“What… what the hell, Mia?”

  “Breathtaking, isn’t it?” We let out a sigh, like we were beholding the view over the cliffs of Dover. “Sometimes, I come in here and just… stop. This feeling will come over me, and I will be struck dumb, helpless to do anything but admire it, no matter how many times I’ve seen it before.”

  Our eyes twitched left to right dubiously, just in case I had missed something, but it was the same as before: fist-sized spheres of plastic, bright primary colors, a fine mesh net to pin them all in…

  Yup, that’s a ball pit.

  The walls were even made of that inflatable bouncy-castle material.

  Our lips formed over the beginnings of several potential questions before we settled on, “And you control everything from here? Somehow?”

  “Not everything.”

  We tittered dismissively before stepping forward, but instead of having to wade through them as I had expected, the balls parted before us like a veritable child’s Red Sea.

  Okay, so it’s a magic ball pit. Guess I should have seen that coming.

  “I cannot communicate from in here. Nor can I access your lilim’s Cores without first traveling up and through the mind construct. It’s all very inconvenient.” We halted near one of the rounded edges of the pit where a tube about the width of our extended fist extended out from the upper nylon wall, much like an artery might from the inside of a heart. “You see? This passageway is too small for me to fit through, though I do receive passive updates about their condition: major changes to their health, Status Effects, their Devotion or Loyalty rating… that sort of thing.”

  “Huh.” I replied intelligently. “And who does this go to?”

  “You can’t tell?”

  I started in with some defensive hemming and hawing—it was not like the blasting thing was labeled—but the second I actually thought about it, it was obvious.

  “Jax?”

  “You say that as if you don’t already know. You can sense where she is, can you not? Well, this is what you are sensing, your connection to her.” We shook our head, smiling. “And Arx would be over there.”

  We pointed to one side where another tube was—we performed a quick double take—was slowly warping its way through the wall. I could literally see the nylon around it deforming as it passed.

  Amend that to an eldritch ball pit.

  The tube halted once it neared Jax, and for some moments, the two just sat there, side-by-side. I could not tell you why, but they were giving off a sense of… agitation? Then Arx’s tube reversed course, warping its way back again.

  “Hmph. Seems to be an argument going on,” Mia interpreted. “Not unexpected. I don’t doubt they are worried. We’ve been out for some time now.”

  We winced. “Right… Tips wanted us out of that room, pronto. He’s gotta be pissed by this point. Let’s hurry and get whatever it is you wanted to do in here finished so I can wake up. Jax’s match is at sundown.”

  Our lips drew back over our teeth. It did not feel like a smile.

  “What is it?”

  Other than a tsk and sigh, we offered no audible response.

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it,” I guessed. “What? Is waking me up going to be more difficult that you expected? Do we have to undergo some ordeal first?”

  “That… remains to be seen, but… well, perhaps this might offer some insight.”

  We reached down to snatch up what appeared to me as just another random ball from among the multitude, except when we held it up for closer inspection, I could not help but notice how unnaturally our fingers were twisting around the object. It was as though we had just casually plucked a wormhole from off the floor.

  A wormhole in the shape of a plastic—rubber ducky—stuffed elephant—SOmeTHiNG elSE—ball?

  Our eyes snapped closed almost before we registered the overwhelming fear gripping us, and for some moments, it was all we could do just to control our breathing.

  “My lord? What’s wrong?”

  “Mia,” I began, trying to remain calm in the face of the insanity we had just witnessed. “What are we holding right now?”

  We hesitated. “That… would require a lengthy explanation, but in basic terms, it is an information packet.”

  A nervous sort of chuckle burbled out of our throat. It was not that I did not believe her, but ‘information packet’ did absolutely nothing to explain the visual salad resting in our palm.

  “Okay, how about in not-so-basic terms?”

  She took a slow breath, and with the kind of monotone a teenager might have used to explain mundane technology to a doddering elder, she began, “It is a degenerating extra-dimensional storage prism housing a void construct just large enough to stimulate the Manic Energy necessary to engrave a brief message. There is nothing to fear from it so long as you remain within my protection. Now, can we please open our eyes?”

  It took me more than a few seconds before I could convince myself to do so. I had understood… most of those words, if not necessarily in that order. But I had read Madeleine L’engle as a kid. I knew about Flatland and all of that crazy nonsense. If this thing was extra-dimensional, that meant it occupied more than just the typical three, which would explain why our fingers had looked so strange in holding it. They were being drawn into directions I was not capable of seeing into.

  I should not have been capable of moving in those directions, either, but I had to suppose being in Mia’s body could explain that part.

  So, with a healthy dose of trepidation, we cracked an eye open. Except this time, we saw no balls, elephants, or anything else unusual. We were just holding a slip of paper.

