Content Warnings

Gore
Suicidal ideation [MAJOR] (but also metaphorical)
Internalised ableism

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Dream. Dark as death and deep as forever. A ceaseless river both blood-warm and ice-cold, clogged thick with red-black clots, carrying me down and down and down.

Pressure against my back bends me double, curls me into a tight and creaking ball, cores me like a rotten apple. Ancient routines of flesh reach cruel through dreaming darkness, to remind this avatar of agony that it is not yet without material context. I still exist, submerged somewhere between the waking world and the precipice of eternity. On a bed of tar I float downriver, a shattered kernel of useless scrap cushioned by my own spilled entrails and sheets of scab. Faces congeal from the black — people I’ve known, people I haven’t, words that are not words, speech which communicates nothing from nothing to nothing.

Pain drives me deeper into dream, through quasi-memory of places known and out into pure abstract thought, where I rotate puzzle pieces in the dark for centuries on end, trying and failing to make anything fit, completing nothing, achieving less. Cautious visitors linger side-on and lurk peripheral, lost to direct sight, faces smeared under scrutiny, jealous of the focus, afraid of the attention.

Sometimes current betrays, forces me closer to the surface. Pain sharpens claws most terrible on the whetstone of my guts, rakes my back with red-hot iron, opens holes right through me. Light leaks from beyond, intrudes on darkness, threatens me with flesh.

Wet weak whimpers. Snorting and spluttering, snivelling and self-smothering. Taste of dried blood. Scent of burnt oil. Nails in my spine.

I claw back down into the dark, into red-black refuge.

Pain ebbs onward, but I am distant.

