Content Warnings

Grief
Discussion of cannibalism
Discussion of dead children
Internalised homophobia

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Plato Base is a baroque and broken labyrinth, haunted by dream-bound ghosts.

Concrete corridors branch and blunder, tumbling together in belligerent junctions before wandering drunkenly apart. Passages and hallways radiate outward from brief scuffles, plunging back into the petrified guts of the moon. Bare concrete stairwells invite curious feet up toward the roof, or threaten descent into the depths of the rock below, lined with naked steel steps and rusty handrails. Lights in the ceilings cast a cold and distracted glow, dimmed in many places, failed completely in others. Footsteps echo, tripping and tapping down side-passages and through empty vaults, soaked up by shadow-saturated corners; occasional replies scrape and skitter upward from the lower levels, furtive half-heard illusions, nothing more than mistaken moon-wind.

Doors and archways and access points stand open, rooms like old abscesses long drained of foul taint: dormitories and workshops and laboratories and meeting rooms and command bunkers and other places of which I catch only the briefest glimpse. Most were ransacked long ago. Some have been intentionally, rightfully, thoroughly desecrated. A few stand almost untouched. All bear the scars of certain symbols removed, idols cast down, rough patches in concrete where hammer and claw smashed apart the hooked cross.

Gold remains all over the place, both solid and leaf. Door handles and decorations, light fixtures and lampshades, scroll-work on chair backs, inset into tabletops. The people who built this place loved gold, but couldn’t take it with them. The ones who put them down had no use for it, so here it remains, glittering in the dark.

I had not appreciated, from the busy outpost of our domesticated corner in the Big Room, or the repurposed concrete cells of the bedrooms, just how wide and deep this ruin rambles. And this is only one floor.

Plato Base plays tricks on the mind, though not with ill intention.

When measured by the eye, every line pretends to obey the ruler of the mind, every angle a sensible and upright ninety degrees; but time and dreams do not obey our rules, so though every angle is right, any given crossroads has five, six, seven exits, a hallway never moves aside yet one cannot see the end, a corner is turned but a glance over the shoulder shows only a straight route back.

But there is no dreamlike inability to recall one’s path, no repeating rooms or endless corridors, no sudden dead ends. No pitfalls into the black.

I am not lost. Just over-matched.

More importantly, my escort isn’t bothered. The sextet of zoogs don’t seem upset by the journey, only by the prospect of our destination. They trundle along with unerring little paws, sparing not a glance for how the corridors misbehave, leading me straight to Grimgrave.

Scars mark every corner in this wing of Plato Base — the western side of the structure, if my sense of direction and moon geography are in agreement. Old wounds, inflicted during the last stand of the human monsters who built this place. Shattered blast doors, metal melted and twisted aside. Bullet holes pockmark many corners, some only a few, others chewed ragged, concrete crumbly beneath my fingertips. Cracked floor segments, soot-like blossoms, perhaps from blast damage. We pass several sections of roughly demolished wall, where something giant once smashed or strode straight through the concrete, crashing from room to room and out into the corridor; stubs of rebar hang exposed, buckled from massive pressure. Dark reddish stains lurk on many floors in both rooms and hallway, faded with the decades.

One of the largest rooms we pass — perhaps once a command centre, tables and machines around the circular perimeter, unreadable scraps of map pinned to the widest wall, a stepped depression in the middle — now hosts a great cairn. Moon rocks piled high and wide, topped by a ring of grey-white alien skulls. Strange markings loop and coil in concentric circles at the base of the stone pyramid, painted with greasy black ash, small smooth rocks placed at precise junctions, a ball of twisted metal scrunched up at the core.

The whole thing radiates untouchable dignity, even across the chasm of language and species and dream. A Moon Beast cenotaph.

Several other rooms are dominated by written graffiti on the walls, black and angular, sharp and curling, some chipped into the concrete surfaces. A language I cannot read, but I do recognise, from images and video illegal in England. Ghoul tongue, written with claw marks. Less gravity than the tomb of the unknown Moon Beast, but perhaps only because I cannot read the tale.

Finally I understand why the bedrooms and the domesticated corner are clustered so close to the main entrance of Plato Base. Cleared out, made safe, but never truly reclaimed.

The journey itself isn’t long, a few minutes easy walk through empty corridors, dense with scar tissue and war graves. Strange to walk so far on my naked right foot, steel clicking against concrete floor with each step. But it is somehow fitting, like this is the place my prosthetic limbs were always meant to traverse. My empty right sleeve flaps about too much, so I fold it inside, tuck it into my waistband.

As we draw close to our destination my escort of zoogs grow visibly nervous. They start to peek around each corner, hanging back behind my heels, winding their tails together, little claws clutching for each other’s fur. Unbothered by the strange noises earlier, the pools of deep shadow, the old bloodstains, but approaching the end makes them skittish and snapping, baring their teeth, not happy to go first.

I take over, step ahead, indicate our options. “This way? Or that way? Just nod, it’s fine.”

For the final two dozen feet I lead the way best I can, past a knot of two junctions and through an open pair of double doors, zoogs pattering along just behind.

We emerge into a chamber that was once some kind of machine shop, the scent of oil and grease still hanging in the air, engine pits set into the floor, buckets of tools left to gather dust, shelves crammed with spare parts, some of them overturned long ago. A massive pair of garage doors stands on the opposite side of the space, chained shut from the inside. I cross to a tiny access door alongside, propped open with crowbar, hinges rusted solid.

Grey concrete and dark skies loom beyond; fingers of moon-wind hesitate at the threshold.

The zoogs hang back, squabbling amongst themselves with little hush-hush hisses.

“You have no obligation to follow me out there,” I tell them. “Not if you don’t want to. You’re free to go back to the Big Room. You owe me nothing, do you understand that?”

They’re not really listening, focused on pushing and shoving and nipping at each other, beady dark eyes rolling with fear. But then they settle into a tightly-squeezed pack, snouts upturned, all eyes on me.

“Is it dangerous out there?” I ask. “For you, I mean.”

“Noooo,” one of them rasps. “No danger.”

“Is it dangerous for you to stay here alone?”

They share glances, scrunched noses, the zoog equivalent of a frown. “No no no,” one of them rasps. “No. Zoog big scary. Nothing fuck with us. Not with Nerys!”

A little chorus goes up. “Nerys! Nerys!” They do adore their goddess. But they don’t step any closer to the door. “Nerys!”

I try not to sigh, try to be patient. They are zoogs, they are very small, and they are trying their best.

