darkness swaddle me. Through darkness I feel the shape of my surroundings, this box of simple stone, and I find that it is more than a mere box; I am in a crypt or a tomb, some place of restful death. The floor is smooth but the sides are hewn with recesses for the tender care of long-gone corpses, and as my senses expand I find halls and halls of quiet dead. This is a catacombs, someplace deep underground.

Where am I? This doesn’t feel like my family’s castle. Where… how did I get here?

The question drives a nail of pain into my skull, and I wince at the sudden splitting headache. Confusion and pain mingle and each question brings more questions, a veritable flood of them. What am I doing here? What was I doing before? What… what day is it? Why do my memories feel so… so…

The red light of Homura pulses in the dark halls beyond this chamber. Her voice carries to me from deeper within the catacombs, transmitting easily through my web of shadows. “If you’ve gotten the violence out of your system, I’d love to ask you some detailed questions. I can even trade intel for intel, if that suits you better, or suits the face before.”

Anger cuts through confusion and pushes out pain. No questions, no talking, only ending this threat before it can hurt us. Us?

I cling to fury and call the shadows to swirl about me and move me through the halls of the catacombs faster than I could run. I hunt her, chasing that cursed red light. If I can only corner her, then maybe…

“Try this one on for size,” her voice calls from so daringly close.

Shadows pierce the source of the sound, clawing at the red-eyed figure holding the red-glowing orb, but the light goes out before I see her bleed and a moment later she’s somewhere else, still talking.

“You were Veseryn when you arrived, I’m sure of that, but now you’re unmistakably Kiana. How? Who are you, really? Or are you, really?”

Confusion fights back against anger. What is she talking about? Who is Veseryn? Who is Kiana? Distraction. Distracting us! I chase her through the catacombs as she flickers in and out of my vision every time I get close. Throwing us off, tricking us, all so she can murder us again like she murdered us, murdered us, murdered us!

Her face, just in front of mine, those beautiful burning eyes and that twitching smirk. “Who are you, princess?”

I swipe my hand through the apparition, tears streaking down my cheeks, and I cry at her, “I am Reska Shadowsun, and I am the monster that you made me!”

Her voice behind me. “Are you, really?” A spear of night, her flickering orb. “It’s a genuine question.” An explosion of darkness, her form unharmed. “I can’t see outside the confines of this quaint little construct, but I remember what I did to that pretty little princess.” Running and crying and lashing out at a phantom that just won’t die. “Do you? Do you remember what I did to you, Reska?” She laughs.

I chase her—she leads me—into another stone chamber, grander than before, a monument to time and death and memory. The walls are lined with corpses, preserved and decorated, and the ceiling is patterned. She appears in the center of the room, her red orb illuminating only the plain stone around her, and I am struck with revulsion for the crudeness of her craft.

With a whisper of will I bring stars to the underground. My magic lights the chamber with beautiful blues and greens and purples, pale and shimmering and wondrous. I see the dead buried here, and I see the intricate spirals painted and carved upon the ceiling. This is true light. This is true craft.

I stay by the walls, unwilling to step closer and seemingly unable to bring an end to my ruinous foe. Is this all a form of torture? Is she making me feel helpless so I’ll return to her side?

The red orb vanishes, unneeded now, and the witch bites her lip as she admires my starlight. “I wonder… ah! Let’s try a trigger phrase and see what happens.” She meets my gaze, those crimson eyes boring into me even from across the room, and she asks, “Tell me, girl who stands before me: do you know regret?”

I gasp as those words slam into me like a fist to my gut, that splitting headache from before getting worse and worse and—

—there’s a monster, a stretched thing, scarred and misshapen, and it asks me a question with a voice that is choral and beautiful and hideous. I get smart with it. It doesn’t like that. I lie to it. It really doesn’t like that. Then, the violence—

—I watched you, frozen and horrified, as your nails drew blood from your palms and you laughed at the pain as you told me—

—it battered me and nearly broke me, but I killed it and I lived and I remembered that question, and then I dreamed—