Dreaming.

~~~~~~~

A long time later — after the turning of entire stellar ages, when the stars have come round once again to wake me from death — dream clarifies and condenses, remembers itself as solid ground.

Upon which I suddenly stand.

A park, in a barren season. Leafless trees gone brittle and grey. Dead grass, frozen ground. Tarmac pathways cracked and crumbled, colonised by pale moss and slime-soaked lichen. Broken brick walls mark the boundary, topped by iron railings once melted, now set and sagging. High-rise towers in the middle distance have peeled open, glass and steel parting and flowering like blossoms in spring, discoloured and dripping with hues that cannot be dreamed in the waking world, a riot of pulsing purples and quivering yellows and the sickly orange of exotic rot. Around their roots an ocean boils, slopping and bubbling, writhing and roiling, sending the occasional questing tendril up the flanks of the towers-in-bloom. Their tips shimmer and shiver against a backdrop of blood-froth skies, a whirlpool of shed claret and liquefied ruby, speckled with diamond-flecks in glittering white.

Beyond the park, beyond the towers, beyond even the sky — in some fashion that makes no sense beyond a dream — stands a wall.

For this wall, dream is not enough; even broken rules cannot hope to contain it. Vast beyond measure, too tall for gods to cross, thick as a continent, it stretches from one end of reality to the other, buckling the surface of the dream. It is made from a single piece of material, grey and red and black and white and flesh and bone and wood and stone and more, all at once. A statement embodied: that some boundaries can never be crossed. There are gulfs in the universe which will forever remain unplumbed. Laws that are enforced simply by the fact of their own existence, akin to gravity or time.

The wall lies ruined.

Shattered dead centre, as if by a cannon-blow beyond imagination, a wide and crumbling canyon carved right through the middle. From that initial mortal wound a trillion cracks have spread, spider-webbing the wall’s perfection until great gouges and chunks have fallen away, matter flaking like a skin disease, the top edge eroded and chipped, the whole mass slumping with subsidence. The fall has not yet finished; the wall is coming down still, like a tidal wave in slow motion, collapsing inch by inch over a span longer than any dreaming mortal can envision.

From that first great breach and the billion comorbidities flows a discharge of prismatic plasma, boiling off and misting and freezing, slopping down a million miles to pool and collect on this side of the wall, feeding the liveliness that has begun to grow and spread at the broken base. Other things pass through the wounded wall too — scudding and scrabbling and skittering, parading and preening and pirouetting, a constant trickle of gods and monsters from the infinite beyond.

But what lies on the far side of that wall, even dream will not show. Eyes refuse the sight.

A single chunk of broken wall lies not far off, on the frozen ground of the dead park, twenty feet away. Shimmering like pearl crossed with bone, coated in a thick layer of oil, lit from within by pale fire. Wood and glass and living flesh all at once. Chalk and umber and gone when you blink, there when you look. A little piece of eternity, cast down in the dirt.

“The wall itself,” says a voice, smooth and deep, irritatingly familiar. “Though this is only a metaphor, the sign is not the signified. Risky to make that mistake, wouldn’t you agree? Especially here.”

Turn my head. Neck feels like rusted iron.

Winter — the occultist, whatever she calls herself — stands a few feet to my right. She looks no different to when I encountered her out in the Nightmare, still dressed in her long black habit, throat bandaged, hands gloved. She seems taller somehow; no, it’s just that I’m stooped, half-hunched with damage.

Winter meets my eyes, her own deep as coal-pits, lips creased with curious amusement.

“Octavia,” she says, greeting me with mild surprise. “Are you lucid?”

“ … this is … a dream?”

My voice is a scrape of twisted metal, moved by great effort. Speaking wakes the rest of me; suddenly my breath stutters up from my chest, the catch and flutter of a failing engine. Heart full of metal shavings, labouring to turn. Feet rooted to the spot; one step would send me sprawling, scatter me as loose components.

This Machine is badly broken.

Winter smiles wider, darkly amused at somebody’s expense. “My goodness, there you are. Lucid before the brink.”

“This is a dream,” I crunch out. “You’re in … a dream. You’re a Dreamer. You lied.”

Winter raises her eyebrows in mock-surprise. “You’re in this dream too. Does that mean you are also a Dreamer?”

“My dream. You’re just in it.”

Winter shakes her head. “Such innocence. No, I do not think you would lay claim here, if you knew where you stood. This dream belongs to nobody, certainly not either you or I. Unless you are far greater than you’ve been letting on. And I don’t think you are, not in that specific way. Are you?” Winter doesn’t wait for an answer. She gestures with one gloved hand. “We are on the outskirts of the dream. The Dreamlands. We are right at the border, before the final crossing. Do you understand?”

“ … huh. And that … that wall … ”

Winter nods slowly, casts her eyes across the vastness ahead. She takes a deep breath, fills her lungs, savouring some quality of the air I cannot taste.

“The wall of sleep,” she says. “Forever breached. Beyond even the gods to repair. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Silence lingers, gives me time to rotate my rusted neck, to look up at the wall which once bisected reality. A barrier that no human mind could hope to cross, were it not for that breach right down the middle. Surely it is too large to be contained, either here or in the waking world. It will fall, crush me flat if I dare creep closer. Except it doesn’t, because it has failed at being a wall.

Subtle pressure mounts behind my legs, a sea-current dragging at my calves, urging me to step forward.

“Though, it is only a metaphor,” Winter says. “The wall of sleep is not a literal thing. There is no physical object, no place one can visit. A magical girl could batter herself to death searching for a place she once saw in a dream. A sad fate, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Mm.”

Winter sighs, lowers her eyes, looks closer to hand. “And this isn’t what London looks like now. This is some myth your mind has woven, to make sense of where you find yourself. Instinct has guided your imagination, because your guts know where you are. After all, this is where so many of you magical girls end up.”

“Where?”

“At the edge of the dream.” Winter’s voice dances with dark amusement. Having fun at my expense. Would slap her if I could make my arms work. “At the threshold of change. As deep as a mind can go, before the final crossing.”

“ … why?”

Don’t need Winter to tell me. I know why I’m here. Just don’t want it to be true. Wish there was some other explanation.

“Why what?” Winter asks. Knows what she’s doing. Bitch.

“Why am I here?”

“Because you’ve been defeated,” Winter reads me the inside of my own head. “Because you’ve flirted with the prospect of simply giving in, giving up, giving out. Because you still want to. Because you’ve had enough of trying. Because you see no—”

“Stop dragging it out,” I grunt. “You’re enjoying this too much.”

“Far from it. Octavia, you’re here because—”

“Because I’ve failed.”

Doesn’t seem to matter. Perhaps I’m not fully lucid after all. Or maybe I’ve already given up.

Winter lapses into long silence. Dream bubbles and flows and froths and burbles from the infinite wounds in the wall. London’s corpse writhes with new life, a roiling cauldron of possible flesh. My body ticks along, winding down, pain a distant echo from somewhere beyond. Current swirls around my ankles, trying to drag me forward.

“Do you understand what this represents?” Winter says eventually.

“Don’t care.”

“Some of us had theories. In the early days, I mean, right after it happened. The wall is — or was — an impassible barrier, the metaphysical principle of sleep itself. Not the biological principle, you understand? That’s just an echo or a reflection of the greater need, a miniature communion taken by mundane minds, the closest you can get to touching the other side from where you stand. The pre-Harding models of human consciousness, the old models of cause and effect, they hold that sleep brings dreams, we dream when we sleep, and so on. But the clue is in the name. The wall of sleep. Do you know who coined that? A pre-Harding Dreamer of no consequence, some scribbler who lived in utter obscurity. The term was right under our noses all that time. Sleep is a wall, a wall that keeps us from dreams, keeps us apart from the rest of what we are, keeps the world itself neatly in two.” A sigh, deep and longing. “But why? For our safety, for our confinement? Are we prisoners in some divine game preserve? Who can say for certain, except those who have reunited with their own greater selves? And now the question is so much broader. We never predicted that fool would do it. Harding was a nobody. We thought it impossible.”

