Content Warnings

Alcohol abuse / alcoholism
Internalised homophobia
Ableism
Suicidal ideation
Sexual objectification (not even sure if this is accurate, I am struggling to come up with the right warning for this.)
Sexual content
Self harm

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Plato Base is well-suited and well-situated for rest, recovery, rehabilitation.

Two hundred and thirty eight thousand miles distant from England, far beyond the reach of the British government, GCHQ, Dream Control, the Trio of Albion, or any other magical girls who fancy their chances. A hidden fortress on the moon, a forgotten leftover from an obscure dark age, tucked away in the shadows of the Montes Alpes, dug into the side of a nameless peak, deep in the pan-lunar Dreamland overlap. Property of a Dream-God from beyond the human collective subconscious. Spoils of a just war. Solid, stable, insensible.

Quiet concrete halls. Dull secluded rooms. Soaring ceilings and monolithic walls surfaced with rainbow-mad graffiti. Murals snaking down into darkness and silence. Distant whispers of moon-wind against the roof, creeping through the silver-black forests on the mountain slopes above. Creaking, pattering, scraping in the deep, half-imagined dream-things slinking through the black levels beneath. An ever-present chitter-chatter hish-hush rasp-rush of zoog voices, exposed claws clicking along the floors.

Nobody’s around. At least no humans. Moon Beasts aplenty, a far-off abstract. Dozens or hundreds of furtive zoogs, but zoogs don’t judge, zoogs don’t ask. Tissy, ‘Tistis’, unseen and unheard except when she knocks, perhaps not real after all.

Occasionally one must endure unwelcome interruptions. Those can be safely ignored, with the door to my cell shut and locked and bolted up tight.

I’m doing plenty of what passes for rest, precious little recovery, certainly no rehabilitation.

I am a widening gyre of madness and rot.

Sleep has occupied as much of the last three days as it can bear. Crying claims the lion’s share of all else, when I’m not staring at the ceiling or wrapped up in a reeking cocoon of blankets, my waking hours disjointed and decayed. My tears are neither clean nor pretty, not the kind one might expect from a so-called ‘magical girl’; I am ugly as old sin when I cry, but I cannot bring myself to care. Weeping and wailing, so quickly turns to screaming. Sobbing into my pillow, raking at my face, then hurling the offending mass at the wall, just to have something to hurt. Stripping the sheets from the bed in one-armed, wordless, screeching rage; crying on the floor, squeezed into a corner, big sodden full-body wracking sobs, trying to make the world go away. Piling the bedclothes back on the mattress, a disordered heap, lying atop the mess, wrapping myself within, passing out, spent, exhausted, done, dead.

Thus is all that’s left of Octavia Carter. Embarrassing, yes; mortifying, even. But corpses have no dignity.

Dreamless sleep would be a blessing, but I’m cursed. Nightmares lurk in ambush just behind the wall of sleep, with knives for my gut and cudgels for my skull and cleavers to take off my limbs. Mundane nightmares, picking over the remains of my shrivelled carcass every time I close my eyes.

Mostly I dream of Willow.

Normal things, everyday nothings, half-remembered events, all gone grey and ghostly, because in truth they never happened. Willow’s face, contours in perfect clarity; Willow’s smile, beaming bright and wide and happy for me; her hair in my hands, her scent in my nose, her touch against my skin, her lips on mine. The slow, soft, sighing sibilance of her voice, whispers in my ears, words running together, meaning everything and nothing. The Willow I’ve known for half my life, my best friend, my only friend, a canvas for my self and a beacon for me to follow, proof that the world is not all evil, that good things can exist, that I am not alone. But then she turns in the shadow of toxic golden light and the other truth makes itself undeniable. The Dreamer I never saw, a mask of human skin stretched over something that has forgotten how to be a person. My lost Eden collapses into a cold jagged hell. Willow laughs and points and bites off pieces of my dwindling body, chewing at the ragged stumps of bleeding limbs, my flesh turning rotten, falling from my bones, sliding through my fingers.

Then I wake. Back to crying.

The other dreams refuse to return — the red-black dreams. Transcendent visitations that I mistook for violation. A mirror of myself in black steel armour, molten furnace where a heart used to beat, masked by a slice of the void, fists clad in ageless metal. She’s not coming to rescue me from Willow anymore. As if she’s grown shy, now I’ve figured out that I am her and she is I.

Transformation is further away than ever. In lucid moments between unquiet oblivion and uncontrolled weeping, I stare into the little mirror above the sink, watched by the slit of my right eye and the sunken, dark-ringed, bloodshot socket of my left. Visualise that mask, that other face, my own face. Strain and focus and grit my teeth. Scream and shout and pull at my hair, bite my lips until I taste blood, hit myself in the head with my left fist.

Willow has taken everything. The last ten years of my life. Who and what I believed I was. And now even the cold consolation of transformation. She has hollowed out the means of my escape.

Octavia Carter, the scraps of a girl who died ten years ago, has been scraped up off the concrete, and pronounced dead.

For the first day I have no idea what time it is, either up here on Luna or down there in England, because I don’t particularly care to find out. Days, weeks, months, years, all could pass, and I would continue to rot, so what difference does it make? My mobile phone waits on the little desk, but crossing the distance seems impossible, not least because of the grisly accompaniment I must face when I arrive at that desolate and mocking shore. But eventually the crying and the screaming and the sleeping abates long enough, so I embark on the voyage, stumble over to the table.

My prosthetic arm lies on the desk. My own right arm. In two pieces. Bisected and broken. Carefully arranged. As if for inspection.

That’s me! Entrails spilled out, skin peeled back, ruined on the inside, cut apart on the outside.

A spasm passes through the naked stump of my right arm. Phantom pain tingles and throbs and aches and burns down a limb long-gone, intangible fingers squeezed into a rock-tight fist, invisible muscles clenched hard, cramp creeping into my shoulder, my chest, the side of my neck.

My mobile phone sets off a fresh round of torture. Willow’s still in there, the main subject and devoted centre in a decade of photographs, peering from behind the digits of her number, smeared all over the call logs and text messages. Rip her out, purge the whole lot, it’s the only solution, the only possible act which makes any sense.

But I sit in bed and rock and cry and grit my teeth and try not to scream as the phone weighs down the blankets like lead shot, because I can’t bring myself to do it. I cannot make myself delete all this evidence that I once loved her.