—I dug my nails into my palms, that little act of self-harm steadying me as I looked back, as I laughed at the emotions still raw a world away, and I peeled apart my mask and I told you: the only thing I ever regretted was not killing the old man when I had the chance—

—and in my dreams the princess told me that her killer once asked her, “Do you know regret?” She told me that she drowned in it. It made her a demon, and that demon is the girl I have to save, but she’s not me, she’s not me and I—

“Oh, my darling Creator, what madness have you wrought this time?” The witch’s voice is full of wonder and amusement and it drags me back to myself, away from the awful din inside my head and those people that aren’t me, can’t be me, because I am Reska and no one else. She’s closer now, watching me with naked fascination, those scarlet eyes sparkling and that lovely mouth smiling, and my shadows come swarming in to shield me from her gaze.

But the shadows can’t hide me. The stars are gone, my beautiful creation banished, and all is lit in the baneful glow of Homura’s red orb. She’s close to me, so close it makes my heart beat faster and my head swim, and she’s got a strand of my hair between her fingers. She’s playing with my hair, twirling it gently, like she used to when we were alone together.

My hair is wrong. The color is off, the aberrant tones visible even in this rough lighting. It’s not the pale blonde I’m used to, not that clear sun-kissed color, but a dirty blonde stained with dark brown, like darkness infecting sunlight.

“What have you done to me?” I whisper in horror. “What wicked spell did you cast? Why would you take that from me? Was everything else not enough?” I can feel the tears starting to fall, and my heart is cold and hollow.

Homura laughs and lets my hair fall from between her fingers. “Don’t worry, princess,” she drawls like it’s nothing, like I’ve just spilled a bit of jam on a tablecloth. “I’m trying to figure this out, and I think I’ve almost got it. We can at least rule out you being the real Reska, if you don’t remember being Contrition. I lodged that curse deep, deep inside her brain.”

“I’m real,” I whisper, but somehow it doesn’t sound sincere. What curse?

My headache is back, and worse. It’s a throbbing pressure inside my skull, like someone is pounding on the walls and screaming to be let out. And a voice, whispering in my ear that you are not real and you are not her and we are all just shards and copies wearing other faces so let me out and give me back my fucking body before—

Homura kisses me on the lips, hard and hot and forceful, and she tastes like I remembered, and when she moves away she steals my breath and I look up at her with love and hate and pain, and she asks me, “Do you even know who you are?”

And then I unravel, because I love her and I miss her and I wish that she would die—this hateful killer that haunts my dreams—but those beautiful eyes make my heart ache and burn and splinter and yearn—this pretender to my name—Homura, Homura, Homura—a failed experiment speaking to another, two dolls that think they’re more than what I made them—and I know that she’ll lie to me and I’ll believe her and I’ll burn in her embrace, and I don’t know what that means or what that makes me—a girl I’ve never met and a girl I’ve never been—and more and more I don’t know who—

—I am.

But I do know who I’m not.

“Welcome back, Veseryn,” the phantom purrs at me, the taste of her lips still burning on mine. I wonder, is it narcissism to enjoy a kiss from your clone?

Not that I enjoyed it, obviously. I mean, well, okay, I did enjoy it, clearly, but only because of Reska. It was nothing to do with my desires, I lie as easily as breathing.

“My name is Alice,” I snap aloud to mask my internal strife. “Maven Alice, remember the name. Not Reska, not Kiana, not—wait, what’s so interesting? What did I say?”

The might-be-Homura’s eyes are lit up with interest, orange swirling with red, and she licks her lips at my question. “Your name is M. Alice? Did I hear that right?”

I fight back a blush of embarrassment. Damn my past self! “Yes, I named myself Malice, don’t—”

She howls with laughter. “Oh, love, what have you done?”

“I’m not your love!”

“Oh, I know,” she says with a returning smirk. “And you know that too, now that your head’s on right. Or is that wrong? Am I speaking to the real you, or is M. Alice just another rattling splinter?”

