This Magical Girl is Mine 6.6 This Magical Girl is Mine

At first, all I can feel is pain. Sothing violates my chest and forces its way inside my lungs, my nerves, behind my eyes and pressing, pressing, pressing. Poison in my blood.

Then, she tries to drown in light. A god has word its way into my soul—into the hole left by my stolen heart, now returned, corrupted—and she’s wearing like a cheap suit. She laughs with my throat and her voice, my limbs moving to her will, my form reshaped to her design. She subsus like it’s only natural. Maybe it is.

It's different from how it was in the waking dream. There, she trapped in placidity with a pleasant illusion, one maintained by an active servant. Every ti I began to question, I was nudged back onto her rails and the errant thought scattered.

This ti, I'm fully aware. I feel every part of what she's doing to —I feel everything. As I scream and bang against the black glass of a ntal prison, I'm also moving as she moves, wielding power as she wields it, thinking as she thinks. It's an awareness that surrounds , compresses , invades .

I feel righteous indignation at the mortal pests that dare stand against a god. I feel a thrill of fear that here, at the mont of my rightful ascension, everything is falling apart. I feel the flas of ambition stirring in my soul, singing to of what wonders I shall shape if I can just reach that single step further and take my mother’s place on that throne of gleaming glass.

I am Venus; my will be done. I am Rachel; soone, please save .

Around us, chaos erupts. Witches and magical girls clash across a vast chamber of strange tal—multiple tals, actually, mostly mundane, but a handful of exotic alloys with intrinsically arcane properties—and thick tubing that carries power—electricity, chemical solutions, and raw conceptual energy extracted and processed—to a central pillar—the worship engine, the glorified battery holding the harvest of the better part of ten years, built by a wizard on contract—and stolen, now, by so pawn of another wizard. Arrogant. Reaching above their station, all of them, those damn mongrel mages.

Wizards. I know wizards. I know one wizard, as Rachel, fresh and vivid and painful in my mory, but what’s this about a second? Why does that feel so familiar? Why do I rember—

A face. A man. Gloved hands, high collar, pocketwatch. A bargain struck, a price paid.

The work is done. I do hope you don’t get yourself extinguished before I can collect my full due. Though, with the shoddy craftsmanship of the original model…

Anger. Disrespect. And yet, wariness. Ugly necessity and a binding contract.

The mory burns away as quickly as it ca. Not ant for my eyes. Who do I think I am, persisting like this? What right do I have to cling to existence?

Invisible chains bind nine servants. They overwhelm the intruders with raw numbers that clever tricks can’t overco. No matter how many bodies the Hydra-bearer makes, it won’t be enough. Athena’s host is dangerous, but she still has limits. All the Loki-bearer can do is run and hide. They should have brought an army.

We approach the last one, the wielder of Daedalus. Ferromancer. Erica. A creature of base passions, but one that resisted our attempts to ensnare. She could have been so much more. Such a pity.

The accumulated power in the worship engine bleeds away rapidly, but there’s still enough in the air that I—that Venus—can easily force our way past all opposition and clear a path to the artificer. She flashes into her power armor the mont we get close, surrounding herself with floating drones that project shields and fire beams of caustic energy. Pathetic.

I wave them aside. “You. Fix what you’ve broken. Return what is mine.”

“Make ,” she says, so I do.

I am Venus; of my mother’s children, I alone was chosen to inherit the greatest of her aspects. I am love. I am beauty. I am ant to be adored.

My aura washes over the battlefield, taking hold of all the energy in the air and directing it toward the mantled. My presence bears down on those who still resist , bombarding their minds with the sacred truth of my being. The fullness of my will presses against the mind of the intruder before , the one that dared to steal my power.

Love . Worship . Adore . This is why I was made.

That thought stirs another—a blip of recollection, a nanosecond firing of ethereal synapses in the mind that enshrouds mine—and I reach for it, struggling against the light, still railing against the walls of an invisible prison. If Venus is going to trap inside herself, I’ll dig through any of her secrets I can scrounge.

So I reach, and again I steal a glimpse of another ti, another place. A flash of gold.

Beneath a sun that had yet to bleed, there was a city of marble and silk. The city was white, bleached, starved of color. Phantoms walked its streets; shadow people pranced and played, fignts of imagination bent to crude simulation of urban life. A chiaroscuro city, sketched in grayscale but for the prismatic light at the heart of the grand palace.

There, all the colors of creation were concentrated in five figures, each more vibrant than reality itself. Greens more vivid than the deepest forests, blues more perfect than the Seven Seas, and all the shades of dusk and dawn rendered brighter, grander, truer. The palace was the planet, the solar system, the universe, all orbiting around the one who begat four.

Hastur, the King in Yellow. Hastur, a traveler from alien stars. Hastur, demiurge, who shaped our flesh from dreams and nightmares.