“Well,” I say, gesturing at the little door to the outside of the base. “I’m going on ahead. You can go back if you want. Or wait here, if you want me to escort you back—”

“Grims!” one of them rasps. That sets off another chorus of chitter-chattering. “Grimmy!” “Grimsgrimsgrims!” “Gravegrims grim!” “Grimmygrave!”

“Okay, okay.” A sigh, count to five. “Okay, just … follow if you want, then? I’ll … protect you. If there’s anything to protect you from.” That sets off more hissing, wordless complaints. “Okay, fine, no protecting then. Just … come on.”

The whole zoog-mass moves forward as one, following as I turn and duck through the open doorway, stepping out beneath Luna’s inscrutable skies.

A semi-exterior courtyard, bracketed on two sides by high concrete walls, on the other two by deep excavations chiselled into the nameless mountain of the Montes Alpes. Above broods a dark and starless void, the Lunar sky. Sunlight dapples and dances across the silvery black vegetation on the mountainside, rustling and swaying in distant overhead winds, reduced to a mere whisper down here behind the concrete walls. Earth is not visible, lost over the horizon.

Left — a pair of massive metal doors stand rusted permanently open, watched over by empty guard towers and machine-gun posts; right — a series of massive tunnel-mouths burrow beneath the mountain, presumably leading to the lower levels of Plato Base, perhaps deep vehicle storage. The courtyard floor is wide enough for a tank regiment. Rusted-out hulks stand slumped in disorderly rows, barrels worn down to stubs, tracks collapsed, any rubber long since rotted to nothing.

A brief pang of sorrow stirs in my chest, grief for the poor machines. Still just barely recognisable as the tanks they once were, far beyond any restoration work.

Then I remind myself who built them, for what purpose. Perhaps it is better that they rusted. A few museum-piece Panzers are enough.

On the far side of the courtyard huge chunks of concrete floor have been ripped up and piled to one side, to expose a wide section of lunar soil, covered with low vegetation, dotted with gravestones.

Grimmy squats before the graves, a vague white smudge embowered by grey concrete.

Relief floods me, so strong I let out a sudden breath, almost stumble, left knee gone weak. Absurd, what was I worried about? That Grimgrave would be gone, that she would be hurt? I’ve known her a few days at most, and we’re hardly inseparable intimates.

But then I glance over my shoulder, though I’m not sure why. Past the zoogs now navigating the threshold, joining me outdoors, and into the machine shop, the far doors still open, the concrete of Plato Base quiet and still beyond. Shadows in the corridors. Old scars buried deep.

I’m — afraid? Of what?

“It’s nothing,” I hiss. The zoogs gather around my ankles, pressing close to my left leg, peering across the courtyard, lips peeled back. “Stop being ridiculous.”

Focus on solid things. Grimgrave. Grimmy.

Runnels of moon-wind rustle down the mountainside to tug at the tips of her hair, drawing loose strands away from the white of her hoodie, slim shoulders a tiny bulwark against the endless grey concrete. She is facing away from me, into the makeshift graveyard, distant, isolated, unaware.

Black skies, grey soil, lonely graves. Perhaps I shouldn’t be here, interrupting her privacy. No great leap of logic is required to understand what she’s doing, who she might be mourning. Polite feet would turn back, pretend they did not see. A nice young woman would avert her eyes, say nothing, accept that certain things are not mentioned out loud, some sorrows must be private, contained, untold.

But I want Grimgrave to come back indoors, out of the wind, away from this monolithic landscape of grey concrete and silver-black mountainsides and starless dark skies, no matter how beautiful it might be out here. She should not be dwarfed by any setting, not reduced to squatting in silence and staring at gravestones. She should be back in the warm with the zoogs, laughing and eating and playing.

Plus, I don’t want to go back by myself.

Pure selfishness. I’m not a nice young woman, never was. Murderer, dream terrorist, renegade magical girl. I cup my left hand to my mouth; don’t want to surprise Grimgrave by sneaking up on her.

“Grimmy!” I call, voice echoing out over the concrete, lost in the rustle of lunar vegetation, snatched away on the wind.

Grimgrave starts, twists to look over her shoulder, stands up and stares. Tiny face, eyes wide, mouth open in surprise, one arm sweeping aside her waterfall of hair. I raise a hand, wave; may I approach, or will you bite? You have every right to bite down until I retreat; you probably should, you should drive me off, because I do not fully understand why I am doing this, you are not safe around me, not safe to let me back in. I am a wolf and you are a lamb, turn your shoulder and tell me to go fuck myself.

Grimgrave waves back. “Heeeeeeyyyyyy! Occyyyyyyy! Come on over here!”

Across the courtyard I go, between two rows of rusted hulks, out onto clear concrete. My left foot grows a touch cold through the sock; my prosthetic foot clicks time on the hard ground. The zoogs stick close to my heels, hissing to each other, words too soft to make out. Grimgrave bounces on the spot, breaks into a grin as I approach.

“Hey hey hey, Occy! Didn’t expect you out here, yo!” She waves both hands at the zoogs, fingers spread. “Guys, guys, you didn’t have to come!” She laughs, then back to me. “Occy, hey, sorry! I like, lost track of time, you—” Her grin vanishes, eyes go wide, mouth falls open. “What happened to your face?!”

I stop a few feet from graveyard’s edge, alongside Grimmy.

“My face?”

“Yeah!” She points. “The great big fuckin’ shiner on your cheek!”

“Oh, that.” I touch the stiffening bruise on my left cheek, work my jaw, probe the pain. A slow and steady throbbing. Background noise, like all the other pains in my life. “Bright punched me.”

“What!?” Grimgrave yells, the concrete courtyard acting like a funnel, her shout at lunar escape velocity. “Fuck!” She hops to one side, looks past me, back across the courtyard, as if expecting Bright in hot pursuit. “I’ll knock her shit-packed guts out, I’ll fuck—”

Raise my left hand. “Don’t.”

“But—”

“Grimmy, it’s fine. I handled it. Handled her. Whichever. She’s not behind me or something. Nobody is behind me.”

Grimgrave boggles. Glances at the door again. Looks lost. “Eh?”

I had wanted to avoid tiresome repetition. But I do what I must, fill Grimgrave in on my little altercation with Burning Bright. I leave out the details of our conversation, especially the parts about Scarlet Edge.

Grimgrave’s boggling squint worsens. She tempts me to put my left hand directly over her face and command her to stop.

“You put her to bed?” she asks, incredulous and amazed when I finish. “You put fuckin’ Burning Bright to bed, tucked her in, all that shit?”