“You gave me bad advice,” I rasp.

“Hm?” Winter blinks at me, pulled from her clouds. “Ahhhhhhh, yes. I directed you to the shelter. I surmise by your presence here that the strategy was not to your advantage.”

“No.” A pause. “Well. Maybe. Sort of.”

Winter’s smile grows by another few millimetres. “Then was it really such terrible advice?”

“Didn’t win.”

“Evidently. Hence, here you are.”

Dip my head, look down at my own body. Still transformed, but in ruins. Black steel armour is punctured and bent, great rents in my metal shell. Blood and oil has dried in long streaks down my front, a trickle of both still flowing from deep wounds. Red-black light flutters from inside me, weak and wavering, aching to extinguish.

Makes me cough. Tastes sweet and sticky.

“How bad is it?” I ask. “Out in … in the waking world?”

Winter shrugs with great eloquence. “If you’re here, that means you’ve come right to the edge, but it also means you’re alive, since one must be alive to dream. And you are alive enough to be presented with the choice, which is more than I can say for any others of your kind who came all the way here. I’ve never seen one of you so lucid, so close to the end.”

“ … choice?”

Winter waves a hand at the wall. “To become a Dreamer.”

Currents swirl and pluck at my ankles. The way through the wall is a way out; over there, I will not have failed.

“Or?”

Winter waits. I turn my head and stare at her, her features side-lit by my own guttering red-black fires. She stares back, as if there’s more to the question.

“Or?” I repeat.

“Or go back the way you came.” Winter gestures to our collective rear. “Return to the struggle, if you find it pleases you.”

Can’t easily turn my head that far, but I know what waits back that way. Pain, and lots of it. With sharp claws and long knives and a perfect memory. But pain is an old foe by now, one I’ve learned to tolerate. Pain doesn’t frighten me, it only hurts, and I have developed a great capacity for hurt. Pain will not swallow me, I will swallow it.

But once the pain is passed, it will not be only me left behind.

I will be alone with failure.

Time seeps by, or at least something that pretends to be time. Currents tug at my legs and cup my ankles, urging a step forward; lift one foot, and the pressure will do the rest. Try not to sway, not to sag any further. My eyes close several times, seconds lost to blackness. The wall shimmers and shifts, a dying coral reef doused in oil.

“Willow,” I manage. “What … what happens to … Willow?”

“Mm? Ah, your Dreamer,” Winter says. “I haven’t the faintest notion what they do with failures or lapses in judgement. There’s few enough of them that they cannot afford to idly reduce their own numbers with harsh punishments. But equally they cannot afford the appearance of weakness. They must show utter solidarity, at least outwardly, or they risk far greater collapses. She will live, I suspect. They will find her a new anchor. But she may be under lock and key. She may be … politically unreliable.” Another shrug. “I do not know her. Do you?”

Can’t even grunt. This Machine is out of fuel, and so very tired, not only from the fight, but from all the years before, the whole long waking slog of life.

How could I hope to beat an entire cabal of Dreamers? More than a cabal, in fact; the power behind the throne, the face behind the mask of Dream Control, the British state, the whole interlocking system that keeps everything beneath the boot. This Machine gave everything in the attempt to save, punish, redeem, resolve Willow Finch, one person, one Dreamer, and that didn’t work.

Anger is all used up, fuel and fumes. Barely enough left to keep the lights on. Last few embers dimming to dark, going cold.

I’ve failed. This Machine is broken. Octavia Carter is done.

I’m ready to give up.

One step forward is all it will take; I will not actually have to trek across this dream landscape to reach the wall. Just fall forwards, and the currents in the air will pick me up and carry me along and suck me swirling through the breach. No more weight of flesh, no more need for a steel shell, no more sense of failure and loss and defeat. No pain, no prosthetics. No more ‘me’ to hurt. All will cease to matter, on the far side of that wall. As a Dreamer my desires will be made manifest by nothing but will; I could conjure my own Willow from clay and sunlight and memories, and she will be just as true as the ten-year-old I never got to know. More likely I won’t care about Willow anymore, real or fake. I won’t care about anything I care about now. Desire will die. Octavia Carter will cease to exist in any way that matters. Immortality comes with the price of no more self.

One step, the easiest thing I’ve ever done. No pain, no suffering, no humiliation, ever again. No loss. No yearning. No failure.

I raise my right foot. Black steel plates scrape and squeal. And I take a step—

Backward.

All I have strength for, fighting the currents. But it’s enough. Air pressure slackens, fingers of wind giving up and sliding off my broken armour. Temptation ebbs away to nothing, knows better than to try me again, because next time I’ll strangle it dead. Pain creeps back, stabbing me in the spine; a welcome old friend, sliding to my side, ugly but reliable. I cough three times, hack and splutter with the taste of blood in the back of my throat.

“Ahhhhhhh,” Winter croons. “I’ve never seen one of you step away from the brink before. Octavia? Octavia, can you hear me?”

“Never was … any good. At. At giving up.”

“A glutton for punishment, are you?” Winter asks. She’s laughing now, a cocktail of dark delight. “Or is there perhaps some—”

“A zoog. Was in my … inside my armour. When I went down. Need to … mm. Check on it.”

“But that’s not all, is it? Octavia?”

“Women.”

Winter waits, silent, expectant.

“Women I want to fuck,” I rasp. Not the slightest bit of embarrassment. Surely I’m not lucid.

“But if you became a Dreamer, you could—”

“Wouldn’t be real. Or if they were, I’d be … like her. Willow. So, no. No. Needs to be real. Need to want it. Want to want it.”

A tiny round of applause, fingertips against gloved palm. Winter approves. Pervert.

New fuel trickles into the tanks of This Machine, thin and weak and strange, harder to harness than anger, and not very much. It forms a cocktail with the dregs of old rage, soaks them in cool fluid, transmutes them to some unfamiliar compound that my damaged heart can barely process. But it’s enough for another step back, then another, and another still.

With great and terrible effort, I turn my back on the wall of sleep.

Winter and I are very suddenly not alone. A tall dark figure strides toward us from the direction of the waking world.

Nerys — Nerys the dream-goddess, abroad in her human guise, scarred and clipped and marred by old wounds. Nine, ten, eleven feet of hunchback oil-slick crowned with a tangle of black hair, dressed in a pale gown of patchwork leather. Her long-broken ankle fetters clink and drag on the frozen ground. A massive zoog-like tail swishes back and forth in wild agitation. Claws come up. Teeth come out.

She’s on us. A hook-clawed hand closes protectively around my shoulder; her tail wraps around my waist. She interposes herself between me and Winter, god-bulk bending the dream in a tiny imitation of the wall itself. Her other hand lashes out for Winter’s face, to claw at her eyes or rend her cheeks, black claws cutting rents in the dream.

Winter is suddenly too far away, beyond Nerys’ reach. Wide-eyed but no less amused, the occultist raises her gloved hands in surrender.

Nerys opens wide and hisses loud, a deep rumbling rasp as if from a zoog grown leviathan.

“Fuck off, blood-stink shit-bitch!” Nerys screeches. “Hands to yourself! Or I’ll bite them off and shit them back out and cram my dung down your throat! Off, off! Away!”

“Oh, dream-thing, you mistake me,” Winter says, though she takes another step back. “I was only here to observe.”

“Nerys,” I rasp. “Nerys, I’m okay.”

Nerys hisses at Winter again. Tightens her grip on my shoulder.

“You really should keep a closer eye on your girls,” Winter tells her. “Octavia almost went over the edge, and you do have such a habit of losing them, don’t you? If you intended to ride to the rescue, you’re rather late for that, no?”

Nerys straightens up, fifty feet, a hundred, more. A goddess from the deep, dripping black and bending close, torture dancing in her eyes and on the tips of her claws.

“And how would you know that, you reeking thing?” she says to Winter. “I do not know you. What hole did you crawl from?”

Winter smiles wider, shrugs with knowing amusement, continues her measured retreat. Nerys can’t reach her, not without letting go of me.

“Nerys,” I rasp again. She finally glances down at me. I gesture at the exit from the park with a weak nod of my head. “Nerys, just … just help me … help me out of here.”

“Wise,” Winter says. “Very wise, dream-thing.”

Nerys gives Winter one last glance, a towering goddess looking down at an ant, then turns away. Her tail lifts my waist, and her arms support my weight. With her help, I walk.

We leave the wall of sleep far behind, passing back into the red-black river of dream.