Can’t bear to let her go. She still has me, because she’s all I had.

Another long sleep. More dreams of her.

When I wake again, I’m numb enough to use my mobile phone for other things, to confirm that beyond my concrete tantrum, the world still turns. I lie on my side in bed, face lit by the glow from the little screen, lips slack, eyes hard to focus.

We’re all over the news, British and international, informal and official, sober and irreverent. We are the current event, the main event, the only thing anybody is talking about down there. ‘We’ — myself and the girls from Luna, along with the mandatory heroics from the Trio of Albion. Too many phone camera videos to suppress them all, too many livestreams that caught most of our fight, too vast and ragged a rupture with the last four decades of assumptions and natural order and common sense. The first time magical girls have fought magical girls, anywhere in the world, at least that anybody knows about. And it happened right there, on the doorstep of London’s sealed casket, in the benighted and blasted isle where the crisis first began.

The whole world has seen the footage by now. Culture shock is a palpable thing, thrumming through the bold print of a hundred thousand headlines and the words of a million internet discussions. Threads on every imageboard and forum that I care to glance at. Hundreds of videos picking apart the footage, filled with speculation and commentary and total nonsense.

Grimgrave, Burning Bright, The Locus of Lost Signals; clever minds have divined their titles, first from snippets of badly filtered audio, then from the full and supposedly ‘unedited’ video released by none other than Signal herself. The collective internet has it all by now, organised and timestamped, subtitled and highlighted.

Pixelated phone camera views of Grimgrave shouting at the Trio. The stutter-step optical illusion of Bright and Signal arriving via translocation. The awe-inspiring whirl and chaos of open melee.

Me, ‘Octavia Carter’, haloed by a faint smudge of paradoxical red-black light, all the earthly evidence of the purity of purpose I felt in that moment. A flickering, stuttering, half-glimpsed ghost, that was all I amounted to. My fist crashing into Scarlet’s face.

My failure, my collapse. A thousand speculations about what it all means.

Willow, a scrap of toxic gold, tossed from the roof, bleeding mad dream-light as she falls.

Analysts and arguments dissect us from every angle. The Battle of Oxford Holton, a watershed in world history. Where are these new magical girls from, and what do they want? Are those the real words Scarlet Edge spoke, or clever forgeries made with generative artificial intelligence — as the British government claims? Japanese imageboards blossom with thousands of drawings of Grimgrave and Bright. Social media hums with OSINT speculation about Signal, wandering what lies under the armour of her strange minions, and the precise nature of the aborted attack run on the hospital. Fanbases have sprung up overnight like mushrooms, debating the finer points of the duel between Grimgrave and Scarlet, insisting that Scarlet was about to finish things, or that Grimgrave is invincible because clowns and jesters work under special, unique, different rules. Gun nuts from America have analysed Grimgrave’s firearms down to the smallest available detail, spilling forth lists of specs that mean nothing. Azure Infinity’s personal defenders have logged on, cooking up 3D depictions of her slaying Burning Bright; the less invested ones have gone further, more interested in what may have happened if the fight had been more intimate.

BBC news is crammed with talking heads. What does this mean for national defence and Dream Control? It was the Russians, the Chinese, a secret plot by terrorists, these girls aren’t who they claim they are, the public must remain calm, the woman seen toward the end of the footage is unknown, not a Dreamer, not something we’re currently concerned about. Yes, we’re still looking for Octavia Carter. No, this changes nothing. Yes, we’re still in control.

Nobody’s in control of this. They need to change the narrative; they’ll pull something over the weekend, perhaps something mundane, distract the papers and the news with some shiny bauble or fresh scandal. Won’t work.

Everyone’s really into Burning Bright. Big red dragon-girl breathing fire. The smarter corners of the internet are picking up on what she said to Scarlet Edge, words that Signal didn’t edit out of her footage releases. The darker corners of the internet are drawing her in ways I can’t believe, ways that make my eyes pop out of my head, equipping her with muscles in excess of reality, or body parts she doesn’t possess.

The open secret parts of the internet are talking about Y Ddraig Goch, the red dragon of Wales, omens and signs and the imminent collapse of the British crown.

None of it means a thing. Why is anybody still talking? How does the world carry on, when mine has stopped so completely?

Tissy keeps me fed. Metal carts appear outside my locked door three times a day, announced by sudden triple knocks. Protein-rich breakfasts, thick sandwiches for lunch, dinners hearty and simple, multivitamins on the side. I eat on the floor, limp and unwashed, cry into my food more than once. On the second day my stomach and lungs and throat are so sore that I vomit it all back up, then fall asleep curled on my side next to the toilet, can’t be bothered to move.

When I do keep it down, sleep comes without dreams, blissful oblivion, no tears when I wake. Tissy might be drugging my food, but I don’t give a shit. She could dose me with opiates and gin for all I care. Drown me in chemical haze. Make me forget.

Tissy isn’t the only one who visits my door, but she is the only one whose gifts I will admit.

Signal makes two attempts. Denuded grey skeletons lurk in the corridor, waiting for me to open up after Tissy leaves the food. Signal babbles at me through her speakers. Are you alright, Octavia? Are you sleeping, are you washing, are you doing okay? It’s not a good idea to isolate yourself like this, Octavia. We’re all here for you, Octavia. We’ll respect your privacy and right to be alone, Octavia. But. But. But.

You can break down this door any time you want, Signal. And why not? There’s nothing in here but a corpse.

I slam the door in her face.

Grimgrave doesn’t ambush, doesn’t try to coax me out, doesn’t even complain. She bangs on the door with the flat of her hand, shouts through the metal.

“Mornin’, Occy! It’s me! As if you couldn’t guess, haha—” “—how’s it rockin’ in there? Tissy made you curry, the good shit like, with the coconut—” “—still kinda sore? Yeah, I getcha. Fucks you up, using a ton of girl-juice like that—” “—miss you, Occy!” “—got that laptop set up in there yet? You got games on it, right? Wanna try—” “—Tissy’s doing cake or something, you like chocolate or—” “Night, Occy!” “Occy!” “Occy!” “Occy!”

I don’t reply, but she never stops. Doesn’t even slow down. Three whole days.