She sat with on a balcony overlooking the city, drinking black tea and telling stories, as she had done so many tis before. Stories were her passion, our maker, and she frad everything by narrative lens. She told us that everything had a proper place on the stage, from the headlining actors to the lowliest prop. All things have a purpose. Ours, as divinity, was to rule. It was our destiny to be worshiped.

That day, I asked her sothing odd. It was a question that had never occurred to before, but which slipped into my mind then and beca inescapable.

I asked, “Do you love us?”

She laughed. “Of course, child. You belong to . It's only proper.”

The mory burns away—I am thrust from it, violently, by the will of the goddess encircling . I can feel her red rage at my intrusion.

You've seen inside my mind, I tell her spitefully. I'm only returning the favor.

Back in reality, the wave of suffocating presence has made its mark on the battlefield… though not to the egregore’s satisfaction. Harlequin and Howl move slower, sluggish, fighting against the aura of the goddess, but so of her own minions have fallen to their knees in blind worship. Striga fights unaffected, the wretched—wonderful, perfect in every way—pawn of Minerva.

Ferromancer, subjected to the most intense shock of grandeur, has resisted longer than she should have been capable of. A gift from her new master, almost certainly. But no amount of passive warding can protect her from my loving attention forever. I burn away the last of her resistance and sink my talons into her ugly, bruise-purple soul.

“Be mine,” I hiss, and she is. “Reverse what you have done. Bring back my hoard!”

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“Can't. Can't, can't, can't,” she babbles. “Not possible. Can't be done. Out of my control. Don't know where it is, don't know how to get it back. Made it like that on purpose. For this.”

“Useless!” Venus roars. We grasp her putrid soul and burn it. Divine light erupts from within and blazes through the seams in her armor. Erica screams. Ferromancer sags. I toss her empty shell aside, uncaring what happens to it next.

How could this have happened? I extend my awareness into the whole of the underground complex and hiss at what I find: sabotage, all throughout, that must have been done over weeks, maybe months. A wizard couldn’t have hidden this on their own. Soone let them in. One of my own is a traitor. I’ll find them, once this is done. I’ll make them suffer. But first, I must act.

This is not the end. I will not allow it to be the end. All those years of preparation cannot go up in smoke because another of Mother’s pet projects got to cheat out of this. This is my ti. I am her favorite child, the one ant to succeed her.

I fly up to the surface of the worship engine and place my hands upon the crystal pillar. The power has all but bled out from the great mass once stored here. Not nearly enough to work my will upon the whole of the world for as long as I need to achieve my goals. I cannot claim the throne of Hastur with this lowly supply. But it's not nothing, and I can still feel the connections I established with my speech. All those watching souls are still mine to grasp, if only for a fleeting instant.

Scope will have to be narrowed. I can ascend, but it will be a slower, more grueling process. So be it. I am Venus, and I will not be denied.

I tear the magic from its shell, fighting through protections that have been turned against their rightful master. I gather the last dregs of worship, still tuned to my divinity, and with the power in my hands I shape a single truth: —

I can't see it. It's like a blank spot in my mory, even though I was present for its creation.

Venus laughs at as she unleashes her artificial truth on the world. Did you think I would give you everything? Suffer in ignorance until you've learned your place, my vessel. An idea I can't grasp, one hidden from , passes from her hands down the strings of the invisible network, propagating to the souls of so unknowable number of humans across the planet. I don't know where, I don't know who, and I don't know what. Damn her.

“I will have my world!” she cries. “This was rely a—”

Striga’s spear clashes against our personal shield and cuts through seven layers of nine, silver light sparking. Venus reels, shocked at her sudden appearance. I cry out for my beloved, silent and longing.

The champion of Minerva left a trail of destruction in her wake. With divine sight, it's clear that she's been calling on dangerous quantities of power from her patron. Her form wavers at the edges like it's struggling to hold together, close to overloading from how much she's channeled. Ever the ruthless one, Striga; always so willing to put her very existence in jeopardy for the sake of the mission.

She’s taken damage. She’s bleeding in three places from the mad fighting she must have done to reach Venus through all her brainwashed defenders. Invincible no longer.

“Give her back,” Striga says, coldly furious. “Return her, Venus, and you can slink away.”

Venus laughs. “Is the mask laid aside? Finally, no more lies about what truly motivates you. Co, Striga. Show your devotion. It will shine all the brighter when you submit.”

They clash. Striga is a whirlwind of silver and steel, carving through everything Venus puts before her. The egregore fights on the defensive, hiding behind barriers of light and puppeted minions—though the latter carries risk, as Striga’s blade cuts at the connection to Venus and steals motes of power. She killed Pearl Princess to get at Venus, though the discarded host had little to spare. It’s an attrition ga.

But attrition cuts both ways.

“Hound of Minerva, is this the best you can do?” Venus laughs again, soaring away from another deadly strike. “You’d be disappointing your dearly beloved if she could see you.”