“‘All that shit’,” I echo. Rather satisfying.

“Fuck,” Grimgrave mutters. “And she didn’t like, transform or nothing? You’re sure she was like … I dunno … not like a doppelganger or a mimic or something?”

Frown, hard. “Can that happen?”

Grimgrave shrugs, flapping both arms out to her sides. “Fuck knows, search me! S’not like Bright at all. Shit, maybe it’s all that stuff with her sister, like? Maybe it really took it out of her, and she’s all messed up?”

“That would be the obvious cause. Whatever the reason, I’m glad she didn’t disembowel me or roast me alive. We did have a nice little chat, in the end, after getting off on the wrong foot.”

“Nice little chat!” Grimgrave laughs. “Hey, maybe she’s finally getting on board with all the teamwork stuff, like!”

“Mm.” Probably not.

The makeshift cemetery is separated into two distinct sections. On the left I count thirty six graves, all tiny plots, too small even for infants. No names, no dates, each one marked by a single upright stick of concrete rooted deep in gritty grey soil. Lunar vegetation blankets the spaces between the graves with pale silver mosses and tufts of hardy blackish grass; the graves themselves blossom with lunar flowers, great heavy drooping bells of argent gleam, shimmering silver cups open to the skies, glossy and healthy with new life. All except one, right at the front, with freshly turned grey soil.

On the right the graves are sized for full-grown human beings. Same flowers, same spread of lunar mosses, but capped by proper headstones, roughly cut from chunks of raw concrete. Names, dates, scored deep into the surfaces with inexpert hands. Twenty one graves, none new.

“Serious though,” Grimgrave says. “Soz, for like, leaving you alone. Didn’t think shit would happen!” She squats down, scoops up one of the zoogs; they’re all staring at the tiny graves, caught halfway between fascination and mortal terror. “And guyyssssss,” Grimgrave complains at the one in her arms as she straightens back up, hugging it to her chest. “You shouldn’t have come, yo! You know it’s not good, yeah?”

The zoog in her arms twists this way and that, hissing and rasping. “Grimmy graves grim-grim graves grim!”

She croons and cuddles it, until finally it settles down against her shoulder.

“They were concerned about you, I think,” I say. “They insisted on escorting me, though I told them they didn’t need to. I hope this isn’t a problem.”

“Concerned?” Grimgrave squints up at me, her grin half-false. “Pffffft, nothing to worry about like, just lost track of time!”

Grimgrave doesn’t look like she’s been crying in secret. Clear eyes, no flush in her face, no need to sniff back the aftermath of tears. But an undeniable melancholy lurks behind the green of her eyes, too much for the grin to conceal. My first instinct was correct; she should be indoors, with her zoogs, not out here by herself, brooding over the dead, whoever they were.

“Occy?” Grimmy tilts her head. “Occyyyyy, heeeeyyyyyy?”

“Sorry?”

She bobs her head from side to side, breaks into a fresh grin. “You hypnotised? Or am I just that fuckin’ pretty?”

“Grimgrave, are you … ”

‘Are you okay?’ What a futile question. What meaningless pablum. How would I react to that? I have not been okay for ten years. I will never be okay again. A shrug and a cold shoulder. A smile and a nod. A total lack of comprehension.

Grimmy raises her eyebrows, waits for me to finish, nodding along as if I’m an animal learning to speak.

“So,” I say instead, a poor recovery after an obvious fumble. “Plato Base has a graveyard. I assume the small plots are for zoogs?”

Grimgrave’s grin passes behind dark clouds. She lets out a big breath, cuddles the zoog tighter in her arms, buries her nose in its fur for a long moment. Trickles of moon-wind drag at her hair, catch on the hem of my robe.

“Yeah,” Grimmy says eventually, staring at the little graves. “I didn’t start it myself. There was a few when I got here. But I thought … like … it’s just better, you know? Better than leaving them to rot.”

The zoog in her arms is so wide-eyed it looks drugged. The ones around her ankles hiss and chatter, fixated on the graves.

“I couldn’t agree more,” I say. “I count thirty six? But there’s what, two hundred zoogs in Plato Base? I was under the impression they’ve been here a long time. Shouldn’t there be more … ”

Grimgrave turns big bright eyes toward me, mildly surprised.

“What?” I say, try not to sigh. “What now?”

“Occy, zoogs eat their dead.”

My face goes cold.

“ … what?”

“They eat their dead. Like, ninety nine times out of a hundred. But they’ve got like, a really really good sense of smell for sickness and stuff. If a zoog dies too sick to eat, they don’t know what to do with the body, ‘cos they can’t eat it, right? And if a zoog dies, like, alone, you know? Down there, on earth, in a gutter or some shit, nobody to care. Then it rots for a day or two, and then they can’t eat it either.” She nods at the rows of little graves. “That’s what this is for. Zoogs who ain’t got proper burial, not like they’re supposed to.”

My mind catches like a skipping record. “They … they eat their own dead? Zoogs eat their own dead? They eat their dead?”

Grimgrave straightens, tilts her head up, eyes gone wide. I almost step back, like she’s squaring up.

“Don’t!” she snaps. “Don’t be fuckin’ rude about it, hey!”

Raise my hand, half-surrender. “Grimgrave! You cannot tell me that zoogs practice funerary endocannibalism and not expect me to freak out a little! Give me a moment, bloody hell!”

But she doesn’t give. “There’s nothing wrong with it! And it’s their dead, it’s respect, yeah? It’s not like they pick off their own weak and wounded. Not like we fuckin’ humans do!”

The zoogs are all staring at me too. One gently gums at my left ankle. I gesture at them, address them. “Ladies, gentlemen,” absurd, but I can’t think of anything faster, “it’s not your fault, I’m not angry at you, not— not disgusted.”

“Yeah!” Grimgrave snaps. “You better fuckin’ not be!”

“Grimmy. Sorry. I’m sorry.”

That was easy.

Grimgrave pauses, then shrugs and smiles, transgression forgiven instantly. Her anger is like lightning, gone in a flash.

“S’cool, no worries,” she says. “Just like, it’s a respect thing for them, you know? S’what they evolved to do.”

Force a smile in return; Grimgrave eyes my grimace with vague suspicion, so I give up.

“What about … ” Clear my throat. “I mean this with the greatest respect, but what about diseases? Shouldn’t they be riddled with prions?”