Why did you try to save a corpse, Grimgrave? I never deserved such kindness. You don’t deserve to see the result.

I have no memory of how they got me back to my new bedroom in Plato Base, unconscious before Grimgrave finished the translocation. Signal probably carried me, slung between a pair of skeletons like a sack of wet ashes. Equally a mystery who removed most of my clothes or took the intact half of my prosthetic arm off my stump, but none of the possible answers are palatable ones, so I avoid the thought.

But I do recall stumbling to the door as soon as I was able, turning the lock, bolting myself in, screaming for everyone to leave me alone.

According to Grimgrave’s cheerful trans-doorway yelling, I was in no state to be left untreated after I passed out. She and Signal were not certain if magical girl physiology could shrug off that particular malady, because they’d never seen it before. They guessed it was the reason I’d collapsed on the hospital rooftop, after Scarlet Edge had cut my prosthetic arm in half.

Apparently, I had a heart attack.

Body catching up with my soul, that’s all. Now it knows I’m dead.

After three days of sleeping and crying and screaming, my tantrum finally dribbles out.

Alone in my concrete cell, sitting upright in bed, staring at nothing. Dry, numb, empty, done. Another unfair nightmare cobwebs the back of my mind, Willow’s face and Willow’s lips and Willow’s soft hands. But I’ve got nothing left to give, no matter how bad the torture. I consider lying back down, but my body lets me know that’s not an option any longer. I’ve slept enough.

Not quite clear-headed, but closer than I’ve been in a very long time.

Check my phone. Still there.

11:38 in the morning, on the 20th of August, 2025. A Wednesday.

Phantom pain needles dead nerves, pesters me to massage the stump of my right arm. Can’t unclench those intangible fingers without my prosthetic. I kick back the bed covers, wobble to my feet, pad over to the desk.

My prosthetic arm waits right where I left it, neatly cut into two pieces, right through the forearm. The edges of the wound are melted from the internal heat of Scarlet’s ruby sword, carbon fibre warped out of shape, foam blackened and burned, wiring severed and fused. A limb of flesh and blood would be bisected through the ulna and radius, at the exact midpoint of each bone, arteries cauterised shut, meat cooked and charred.

All the most expensive and delicate components are undamaged. The battery and myoelectric pickups in the upper arm are thankfully intact. Repairs are possible, difficult, costly, but not entirely beyond my skills.

I pick up the forearm, inspect the hand. My hand. The fingers are a bit scuffed and scraped from where it fell to the concrete, but the complex joints and miniature motors are probably fine, built to withstand a bit of knocking about, though I’ve no way to tell without repairing the wires first.

Greyish residue still stains the palm and fingers. Willow’s brain-slug.

“If you were a Dreamer all along,” I murmur, “why didn’t you remake my limbs? Why, Willow? Did you prefer me as a cripple?”

Tears threaten a storming return; now I’ve finally stopped, I don’t want to start again.

I put the hand down and pick up the rear half of my prosthetic, everything from the socket to the back half of the forearm, elbow joint hanging limp. Press it to my stump, hold it in place. Try to unclench my phantom fingers, relax the invisible muscles. Doesn’t work.

Awkwardly, knowing it’s absurd, I half-crouch, press the two halves of the wound together, will my arm to remake itself. I’m a magical girl now, aren’t I? Shouldn’t my wounds close by themselves? Where’s my regeneration, my healing, my replacement parts? Or is it only the beautiful ones who deserve that boon? The ones who were intact and whole in the first place.

Nothing happens. Blink back another wave of tears. Leave the arm on the desk.

I strip, shuffle over to the frosted glass shower cubicle in the corner, turn the water on high and hot, then sit on the floor underneath the stream of steaming heat. Hair sticks to my face and neck. My chest shudders and quivers, like my heart might mount a second rebellion. Water pools between my legs, around my backside, sluicing along the dam of my prosthetic leg. Water-resistant, but not waterproof. Don’t care if it breaks. May as well finish dismantling myself.

Soap and shampoo seem utterly superfluous, but habit carries me through. Half-clean, half-washed, half-dried on the towel by the sink, I locate my pajamas, the ones Tissy brought to the room on my first night in Plato Base. Don’t bother with underwear, it’s filthy anyway. Slip the robe over the top, big and fluffy, almost too much. Right sleeve hangs limp, so I tuck it into the soft belt on the robe.

“No more sleep. No more crying,” I croak, staring at myself in the mirror. Corpse face, drained, pale. “Do something, you child. Get up. Prove her wrong.”

My sports bag sits just inside the door, filled with the debris of a lie.

Clothes. Should have remembered these before I eschewed underwear, but I’m not getting back out of the pajamas now, though I do put a sock on my left foot. My two old furbies go on the bedside table, for later, for never. My diary stays in the bag, a record of nothing but false memories and somebody else’s dreams. Perhaps I can burn it?

Out comes the waterproof Faraday bag with my laptop nestled safely inside. I shake it free, extract the charging cable, get everything laid out on the desk, next to the remains of my arm. The cable is long enough to reach the power strip on the other side of the room. Plug it in, both ends, wait for the little light to come on. Battery’s still good.

Sit down. Pull the chair toward the desk. Open the laptop. Routine begins to take over, familiar and comfortable, more solid than any dream. Hit the power button, wait for the blank screen with the blinking cursor. Input the password to peel open the encryption on the drive. Wait for the Arc logo. Log in to the operating system. Wallpaper blossoms with the fractal perfection of interlocking tessellation.

At least this place was real. A little rectangle of my private world.

A few moments later I’ve got wireless internet connection. Plato Base boasts three networks, to my mild surprise. One is a string of numbers that I can’t wrap my head around. Another is just called ‘Pirate Radio Antenna Uplink – PRAU’. The third has been recently renamed to ‘OCTAVIA FEEL FREE TO USE THIS’, and requires no password.

“You watching, Signal?” I murmur. “As if I care.”

Boot up Steam. My account still exists. Not sure if I should be surprised by that.

I stare at the names of my favourite factory games for a very long moment, with a decision to make, strange fear in the back of my throat, a taste like iron and rust.

What if this part of me was also a dream? My skills, my passions, were those all Willow’s make believe? I half-recall showing her all of these games, my favourites, something I’m good at, something I know. Memory tells me I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into some of these, thousands into a few. But what if that’s all lies? What if I’m not an engineer, what if I know nothing? What if I don’t enjoy the things I thought I did?