  Surprised, our head swiveled about, staring. All the balls had disappeared, as had the pit containing them. Instead, we were now standing in an old-school ticket office with reams of paper flowing about our feet.

  Okay, I see what’s going on here. I think.

  I was still asleep, after all. This might have been an actual place occupying my body, but I was interacting with it through the filter of the ‘dream fabric.’ And that meant my subconscious.

  I figured this had to be some shit my primate brain was not capable of understanding on a visual level, so my unconscious mind was trying to contextualize everything into terms I could understand. I was pretty sure now that each of these objects did look roughly like a ball from a distance, but once you got closer, their strangeness became apparent. However, I now understood their purpose was to convey information, thus they were paper.

  It made perfect sense. For dream logic, anyway.

  Uneasy yet mollified, we took a quick look at the slip in our hands, while doing our level best to ignore how unnaturally it warped the tips of our fingers. It was now only a knuckle wide and about thrice that in length, similar to what you might find in a fortune cookie. But it was not until we flipped it over that we saw any text.

  It read:

  [Dolilim: Donum Jax] has revived.

  Then it dissolved.

  “Uh?” We glanced about nervously, but there was nothing left of the slip of extra-dimensional… whatever. “Did I break it?”

  “Of course not. As I said, that prism had a degenerating property. Its message had been delivered, thus it had no further use. And so it, erm… destroyed itself.”

  “Why do I get the sense that you dumbed that down that for my benefit?”

  “Do you want the long version?”

  “No, no… it’s okay,” we said quickly. Our tail had taken to flicking about in our agitation, so we snatched it up and began stroking it like a security blanket. Which was doubly nice because we were petting ourselves in the process. “So, what did that mean? Jax revived? When?”

  The last time I could remember her dying had been next to the Stele of the Fourth Creation, right before I met the Lady of Power. We had been engaging in some… ill-advised fornication. Again. Most people’s war stories were limited to how awkward car sex was, but I had the dubious honor of having experienced the ins-and-outs of it while suspended by a rope from a tree, while almost drowning in an arctic river, and over the broken remains of the fence that had been meant to keep us away from an extremely dangerous sacred relic.

  At the rate I was going, people were going to think I was some kind of satyric adrenaline junkie.

  “Did you not see the time stamp?”

  Our eyebrow arched. “There was a time stamp?”

  “Yes? In the upper left-hand corner. All status messages are marked with a time since delivery. In this case, two days, seven hours—”

  “Two days?!”

  “Yes, plus seven hours, thirty-four minutes—”

  “But that means she died three days ago!”

  We jerked our tail from our hands irritably. “No, it means she died three days, seven hours, thirty-four minutes, and seventeen seconds ago! See?”

  We bent down to collect a second sheet of paper, which reported:

  [Dolilim: Donum Jax] has died.

  And sure enough, in a font that was almost too small to make out before this message too dissolved, there were some numbers, right where she had said they would be.

  [0000:00:03:07:34:27]

  It was difficult not to roll our eyes. Mia could be pedantic about the strangest things.

  Instead, I said, “The timer has a space for years?”

  “It is an occasional necessity.”

  “Huh.” We shook our head quickly, dismissing the matter for the more immediate concern. “But this doesn’t make any sense, Mia. We were escaping from the Dungeon three days ago. Jax survived. Arx was the only one who died. Are you sure this isn’t some kind of error?”

  “Positive.”

  “But—”

  “My lord, I did mention the difficulty I experienced in getting us to our present state of stability. I cannot say how long that took exactly, but it was not short. Prior to that, you and I had been more than a little distracted by Xhinn’s… present.”

  It took me a moment to process that.

  “Are you telling me I’m in a coma?”

  “Yes.”

  “Xhinn put me in a coma?!”

  “Yes.”

  “…by force feeding me Her grool?”

  We grimaced with distaste. “Can we not use that word? I’d much prefer something… like nectar. Or even Her femininity.”

  “Why?!”

  “Well, it’s more than a little base, is it not? Girl drool… ugh. Whoever thought of that portmanteau should have been flogged on the spot. It’s like calling a fine wine, fermented grape vomit.” We shuddered. “And we both know how much you would have enjoyed it, had you the palette to appreciate—”

  “Why did she put me in a coma, Mia?”

  “Oh, that. Uh… hmm.” We took a breath and rolled our head over our shoulders once in thought. “She mentioned preparing some grand Quest or other for us. Perhaps she meant to put us out of commission until she was ready.”

  Our lips twisted to one side, not caring for that explanation. From my point of view, Xhinn was this towering intellectual super-giant, so it was hard to think of Her as needing time to prepare. Although, I had to suppose the idea of natural human aging had taken the goddess by surprise. It was possible the Elixir she promised as a counteragent might take a bit of research.