~~~~~~~

Pain is omnipresent, but it’s not pain that wakes me; I’ve had half a lifetime of learning to sleep through discomfort, no matter how bad. Pain ebbs and flows, drags me up toward the surface and dumps me back down just past the threshold of consciousness again, over and over in a timeless stutter-cycle. Might be minutes, could be hours, probably more like days.

But no more dreams, nothing more esoteric than my own fractured imagination projected onto the inside of my eyelids. No wall, no Winter, no Nerys.

Lying on my back. Eyes gummed shut. Limbs won’t move, too heavy.

Sometimes I’m not the only person here. Another presence comes and goes, hovers over me in the dark, wipes my face. Somebody else’s breathing keeps time with my own. Never speaks, nothing more audible than a low mutter. That doesn’t wake me either, not even when the silent presence rolls me halfway onto my side, adjusts something behind my back, and lowers me down onto fresh softness.

Smell wakes me in the end, with a side-order of taste: my own blood, clotted and dried on palate and throat, rank and rancid from hours of mouth-breathing.

Consciousness finally swells up inside and floods me full, taut as a balloon filled with entrails.

“Unnnnhhhh … uuuuuuhhhhnnnn … unnh … unnnh … ”

Grunting summons nobody, hurts my throat, and worsens the disgusting sensation of bloody dried mucus clogging my pipes. My eyelids part like old scabs, reluctant and crusty. A plain white ceiling stares back down, sullen in soft shadows.

“ … ‘lo? Ow.” Voice hurts, throat like poor-quality sandpaper soaked in a sewer.

Everything hurts, my back and my insides worst; no surprise after Willow hit me with a handful of relativistically accelerated pebbles. The surprise is that I’m alive at all, rather than a rapidly cooling collection of meat chunks and superheated metal. My back feels like every muscle has been pulled and every bone has been broken, shards of the latter peppering most of my organs, flesh minced, skin ragged.

“Up,” I grunt. “Up. Get … get up. Oct— Octavia. Get up.”

Sitting up takes a long time, berating myself doesn’t make it any faster. Ten or twenty minutes float by, during which I do little more than twitch and grunt and take wet-fluttering, clotted breaths, drifting off to sleep in fits and starts, always dredged back to the surface again by throbbing pain and the taste of blood and my own bone-dry mouth sticking to itself.

“Fuckin’ … fuck … get up. Up. Up!”

‘Up’ costs dearly. Obscure parts of me pop and crack and grind, while other parts stick and peel and threaten to collapse. Pain quivers close, a raw shivering hand at my throat that squeezes out an aborted scream, a guttural rasp, panting, drooling, snorting. A lesser fool would give up and lie back down; but I’m the biggest fool there ever was, and I’ve never been much good at giving up.

Legs are easier to move, and both of them seem to be present, so I shuffle them sideways until they go over a soft edge. Bare left foot touches plush carpet.

Standing might kill me.

So I just sit here.

Edge of a bed?

Hang forward, half-hunched. My back is on fire. I drift off again, drift back clearer, drool hanging from my lips.

“Pushed … pushed yourself … too far,” I mutter. “Too much. Paying for … for it now. Now. Focus. Useless fucking cripple. Focus.”

Open eyes. Raise head. Blink hard, clear sight.

A bedroom, larger and more cluttered than any bedroom has right to be; most of my grandmother’s flat could fit in here. Plush white carpet deep enough to swim in, off-cream walls plastered from floor to ceiling with posters — ninety percent of them magical girls, English and foreign, near and far, in every kind and style, from all around the world.

At the far end of the room a pair of sofas face a massive television set mounted on a hardwood entertainment centre. Nearer to hand stands a huge desk playing host to a very expensive pre-built computer, useless for anything real, but very flash, case in white with red highlights. A matching hardwood vanity stands next to a trio of full-length mirrors, set up so the owner of the room can parade before them. Three bookcases overflow with knickknacks and paperbacks. Mess lies on every surface, clothes draped over chair-backs, hairbrushes tossed into corners, underwear and bras balled up on the floor. Somebody seems to have been sleeping on one of the sofas, blankets and a pillow wedged at an awkward angle. Two doors, one closed, one open; the latter leads into a walk-in closet, clothes overflowing from what little I can see. Not the sort of room I have ever been welcome in; the sort of woman who lives in here would look down at me like something found on the bottom of her shoe.

Three windows, heavily curtained. A skylight in the ceiling too, tinted against the bright blue beyond.

Not on Luna, then.

“‘Lo?” I try again. Clear throat. Feels awful. “Hello? Nerys? Grimmy?”

A long squint at the magical girl posters everywhere reveals no clues as to where I am, not until my eyes wander back to the vanity and the desk. The posters around those show a clear theme in red and white.

Scarlet Edge; every poster in that close corner of the room is of Scarlet Edge. Promotional photos, glamour shots, newspaper cuttings, single-frame print outs from live footage, cartoons and public information posters and more. There’s even a few pieces of high-quality fanart, one or two in a certain familiar style. On the desk, flanking the computer monitor, stand a pair of very expensive figurines, probably of Japanese make. Both are of Scarlet Edge.

“No … no way,” I mutter. “No fucking way.”

I catch sight of myself in the trio of full-length mirrors. Almost laugh.

I’m a wreck. Still wearing the clothes in which I transformed, pajama bottoms and a t-shirt, sweat-soaked and rumpled, old bloodstains all down my flanks, spotted with crimson on my front. The bed on which I have been sleeping — a massive king-sized thing all in white and pink — is packed with bloody towels, most of which seemed to have been wedged beneath my back to absorb a truly inhuman amount of dried gore. My legs are fine, prosthetic intact, though I can feel the tell-tale tightening of skin inside the socket, the gummy residue of blood from abrading my amputation site.

Upstairs is much worse. I don’t have the energy to lift my t-shirt and examine the damage; feels like parts of me might fall out if I raise my arms too far. My left forearm and hand is a mass of dark red scabs, pockmarked and peeling, the remains of a thousand burst blisters, the aftermath of radiation burns on fast-forward. My prosthetic right arm grinds and scrapes as I lift it, plates of CFRN loose and cracked, held together only by copious amounts of carbon fibre tape. But it moves fine, and my mechanical fingers wiggle well enough, so the wiring must be undamaged. I raise it higher, use it to push my greasy hair out of my face.

My insides feel wrong, organs bruised and tender, bones brittle with fractures. Heart aches, beating too hard, too slow.

“Still alive though,” I say out loud, a painful rasp. “Not a … not a Dreamer. Huh.”

The wall of sleep came to me in a dream, and I resisted temptation.

Doesn’t feel like rebirth. Feels like I need repairs.