My hand hovers over an easy option. The shallow end of the pond. Stellar Uplift Program or Satisfactation.

“These are mine,” I hiss. “This is mine. You can’t take this away.”

Factory-Oh it is, right in the deep end. And not one of my half-dozen ‘completed’ worlds either. I don’t want to tinker with the vast virtual machines I’ve built. I want to prove that this was me all along; I want to lose myself in this, to stop existing or thinking for as long as I can manage.

Five minutes later, in a fresh world, I realise I can’t play with one hand. Trackpad, clicking, keyboard shortcuts, they’re not impossible with only my left, but everything takes more than double the time. I’ve played hundreds of hours of Factory-Oh; I know the game inside out, or so memory says. But I can’t lose myself when I’m a cripple.

“Fuck. Fuck you. Fuck … ” Gonna cry again. Bite it back.

I need a mouse, then I can play with one hand. And I know just where to find one.

Nobody’s waiting in ambush when I crack open the door and step out into the cold concrete hallways of Plato Base.

On my right the corridor stretches off into darkness, where the lights have failed. On my left there’s no skeleton this time, just the empty junction back to the Big Room. No zoogs, no Grimgrave, only a distant whisper of wind against the far-off roof, muffled by layer upon layer of concrete.

I wait one step over the threshold, eye the clashing pink door to Grimgrave’s room. ‘FRONT TOWARD ENEMY’, not quite toward me.

She might have heard me emerge. Might burst out and make noise at me. Might accompany me to the Big Room.

My lips part. Against my will. “Grimgrave … ”

No. Don’t want to see anybody.

“Grim … Grimmy … ?”

Seconds ooze past. Grimgrave’s door stays shut. I turn my shoulders away and pad down the corridor, sticking to my plan. Dressed in a half-open robe and pajamas, no underwear, no shoes, no right arm. Plastic right foot on full display, scraping with each step. May as well be stark naked.

Down the concrete corridor, shuffling footsteps echoing off the ceiling. A turn to the right, more concrete hallway, a knot of tension in my throat. If Signal’s at her desk, this plan is worthless, because then I’ll need to ask her for permission. Perhaps I can do so via a series of wordless grunts. Maybe I can just ignore her. Ignore me, Signal. Just a dead thing walking.

But I’m in luck. The Big Room of Plato Base is empty. Of humans and their analogues, at least.

After three days of internal exile in my blank concrete cell, the brilliant rainbow graffiti and open vault of the Big Room is like stepping into raw sunshine. I pause, blinking, blinded, running my gaze over the rainbow-hued walls, the gigantic murals, the cartoon-encrusted columns. Zoogs are scattered about the domesticated corner as they always seem to be, dozing in little huddles, piled in the big animal bed, rooting through the mess; many of them look up as I enter, pausing, tails gone stiff. But then they ignore me, a harmless swaying corpse. Zoogs are smarter than humans.

The quad-television setup is tuned to some kind of nature documentary in the jungle, sound turned down to a whisper. A wide cluster of zoogs are glued to the action, watching a tarantula hunting among the leaves, their eyes wide with rapt fascination, jaws open in anticipation, claws clutching at the rugs.

No Grimgrave on the sofas, no Signal at her desk, no Bright at the big metal table.

Gregory the dead Moon Beast is present and correct, floating in his glass tank of cloudy preservative; I half-nod to him, one corpse to another.

I shuffle deeper, along the edge of the domesticated corner, tempted to sit down in one of the armchairs, join the zoogs. Their simple attention feels so real right now. I could sit in a chair and watch the television and stop thinking for a while. Think like a zoog and everything becomes easier.

Yet I know my mind would wander. Something so passive won’t work well on me. My eyes trail up the walls, to that slogan I finally understand, in big red letters.

‘HOME IS DEAD TO ME AND I AM DEAD TO HOME’

A loose circle of zoogs are asleep on the metal table as well, lying on cushions and a mess of blankets, surrounding a separate animal bed, a smaller one that I haven’t see before, with high sides and a plush bottom. I shuffle closer, shaking my head, a laugh in my mind but not on my lips.

“All you things do is sleep,” I say. “Sleep, sleep, sleep. Just like me. Given half … a … chance … ”

Nerys is in the little animal bed, curled up on one side, all by herself. Hard to tell through her black-on-black colouration and the miasma-aura of phantasmal goop that makes up her form, but her eyes are closed and her jaw hangs open, tiny ribcage rising and falling in deep sleep.

She’s covered in wounds. Scratches, bites, claw-marks, grazes; they’re hard to make out, a darker black instead of the red blood of fresh injuries on a real zoog. The bottom of the animal bed has been lined with a towel, stained with black splotches and smears, the shape of bloody residue from her tossing and turning.

“Nerys?” I step closer. “Nerys? Are you—”

Her honour guard of zoogs rouse themselves at my approach, scrambling upright, jaws open in silent hisses, backing toward the basket, tightening their ring of protection. The biggest of them shoulders to the fore and bares its teeth at me, tail gone rigid, prepared for a fight.

I stop, raise my left hand. “Sorry! Sorry, I just … I … Nerys, what … what happened to Nerys?”

The zoogs slowly relax, not quite all the way. The big one up front eyes me like I’m trying to pull a scheme, jaw working silently, little flappy ears going back and forth, fur bristling, nose twitching.

One of the others, further back, hiss-chatters an answer: “Hurt hurt hurt.”

“Yes,” I sigh. “I can see that she’s hurt. But how? What happened?”

Nerys stirs, lets out a clotted snore, cracks open one glassy obsidian eye. “Octavia,” she rasps, soft and exhausted. She curls her claws, a feeble motion. “You had your fight, I had mine.”

“ … do you need … help? Or … is there … ”

Is there anything I can do? For a zoog. Anything.

“Already had plenty of that,” she says, very slowly. Her eye closes again. “Don’t you worry yourself. Signal and Tistis have taken good care of me, got me all fixed up. Just need a little more sleep. Be right as rain in no time at all. Hmmmm.” She grumbles, a tiny frown in the blackened fur of her forehead. “What’s right about rain? I never got that one. Human idioms can be so … well … mmmm … you know … mmm … ”

Sleep carries her off.