“They’re from the Dreamlands, duh! Ain’t gotta worry about that. I don’t even think they have like, DNA. You got DNA, little fella? Hmm?” Grimgrave wobbles the zoog in her arms; he rasps and wiggles and thwaps his tail about, which makes Grimgrave laugh and boop his snout. “Nah, no DNA in you!”

“Deeany!” he rasps.

“Lucky for them,” I say.

A step back from Grimmy, a step to one side, the better to cast my eyes over the graves. The other zoogs detach from my ankles and cluster behind Grimgrave instead, sheltering in the lee of her legs, staring past her at the graves of their own fallen. Grimgrave puts the sixth zoog down among his friends, then ruffles heads and strokes backs and scratches behind ears. She makes a gentle shooing motion; the zoogs turn away with slow, morbid reluctance, little black eyes drawn to the graves as if by magnets, like children passing a terrible car accident, uncertain if they should cry or not. But eventually they shuffle off, crossing the courtyard, furry little rumps trundling between the rows of rusted machines, vanishing through the door, back inside Plato Base.

The fortress towers against the black lunar sky, only the tips of antennas and dishes visible from so close, whistling faintly as wind catches metal.

Grimgrave puffs out a long sigh, shoots me an awkward grimace. “S’not good for them to see this, like. At least, not the younger ones. Dead zoogs under the ground, it freaks them out bad style. I keep thinking, shit, maybe I should cremate them or something, I dunno. But I brought that up once and they hated it even worse.”

“Do they have … ” I feel stupid, asking this. “Religious beliefs? About death and burial?”

Grimgrave snorts. “Nah, not exactly. Hey, you should meet a ghoul sometime, they’ve got religion, they’ve got it bad, and it’s weird as shit. You think zoogs eating their dead is freaky, ghouls eat everybodys’ dead.”

“I’d rather not,” I mutter. Meeting a ghoul, face-to-face, for long enough to converse? I may be a dream-terrorist hiding on the moon, but that idea sends a shiver up my spine. I turn back to the graves, gesture at the larger ones. “Who were they?”

“Magical girls.”

“Oh.” What did I expect? “Right. Of course.”

Grimgrave squats down at the edge of the broken concrete, draws her hair up, pooling in her lap so it won’t drag on the ground. “Not all of them are actually in there, like,” she says. “Some are just empty coffins. Or just nothing. And there’s no graves for the ones who went Dreamer, they’re not, like, proper dead, I guess. I mean, I dunno about the oldest ones, the ones at the back. Some of them didn’t have headstones, so I just put up a slab for them. Didn’t know what to write. ”

I join Grimgrave at the concrete lip. My left hand twitches toward her shoulder, an urge I cannot countenance. I stick my hand into the pocket on my robe, to keep it from offending.

The gravestones at the rear are unmarked, concrete hardly weathered.

“Would Signal know?” I ask. “About the oldest ones?”

Grimgrave shrugs. “Don’t think so. Nerys has been doing this since the fuckin’ nineties, you know? Even Siggy’s only been a magical girl for like ten years or something.” She gestures. “The next six, all we got is the names. Fuck knows who they were, or who buried ‘em, or put their names on the stones. Nerys doesn’t tell much. Dream-Gods, you know?”

The six concrete gravestones she indicates do look a bit older than the others. Two of them have only names, magical girl names: ‘Symphonic Bloom’ and ‘Vulpine’. One has only a single date, 1999, with no name; I cannot help but wonder who erected that slab. The other three have both dates and names, deaths ranging from the nineties into the early twenty-tens; ‘Amanda Rainsborough’, ‘Mina Twitch — Spark Speed’, ‘Hannah Barrow, Iridescent Terminus’.

“Hannah Barrow,” I sound out that last one. “Two thousand and two to twenty fourteen. Grimgrave—”

“Yeah, I know.”

“That was a twelve year old girl.”

“I know.”

Moon-wind trickles down the slopes of the Montes Alpes, a distant rustling of lunar flora, whispers at the edge of the world. Grimgrave stares at the headstones. I swallow, with some difficulty.

“And we don’t know anything about her?” I ask. “Nothing? Just nothing? That’s it?”

“She died before Siggy joined up. Siggy didn’t like, get a lot of instruction, you know?”

“And Signal hasn’t tried to find out?” Heat stirs in my chest, rising into my face. “To put names, histories, anything, to these … concrete gravestones? I can’t— I can’t—”

“Siggy doesn’t like to come back here,” Grimgrave says, quick and sharp. “If you wanna know stuff about the girls before us, you gotta ask Nerys, but like I said, she doesn’t talk about it. It’s just how Dream-Gods work, yeah?”

“Signal has made no effort at all!?” I snap, almost laugh. “With all her resources, her skills, surely she—”

“Shit, Occy!” Grimgrave huffs. “Fuck! Look, I’m not supposed to fuckin’ know this, okay?” She looks up, over her shoulder, at me, eyes tighter than I expected. “So don’t fuckin’ repeat this, yeah? Promise!”

“ … okay?”

She points at one of the middle gravestones, more recent examples — ‘Shabana Tewari. Noise. 2001-2019.’

“What am I looking at?” I ask slowly.

Grimgrave grimaces, all teeth. “That’s Siggy’s twin sister in there.”

False fire snuffs out, turns to ash. “Ah.”

Moon-wind briefly changes direction, whistles through the dishes and antenna atop Plato Base, a sudden mournful wail trailing off to nothing. Grimgrave wraps her arms around her knees.

“Signal and Noise,” I say. “I see. Were they … I mean … they must have been close?”

“Dunno,” says Grimgrave. “Never met her, you know? S’not much actually down there in the box, according to Bright. Just some scraps. Bits of bone. Real nasty shit, you know?”

“How did she die?”

A shrug. “I dunno that either. Don’t know the whole story. Bright got bits of it, but not the whole thing. Before my time, before Bright’s time, you know? Anyway, Siggy’s kinda like the zoogs, she doesn’t like to come back here. Not even sure who put the headstone up, might have been … well, somebody else who’s either dead or dreamer now.”

I am struck with a sudden urge to squat next to Grimgrave and put my arm around her shoulders, tighten my grip, feel living warmth, body against body. But she doesn’t want that, that’s not why she came out here, and she’s not done yet.

Grimgrave slowly tells me about the rest of the seven known dead, pointing to headstones one by one.