“Fucking hell,” I rasp, try to wet my lips, saliva like tar. “Nerys? Nerys? You were in that dream, you have to be nearby. Nerys … fuck’s sake … ”

A jug of water and a plastic cup stand on the edge of the desk, placed carefully at the far opposite end from the desktop computer itself, half a dozen paces from the bed. Thirst overrules better judgement and overpowers pain long enough to get me upright. Half a dozen paces almost defeat me, but then the nearest wall comes to my aid, shores up my left flank, even as my burned hand screams at the touch. Gets me back into the fight. Half a dozen paces feels like ten miles, but my prosthetic leg does most of the work, anchors me on the final step.

My right hand is strong enough to grab the jug. The plastic cup I abandon, tip the jug back against my lips, slurp and swallow and almost choke myself on the sweetest water that has ever been, snorting and panting and wiping my lips, water speckling my front, almost falling over again as I thump the jug down.

“Nerys!” I croak and gurgle, clear my throat, hack up a bolus of dried blood and mucus. Drink again, wash it all down, drain the whole jug. “Nerys. Fuck’s sake, Nerys, you have to be here. Nerys … ”

Myself in the mirror again, a bloodstained wraith with hollow eyes, lank greasy hair framing my face, dribbling water down my own front. The worst that Octavia Carter has ever been.

Except, for the first time ever, I’m neither ashamed nor disgusted by myself.

Because I’m still This Machine. The contours of the face I saw in the shelter’s mirror, those were mine all along, the same ones that stare back at me now, slit-eyed and pale from a fancy full-length mirror. The power I had out there, thundering through concrete and broken steel, that’s still mine. At a low ebb now, but still there, pilot lights keeping time inside. Transformation is only a thought away; inadvisable right now, but not impossible.

I reach out with my right hand, up toward the face in the mirror. Trace the line of my jagged scar, the flesh around the slit of my right eye.

“Really me. That was … was really me.”

This Machine was intoxicating.

Something moves down on the desk. I would flinch if I weren’t whole dimensions beyond sore.

What I had taken as another part of the expensive computer turns out to be an animal carrier, the kind of plastic box you might herd a cat into for a trip to the vet. A narrow grey snout presses itself against the metal mesh at the front, one beady black eye angled upward to get a good look at me.

“ … little guy.” I smile despite everything, then almost laugh, but stop because of rib pain. Would drop to my knees, but bad idea, I’ll never make it upright again. “Little guy, hey, hey you.”

It’s the zoog I rescued from the Nightmare. He greets me with a wordless rasp, then scrabbles at the mesh with his front paws, claws clicking on the metal, lopsided and awkward. I ease lower, more difficult than I expected, and peer into the carrier. He’s got a food bowl and a water dish in there. His right rear leg is dragging, wrapped in white bandages, a little ragged from where he’s been chewing at them.

“Out, out, out!” he rasps.

“Yeah, yeah, out. Let me … huh?” The animal carrier has been padlocked shut. Doesn’t budge when I tug on it. “Who the fuck padlocks an animal carrier? I can’t get this open, I’m sorry, I … ”

A chunk of familiar dark metal sits next to the animal carrier, a broken scrap twisted off some larger structure, stained with dark flakes of dried blood and a thin patina of machine oil.

My prosthetic fingers click against the material when I pick it up. Heavy, dense. Damn near imperishable.

This Machine.

“A piece of me?” I mutter, putting the chunk of black steel back on the desk. “No. No, come on, no. Can’t be. Can’t … ”

A sudden echo of pain shoots from low in my belly to high on my upper back, a channel through my core more urgent and real than the full-body aches from my fight with Willow.

At the far end of the room, the door opens. But I’m not surprised. I knew exactly who was coming.

She stands framed in the doorway, wide-eyed at me up on my feet, lips parted, left hand frozen in a flutter for her throat. She catches herself, steps inside, shuts the door quickly, fumbles for a latch, a lock, a bolt; the door has all three, but I wasn’t locked in. When she’s sealed us inside she leans back against the door, as if somebody might try to break it down. Am I her dirty little secret?

Long blonde hair, thin and wispy, frames a severe face, thin-lipped, sallow-cheeked, narrow-chinned. The kind of face naturally given to sour looks and haughty sneers, though she wears neither. Dark rings of unfamiliar stress surround sharp, pinched, difficult eyes. Taller than me, skinny and bony beneath her clothes. Dressed in white jogging bottoms with red trim, and a rumpled pale red t-shirt, with long sleeves all the way to her narrow wrists.

A purple bruise lingers on part of her lips, a hungry kiss imprinted on her mouth.

She straightens up and folds her arms over her chest, a tight cage around her body. Only then does she stalk across the room without a word, watching me like a deer with a crippled wolf. She stops way beyond arm’s reach, by the foot of the bed.

Can’t be her, but there’s no other explanation. A pinprick of pressure grows inside my head, makes my eyes water, too big for my mind to contain.

An echo of pain runs from belly to back once again, the shape of a sword my body remembers.

The pin-prick of pressure pops. The sword-wound is irrefutable.

I know who this is.

Try to raise my right fist, more instinct than volition, but I get less than halfway there. One punch would shatter my prosthetic forearm beyond recovery. And what’s the point? Whatever she wishes from me, I am at her mercy.

“Scarlet,” I rasp. “Francesca.”

Scarlet Edge — Francesca Fairfax — takes a deep breath, steels herself against the task. Wets her lips. Tries to raise her chin. When she speaks it is with her head turned slightly aside, as if she expects a sudden blow.

“How long have you been awake?” she says. Sharp, precise.

“Few minutes. How long was I down?”

Scarlet doesn’t answer right away, as if this information might give me some kind of advantage. “A few days. It’s Tuesday now. August the twenty sixth. Just past two in the afternoon.”

Days? I’ve been lying on that bed for days? How did I even get here? The others — Grimmy! — must be worried sick. No, Nerys would have told them, surely? Except that dream wasn’t literal, just a metaphor. Was Nerys even really there? How can I have been lying on that bed for days without food or water or—

“Your hair,” says Scarlet.

“What? What?”

“Your hair,” she repeats, then nods at me, as if I don’t know where my own hair is located.

“What about my fucking hair?”

“It’s … it’s longer. Much longer. Than when I first saw you. I mean.”