The regular zoogs settle back down into their sleeping positions, following her lead. Half of them eye me for a moment longer, but I’m not worth much more. The big one stays upright for a while, as if to ward off any further attention, any more interruptions of Nerys’ much-needed sleep.

Nerys seems so vulnerable. So small and wounded.

“I didn’t … ” I whisper. “I didn’t think this was possible.”

The large zoog lets out a raspy little hiss. No words, but I nod anyway.

“What could even do this?” I ask, pure rhetorical question. “What could hurt a Dream-God?”

On a mad whim that I could not explain if I was placed in front of Willow and promised all the restitution the waking world has to offer, I reach out with my left hand and pet the zoog. Once, twice, three times, gentle strokes from the head to the base of the tail. Amazed I don’t get bitten, didn’t even think of that.

It — a she, I think? — closes her eyes, lets out a soft huff of satisfaction, bares her sharp little teeth.

“Who did she fight?” I whisper.

“Catssss,” the zoog hisses. “Nasty-hate cats.”

“Cats?” The grey cats from the graveyard? “For … because of … ” Me?

If the zoog understands my unvoiced question, she doesn’t show it, likely doesn’t care. She lowers herself back to the blankets, leaves my petting behind, snuggles close to her companions, closes her eyes. I am once more alone.

Did Nerys fight the Dream-God master of those cats in the graveyard? And why? For me? A walking corpse? Look at her prize. Not worth the spilled blood.

Tears threaten fresh assault. Crush it all down. Carry on with the plan.

Easy enough to steal a spare mouse from Signal; I don’t touch her actual computer setup, that would be beyond rude, a violation that even I’m not stupid enough to mistake. Instead I cross the domesticated corner to peer through the various computer parts and machinery piled up on the tables, adjacent to her row of 3D printers and CNC machines and server racks. The drone she’d been working on is gone, some of the tables clear for the next mechanical autopsy. Locating a mouse takes no time at all; I find a relatively clean one and put it into the pocket on my robe.

“Just borrowing it,” I say out loud, facing Signal’s empty chair, the blank screens of her computer setup. “For video games. I suppose you know that already, though.”

Tissy won’t bring lunch for another couple of hours yet. I pad over to the weird slice of cobbled-together kitchen, the mismatched pieces of countertop and sink, the ripped-out island covered in food wrappers and empty takeaway boxes. A massive chrome fridge hums away to itself, cold air pours out when I pull it open, but as far as I can see it’s not actually plugged into anything.

Slim pickings: the half-finished remains of half a dozen takeaways, a massive jar of whole pickles, a carton of almond milk, a single shiny red apple in the middle of a shelf, all by itself, that I would not touch for a million pounds.

Big sigh. I can wait. Not like corpses need to eat anyway.

A bottle stands in the door, catches my eye as I close the fridge. Clear glass, clear liquid, red cap. Florid design on the label.

Vodka.

The bottle of vodka Grimgrave and I shared. Still three quarters full, which doesn’t seem possible; surely I must have drunk almost the whole thing? The way I remember feeling back in the abandoned house, the way I kicked and whined like a grumpy child, the way I fell asleep. But there it is. Three quarters full.

Salivary glands tingle. Chest flutters, almost painful. Skin breaks hot, light with sweat.

Grab the bottle. Slip it into my pocket. Close the fridge quickly.

Signal likely sees everything that happens in Plato Base, whether she’s present or not, but the zoogs aren’t paying any attention, and they matter more than Signal. I glance at her desk and shrug, dare her to say something, wherever she is. Not like this is stealing, Grimgrave stole the vodka in the first place. Gregory watches me, of course, and he understands, because he’s a corpse too. I hurry past the cloudy waters of his tank, judged by a long-dead Moon Beast.

“Don’t,” I hiss at him. “Don’t.”

Back to my bedroom without incident. Door shut, locked, checked, secured. Sit at the desk, plug in the mouse. Works first time.

I take out the vodka and place it on the desk. Stare at it for a moment. Imagine the scent in my nose. Sharp taste on my tongue.

Then I push it away, next to the broken pieces of my prosthetic arm.

“Right,” I say, a little too much force in my voice. “Right, right, right. What are we doing? Let’s pick up where we left off. Left off. Left. Ha. Haha. Funny. Not.”

An hour later I have proved conclusively that I can play Factory-Oh with only my left hand, with the aid of a mouse.

My fresh world is now nicely advanced, little pixelated mining equipment shunting raw ores to lines of smelters along tightly organised conveyor belts, all sorted via splitters I’ve rebuilt from memory, pumping resources into the beginnings of a beautifully bootstrapped initial factory, churning out plates and rods and wires and more, combining them into components of greater complexity, creeping toward stepping-stone goals between greater achievements.

“Didn’t dream this up, did you?” I hiss at the screen, a savage satisfaction, words I wish I could spit in her face. “Probably don’t even know how to play. You can dream, sure, but I can engineer. This was all me. All me. Fuck you. Fuck you, Willow. Fuck you. This is real. And mine.”

Slower than my best, but probably not because of working with only one hand, and certainly not because of Willow.

Mostly it’s the cramp in my phantom limb, pain smearing the edges of my concentration and calculations.

I lean back, massage the stump of my right arm, grimacing and grunting, trying to work out knots in muscles and tendons that exist only in my head, projected into empty space. Factory-Oh ticks along like clockwork on the screen, everything in the right place, pieces locked together. A mirror of the universe, a machine set in motion by my will; I could work on all sorts of little details, or get started on the next stage of expansion, but the machine will run itself for a while now, no need for active attention.

So. Right.

Why did I take the vodka?

The glass is cool and smooth in my left hand, so different to everything else in the dregs of my life, in this room, in my head. The liquid clings to the inside of the bottle as I tilt it from side to side. The cap twists off with a light metal scrape. Sharp, astringent, repulsive scent punches into my nose, makes me recoil, almost gag.

“Ugh.”

Willow didn’t want me to do this, doesn’t like it when I drink. Because it damaged her control, because it suppressed the literal brain slug she put in my head.

Or maybe because I have a history of drinking? Because I was a teenage alcoholic? Because she really did care?

“I don’t remember,” I mutter. “Not a single thing.”