I flinch at the implication. I’m real, I must be real, I’m the only one that’s real and anyone else that says they’re me can shut the hell up and get out of my head. But saying that isn’t going to make me sound particularly sane, so instead I say, “We’re all splinters of the divine vivisector, are we not? I’m the true and original resident of this particular cut of meat, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Wonderful! Yes, yes, yes!” Homura claps her hands together and rubs them gleefully, her childlike excitement at gross odds with everything I remember about the smooth-talking murderer. “If you’re in the know about our darling Creator, that makes this next part a lot easier. Now we can have a proper conversation about—oh, oh really? Are you really going to interrupt me on exactly that line?”

In the middle of her chatter, every corpse in the ossuary wakes up.

Cold blue light pierces the red-stained gloom from a hundred desiccated eyes. The corpses interred within the walls of the grand chamber shudder and twitch, their creaking limbs and withered digits convulsing as if electrified. I stumble away from the nearest wall before the quickest of the dead can rise from their rest, my brain immediately flushed with raw animal fear.

My mind races with dire imagination, stricken by haunting visions of inevitable decay. Their flesh is gray and shadowed, made monstrous and unknowable by the dim glow of enchanted eyes, but I catch glimpses of peeling skin and yellowed bone, of muscles long atrophied and hair all matted. They are rot and ruin and creeping death, my childhood nightmares come to kill me.

Flight instinct kicks in and I try to run, but a flash of weakness—meat on a cold slab of stainless steel, the scalpel sinking deeper—slams me to my hands and knees in the center of the room. I gasp for breath, heart racing, vision blurry, and the dead keep rising.

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

Homura—or the thing pretending to be Homura—does not share my panic. She rolls her eyes, unmoved even as the walking dead begin to crowd her and block the exits. She says, “This is unbelievable, and by unbelievable I mean COMPLETELY BELIEVABLE from your dramatic ass. I’m not giving this scene any dignity, Pom-Pom.”

Pom-Pom??? Who is she talking to???

The blasé absurdity of her speech shocks me out of my blind, unthinking terror. I force my shivering limbs to push me to my feet, standing tall and straight.

Whatever these freaks are and whoever sent them, I’m the bigger monster. They’re just zombies! I’m way too strong to die to trash mobs like these.

“Voracious Heart!” I hiss, and this time I don’t even get a pair of brackets for my trouble. My beating heart stays lodged firmly in my chest, my blood does not stir, and my shadow does not slither up my skin. There’s not even a whisper of a suggestion that the spell was once carved deep into the wood grain of my soul. Its name is just noise.

That’s bad. That’s very bad. Why is this happening to me?

You told her to free Cheshire. Do you see a Cheshire? Do you feel a Cheshire? She was the core of that spell.

Right. Cheshire is gone, and she’s never coming back, and we don’t have the luxury of processing that right now because I hear more zombies shuffling in from the outer halls and my cool shapeshifting blood armor spell isn’t working. That’s fine! I have more tricks! Bugs are good against dead things, right?

“Carrion Heart!” I command, holding out a hand into which my bug-in-amber artifact very definitively does not appear. “Carrion Swarm? Oh, fuck.”

I rapidly cycle through every spell in my arsenal, chanting them in my mind, but none of them respond. I can’t conjure anything from my throne world, either, not even Vorpal. I’ve got nothing. I’m powerless.

And the zombies keep shuffling in, forming a wall of dead meat that gets more and more impenetrable the longer I struggle with my worthless magic. They would barely qualify as speed bumps to my fully-powered war form, but without my spells or my armory they’re a rising tide of death and dread.

My only solace is that Homura seems more interested in the zombies than in my fumbling with spell names. She frowns at one of them, leaning in close and making that camera frame gesture with her hands again. She says, “The work of another Veseryn, how strange. Is that this loop’s true gimmick?”

I bark another awkward laugh, standing terror-stricken in the heart of the ossuary. “What are you talking about? Who or what is a Veseryn?”

“A reckless coward and a clever fool,” Homura quips, and then the necromancer makes her debut.

The second Veseryn is a woman I’ve seen once before, reclining on her throne as a glass monster pronounced judgment, and though that glimpse was brief and I had much else to occupy my attention, it’s hard to forget a face split down the middle like that. The cold blue light in her empty eye socket is the same light that burns in all her fresh thralls, the same blue as gleams in her undamaged eye and paints her plump lips even as half those lips shrivel away into torn skin and exposed bone. Her teeth are perfect and bloody, and her platinum hair is styled as if her exposed skull was just the shaven half of a side cut.