She stares at me like there’s any possible answer to such an inane statement. I stare back at her like there’s some kind of answer I can give. But words die on the way down from my brain. The last time Scarlet and I spoke — excepting when I screamed in her face during the fight — she sent me a selfie and I made her orgasm by making her bark for me. All that seems very distant and abstract right now, like something which happened between two other people, not us.

“You shouldn’t be up,” she says, sharpening her voice with a little tut. “You should lie down. Your wounds haven’t closed yet. They go right through you, all the way through, like … like … you just shouldn’t be up. Lie down.”

“I’ve been lying down for three days, apparently,” I croak. “I’ll rest when I—”

Try to take a step forward, not sure why; am I trying to get in her face? Doesn’t work, turns into a bad stumble, a grope for the edge of the desk. Impact runs up through my torso, twists open wounds bad enough to squeeze a strangled grunt from me, heaving and panting, eyes squinted hard.

Scarlet flinches too, jerks forward, hands out but doing nothing. She backs up just as quick, like being close to me brings her pain. She’s afraid I’ll fall down, because then she’ll have to catch me. Doesn’t want to touch.

Six slow paces back to the bed. Ease myself down onto the edge of the sheets. Sitting, not lying.

Scarlet folds her arms again. “Lie down.”

I stare. Dare her to try.

“Lie down,” she repeats. “Lie … lie … ”

That’s right. You don’t give me orders. That’s not the relationship we have, is it, Scarlet?

She sighs, looks away, shifts uncomfortably. “Your wounds are … well, not extensive, but very, very deep. I counted seven exit wounds in your back, though I haven’t … I didn’t … I didn’t strip you, to check, I mean.” A sharper sigh. She turns aside, shaking her head. “I don’t understand how you’re conscious right now. You certainly shouldn’t be able to stand. Even I wouldn’t be able to get up in that condition.”

“Used to being a cripple,” I croak. “Pain and me, we’re old friends. We have an arrangement.”

Scarlet squint-frowns in confused outrage, makes no sense of that. I raise my prosthetic arm, broken plates grinding against each other, and wiggle my fingers. A rueful smile sneaks onto my face; I am more of a wreck than I’ve ever been before, an objectively ugly thing, falling apart, unwashed for days, coated with dried blood. And yet I still feel glorious. Scarlet cannot look away.

“Fine,” she clicks. “Whatever you say. But you’re still wounded, Octavia. You’re not—”

“This Machine.”

Scarlet frowns. “Pardon?”

“This Machine,” I repeat. Could explain myself, but a perverse impulse wants her to stumble. “This. Machine.”

Scarlet nods slowly, surprises me. “Your true name?” A sharp huff, strangled at the end, disapproval averted. “Unconventional. But everything about you is unconventional. It … it fits, I see that. This Machine. You’re still wounded, This—”

“Don’t,” I grunt. “Don’t need to say the whole thing.”

“Machine, then?”

A shrug; bad idea, feels like the skin is being scraped off my back, fingers of pain worming against my spine. “Uhhnnn. No. No. Just. You can just say Octavia. M’not transformed right now.”

Scarlet purses her lips into a tight, pale line. She looks away, then up at the skylight, anywhere but me.

“This is your … ” I croak, clear my throat. “Your home?”

Scarlet blinks at me, as if alarmed by the question. “My family home, yes. Out in the countryside. West of Oxford by about twenty miles. We’re quite isolated here, but not actually that far from a main road.”

“Didn’t ask.”

She shoots me a pinched look, unimpressed. “I assumed you would want to know. You’re not my … my captive, or something, you … you’re not a prisoner. That’s not what this means.”

Silence. No traffic sounds or birdsong from outdoors. A trickle of something from deeper off in the house, maybe air conditioning or a boiler.

Scarlet hasn’t moved a step. Shoulders drawn inward. Chin tucked down. She does not look much like England’s ruby-red rose right now.

“Francesca,” I croak.

“Yes?” She says it like I’m being tiresome.

“Why am I alive?”

Scarlet Edge finally laughs, a single snort, harsh with derision. That gets her moving. She shakes her head and paces past the bed, arms still folded. She peers around the edge of one of the curtains, then paces back the other way, past me. Back and forth, back and forth, like a caged tiger.

“Luck, mostly,” she answers. “I’ve never seen a magical girl take that much punishment and live, not without a lot more magic to hand. But you got lucky. The moment you keeled over, the Nightmare was already dissolving. Do you know what that means?”

“Girl juice.”

She pauses, squints at me, baffled. “Excuse me? What-juice?”

“Girl juice.”

“Is that … that’s what you call it? You lot? The … the others? You’re serious?”

“Mmhmm. Magical energy. When the Nightmare went down.”

“ … yes, well.” She recovers, huffs, paces. “I suspect that sudden infusion is the only reason you didn’t die right there, though I don’t understand how you got that far in the first place. And then I … I didn’t have any other options. Your helmet came back up, so nobody else knew who you were. Except Azure, maybe. And I don’t know what was going on with her, what you did to her. Your … ‘companions’ were flitting about, but they couldn’t stay, there were too many of us by then, a dozen magical girls all descending to see what on earth had happened down in Parliament Square. Cleanup from Dream Control would be there within the hour, so I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t stall, I couldn’t. Your transformation might have reverted at any moment. So I picked you up.” She snorts with a single chuckle of derisive laughter again. “You weigh an absolute ton when transformed, did you know that? Like you’re made of metal on the inside, too. And there was nowhere else to take you. Nowhere you would be … unmolested.”

Silence reigns for a few awkward seconds. Scarlet swallows, then turns her face up to the skylight, stares at the patch of shaded blue sky.

“Not what I meant,” I croak.

Her attention snaps back down to me. “What? What do you mean, then? What are you talking about?”

“Why am I alive?” I repeat.

“I just told you!” she snaps. “You survived because of luck and—”

“Scarlet. Why haven’t you killed me?”

Scarlet Edge — the rose of England’s dreams, the de-facto leader of the Trio of Albion, the most powerful magical girl in the country, if not the world — stares right through me. She opens her mouth, closes it again. Wets her lips. Hesitates.