‘Anislee’ — before Grimgrave and Bright, but known to Signal. ‘Lake Mercury’, a magical girl name, apparently once friendly with Bright, died shortly before Grimgrave’s time in Plato Base. Then there’s—

“Cece!” Grimgrave lights up, a smile growing on her face. “Cecilia, but we all called her Cece. Uh, ‘all’, I mean like, was a bit different back then. Though, wow, shit, that was only a couple of years back. Her magical girl name was Gorgon, which was cool as shit, you know? She was cool as shit all over. Helped Nerys when I got picked up. She’d been here a while, with Signal and a couple of others. Cece fuckin’ rocked. Miss that bitch.”

“And … 2023?” I read the date off the headstone. “She … ?”

“Yeah.” Grimgrave shrugs. “She got got, and that was that.” She moves on, points at the next grave. “Mahalia. We uh, never got a magical girl name out of her. She was here for like … six months, I guess. Then Alice, same. Iridice, same. Shit, this is nasty, right? And … uh … ”

Grimmy falters on the final grave, mouth open, words stuck. Her hand sags.

‘Haleigh Knight. Feast of Bones. 2000-2024.’

Need I even ask? What manner of memory and mourning would still even Grimgrave’s laugh?

“Grimmy?”

“Yeah,” Grimgrave says, speaking to the grave, voice thick and slow. “Uh. She’s like, not actually down there, most of her, anyway. Buried a— an arm. Pretty much. Her dress, it’s one of the ones on the wall in the base, you know? The one with the black skeleton bits, but you kinda can’t see much of that anymore, since it’s all burned and cut up and shit. She uh … she was one of us for like, a year. A bit more, I think. Yeah, thirteen months. Heh. Can’t forget that.” She swallows. Sniffs awkwardly. Wipes her nose on the back of one hand. “January sixteenth, twenty twenty four. That’s when she … you know. Around about seven in the afternoon. It was … raining, in England. Mm.”

Mid January last year; a particularly bad Nightmare incursion, three days of putrid phantasm roiling forth from London’s foul corpse, four distinct Nightmares and their attendant clouds of dark-dripping Dreamland detritus, drifting west and south over the London Wall. Three days in and out of the shelters. Sixty eight dead, over two hundred wounded. Halted and slain in the end, by magical girls, as Nightmares always are.

Plus Haleigh Knight.

How did she die? To the Nightmares, to the Trio, to the other magical girls involved in that particular defence of the realm? What hidden battles unfold beneath cover of Nightmares? What secret war is hidden from England’s eyes? Was it worth it, her death? Did she go down as martyr, worth all the pain? Or did she regret everything, wishing for one more day of life?

This was Grimgrave’s girlfriend. I’m certain.

My left hand twitches again, wants to reach for her shoulder, but that would be a worse intrusion. She sniffs a few times, won’t show me her face. Clears her throat. Takes a deep breath.

“How many became Dreamers?” I ask. Coward.

Grimgrave shrugs. “Dunno. Double this, probs. Easier to wander off than flame out, you know? ‘Course, this doesn’t include all the girls who Nerys picked up who never made it the first couple of hours, like. Nerys says there’s been lots. But, you know, no bodies, no names, nothing, no shit. She has to do it quiet, else the Trio and other bitches get riled up. We can’t barely help. Sucks shit.”

All of these girls, all of them like us. Why did they take Nerys’ deal? What did they imagine they were fighting for — or what horrors were they fleeing? Why did Haleigh Knight become a magical girl; was it worth her own death? Was it worth leaving Grimgrave behind? Or was it because of Grimgrave? What about the unmarked graves at the rear, the ones nobody but Dream-Gods recall, whose names cannot cross back into the waking world? What about the Dreamers, the ones who gave up and left, the ones who decided England and Earth and humankind itself not worth the effort?

Plato Base should be teeming with young women. Dozens of us. A hundred. More.

Here are the unquiet shades in whose shadows I stand.

Grimgrave takes a deep breath, straightens without rising from her squat, sweeps her hair back, tresses trailing on the concrete ground. She wiggles an index finger, imitates a claw. “We’ve got a ghoul claw for carving into the concrete. Could do it with a chisel, sure, but that baby goes like a hot knife through butter, it’s cool as shit. We keep it in the machine shop room back there, do you wanna see it—”

“I’m sorry.”

Grimgrave twists, looks over her shoulder. “Eh? Occy?”

One step back, give her space. Can’t meet those eyes, still damp with unshed tears.

“I apologise,” I repeat. Throat thick. Glued shut. “Grimgrave. Grimmy, I— I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Can’t find the words. “I’m sorry.”

Grimgrave goes sceptical in my peripheral vision. “Hey, what? What for?”

“For earlier. For … the way I … ” Pushed you down, jammed my knee into your cunt, when you have your own ghosts draped about your shoulders. “I-I can’t … I cannot impose on you. I can’t inflict myself on you, you don’t deserve, you … you should be allowed to … to grieve, to—” Take another step back, hands to myself, eyes aside. “I-I-I shouldn’t, shouldn’t touch. Not when— when—” Gesture at the grave, at Grimgrave’s dead girlfriend, at the shades who suddenly crowd the edges of my vision. “You should be allowed to remember in peace—”

Grimgrave explodes — to her feet, in my face, and wide, arms thrown out to her sides, eyes blazing with maniac fire.

“Fuck that!” she yells. “Occy, hey, yo, look at my fuckin’ face! Fuck! That!”

Grimgrave grabs my robe. I shake my head, mutter a denial, but she’s not listening.

“Yeah, they’re all fuckin’ dead! So what, huh?! We can’t change that now. Shit, couldn’t change it then, couldn’t do a fuckin’ thing! But you know what, hey? Occy, you know what? You know what!?” She shakes me by the robe, forces me to dig my heels in. “We’re not dead! Me, you, Bright, Siggy, we’re all still here, still fuckin’ alive! Tissy too, even Nerys! You get it?!”

“B-but—” I glance, helpless, at the grave of Grimmy’s lover. “But she was—”

“Yeah! Yeah, she was! Was! And now she’s gone. And you know what she’d want me to do? And you don’t, you fuckin’ don’t, ‘cos you never knew her. You know what she’d want me to do!? Anything I want!”

Grimgrave pants hard; I can smell her breath, the softness of her, her hair and her skin. Right about one thing, she is very much alive.

She lets go, steps back, cracks that lunatic grin, fifty, sixty, seventy percent power, still climbing. Eyes on fire. Springs in her heels.

“And you know what I want?” she says. “I wanna fuckin’ live, Occy. I wanna live, and I wanna win, and smash the chains on England, and all the rest of it! I wanna live, every day!”

I meet her eyes, no choice, like a bonfire on a frozen night.

