Being alone with Strix Striga is a dream come true. Getting her attention in this role is why I became a witch—or at least the first layer of it. I want more—I want to save her—but I’ll savor this moment with joy in my heart. Of course, I have a pretty good idea of why I’m getting her attention , in a private conversation far away from any eavesdroppers not named Morrigan; right now, Striga is trying to decide whether I am a threat or an asset. Ferromancer cornered me in her workshop and interrogated me about why the Jovians chose me to be their answer to Striga. I don’t think she passed on every detail of that conversation—it certainly doesn’t seem like she passed along my civilian name, which she would have known from the start thanks to Jovian intel—but it’s basically a given that Striga knows I have feelings for her. If not from Ferromancer, certainly from the Morrigan, or just from watching me watch her during the fight in the theater. The Jovians pointed a weapon at Striga, but that weapon is in love with her, and now I’m the only member of the conspiracy with reliable access to one of Striga’s strategic goals—Jupiter’s pit, warded against normal methods but not, it would seem, against the teleporter in my furnace. Striga needs me on her side, but can she trust me? What if all this was just a long game, and I’m still a trap meant to destroy her? She needs more information. “I’d like to hear about your experiences in the World of Glass,” Striga says once we’re deep in the hedge maze. She moves unerringly through the endless green. “I’ll be getting detailed reports from Howl and Ferromancer later, but you’ve caught my eye.” I don’t bother to suppress my grin at that. “A great many players in the game have taken an interest in you, Archon. What did you think of the King in Yellow and her children?” “Dangerous,” I answer immediately. “Mars and Venus felt… petty, I want to say. They could present a compelling scenario, but they fell apart trying to adapt to resistance. Hastur, though… she felt in control the entire time. She placed me in front of a deimovore to prime me for my encounter with Mars and Venus, dropped the teleporter in my lap to solve your pathing problem, and led us to every conclusion she wanted us to make about the Jovians and the ‘egregores.’ At least, I assume that’s what happened, but I can’t exactly be certain. She feels like a game master in an RPG, laying out challenges to justify giving rewards.” “An apt comparison. I think of her as a referee. She has rules that she follows and which she enforces upon others, though I am unsure how many of those rules are her own creation and how many are genuine limitations. Her children are far less principled; ‘petty’ is a good word, but ‘immature’ would be better. They have a great deal more power than they have understanding. What did you think of the team that came with you?” That’s a more complicated question. I highly doubt Striga’s asking me just to get a better sense of the others; she’s checking my tendencies. Prosocial or antisocial, team player or not. Threat or asset. I can’t get away with lying to Striga, so it’s a good thing I don’t have to. “They’re fun!” I say honestly. “Harlequin does a solid clown routine, Howl acts meaner than she is, and Agatha is adorable. I think they like me. I hope they like me, ‘cause I like them.” “And Ferromancer?” she asks as we pass a hedge sculpture of the Morrigan. I chew on my lip. “That one’s a little trickier. I really want to talk with her about Delilah. I think Hastur was testing me and Ferro in particular, straining our teacher-apprentice dynamic to see what would happen. Or to push us in a certain direction. Yeah, I’ll have to talk to her again before I can settle how I feel about everything that happened on the other side.” Striga nods. “Tell me more about Agatha. I’d also be interested in hearing your thoughts on Visage in general.” “I’d be happy to infiltrate them for you, if that’s what you’re asking,” I say with another wide grin. “I noticed the pattern in our little group; you’re missing a Visage witch and an independent magical girl—and a Syndicate witch, now, but I guess that’s a lower priority given what we found in the World of Glass.” Striga’s mouth quirks into a small half-smile. “Perceptive. Yes, that is the nature of the work I have in mind for you. You would be coordinating with Agatha on investigating Visage from within; both the organization as it stands in our world, and the shadow of the Spire in the other.” “I’d like that! She seems like a really nice girl, and I wanted to spend some time with Visage anyway. I’m a pretty shameless attention whore.” Not that anyone’s attention could ever equal yours, Sophie. It’s almost the kind of line I’d drop as Rachel, but Archon’s character is more blatant, more blunt; Rachel veils everything in layers of irony and contorted narrative. At least, that’s the version of those roles that exists in my head right now. We round a bend in the maze, flowering vines covering the hedge. “So I’ve heard,” Striga says wryly, voice light and amused. Then she stops in her tracks, turns on