Lord Urna, Noble of the Labyrinth, strides through her court of corpses with chin upturned and spine like an iron rod. The waking dead turn hungry at her arrival. They all turn to face their mistress, and the nearest reach out with grasping hands in what could be mistaken for religious rapture until those hands grope beneath the fabric of her sheer monochrome dress. The dead make no distinction between the luscious, shapely half of her body and the skeletal, gore-dripping half; they grab at all parts of her with desperate, shivering need.

Urna barely acknowledges their presence as they feel up every inch of her body, though her smile is satisfied and indulgent, until that smile suddenly drops and her skeletal arm lashes out to grab a zombie’s face. Her choice seems random, seizing not the zombie with a hand between her legs nor the corpse leering at her chest but instead just one of several that were admiring her shapely and fleshless limbs.

She crushes its head like an overripe grape, squeezing until the whole thing is a mess of pulverized bone and leaking brain, and then she tosses it aside and it smears across the stone. The mass retreats, their lustful hunger spoiled, and then one by one they all turn their heads to look at me.

“The fail state of a Veseryn,” Homura chatters while all that is going on, the phantom uncaring and seemingly unheard. “A few too many bad deals and bad decisions, so now she’s a slave on a very complicated leash.”

Prevara’s leash. The glass shard. The Emissary’s next assassin.

Urna takes a step forward, her horde now parting for her and pressing against the walls to keep away from their capricious ruler. Her lips curl as she looks me up and down, her one good eye narrowing, and then with an angry huff and crossed arms she demands, “Why do none of you wretched imitators ever fix your tits!?”

What?

I stare at her. “What?” Am I crazy? Did she really just say that? “Seriously, what? Why is that the first thing you say to me?”

“Because your ugly little mosquito bites aren’t doing anything for me,” she leers, “and I’m going to have to fix them before I can get off on ravishing your reanimated corpse, vampy. The face needs work too, don’t get me wrong, but that’s what masks are for. I swear, do the rest of you just like being hideous? Why am I the only splinter with taste?”

Homura gnaws on her lip as she circles Urna, weaving through the space between necromancer and zombies with casual ease. She muses, “Not a typical Veseryn trait. Part of the leash, or independent variable?”

I blink, like, twelve times in a row. Is this how computers feel when they bluescreen? I feel like a professional boxer just punched me in the nose. Why this? Why now? I just want to go curl up under a mountain of blankets but fine, whatever, let’s engage with the insane necrophile clone. “Splinters and the rest of you,” I babble, just trying to get my brain restarted, “means you’re like me? You’re an Alice?”

The monster sneers. “Am I ‘like you,’ mosquito girl? I’m better than you. I’m smarter and more dangerous and much, much more attractive. You’re an Urna knockoff, get it right.”

Homura covers a laugh, but then she’s talking rapidly in my direction. “Listen: Veseryn always loses her name or her phylactery—a ring, always a ring—and that’s what makes her a thrall. That’s your leverage.”

Her words are a lightning bolt that sends me back to the very first day of my journey—of my existence—when I sold my name to a faerie huntsman. A reckless coward and a clever fool… yeah, that’s me. I am Veseryn, and Homura knows exactly what that means. We need to talk to her. We need to learn her secrets. But first we need to survive our first real encounter with another splinter.

Urna, unable to hear Homura’s commentary or read my internal dialogue, watches me watch her in silence. She doesn’t seem to like the silence. Urna takes a step closer, then another, and she sneers, “Are you plotting another scheme, lamprey? I’ve been watching you. I know your games. Whatever you think you can do to get out of this, you’re wrong. Surrender and I’ll kill you clean.”

I almost laugh at her. She thinks I’m dangerous. She thinks I’m plotting. Or maybe she’s just wary of the overgod in my corner. Okay. Leverage, we have leverage. Mask on, veins of ice. “Prevara stole your phylactery—the ring that makes you immortal,” I guess with false confidence. “I can free you from those chains,” I lie to the insane necromancer with a smile on my face and open palms spread wide.