Whatever the truth, Willow has taken it from me; I have no memory of drinking alcohol before that fog-drowned afternoon with Grimgrave, holed up together in an abandoned house. The scent of vodka stirs no other neurons to re-tread old pathways. No memories float from the dreamlike swamp of the last ten years.

“Liar,” I say out loud, no more whispering. “Liar. You lied to me about everything, Willow. You lied to me about myself. Liar. Liar. Liar.” Shout it! “Liar!”

Raise the bottle, touch the rim to my lips, tilt it back.

Two swallows of raw vodka go down like cold fire before I cough and splutter and almost heave it back up. Lean forward in the chair, panting for breath, eyes watering, throat burning. Why oh why did I do that? It tastes vile, like cleaning fluid or machine oil or worse. May as well drink petrol straight from the pump. I’m going to be sick, I’m going to bring it back up, this was stupid and I didn’t want it, didn’t want this at all.

And then.

So slowly, like home coming into view over the brow of a hill.

Like a warm fire in a freezing room in the dead of a long, dark, winter.

Heat spreads outward through my chest, like my heart expanding to fill all my flesh.

“Oh … mmmm. Hello.”

I wasn’t able to fully appreciate this sensation when drinking with Grimgrave; my mind was occupied by more urgent matters. But now there’s nothing left of me, I can give myself over to it completely.

Factory-Oh ticks along all by itself. I tinker around the edges for a few minutes, re-orienting buildings, laying out rows of machines, clearing some trees.

Muscles relax. Eyelids grow heavy. Try to smile.

A third swig of vodka goes down easier than the first two, but still sharp, still not a good taste. “Ugh. How does anybody drink this?”

Five, ten, fifteen minutes pitter-patter past. Alcohol settles on my eyes and limbs and chest, a heated blanket, a sagging of my neck, rolling my head from side to side. Everything gets easier, smoother, quieter. My brain stops going so fast, gives up bouncing off the walls, sits down and shuts up for once.

“Mmmmmm. Right. Well. I’m getting drunk. I should … do something. With this. I mean.”

Know what I need to do. The thing I’ve been putting off, not thinking about, because thinking about it is hard and makes me angry and upset and sad and bad. But now thinking is easy and smooth and light. My phantom limb still hurts, clenched up like a motherfucker, but I care about the pain a bit less, and if I don’t care then who cares. Nobody cares. Least of all me.

I fetch my mobile phone from the bed, with funny wobbles in my left leg. Sit back down at the desk. Lean back, take another swig of vodka. “Uuuughhh. Vile.”

She’s still inside my phone. Willow. Willow Finch. Willow Bitch. Willow liar and cheater and betrayer. She’s all over it, in the screen and the speaker and the circuits, and I didn’t have the courage to solve that problem, not before lots of heavy anaesthetic in my bloodstream. A girl like poison, like nerve gas, like neurotoxin, and only now is my body fortified against her. Walls of vodka to repel her siege.

Text messages go first. “Delete, delete, delete.” Have to close my eyes, try not to read them. “Delete, delete!”

Next, her number. Easy. I never want to hear her voice again. Or I do, but I never heard it in the first place. Never never! Never never.

Hardest for last. Lastest for hardest. Another gulp of vodka does the trick, pushes me over the edge, puts the walls back up that she knocked down, and nobody is allowed inside, nobody but me, safe and sound inside my heart. No Willow, no traitors, no betrayers, no Dreamers.

Pictures. All the pictures of her. The pictures of us together.

At first I almost can’t do it, sitting and rocking and panting in the chair. But the alcohol sinks deeper, soaks into my organs and muscles, starts to decompose the rot in my veins, cleaning me out, clearing me up. I open the first picture, stare at Willow’s face, her smile, her beautiful eyes, the soft pads of her cheeks, the fluffy expanse of her hair.

“All lies,” I mutter. “Lies lies lies.”

Delete, delete, delete. Delete, delete, delete! I jab the screen so hard my left index finger starts to hurt. Select, delete, confirm. Select, delete, confirm. Over and over, burning her out, purging her reeking remains. Tears run down my cheeks, free and clear and clean and bright, but I’m not sobbing now, it’s all so quiet, so empty.

“Die, die, die, die, die, die,” frothing through my teeth.

Until only one picture is left, my old favourite. Willow and I, her arm around my shoulders, a big smile on her beaming face, hair up in a ponytail. I look oddly afraid in that picture. Now I finally know why.

“I hate you,” I say. “I hate you, Willow. I hate you so much.”

And I delete the picture.

She’s gone. I feel better, worse, neither, unchanged. Drained, buffered by booze, kept in the chair by vodka, my stupid moron brain stopped for once from running away with another weeping fit. Strong, clever, decisive Octavia. Drunk Octavia, and you bloody well know it you absolute degenerate. Smart Octavia.

“Smart,” I say out loud, a nasty rasping grumble, because I don’t feel smart.

Factory-Oh’s been running a bit too long without my attention. I remove some depleted miners, slap down some new ones; terrible orientation, bad spacing, worst I’ve ever done, followed by a big mess of spaghetti conveyor belts to compensate. Look, I can be an idiot too! I can choose to be a dumb fucking bitch. Don’t need any help with that, Willow. Don’t need your dreams to help me be stupid. Fuck you.

Willow told me so many lies. Everything she said, did, implied, knew, all of it. Everything we’ve done together. Everything about me, about what I think and feel. How much did she dictate, how much did she dream up, how much was left to me, or to chance, or beyond her attention? My interests, my values, my decisions, my—

My sexuality?

“No,” I say. “No way. She didn’t … I mean … she never … not really.”

Willow and I never really kissed. No kisses, maybe no hugs, certainly nothing more. All just a dream. Never happened.

I pause Factory-Oh. Glance over my shoulder at the door, double-triple-quadruple check that it’s locked. Point at the lock. “Locked. You are locked.”

Back to the computer. Heart rate going up, up, up. Breath growing ragged. This is silly, I’m not even doing anything. Yet. Alcohol isn’t helping, I need more. Another swig of vodka hits my stomach, but the flutters in my chest are trying their hardest to sober me up, and there’s no way I can do this sober. Do what, hmm? Do what? Do I even want to do this? Can’t even name the act. Can’t even put a word to it. My chest will explode if I do. That’s how they’ll find me, burst open and rotting in front of my computer, dead of embarrassment.