me, and holds my gaze with burning intensity. My heart flutters. “I have also heard,” she says in a softer voice, “that you hold very strong feelings for me—that you love me, and want to save me. Well, here I am. If there’s something you’d like to say, you should say it now.” I’m your Rachel. I’m the girl you saved. I’m the girl who would do anything for you. I want to say those words. I want to tell Sophia that I love her as Rachel, not as Archon, whatever the consequences may be. I want to confess like I promised I would. It’s the obvious solution to every ounce of suspicion that Striga must be feeling right now, and I can’t do it. Before today, the worst-case scenario for a confession was, being realistic, a bit of discomfort in the apartment for a few weeks. Sophia would never kick me out. I’d catastrophize and I’d cry and maybe I’d threaten something drastic, but I wouldn’t go through with it. I care about Sophia too much to leave her even if I knew for a fact we’d never be together. Then the King in Yellow warned me off exactly this conversation. The right time, the right place, the right plan. A holiday. The morning of November 1st isn’t exactly a holiday, even if I’ve been up since Halloween. The specificity of that stands out. For some reason, Hastur doesn’t want me confessing to Sophia in this moment. Maybe she has a plan that requires me to confess later, or she thinks it isn’t dramatic enough, or maybe she said it just to fuck with me. Part of me wants to ignore her advice and follow my heart… but more of me is nervous about pissing Hastur off. Striga described Hastur as “an existence utterly beyond our ability to punish.” I don’t want to make an enemy of that, and I think Striga would agree with that decision. I think she would forgive me for the deception. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! I have to play this safe. I can’t afford to let Striga see me as a threat, but I also can’t afford to antagonize the King in Yellow by revealing myself now. I can only see through the veil on Sophia because I saw her transform, but her analytical ability is so good that she might not need something so obvious if I slip up. So, I have to be careful. I’ll play another role; I’ll tell her how Archon loves Striga, and some day soon I’ll finally tell her how Rachel loves Sophia. It’s like a practice run. And, since she doesn’t know who I am… I don’t need to be nervous. It doesn’t matter if I get rejected . Just this once, I don’t have to hold back. So I sigh dreamily, I smile at my beloved with pure, honest adoration, and I say, “I love everything about you. I love the way you move in battle, calculated and precise. I love the way you command a room just by being who you are. I love your ruthlessness and your sense of perspective, your willingness to do anything and say anything if it furthers your goals. I love your heroism and how earnest it is despite how much of your life is performance and manipulation. You’ll use anyone, even your own teammates, but it’s all for a good cause because all that you are is the pursuit of that cause. A spear against the Syndicate. A shield against the Catastrophes. A helping hand to anyone in need, no matter how small and inconsequential. You are exactly what the world needs: a perfect, invincible, unrelenting savior.” I’m making Striga uncomfortable. Her self-control is without equal, so it’s not anything obvious, but I can tell it in her posture and the corners of her mouth and the rigidity of her hands, all just a little bit off from her norms. She says, “I see. You should know that—” “It’s a lie,” I cut her off, still smiling. Her eyes widen a fraction of a centimeter, only visible because I know her so well, and I take advantage of her momentary surprise to step closer to her, only a breath between us now. “Perfection is a paradox. No one is invincible. No one can fight forever. But to be the hero they all need you to be, you have to pretend it’s all true. Your entire existence is a lie and you’re drowning in it. They’re burying you in work, putting the world on your shoulders, because you told them you could take it. The edge of exhaustion in your voice, the little moments of hesitation when you just want to rest but you can’t allow it, the cracks in the mask of the perfect savior—those small, precious details that no one notices, or that they pretend they didn’t see because the lie is too important. But I see it. I see you, Striga, and it only makes me love you more. I love how hard you fight to be something impossible, you mad, beautiful, doomed hero. I love you. I love you. I love you.” I can hear the frenzy in my own voice, the manic, desperate need. I’ve never said these words to her out loud, never poured my heart , and it tumbles out like a waterfall, the sheer force of it impossible to stop or even slow. I need her to understand. I need her to see. My hands are on her shoulders and I don’t remember putting them there, but she hasn’t moved away, hasn’t done anything to rebuild distance. There’s a glint in her eyes that looks like pain. A stiffness to her posture that she isn’t trying