Urna’s advance falters, on the back foot for the first time in this conversation. She bought the bluff. Her face twists with longing and distrust. “What can a slave offer a slave? The Demiurge could free me at her whim, but she whims it not. There will be no freedom for any of us until the Resurrection, when the Leviathans tear that pretender from her throne.”

Homura rolls her eyes from right behind the necromancer Noble. “She’s dumb or desperate. That way ends in fire.”

I choose my next words carefully. “I am not God’s hunting dog, if that’s what you think. Nor do I trust the Emissary’s plans to lead to anything but annihilation for all of us. Victory—survival, even—requires that I kill Prevara. When I do, I’d rather take you as a partner than as a pet. But you don’t want to be my enemy, Urna.”

The necromancer lifts her hands to the fur mantle around her shoulders, and then she closes her living eye and the ghost-light dims. She lets out a heavy, tired breath, and for a moment I see exhaustion written on that half-dead face. But then she smiles, wicked and sinful, and when she opens her eyes they are full of hunger.

“I’ve killed us twice already, lamprey. I like my chances for a triple.”

She lunges for me, fleshless hand outstretched to shatter my skull. Panic devours me and I grasp at spells I can’t call and weapons I can’t conjure, paralyzed and powerless.

She’s going to kill me. She’s going to kill me and there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop her. I don’t want to die here. I don’t want to die in this horrible, wretched, miserable Labyrinth. I don’t want to be here at all.

Anywhere but here. Anywhere but Wonderland.

Urna reaches out to kill me and I lurch back, my terror reaching a final crescendo, and then the air between us shatters like glass. Reality breaks, the world is sundered, and when I blink my eyes I’m tripping over my own feet on an ordinary sidewalk with no sign of the living dead.

I stumble backward into a brick wall and get the breath knocked from my lungs, but I’m not dead. I slump against the wall, gasping and wheezing, and I try to slow my racing heart. No Urna and no zombies—no Homura either—and no idea where I am or how I got here.

I scan my surroundings and see brickwork, glass, wood, and stone. The sun beats down on me, hot and uncomfortable. Buildings, squat and tall and all between, an urban forest. Wispy clouds, a bright blue sky. A city, vast and sprawling. Sunlight glinting off a glass tower that pierces the blue heavens. A sun, burning in the sky.

There is a sun in the sky. Why is there a sun in the sky?

The glass tower, that’s the tower, the heart of the Labyrinth, but the Labyrinth doesn’t have a sun and those clouds should be floating islands. That tower should be black as pitch, not radiant in the light of an alien sun. The tower… it’s like it was in Reska’s age. The tower before it blackened, before the world broke and the sun went away.

Where am I? When am I? This must be a dream, but I don’t feel like I’m dreaming.

I pick myself off the ground and glance around my more immediate surroundings. There are people here, just like you’d see in any city, but I wonder if they’re real. None of them have reacted to my sudden appearance, but I guess that doesn’t mean much in a world where magic is everywhere. The city doesn’t look as modern as Sanctuary, and the people are dressed to match, but I can’t really place a specific era or region they’re emulating.

They’re probably figments. I could just ask them if they’re real. It doesn’t really matter either way.

It doesn’t. But I want to see it. Even if it means feeling the burning shadow of the Demiurge again, I want to take that risk and open my sight. I want to prove I still can. And hey, maybe seeing her true form—that gruesome, smiling cadaver—banished the clouds from my secret eyes.

I close my eyes, breathe deep, and focus on my vision like I have a dozen times before. My soul sight, my demonic sixth sense which paints the world in paper and ink and reveals the depths of desirous souls. I reach for the switch.

Nothing happens. No paper, no ink, no insight. No metaphysical switch to flip. I open my eyes to the same world of light and color, the world as everyone sees it.

I’m not a demon anymore.

It’s a cold, hollow thought. I should have known it from the moment I lost my magic, but I was in denial. My spells lacking presence, the contents of my throne world unresponsive, my second sight denied me, all because of the simple and obvious fact that I am not a demon. I haven’t been a demon since I was spat out in those catacombs.