She’s still grinning. Beside the grave of her dead lover, she still grins like a mad little imp.

“I don’t understand how you do it,” I say, voice on the verge of breaking. “Tomorrow, or the week after, I might not be here, I might be dead. You might be dead. So why … why … why even try? Why … ”

“Yeah, sure! We might both be in this ground. That’s why you gotta fuckin’ live!”

“All I’ve done is insult you. But you still won’t give up on me. Even when I … attacked you. It … it makes me feel … helpless?”

Grimgrave’s grin hits a hundred percent. “You’ll get used to it!”

A sigh. A roll of my eyes. Half a laugh and the memory of tears. When I wipe my eyes on the back of my hand, Grimgrave takes the opening to ambush me with a hug, darts in like we’re duelling with shotgun and fists. Quick and rough, a hard squeeze round my middle, warm as raw sunlight, small and wriggly, smelling like sweat and zoog fur. Doesn’t give me a chance to hug back, or stumble away, or even yelp. She just does it, then lets go, dances a step clear, wipes her own nose on her sleeve.

“Shit, Occy,” she says. “Thanks.”

I’m still reeling from the hug. “Uh … what? What for?”

“For coming out here!” She gestures at the graves. “I’ve been all mopey, like. Thinking about dead girls. People I miss. You know? But you’re here. You’re alive! Right fuckin’ there!” She frames me with her thumbs and forefingers, one eye closed, a pixie director on a set nobody else can see.

I almost laugh. A small laugh, to be sure, but a real one. “If you say so.”

“I do say so!”

“Well.” I glance out over the graves, at the empty grey soil yet to be filled, just so I don’t have to endure her irrepressible face. “Thank you again for facing down Willow. If she’d gotten me, I don’t think I would be under this ground.”

“Ah?”

“There are fates worse than death.”

“Ehhhh.” Grimgrave, doubtful. “Don’t think so. But hey, you do you. Or don’t, hey!”

A moment of comfortable silence lingers between us, my eyes on the graves, Grimmy’s on the mountains behind Plato Base, or perhaps on the side of my face, though I try not to think about that. Moon-wind teases the tips of her hair, runs fingers across the back of my neck. I look up at the mountains too, at the silver-black lunar forests, the Dreamland woods, beyond all waking reason. Small black dots detach from a handful of treetops, winging through the air in slow, lazy, looping arcs. A few cross overhead, alighting on the outer walls of the courtyard.

Ravens, but not those of the waking world. Ten-foot wingspans, beaks like garden shears, each one with a third eye in the forehead, glowing a dull red against the lunar sky. Heads twitch, consider Grimgrave and I from several angles, then dismiss us and turn to preening themselves.

“Ha, those fuckers,” Grimgrave says. “Don’t let ‘em fool you, they can talk, and they’re real shits about it if you get ‘em going. S’the other reason I don’t like the zoogs to come out here. Hey, you wanna go back inside? Wanna see that cool claw? Or like, has your foot finished printing yet?”

“Why ‘Grimgrave’?”

Away from the dead, back to the living. Grimgrave’s eyes light up at my question.

“Grimaldi!” she says.

“I’m sorry?”

Grimgrave rolls her eyes, sagging with great eloquence. “Joseph motherfucking Grimaldi? The most famous clown in English history? No? No!? Fuck!” She throws up her hands, bursts out laughing. “Fuck you, Occy!”

“I wasn’t aware clowns had history.”

“Well we fuckin’ do.” Grimgrave wiggles her head at me with mock offence. “And I’m the latest and greatest! Totally clown-maxxed! Grim for Grimaldi, and then grave ‘cos like … you know. Graves. It’s a cool name. Rest of my meat-bag family doesn’t deserve it. S’mine now, fuck ‘em.”

“You just put the name together yourself?”

“Nah. Dreamed it! S’how you’ll get yours, I reckon.”

Can’t help but sigh. “I do hope so. Perhaps when I finish repairing my arm.” Phantom pain tingles up invisible fingers, clenched fist reminding me with a deep throb of unplaceable interruption.

“Probs, yeah.” Grimgrave does her best to sound confident, but she doesn’t know anymore than I do, and I need to say far more than I have.

“Grimgrave. Grimmy, I mean. I … I need to ask … I—”

“Just spit it out, yo!”

I give her a nasty look, but she’s immune. “I don’t know how to phrase this,” I say. “But seeing all of these.” I gesture at the graves. “I … well … is it true?”

Though I’m well-aware my question makes no sense, I can’t get the rest of the words up my throat. Grimgrave waits a beat, then snorts.

“Nah!” she says. “Nothing’s true, everything’s permitted!”

Another dark look bounces right off her. “Isn’t that from a video game?”

“Nah. I mean yeah. But nah.”

Grimgrave’s foolery has loosened my throat. “Is it true,” I repeat, wet my lips, choose each word with great and terrible care. “What Dream Control says about … homosexuals?” About us. “Or, I suppose, what they imply. What everybody implies. Is it true? If Nerys chooses only … le-lesbians,” my voice drops to a whisper on that word. Clear my throat. Try again. “To become magical girls, then is the rest of it true as well? It is true that we—” We! “That we’re a risk?”

Everybody knows, though few say out loud, in endless twists and turns of insinuation, that homosexuals are more likely to become Dreamers. Nobody has a rational reason why, outside the carefully guarded secrets and clean-room laboratories of the Dream Institute. Yet, at the same time, everybody knows why.

To yearn is to dream; the yearning is what makes Dreamers. To go beyond the grey skies and grey concrete of old England, to break free of the rational round of the world. To believe that other things are possible, and to want those things with the whole force of one’s soul.

To dream is to be human, to be human is to dream. But some of us are more of a risk. And it’s true, isn’t it? Everything they’ve implied and insinuated, every last word is true.

Grimgrave shrugs. “Fuck knows.”

I blink at her, dumbfounded. “You … no. No. You’re serious? But … how can’t you … ”

“I dunno! I mean, like, maybe?” Grimgrave looks vaguely baffled. “But probs not. DC already lie about all sorts of shit, right? You believe everything else the fuckers believe down in England?”

“Well. I mean. No, of course not. But … ”

“Well there you go, hey! Decide for yourself, yeah?”

Shake my head, total disbelief. “You’ve never thought about this? You’re not curious why Nerys picks only homosexual women to become magical girls?”

“That’s just Nerys! It’s like, her thing? Dream-Gods don’t work like people, they got rules and systems and shit they gotta follow. And hey, sure as shit I’ve thought about it. Made up my own mind, like. I ain’t a Dreamer, I ain’t gonna become a Dreamer. And neither are you, right? Yeah?”