Sweaty palms and shaking fingers minimize the game. Pull up an internet browser. Change the settings, activate the function to clear all data when the browser closes.

“Ridiculous. Nobody’s gonna see this anyway.”

But still I stare at the fresh browser window for a long, throat-tightening, gut-clenching moment. Mouth going dry. Left leg numb.

“I’m twenty years old, I can … I can do what I want. Fuck you, Willow. Fuck all of you. Fuck off.”

I navigate to a well-known website, one that requires a VPN to visit from within England, relatively benign to the rest of the world. The sort of place everybody knows about, even if they pretend otherwise. Can barely type the name into the address bar. I certainly don’t know the url. But there it is.

A porn site. Admit it, use the word. I’m visiting a porn site. I am looking at pornography.

Flushed, quivering, hardly able to breathe.

Click.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, the jitters ebb away, souring into simple sordid disappointment. I spend a few minutes scrolling through video thumbnails, snippets and snatches of human flesh on display, objects going in and out of holes, women caked with makeup, shiny and glossy as a new car or a wax doll.

“Huh. Is that it?” I mutter. Draw myself up. Victory. “I don’t know you people.”

A few more minutes of scrolling and clicking and backtracking and I’m thoroughly done. Was that all? Was this supposed to impress me?

“Ha. Uh … hm … ”

What about an imageboard? Or a ‘booru’, one of those sites where people upload fanart of anime girls? Not magibooru, absolutely not; the idea of seeing art of Scarlet Edge or Grimgrave or any of the others right now turns my stomach, makes me want to be sick all over the floor. But I may as well establish the baseline, rule out all possibilities. Doubt I’ll be able to do this sober. One shot, girl. Shoot it. It’ll be a blank.

I pick a booru, the most popular one. Front page, recent posts, no filters.

A wall of anime girls greet me. Not all pornography, at least not obviously so; much of it’s entirely non-sexual, though some of them are in various stages of undress, or engaged in acts that make me swallow, my cheeks heat up, my bum shift in the seat.

“None of you are real,” I mutter, words trail off.

None of them are real. That’s the point, right? Clean fantasies, no reality to get in the way, no actual person who was filmed with their clothes off. My breathing picks up, sweat prickling on my skin, heart rate climbing again. All these cartoon women, nothing between me and them but the thin barrier of the screen.

Where do I even start? How do I know what to look at? What to feel? What to do?

I choose a name I vaguely recognise, one of the big popular gacha games, one you can even play in England. All the characters are personifications of firearms, or something like that, or whatever, doesn’t matter, who cares, I don’t, because I’m not here for the scaffolding of excuses, I’m here for the meat. The browser window fills with tiles of absurdly well-endowed women wearing deeply implausible outfits. Tits like water balloons squeezed into skintight bodysuits. Hips wide as buses, inside skirts far too short for anything but showing off. Tiny wasp-waists that couldn’t possibly contain any organs. Eyes like great big shiny insect-lenses.

Not all of them are that bad though. Some are closer to real. Still absurd. But it’s all about the style, right? All about what it makes you feel?

I’m feeling something. Maybe it’s just the vodka.

“You’ll do,” I mutter as I pick a girl. A buxom blonde beauty with a big happy smile and boobs spilling from a dress shirt. She looks ridiculous. The kind of woman from whom I would flee in reality. Would probably call me a cripple. Spit on me. Worse. But now she’s mine, on the screen, and I can do whatever I want with her, because she’s not real. I snort, sit back, get comfortable, flick through images, one after the other. Different outfits, poses, looks, moods. One artist seems to like drawing her as a dog-girl, with floppy ears and a big fluffy tail. Sometimes she’s doing things with other girls. “Yeah … yeah, you’ll do. You’ll … ”

I freeze.

Why am I not looking at men?

It’s not like I tried and decided they weren’t for me. I simply never made the attempt. Didn’t even think of it.

“Oh … oh f-fuck … ”

Throat goes dry. Head spins. Hands shake harder than before, heart racing, eyes hot, chest tightening. I take another drink, to steady my hands. Am I really going to do this?

Can hardly breathe as I settle on a picture. Can’t decide, swapping back and forth; another task rendered infinitely more difficult with only one hand. Eventually I choose. She — the anime girl who’s name I refuse to learn, with the big shining blue eyes and tits bigger than her head and blonde hair too perfect for reality or dreams — is down on her knees, gazing upward, collar around her neck, floppy dog ears sprouting from her head, ridiculous breasts spilling from a pajama top and exploding from a white-lace bra, about to face-plant into the groin of the nondescript viewer. Me. She’s going to faceplant into my groin. Make me—

I’m shaking so hard I can barely get my left hand under my waistband.

No underwear. Huh. Good thing you didn’t put any underwear on. Like you planned this. Slut.

And then I’m doing it. Cupping myself. Touching myself. Rubbing. Breathing harder. Making weird little noises. Carried away on a wave of alcohol.

I start slow, staring at a girl who doesn’t exist. A dream rendered in pencils and pixels. She’s not real and that makes it so much easier, plenty of room to lose myself in a nonsense fantasy, unconnected to anything, as dissociated as I already am. That’s a good excuse, right? I can tell myself that later, so right now just give in and do it. Spread my legs out a bit, slide down in the chair, press harder. Can’t believe I’m doing this, jilling myself off to anime pornography.

Settle into a good rhythm. Panting, rough. Stare into those eyes. She’s so happy to do it, slam her face into my crotch. Stupid slutty tits. Fuck, listen to yourself, Octavia. Slut.

Faster, faster. Grit my teeth. “Yeah. That’s … yeah … you big stupid slut, big stupid … s-slut … unnhhh, gonna—”

Then it hits me.

Have I ever masturbated before?

In front of Willow, yes. But by myself? All those memories were false. Her dreams, not mine. Never happened. We never kissed, certainly never touched each other in all the ways I dreamed about. I’ve never had an orgasm before.

And I’m not going to have one now, because the mere thought of Willow crashes the whole process to a cold stop.

I gasp, jerk upright in the chair, panting, heaving like I’m going to vomit, sweaty and flushed and sticky and nauseated and dry and sick.

Keen through my teeth with frustration. “She won’t let me fucking go!”