I made a deal with Nyarlathotep and now I’m paying the price. I bargained away my Cheshire and my powers for the promise of something bigger, and then I tried to run from the consequences… but how do you run away from the lord of the universe?

I laugh darkly and lean against the brickwork. I thought I’d gotten away, but obviously that was a stupid, absurd notion. She probably let me escape, and let me bite her, and let me think she hadn’t already done everything she wanted to do to me.

She took everything I had as a demon, and in return she gave me, what, a bunch of voices in my head? That teleport trick was certainly one of her gifts, but I don’t have the slightest clue how to activate it on purpose. When I was Reska, I could use her shadow magic, but I was also drowning in her grief and rage and longing. I can’t make use of those powers if it means losing myself to some wailing waif.

My hands are trembling, so I clench them into fists. I hate this. I hate what she’s done to me. I don’t want those other girls living in my brain. I refuse to cede control of my body. She’s planted horrible seeds inside my head and I refuse to let them sprout. I will pull those fuckers out by the roots and throw them at her feet.

And then you’ll die, because right now they’re the ones with real magic.

I hiss and drag my nails across my arm. Then I’ll steal their magic first! I’ll make every ounce of it mine, and then I’ll do the same to God herself and rule this whole wretched world! My laughter is wild and desperate, eyes wide, needing so badly to scream my hate. If all I am is just meat beneath her knife then I will crawl my way up that slender arm and burrow inside her soulless eyes. I will make my hate a sword and that sword will take her life and we will call that justice.

But is that really you? Or is that Homura?

Ice pours down my back. These are my thoughts, aren’t they? Aren’t those my desires? I’m still Alice, no matter what that monster did to me. Aren’t I?

I need to get away from this. I need space. I need clarity. I need a goal. We need to survive. How do we survive?

First step: orientation. We’re in a city both familiar and unfamiliar, and we need to acquire more data before we can make any kind of decision about our next steps. We no longer have access to soul sight, but we can still gather information the old-fashioned way.

I step out into the street, clear my throat, and ask, “Can anyone help me? I appear to be lost.”

Most of the passersby ignore me, a point for their realism, but one of them stops in her tracks and looks my way with a concerned expression before hurrying over. “You’re lost? Do you know where you want to get to?”

She is ruddy-cheeked and curly-haired, with warm eyes and a patterned sundress. I dislike her cheerful demeanor, so I give her a pleasant smile. “I’m afraid I don’t have the slightest idea where I’m meant to be going, nor where I’ve come from, nor where I appear to be. I’m very lost, you see.”

The pedestrian laughs cutely. “Oh, well that’s perfectly natural. You’re in a place where lost things come to be found, after all. This is Fata Morgana, the city of glass and dreams.”

Fata Morgana, why do I feel like I should recognize that name from somewhere? There’s an uncanny sense of recognition, but that recognition is tinged with head pain. If it’s trapped in Reska’s memories, I’m fine not knowing. “You get a lot of lost things here, then?” I ask instead.

“Oh, now more than ever, thanks to the war.” Her smile drops, eyes filling with a deep and unspeakable sorrow. “With each kingdom that Queen Shadowsun razes, there are fewer places left for the survivors to take refuge. Soon enough we’ll be the last sanctuary in the world.”

Shadowsun. We know that name. When I was… possessed by Reska? Living her shadow? Channeling her? I don’t understand the specifics, but we can figure that out later. When I was Reska, she called herself Reska Shadowsun. This is her world, her past. Her apocalypse.

The stranger’s expression brightens after a moment. “Oh, but we’ve helped so many people adjust to life here in the city. We’re all so happy to perform our sacred duty, truly.”

“That’s nice.” I look to the tower again, shielding my eyes from the blinding light. “That tower, is that the tower of the Lady Katoptris? I think I’ve heard tales of this place, now that I see it in person. If one wished to meet the Lady of Glass and beg her advice, how would they?”