“Because … you … you and the Dreamer … she … ”

“I think I’ve proven that Willow isn’t going to give me a ‘bad death’, or enslave me again, or whatever. I’m beyond her control now. Burnt it out. Shrugged it off. Nearly won.”

“I … I didn’t … I didn’t know all the details, I—”

“You saw it happen.”

Scarlet stares at a distant spot of the floor, arms folded tight. She takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. Still can’t answer.

Because we shared something neither of us can process, over the internet, on a plain-text chat program, in the middle of the night. Because we showed each other things that we haven’t shown anybody else. Because she dressed up for me and put a leash around her throat, and she wasn’t joking, wasn’t playing around, wasn’t pretending.

I had ‘cybersex’ with this woman. I made her bark for me. Apparently I made her cum.

She spared my life. Saved me, perhaps.

I open my mouth. “Thank—”

“Because,” she says, speaks over me without knowing, my own gratitude too thin, “because you were wounded. Slaying you when you’re wounded, when you’re down, when you can’t fight back, it … it would have satisfied me, once.” Her eyes flicker back to me, haunted and distant. “But I don’t … I didn’t want to. Not when you couldn’t give your all, to match up to me. Which is what you deserve.”

“You saved me because, what? You want me recovered so we can fight to the death?”

“Don’t you?”

“Scarlet. If I win, it won’t be to the death.”

Francesca’s lips part, quivering on quickened breath. A full-body shiver takes her. “You can’t say that,” she whispers. “I would never … never … submit … ”

“Woof woof.”

Scarlet Edge freezes.

“Go on,” I say. “Woof.”

Her lips begin to form the sound, a little bark for me — but then she turns away, arms folded tight to contain her own shaking.

Stunned by my own boldness; if I was any less injured and exhausted I would not have the capacity to think these thoughts, let alone speak them out loud. Scarlet Edge saved me because I offered her a way out of this, a glimpse into another way to be; she doesn’t want me to duel her, she wants me to win, and put a leash around her throat for real. She wants to bark for me.

Or maybe we’re just vile little creatures, oversexed and confused. Maybe I’m concussed.

“Scarlet. Francesca,” I croak. “We … on the internet, you and I, we—”

Francesca unfolds like she’s received a covert electric shock. She huffs sharply and whirls into action, checking the jug of water I’ve drained, peering into the zoog’s cage to see if he needs more food, crossing to the bed, fluffing up the pillows, stripping away the worst of the bloodstained towels. She produces a rubbish bag from one pocket, unfolds it with a snap of her wrists, and shovels the soiled towels inside, then quickly ties it shut at one end.

“You’re going to need more padding,” she says, crisp and businesslike. “You’re still bleeding through that shirt. Another day on your back and maybe you’ll be strong enough to walk. You need fluid, food, and rest. I can bring the first two, but you’re responsible for the third, so lie down. Maybe in twelve hours we can get you in the shower, or, or something. So lie down. Lie down!”

“I’m getting the fuck out of here,” I say.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snaps. “You can’t even walk five paces—”

“Six paces.”

“Oh, for the love of God, are you always like this?! Are you this irritating and obstinate all the time?”

“Yes.”

“Lie down!”

“No.”

“Argh! You—” Scarlet flinches back as I raise my fist.

She’s right though, however entertaining it is to wind her up. I’m not going anywhere under my own power; raising my right arm and making a fist confirms that I am totally and utterly drained, no juice left for translocation, I wouldn’t survive the jump. Whatever infusion I received from the Nightmare has been entirely consumed by homeostasis and self-repair. I lower my hand into my lap, stymied.

“Shit,” I grunt. “Great.”

“What now!?”

“I can’t translocate.” A glance up at Scarlet. “Can you do that? Do you even call it the same thing?”

A roll of her eyes. “Of course we call it the same thing. And yes, of course I can.”

“Wow. You’re even spikier than me.”

“Excuse me?!”

“Just an observation, Francesca. Not necessarily a critique.” She snorts again, a non-laugh and a shake of her head. “Do you know where I’m trying to translocate to?”

She hesitates, then shrugs. “I assume you people have some kind of hideout. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but no. Nobody knows the location. Not us, at any rate.”

I cannot tell Scarlet Edge about Plato Base, the risk is simply too great. She is not some broken hound eating out of my hand. She may never be. She is the leader of the Trio of Albion; she has murdered countless non-Lucid Dreamers, and probably quite a few prospective magical girls, women who should have been my comrades. Very difficult to keep that in mind right now, faced with this scrawny, caustic thing, quivering on the edge of her own revelations, at which I can only guess.

Besides, Nerys said that earth-bound magical girls can’t visit the moon anyway.

I catch the eye of the zoog in the animal carrier, little claws clinging to the bars, beady eyes on me. I raise my right index finger to my lips. Keep them sealed, little guy. I told you about Luna, but don’t tell her.

Scarlet Edge clears her throat. “And of course you can’t tell me.”

“No offence.”

“None taken,” she hisses.

I pat the pockets of my pajama bottoms, feeling for my mobile phone, but there’s nothing. Scarlet Edge watches in silence, then steps over to her desk and pulls open one of the drawers. She holds up my phone, a bit battered, screen protector cracked, but intact.

“It survived,” I grunt. “Huh.”

“Do not,” she says, placing it on the desk, well beyond my reach, “turn it on. The moment you turn it on, Dream Control will know where you are. They’re very good at tracking phones. Even here, in my own house, they won’t hold back. If you want to call your companions, it won’t work. There’s no way to do it, I’ve already thought it over.”

“Mm. Well. Don’t know any numbers anyway.” Though I’m sure Signal would pick up something if I cast a line into the water, metaphorically speaking. I hold out my prosthetic hand. “Your phone?”

Scarlet frowns. “To do what?”

“Go fishing.” Scarlet doesn’t budge. “Alright, I don’t know. I don’t know how to contact anybody. Though Nerys should know already, she should know where I am, she was … ”

Scarlet says nothing, but stiffens at Nerys’ name. I try to straighten up. She swallows.

“I can’t stay here,” I croak. “I can’t. What about your sister?”

Scarlet’s face goes cold with confusion. “My sister? She’s out right now.” she murmurs, suddenly sharp. “What on earth does my sister have to do with you? She’s a mundane. How do you even know that I have a sister? What do you people know about me?”