I can see you! I want to scream. I’m here! Keep fighting!

She can’t hear . She keeps her expression cold, burying her feelings behind a mask of ice, but I know she must be in pain. That pain she never lets anyone know about, the pain she has to hide to maintain her invincible illusion. How far will she push herself to save ?

Is this all I am? Is this my destiny? Everything I did, all that I strived for, and I’m still just that girl in the rain, needing Sophia to save . Helpless. A victim. The damsel in distress holding her back.

No. I’m more than that. I promised I’d be more than that. This ti, I’ll be the one to save her. There has to be sothing I can do.

The will of Venus is a cloying, oppressive force around my soul. I’m a dim fla, flickering in the dark, a world away from everything that matters. But I’m still here. And I’m still a claimant, damn her.

Think, Rachel. Think!

Venus has the raw power to bully her way into my body, and she has the power to keep one step ahead of Striga, but what is she really demonstrating with all this? Nothing she’s done since her speech on the platform has reinforced her claim; she’s too arrogant to bother, not when she thinks she’s won.

Love. Beauty. Adoration. She’s built a structure that channels adoration towards her, but what else? She’s changed my body to emphasize her heavenly beauty, but so what? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and all the adoration she receives is by proxy. I’m plenty cute, and I get that adoration straight from the source. So what about love?

For a goddess of love, she hardly fits the bill. She’s not exactly playing matchmaker. She encouraged an orgy, sure, but one act of lust? Is that all? In the visions she showed to tempt to her side, and the last one, to keep bound, she paired with Sophia. But it was a false love, a fragile love, one ignorant of who we really are. She couldn’t imagine us together in any world except one where I took away Sophia’s independence.

It’s all so shallow. It’s like she can only see love as a kind of possession.

Is that the difference between us? Is that the sin at the heart of her being? A goddess of love that was never taught to love properly, because her maker liked her better that way. I wonder if all the egregores are like that, broken in their core nature.

Well, I’ll be better. I’ll be more. My love for Sophia is pure, and I’ll prove it.

In the dark, I’m only a dim fla, but even a single spark can grow into a wildfire. I reach for Protheus, for transformation, for the divinity surrounding , and for the love that has carried through seven years of suffering. I feed it all into the fla. I would burn for my beloved a thousand tis over. Can Venus say the sa?

Love is all I am—all I was, at least, for so long. When I was empty of everything else, love lit my way. I believe in love. I would kill for love. I would die for love.

I love you, Sophia Lane. I always will.

Venus stops midair. “Your girlfriend is dead,” she suddenly says, a mocking edge to her words. “There’s nothing left of her but the husk I’m wearing. She’s gone, Striga!”

No! She can tell I’m resisting. I push harder against the mbrane of my prison, struggling to regain control over even a finger of my body.

Striga, implacable as ever, approaches with spear raised. She slams into the golden shield and breaks through, shattering the last of the egregore’s defenses—only to be caught, frozen, in a web of golden light that wasn’t visible a mont ago. Her spear cos to a stop less than an inch from my chest.

“Finally,” Venus breathes, hungry and ragged. “Finally, one little mistake. Now… love and despair, you thorn in my side.” She reaches for my beloved.

Striga, teeth gritted, calls on more of that silver power, the ruinous might of Minerva. “I… will only love… Rachel Emily.”

I love you, Sophie.

I break through the mbrane. With a surge of will, I cast aside the egregore’s chains—only for a mont, a brief instant, her power imdiately threatening to drag back down—and twitch my fingers, seize my hand, pull back. I look my beloved in the eyes.

“I trust you,” I gasp, and then I say, “I love you.”

Striga breaks through the web and strikes. She runs through, penetrating deep inside , spearing . Pain and love radiate through my body. I smile. Venus screams.

“I choose you,” Sophia says. “Your love, your partner, your consort. A truer goddess of love than she could ever be.”

Venus wails and rages as she’s torn from , excised by the silver light wreathing Striga’s spear. She clings to , clawing at my mind and soul to escape her fate, but I reject her. I cast her out.

Striga holds . Sophia holds , her spear still sunken into . She’s crying, I realize.

I crack a weak grin. “Hey, not bad for our second ti.”

She laughs, the tears flowing quicker now, and she hugs tight. It hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt. After a mont, she pulls her spear out, and I flash my body with fla to heal the wound. I’m feeling woozy from all that, but I still have fla to spare. More than I should, actually, but I don’t have ti to consider what changes my possession might have wrought.

The last wisps of Venus are floating away, fleeing in the form of drifting rose petals, until they’re caught in a jar held by Maenad, the last of her priestesses, who screws the lid tightly and smirks at us. She sets down on the floor of the vast chamber and hands the jar to the woman beside her, who takes it and tucks it away.

Mordacity bows, deep and mocking. “All’s well that ends well, wouldn’t you say?”