She blinks at me owlishly. “The tower? Oh, that old thing isn’t open to the public anymore. But that’s okay, there’s really nothing in there worth seeing. It’s been a long time since the Lady had the energy to entertain guests.” Her tone is sympathetic yet pitying, like someone talking about a relative with dementia. “But if you want to sightsee, I’m sure I can help you out!”

“Sightsee?” I frown.

“Mhm! I can take you to a nice theater putting on The Garden of Dying Flowers tonight, or to a gambling house that serves the best drinks. If you’re hungry, I know a dozen eateries within easy walking distance. Please, I’d love to help you take advantage of everything your lovely city has to offer. Just forget that boring eyesore.”

I remember this, too, from my dreams. Homura told me about her time in the city and our experiences with its inhabitants. The figments of this place are lotus-priests, obstacles designed to keep you from the tower and its Lady.

That makes this woman another figment, her smiling face a wooden mask. Her hospitality is poisoned, though the poison is surely sweet. She’ll say and do whatever is necessary to keep me from the tower.

Well, at least our next step is obvious. If oppositional defiant disorder has taught me anything, it’s that I should always go where I’m least wanted. Honestly, if I stop and think about it, Katoptris is the one voice in all this mess that I haven’t really heard from. Well, her and the Adversary, but I don’t exactly have her home base in visible walking distance.

“All the same,” I say to the figment, “I think that tower is where I’m needed.”

She purses her lips. “Miss, do you need to be needed? I’m not sure that’s what you really want. Do you know what it is that you want? Fata Morgana can help with that.”

What an ugly question. What do I want? Why would I tell you that? Why would I know that? Love, justice, identity, answers, none of those things matter. I want to not die, I guess, but I’m not telling her that. “I want to speak with Katoptris. I keep hearing her name on everyone’s lips, and she might be able to help me. Maybe I can help her. Maybe that’ll fix your eyesore.”

She sighs. “I doubt it. Wouldn’t you rather take a rest? I’m sure you’ve had a very hard journey. The Lady can wait another night.”

Ha. Of course I want to rest. I’m exhausted, mentally and physically, and I want to lie down for a week without getting up. But by then, the world might have ended. “I can rest once I’ve spoken with the Lady. Thank you, really, but I insist. I can sightsee later.”

She smiles at me like I’m a fool, but she doesn’t try to stop me. “Of course. I do hope you find what you’re looking for.” She bows and returns to her walk, off to play out the rest of her artificial routine.

I start walking.

The other figments don’t get in my way, though a few reach out every block or so offering to help me or feed me or show me a good time. I ignore them all, my mood souring with each pleasant voice.

These figments belong to Prevara, my enemy. They might be the same figments that Homura encountered when she visited the city, when she sought Katoptris and learned the ugly truth about why this world’s precious Lady vanished from their prayers. Prevara did something to Katoptris, though I don’t know what, and has been trying to cement her control—or its, or theirs, I’m not really sure—over Katoptris and the world around the tower. First the figments that watch the city, then the Beasts of the Labyrinth… and at least one figment of Sanctuary.

Lena. My chest tightens at the memory of the cute girl who flirted with me and offered up her neck. I wanted to know her, but Prevara used her to taunt me. Not that she was real to begin with. I know that she wasn’t real.

No one real would ever like me.

I curl my lip. Are you really getting sad over this? You’re pathetic. You knew it was too good to be true, both times. You have no one to blame but yourself for getting attached to them. You should be used to being alone.

I know, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear it. I wanted to enjoy myself. I wanted a fantasy. Don’t I deserve something for all the pain?

Of course I don’t. Pain doesn’t buy pleasures. It’s just pain.

I force out a heavy breath and run my hands through my hair. I hate being alone with my thoughts, if you can really call this alone. That’s another thing I hate. Hate, hate, hate. Is that the Homura in me, or is that just me?

What does that even mean? What does “you” mean? You’re a copy. You’re a splinter, like the others. Your memories aren’t yours, your personality isn’t yours, nothing is yours. All just fractal lenses. What are you, if not the same as them?

Maybe I’m a fail state, like Homura called Urna. I mean, I keep failing.

I failed with the fae, I failed with the imp, I failed at being a demon, and I failed at finding love. Maybe failure is the piece of her that she carved off when she made me. Gobbet Failure. Gobbet Loser. The little gobbet that couldn’t.