to hide. A hardness to the line of her mouth. “So that’s what you meant,” she says quietly, “when you promised to save me. How were you going to do it?” Nᴇw novel chapters are publɪshed on 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵✦𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮✦𝓷𝓮𝓽 “Oh, the plan was to beat you in a fight so hard I’d be able to force you to stop playing the hero.” I laugh and step back to give Striga space. “Yeah, that was a bad plan. I bet Mars gave Delilah the same vision that I got, and you beat her ass like you could have done it in half the time with both hands tied behind your back. So, new plan: if I can’t stop you from fighting… I’ll just have to help you win!” I give her a vicious, bloodthirsty grin. If there’s anything I’m grateful to Hastur for, it’s the realization I just vocalized. Beating Striga was… well, I don’t want to say it was an “easy” anything, but I was treating it like it was the easy solution. If I could just defeat the undefeated, I’d break her myth and she’d toss aside her role. In reality, that was never going to happen. Even if by some miracle I overcame Striga’s terrifying skill and power—and all my plans to do so were cooked up before I knew about the blessing of Minerva—it wouldn’t stop her from overworking herself. Some of the tension eases out of Striga, replaced by a contemplative look. “How were you planning to beat me? I’m still trying to figure out the specific nature of the weapon the Jovians meant to point at me.” She hasn’t really addressed the rest of what I said, but that’s fine; it’s probably a lot to process, even for her. That, or she’s testing how well I respond to being shut out, in which case continuing to be perfectly cooperative is the smartest approach. “The strength of Prometheus is the weakness of Athena: versatility. The more options I have—weapons stolen from magical girls, devices built by Ferromancer, familiars crafted for different purposes—the more complicated your model of my capabilities has to become in order to accurately predict my moves and counter them. At a certain degree of combinatorial complexity, you lose that advantage entirely—and without your perfect analysis, you’re just a particularly experienced warrior. I’d build connections with other witches to get access to their tools or even borrow their familiars, then overwhelm you with as large and diverse an army as I could maintain, pushing you past the limits of your mind and body. Of course, I’d need very good defensive options to keep you from spoiling the trap by going directly for me, and I’d need some sort of boundary that you couldn’t escape from—which, now that I know you can open portals, seems less feasible.” Despite the fact that I just listed in detail my scheme to defeat her, Striga seems more comfortable now than when I was confessing my love to her. Ouch! Eminently reasonable, though, and I’m not taking it too personally; she barely knows this version of me, after all. “Thank you,” she says. “I think I have a better idea of what the Jovians were attempting. As for the rest of what you said…” Striga hesitates, which is something she never does, and then she continues, “You seem to know a lot more about me than I know about you. As we work together in the days and months to come… there will be opportunities to correct that imbalance. I think I might like getting to know you better, Archon.” Aww, she’s trying to be encouraging without baldly lying that she reciprocates my feelings. Well, who am I to say no to that? “That would be lovely,” I smile. “Thank you for giving me a chance, Striga. I know you have no reason to feel about me like I feel about you, and I don’t expect that as the price of my loyalties; I want to help you, however I can, however you’ll have me.” That small half-smile returns to Striga’s face. “I appreciate that more than you could know. To be perfectly honest, this conversation went a lot better than I was expecting it to.” There’s a world where I could have convinced Striga that the best way to secure my loyalty was to feed my delusional obsession with her, but that’s not the world I want to live in; I want to make Sophia happy far, far more than I want her affection, forced or unforced. Besides, I can be patient. I missed my chance today, but Hastur’s demands aren’t too odious; Thanksgiving is just around the corner. What’s one more month weighed against seven years of waiting? I will tell Sophia how I feel about her. Until then, I’ll satisfy my desire for her attention through my interactions with Striga. And, hey, if I can make her like me in that persona, I bet I’ll have an even easier time winning her heart as Rachel. As I walk home from the Ossuary, the sun rising over the horizon, I feel a sense of hope welling up within me. Inside the apartment, I stuff my face with chips and soda, my body sorely thanking me for the calories after the crazy day I’ve had. I don’t stay upright for long before crashing on the couch, pulling the covers over my head, and drifting off to sleep. For just a moment, I let myself feel like everything’s going to be okay.