“Uh, yes. Of course not.”

But how can I avoid that fate when I don’t even understand the nature of the risk? Perhaps I should be asking Signal these technical questions.

Grimgrave cracks a nasty little smirk. “We’re both gay as all fuck though!”

Look away. Can’t respond to that. Not out loud.

I try to fold my arms over my chest before I forget the current lack of my right. Phantom pain crawls up the imaginary nerves of a ghostly limb, creeping into my shoulder as a clenching of muscles, spreading into my neck, burrowing deep. I’m left awkwardly massaging my stump.

“Grimgrave—”

“Gay, gay, gay!”

“Yes, yes, gay, whatever. Grimgrave, listen. This is important. More important than the whole gay thing. Alright?”

“Ah? All ears, Occy!”

“Earlier, after I put Bright to bed, when I was alone, I got … ” Why is this so hard to say? Shame does not matter, not in this case. “I got spooked. Only a little.”

“Pffffft,” Grimgrave makes a dismissive noise. “Ahhh, it’s fine, it’s fine! Plato Base ain’t like, super duper untouchable safe, but shit, it’s safer than anywhere down on earth! Especially for us magical girls.”

“Even for ones who can’t transform?”

“Errr … I mean … ”

“Anyway.” I sigh. “That’s not why I got spooked. Dreamers can go anywhere, right? They’re not bound by the same limitations as magical girls, and certainly not by any limitations of a mundane human being. So.” Swallow, throat surprisingly dry. Glance over my shoulder, at the open door back into the bowels of Plato Base. Grimgrave is right here, at my side; is this the real reason I came seeking her? How long has this thought been lurking in the back of my mind, disguised as something else, something less frightening? “So.”

“Sooooo?” Grimgrave echoes.

“So.” I squeeze my stump hard, phantom pain worse than usual. “Is there any chance, any chance at all, no matter how slim, that Willow might turn up uninvited?”

Grimgrave pulls a face, half-smirk, opens her mouth.

Before she can speak: “Grimmy, I don’t want reassurance, I want truth. Is it possible?”

Grimgrave shuts her mouth, scrunches up a difficult frown, stays that way for well over ten seconds. “Ehhhhh, I dunno? Not like, for sure? Fuck, this isn’t what you wanna hear—”

“Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Tell me what I need to keep myself safe.”

Grimgrave throws up her hands. “I dunno! I dunno, really. I mean, I would’a said no, right? Nobody else can make it up here. The only Dreamers who come here are ones who used to be us, and that’s pretty rare, like. And hey, nobody even knows about Plato Base. Unless you told her about it?”

There is no cold hand on the back of my neck. “I did. I mentioned the moon, when it was just her and I, alone together.”

“Shit.” Grimgrave goes quiet, then quickly rallies. “But like, she still can’t get here! Unless she gets in a rocket ship. But, yeah, I dunno for sure.”

“Thank you for the honesty.”

“She’s not gonna get you back!” Grimgrave says. “She’s not! I’m right here, Occy, and she’s not. She wants my shotgun all the way up her cunt again, she can fuckin’ try! Ha!”

Deep breaths. Do not shake. Do not look over my shoulder. Willow is not here. She is not here. “I think today has firmly established that you cannot be at my side twenty-four seven.”

“Shit, I could be.” Grimgrave smirks at the look on my face. “Until you learn to transform! You could sleep in my room—”

“Grimmy.”

“—and I’ll watch you shit! Hahaha!” She bursts into laughter. “Hoooooo yeah!”

Look away, hold onto dull fear. Try to fold my arms again, forget and fail. “I appreciate the attempt at levity, but it’s not helping.”

“Who said it was ‘levity’? I’m serious!” Grimgrave bounces in front of me, a dirty little smirk on her face. “You need somebody to keep your psycho ex away? I’ve got your back, Occy. Serious. I can take her. Did it before, didn’t I?”

“That’s not the part in question.”

Grimmy’s offer prompts sober consideration; if her presence at my side was the price of keeping Willow forever at bay, then I would gladly sit on the toilet and move my bowels in front of Grimgrave for the rest of my life. I would let her sleep at the foot of my bed. I would have her live in my pocket, at my heels, on a leash. I would sew us together.

But if Willow wanted me badly enough, she would be here. Dreamers have no rational limits, they are not subject to what we — mundane and magical girls alike — consider the boundaries of reality. The Dream is everywhere all at once, and even the great distance of Luna is likely no barrier, not to something like her.

So where is she? For all her pleading, all the dreams she crammed into my mind, she has not pursued me. Never loved me at all. Liar.

Or perhaps she cannot reach across the snatch of vacuum between earth and the moon? I know so little, my own lack of certainty is driving a fear of which I can barely sense the shape.

All I know is that I never want to see her again. Not alive, at least.

Besides, perhaps Grimgrave would not be able to protect me a third time. She shot Willow twice, but both were by surprise, a shotgun in the face and a shotgun to the flank. A Dreamer, a Lucid Dreamer, alive and active in the waking world, a totally unknown quality, forewarned and prepared. Would Grimgrave prevail?

I simply don’t know.

“I just … I don’t need you to watch my back around the clock,” I say, talking to a patch of distant concrete wall. “I just feel naked. Can’t transform. Don’t have my right arm. Even if I start work right away, which, yes, I am going to, but it’ll still be perhaps forty eight hours, maybe more, before I can finish repairs and get it back on. Until then I’m defenceless. If she showed up, I could only run.” Shake my head, bite my lip. Old anger, sealed deep down inside.

Grimgrave breaks into a grin, not what I expected. “Shiiiiiiit, Occy. You know what you need?”

Grimmy pulls the waistband of her jogging bottoms wide and jams a hand down inside. She sticks her tongue out and turns her eyes aside, like she’s rummaging in a sack full of goodies. Just as I pull a face, expecting a terrible joke, she extracts a chunk of brightly coloured polymer, spins it in one hand, and offers it to me, grip-first.

A handgun. A pistol. In bright pink camo-print.

“A helping hand from little miss Glock and her big bang girlcock!” She laughs, eyes aflame with mania. “Serious, go on, take it! Full load, no spare mags, but I’ll get you some soon. Forty-five ACP, none of that nine-mil pussy shit. Take it, take it!”

A tut. “Bullets don’t stop Dreamers.”

“Mine do!”

Can’t argue with that, I suppose. “I’ve never fired a gun before. Never even held one.”