Grab the bottle, probably smearing it with fluids, who cares? Toss it down my throat, one, two, three gulps.

Lurch from the chair, stagger away from the unreal beauty on the screen, so clean and happy and bright, more than I can endure, too much for this rotting corpse of a girl. Octavia Carter, can’t even fuck herself!

I try to make it to the bed, but my legs give out, both of them, flesh and prosthetic alike crumpling in rebellion as I claw at the edge of the mattress. Crying now, clutching the covers, screaming into the sheets. She’ll never leave! She’ll never get out of my head! Willow, Willow, Willow, her face is all I can see, filling my mind, her smile that was never real, her skin against mine, her mouth on my cunt — never happened! None of it ever happened! She drowned me in orgasms but it was all a dream and she didn’t even dream it with me, didn’t want me that way, didn’t want anything like that. I was a pet fed on lies and kept in darkness and she never even touched me.

Sobbing, whining, I drag the sheets off the bed, huddle against the side, hide myself in a cocoon.

“You know who did want it?” I murmur, slurring, half-sobbing, tasting tears on my tongue, tripping over the words. “Grimgrave. Slept next to me. Slept against me. Fucking … dyke.”

My left hand slides back into my pajama bottoms. I’m still slick and wet, but cold now. Close my eyes, remember what Grimgrave felt like against my side, back in that abandoned house. The warmth of her body, the smell of her skin, the way she moved, adjusted, shifted against me. Hugs with Grimgrave, petite form in my arms.

Not enough. Can’t make Willow go away. Kneading myself like dough, gritting my teeth, muscles pulled tight, but she won’t get out of my head.

I need, I need—

Scarlet Edge, her face twisted in sadistic pleasure, the moment she ran me through with a sword? No, no — better! Scarlet Edge done up like the anime girl on the screen, dog ears and a fluffy tail, collar round her throat, leash in my hand. Much better. Perfect. And — and Willow too, fuck her. Fuck. Her. She can be a dog girl as well, a stupid one, big dumb tongue hanging out of her mouth, slobbering all over me. Scarlet and Willow, rutting like animals for my amusement. And Grimgrave can curl against my side and hold the other leash for me. Maybe she can yank Willow’s collar, choke her a bit. Then Grimgrave would turn her head and kiss my lips and shove her tongue down my—

“Unnnghhhh—”

I’m almost there, when something important snaps inside my chest.

Can’t breathe, can’t lift my limbs, can’t even stay upright. The echo of Scarlet’s sword, burning through my core. I crumple to the concrete floor, eyes rolling, hand still down my pajamas. My heart clenches and flutters, breaking all over again.

A knock slams against the door, open-palmed urgency.

“Occy!” Grimgrave shouts through the metal. World’s going dark, lights out, bye-bye. “Occy, hey! You alright in there?! Tissy says you ain’t!”

Oh. I’m having another heart attack. Maybe this one’ll take me all the way. Whee.

Grimgrave hammers on the door again. Fist, not palm. A high fluting sound follows, like a wind instrument filled with oil, drowned out by Grimgrave’s voice. “Occy! Shit, Occy, you best not be sleeping! I don’t wanna break the door, but— yeah, yeah, okay, Tissy, okay! Fuck!”

The door rattles, shakes in the frame. Once, twice, three times.

Can’t keep my eyelids up. Everything’s all heavy. Sleep is so much easier.

Sleep. Grimgrave. Hand on my cunt.

Dead all along.

Dead—

Last thing I hear is the door smashing open. But I’m already gone, down and dreamless.

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

One step forward, one drunken heart-attack back. Octavia can’t deny certain things about herself anymore; like, for example, that she might have an alcohol problem. But oof, that’s gonna sting, in several ways. At least Grimgrave is there to break the door down, right? Not the first time she’s come to the rescue.

Anyway, here we are, arc 4! We are finally out of the beginning of the story, and into the meat of the middle. Octavia’s got some, uh, recovery(?) to do, some repairs to make, and, you know, in a way it also feels like we’ve barely even begun scratching the worldbuilding so far. Perhaps now she’s up in Plato Base for good (for now) she can begin to dig a little deeper. I mean, once Grimgrave administers magical CPR, or whatever Octavia requires in order to not die from a masturbation-and-booze-induced heart attack.

Also, I have some art to share with you all, from over on the discord server! First up we have Maidens Club, in which Scarlet Edge (non-transformed) and Willow discover they have something important in common (by sporktown heroine!) And then we have Scarlet Edge looking, um, pathetic? Pleading??? Pleading. Ahem. (By Cera!) I’ve also recently updated the memes page, which is absolutely full of stuff, for those who might enjoy it. Thank you to everybody who has drawn fanart so far, it’s so very flattering to see so much fanart for the story already!

 

And finally, but absolutely not least, I have another shout-out this week.

Fans of my other big story, Katalepsis, might remember Vora, author of Feast Or Famine (which was partly inspired by Katalepsis) and This Magical Girl Is Mine, (which you should also go check out if you’re enjoying Maidens!) Well, Vora has just started a new story, called Flirting with Death, and … look, I’m just gonna post the blurb. Anything I can say is not gonna do it justice.

Catherine Bird had nothing to live for. A bookstore cashier with dead dreams, twisted desires, and an otome villainess addiction, she doesn’t much mind when Truck-kun finally comes for her. And then, to her disbelieving delight, she wakes up in another world.

It’s the world of the MMO she played with her years-gone almost-girlfriend Momo, and now Momo is right there beside her. They’ve been promised an eternity together in that world, reunited by the hand of a benevolent goddess.

Or not so benevolent, as it turns out, because that goddess is Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, and she’s found a new set of girls to torture for her amusement. The price of her patronage is putting Cat and Momo through a checkpoint-based time loop where they’ll have to die endlessly to conquer Nyara’s game and win their happily ever after.

You can probably see why I’m shouting this out! Anyway, if you like the kind of things I write, you might enjoy Vora’s work too. Go check it out!

 

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.

And, as always, thank you all so very much, dear readers. None of this would be possible without all of you, the audience and readers. We’ve barely even begun exploring Maidens of the Fall, and now we’re finally getting stuck in for real. Thank you so much!

Next chapter, is Octavia dead, or just dreaming? Let’s hope Grimgrave’s got an air horn up her sleeve.