“Ahh shit.” So worn out I forgot for just long enough to say something very stupid; Scarlet doesn’t know about Bright.

Besides, if Bright knew I’d been bleeding all over her sister’s bed for the last three days, she would probably kill me, and I’m in no state to resist.

“How do you know about my sister?!” Scarlet demands. “How—”

“Forget it,” I huff. “It’s not important.”

Scarlet quite clearly does not forget anything. She stares me down, a tiny blaze behind her eyes.

“Fuck,” I hiss. Then louder. “Fuck. I’m stuck here, then? In here?”

“I already said, you’re not a prisoner—”

“I can’t walk out by myself, and I can’t contact anybody, or DC will pick me up. I need juice, or a friend, or translocation!” I spit. “And you’re going to have to find one of them or—”

Scarlet steps forward, both hands making a shushing gesture. “Keep your voice down!” she hisses. “I can only hide you if you stay reasonably quiet! We’re not the only ones in the house. My parents might be around. My sister does live here, some of the time. So. Be quiet.”

Shut my lips. Feel vaguely nauseated.

“You’re gonna have to contact my friends,” I croak.

Scarlet shrugs, spreads her hands, exasperated. “How? How would I do that?”

Turn on my phone and hope Signal is faster than Dream Control. Talk to your sister and pray she doesn’t decide to rip my head off my shoulders. Feed me some of your own girl juice so I can translocate.

My turn to sigh. Hurts. “I don’t know. Fly to the other side of the world and turn my phone on. Wait for my friends to find you.”

“Ah, yes, so they can try to kill me? Use myself as bait? No.”

“That won’t … mm.”

Scarlet finally stands up straight, seems to shed some of her trepidation. She nods, more to herself than to me. “Another day and you might be well enough to travel. Then you can fly yourself out of here whenever you like.” She pauses, catches my look. “What? What is it now?”

“Can’t fly.”

Rapid blinks, a stunning confusion. Makes me want to laugh. “You can’t fly? But you transformed!”

“Voice down, Scarlet. Might get us overheard.”

“Tch! You can’t fly? You’re not joking?”

“That’s what I said.”

Scarlet shakes her head and looks away. “Then you can translocate, I suppose? As soon as you’re recovered. Another day, another night’s sleep. You can be off then.”

This time I do laugh. Hurts, a lot, each tiny convulsion wracking my torso with pain. But it’s too much, too funny.

“What?” Scarlet demands. “What!?”

“Aren’t I your enemy, Scarlet? I’m the enemy. A villain, in your bedroom. Public enemy number one. A wanted terrorist. I’m at your mercy, and you just … mm, nurse me better? Whose side are you even on, Scarlet? What would Azure and Dawn think?”

“They have nothing to do with this,” she hisses, gone cold.

“Sleeping a night, here in your bed, huh?” I rasp out. “Not like we haven’t done it already, though you got to have most of the fun.” Can barely believe the words coming out of my mouth; I knew it, I knew I was always like this, but it feels so good to say it out loud. Only wish I wasn’t so exhausted and bleeding all over myself.

Scarlet’s cheeks colour with a bright blush. She steps back, rubbish bag in one hand, looks down her nose at me. But her haughty superiority is only skin-deep. Her eyes shimmer with trapped tears.

“Don’t make it into a joke,” she hisses, voice quivering. “Don’t make it vulgar, don’t you dare—”

“Not making it vulgar, I’m serious—”

“—don’t you dare mock—”

“—I’m not—”

“—stop it, stop it, stop it—”

“Good girl.”

Scarlet stops, brain short-circuited. She gapes at me, wide-eyed and frozen, not even blushing, just stunlocked.

“Good girl,” I repeat.

Scarlet takes three deep breaths, slow at first, then faster, as if restarting herself. She steps back and swallows hard.

“You need a meal,” she says. “Proper food, after three days burning through your reserves. And that thing in there,” she gestures at the zoog, “needs its water dish topping up.”

“Scarlet—”

But she’s retreating now, across the ostentatious jumble of her bedroom. She almost cracks her hip on the edge of one of the sofas.

“Wait, wait here,” she says. “Don’t try to leave the room. And don’t open the windows. Don’t touch anything. Just … don’t touch anything.”

“Francesca—”

“Wait there!” she snaps, goes for the door. “Just wait. Wait.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

Scarlet pauses at the door, turns back wild-eyed, like a surprised deer caught in a clearing. “You’re not my prisoner,” she hisses. “I can’t hold you, Octavia. I don’t have the right. No more than anything could hold me. Now wait. Just wait. Don’t— don’t do anything stupid.” A pause. “Please.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

The last place Octavia ever expected to awaken. And perhaps not the safest, whatever Scarlet says.

Better get out of here fast, Occy. Before Scarlet changes her mind.

Welcome to arc 6! This one is a doozy; I originally planned for this arc to be really short, maybe 3-4 chapters. Behind the scenes it’s already hit 4, and is probably gonna go to 6-7. So! Strap in, don’t ask Scarlet too many questions, and … well. We’ll see!

And there is more this week! I have fanart to share, from over on the discord sever!

First up we have ‘Birth of a Magical Girl‘ (by cubey) (Warning for gore!), capturing Octavia’s moment of mad laughter back in arc 1! Then we have a fascinating collage-based rendition of the selfies Octavia took in arc 5 (by Lettuce Puppy); see the zoog there too! And lastly, a simple piece, titled ‘Sorry I Sexted Your Sister‘ (by Arachnopuss), though I don’t think it’s going to work on Bright. Also, I have once again updated the memes page with several new additions, for those who enjoy a little nonsense now and again! Thank you to everybody who’s made fanart and memes and fun little pictures, it’s incredibly flattering to see!

Meanwhile, if you want more Maidens right away, you can always:

Subscribe on Patreon!

Right now my patrons have access to three chapters ahead! For the moment I’m going to try to keep it as three; in the future I hope to push this out to more.

As always, thank you so much, dear readers. Maidens would not exist without all of you; Octavia would have nobody to follow her down into the dark depths of wherever the hell it is she’s going. Thank you all for being here!

Next chapter, break bread with the enemy, or try to find a way out? This Machine is in no state to move far under her own power. Uh oh.