“It’s easy as shit! Both hands on the boomstick, point it at what you wanna make dead, and squeeze the little clitty. Then she goes pop, woo!”

Another dark look for Grimgrave. This one penetrates. “Both hands?”

Grimgrave freezes, then snorts. “Shit, sorry! Like, just use your left hand double-hard!”

I sigh. I am defeated. I lie trampled. “Is the safety on?”

“Yeah! Sure!” Grimgrave tilts her head, looks at the side of the gun, then flicks the safety. “Now it is!”

“Fucking hell,” I hiss. “Grimgrave!”

“Take it! Serious! Take it! Willow comes around a corner, you put this in her face and dump that mag. That’s enough to make even a Dreamer flinch! Put her on her arse then scream like hell, I’ll be right there.”

“I can’t believe you had the safety off.”

She shrugs. “Doesn’t matter shit for me. Come ooooonnnnnn, Occy. Take it! It’ll make you feel better!”

With a sweaty hand and final moment’s hesitation, I accept the gun.

Heavy, too heavy, like a tiny contextless component of some vast machine, inviting me to infer grand functions from this single part. I check the safety myself, ensure I can operate it with my left hand alone; I eject the magazine against the base of my rib cage, no right hand to catch it properly, ease the bullets out so I can count them. Thirteen rounds, slid back with a solid click. Smooth polymer surfaces, textured grip, just right in a human hand. What a perfectly designed little device, extruded from the mouth of a deity. Like an extension of my body, within seconds.

Try to imagine the muzzle of this gun pressed to Willow’s forehead. Pull the trigger, watch her burst like ripe fruit. She’s a Dreamer, she’ll put herself back together in the blink of an eye. Aim at her centre of mass, yank the trigger over and over, fill her with holes, watch her fall.

I loved Willow once, or was made to believe I did. Could I point a gun at her? Could I pull the trigger? Do I want to kill Willow? Can it be done? Dreamers, yes, by enough application of magical girls. Lucid Dreamers? Who knows. Certainly not with bullets.

I want the answer to be yes. It might be no.

Aim at the wall with my left hand a few times. Discipline, finger off the trigger. Feels awkward. Incomplete.

Grimgrave whistles. “Thought you said you didn’t know how to use a gun, yo?”

“I’ve never handled one before, but I know plenty about firearms. They’re mechanically interesting.” A sigh. “Does it have to be pink?”

“Best one I got for the job. Suits you!”

“Fair enough.” Now I don’t know where to put the thing. Tuck it into my waistband? In the front, like a surrogate penis? No, thank you. I slide the firearm into the pocket of my robe, where it drags to one side. “Thank you. I think. Listen, Grimmy, if something happens—”

“Scream and I’ll come running,” she says. “Right?”

Have to turn my face away, vaguely shamed. “Right.”

“Oh, and don’t leave the gun where the zoogs can get at it.” She cracks a smirk. “Bad idea!”

“ … no, you’re not telling me they can operate a firearm. No. No way. They don’t have the hands for it. Grimgrave. Stop teasing.”

Grimmy snorts. I can’t decide if she’s being serious. “Yo yo yo, Occy, you should ask Siggy about all this Dreamer stuff, okay? She knows a lot more than I do, like all about overlaps and Dreamers and stuff. If she was worried about that dream bitch running up here and nabbing you, she probs would have said something, like. Ask her, for serious.” Grimgrave rummages in her pockets while she talks, pulls out her mobile phone, a chunky old thing which looks enough to kill a Dreamer with one blow to the skull. “Anyway, I told her—”

“Do you think I was Willow’s only woman?” I say, not to Grimmy, because I wasn’t really listening.

Grimmy looks up from her phone, deer in headlights. I look down, first cold, then flushed with sudden heat.

“Forget I said that,” I say, but it’s too late, Grimgrave is already cracking open a fresh grin.

“You jealous?” she snorts.

“No, just—”

“Worried she was a big old slut—”

“Forget I said it!” I snap. “Please. Grimmy.”

Grimgrave snorts again, then shrugs, gestures with her phone. “Aaaaaaanyways. I messaged Siggy, let her know you’re up and around and stuff. She said to tell you she’s glad you’re well, all the usual stuff she says, blah blah blah.”

“You didn’t tell her the rest, did you? How you … found me?”

Grimgrave grins like a demon. “Yeah, I told her you wanked yourself into a heart attack over some big titty bitches. Hahah! Course I fuckin’ didn’t!”

“Alright, fine.” I huff. “What’s Signal doing, anyway? Where is she?”

“Fuck knows. Same thing she always does, resistance stuff with the Opposition. She’s our girl on the inside, you know?”

“Yes, I gathered that, what with her skills.”

Is that Signal’s mundane life? Hiding out in the Scottish Highlands, deep in the Dream-afflicted parts of Wales, or in some rat-infested bedsit in a northern industrial city, working for the Opposition? A cog in the mundane revolutionary machine. Can’t imagine how she hides the skeletons.

“Anyway,” Grimgrave says, “Siggy’s called a new meeting, since our first one kinda fell apart. Day after tomorrow. Plenty of time to work on your robot arm, yeah?”

Can’t help another sigh. “Is that what you people do? Hold meetings? Or I suppose, what ‘we’ do?”

“Naaaah. Not often. But shit, there’s plenty enough to figure out, right? But it’s not all about that, she wants this one special.” Grimgrave holds up the phone so I can read her messages, a clashing mess of pastels on neon, blood-red and scream-pink and steel-blue. “See? Siggy’s always one step ahead! She’s already onto some new shit.”

The message is short and simple.

‘Strategy meeting. Thursday 15:00. Opposition has plans for a major hit. They want us in.’

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Even Grimgrave can be grim at times, especially when surrounded by graves; this really doesn’t seem like the sort of chapter about which I should be making jokes though, so I’ll leave that one there.

This was genuinely a little rough to write! But I’m glad we went there, these things cannot forever be avoided in such a story, especially with these kinds of themes. At least Octavia has learned something important. Gained some perspective. Knows the stakes. Maybe she’ll be a bit more understanding now, at least about Grimmy.

As for the rest of the arc, it’s three more chapters! Arc 5 lurks up ahead, peering from the shadows.

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 thank you, dear readers! As always, I could not do any of this without all of you, the audience. Maidens of the Fall is for all of you, and I dearly hope you’re having just as much fun reading it as I am writing.

Next chapter, it’s time for a Magical Girl Meeting. Though these girls aren’t much for tea and cakes.