I trudge through the streets of an alien city with heavy limbs and heavier thoughts. The sun beats down on my body like hammer blows, the heat so oppressive I feel buried in it. I am gristle on steel, baking beneath a lamp. I am a half-dead thing, stillborn yet moving.

And I’m afraid. I’m lost and afraid and a failure. Loathing and fear swirl around my head and gestate greater evils. I know this dark spiral, it’s carried me down to the pit of despair so many times before, but most of those memories aren’t really mine.

She gave me those memories. She gave me this disease. She made me weak and small and now she’s laughing at how pathetic I am. I feel empty like a shattered cup.

The smell of warm pastries alerts me to an altogether different emptiness: hunger, boiling in my stomach. A cold, clinical part of my brain overrides the darkening malaise.

Insufficient intake of food and water impairs normal function and accelerates negative ideation. We should eat.

Right. I haven’t eaten or drank anything in some number of hours, and I might be operating on human biology again. Eat, drink, then ideate.

It isn’t hard to find a place to eat, several of them within immediate eyesight as soon as I start looking. Cafe, restaurant, eatery, etc, all of them open for business and highly aromatic. I doubt they’ll even care I don’t have money, just like in Sanctuary, if this place really is one giant lotus-eater trap.

I wander to the nearest shop, not really paying attention to details, but then I stop before the door, staring at my reflection in the window.

The pointy ears are still there, and the teeth, and the pale skin. The hair is longer by a few inches and dirty blonde instead of dark, but that’s not really the change I’m stuck on; my eyes are different. My left eye is bright red, just as I remade it, but my right eye has turned golden and cat-like. It’s Cheshire’s eye. I’ve traded my right eye for Cheshire’s.

What does that mean? What have you done, Demiurge?

It’s unnerving seeing myself with my kinda-ex-girlfriend’s eye, but if I’m being honest with myself it barely breaks the top three weirdest things I’ve seen today. I don’t know how I feel about it, but I can live with it.

My outfit changed too, which I’d sort of passively noticed earlier but not actually examined. Red sneakers, faded blue jeans, and a black t-shirt with the words “KISS ME KILL ME” written in bold red. I feel naked without a jacket. My heart locket is there too, the anatomical heart I enchanted what feels like ages ago. Wonder if it still works.

The outfit is a stark change from the dark gothic aesthetic that I’ve been trying to cultivate, but it feels right in a way the schoolgirl getup definitely didn’t. Honestly, aside from the locket, it seems like the kind of thing I’d wear normally, much more than what I’ve been wearing since playing demon. Or, well, normal for the girl I’m based on, I guess.

“A piece of a piece of me,” I mutter bitterly at my reflection. “Is this the new us?”

If I rejected everything about me that tasted like her, what would be left that feels like me? I haven’t been my own person for even a single second of my miserable existence. If I tried to be the opposite of everything she made me to be, would that Alice be someone new? Or would the very act of inversion keep me defined by her labels? What does freedom mean?

I reach out and touch my reflection, an absent gesture, but when the glass starts to ripple I jerk my hand back—or try to.

The hand in the mirror is grabbing mine.

My reflection is different, still recognizable but now altered and horrific. Her skin is sickly and flaking and terribly cold, her grip like iron. Her eyes are icy blue, blue like Urna’s, and her mouth is stitched shut.

The corpse that looks like me jumps out of the mirror and tackles me to the ground. I scream and try to fight her off but she’s got both my wrists and I’m not a demon anymore, my strength is frail and human and laughably underdeveloped.

She keeps me pinned with her knees and one arm, freeing her other hand to pull a knife. A simple blade, clean and lethal. It’ll do the job.

And then, before I can even think to try and call up my new magic and teleport away, two beastly claws grab the corpse by the shoulders and fling her away from me.

A familiar face stares down at me—one blue eye, one red—and offers a hand to help me up. My gaze flits over rippling muscle and patches of fur and scale. Changed. A stranger.

“Name’s Cheshire,” the changeling introduces herself with a grin. “I’m your new bodyguard.”