  “Or…” Mia continued, “have you considered the possibility that she might be laying the foundations for the day of your eventual coupling?”

  I will not say that our jaw unhinged, but I did have to work it from side to side for a moment. Despite every cell of my body wanting to reject the notion out-of-hand, you can only be smashed over the head with clues so many times before you accept certain ideas as fact.

  I was goddess man-candy.

  Well… maybe that was a step too far. To me, it felt more like I had become the central game piece in a competition between the two evil goddesses. The rest of them were not even involved, and if Mia was to be believed, Bline had deleted me from her memory entirely after our last meeting.

  Most of the rules to this game were still obscured and who knew what actually winning it would involve, but I had worked out a few of the details. Scoring points probably involved scoring with me, which would have put Ahnbe ahead by one. Technically. That point had been in the form of a sexual assault, and she had needed to erase the event from my memory to keep me sane. That had to count against her. Still, she had granted me a boon afterward and come to my aid when I had needed her, so I was inclined to look, if not favorably, then with at least a politely neutral attitude toward her.

  As for Xhinn, she was trailing way behind after swallowing Raialie in her attempts to kill me—from my point of view, at least; I doubted it amounted to even a yellow flag in their game. Knowing her, that whole thing was probably a part of some grand scheme to pull out the win at the last minute. I could see the edges of that scheme taking shape already. She had saddled me with Xyn, and Xyn was technically a part of Her. My girls would try for a defensive screen, but I had little doubt the lilim would get me alone at some point. There would be no resisting her, even if I wanted to. Maybe that counted as kicking a field goal?

  And of course, Xhinn had collected that trophy off of me during our last meeting. That was going to complicate things.

  “What are you saying, Mia? That she’s micro-dosing me? Would that even work?”

  “You aren’t dead, are you? Recall the Tongue-Flower? The skill you built from its venom?”

  We nodded along. “Right. Detonating Sap Varnish. So you’re saying that having now experienced a goddess’s… femininity—”

  “Thank you.”

  “—and survived it, I can use it in skills?”

  “Exactly. Provided we survive it,” she agreed. “We’ll need to wake ourselves up first before it counts as having conquered it. Until then, we can make no direct references to our kin’s nectar.”

  We pursed our lips. “Still, it could be useful.”

  There were easier ways to kill stuff, of course, but no one could argue the value of a substance so capable of knocking you on your ass. We were already toying with the idea of a poison build for Lynnria. With the right delivery system, this would be an excellent addition to her arsenal.

  I was going to have to give it some thought.

  “Alright, so I’ve been in a coma long enough for Jax to have died and revived. Do we have any idea how that happened?”

  “We should. Let’s see…” We squatted down to sift through some of the paper. “There’s usually a report included with these—ah! It says here that she was cut in half.”

  “Wow… okay.” We blinked for a moment. “That’s gruesome. How, though? Length-ways? Sideways? And by whom? Or what? Under what circumstances?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest. The messages I get down here are light on such details.” We dusted our hands off on our knees and rose to our feet. “We could eventually expand our Core connections sufficiently to change that, but it would require a skill point investment or three. Until then, you’ll just have to ask her yourself.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  We shook our head with regret. So many skills to buy, so little points to buy them with.

  “Okay, so what’s the plan? How do I wake up?”

  “I’m glad you asked.”

  Turning, we swept a hand through the air, which sent a multitude of paper to swirling and warping about itself, almost to the point where we felt compelled to look away again. But it soon settled into a large, green chalkboard with a pre-drawn wire mesh of my body already sketched out on it. Someone had even filled in my head and chest region with the flat side of some red chalk, which reminded me of an infographic they might have used in one of those old headache commercials.

  “We must first deal with Xhinn’s influence. Normally, all we would need to do would be to activate our Ailment-conversion aura, That Only Makes Us Horny, then transfer the resultant Lust to your Dolilim,” we explained. “It would be a slow process; the Status Xhinn inflicted on us was broad of both spectrum and depth, and the Dolilim would have needed time to either digest or expel the buildup of Life Energy—all of which we could have dealt with… provided we were not in a coma.”

  I nodded along. “Yeah, that’s the rub. What Ailment are we dealing with, anyway? I can’t imagine this sort of thing comes up too often.”

  “See for yourself.”

  We gestured to one side of the board, where an unseen hand began to scribble a series of words. And then more words…

  …more like a list, actually.

  But the first part was underlined. I had to assume that was the actual name of the Ailment.

  Transubstantiation Stress Disorder?

  We quirked an eyebrow. With a name like that, you would think I had been traumatized from consuming the Eucharist. And the comparison was not so far off, now that I thought about it.

  Our eyes wandered down, scanning the enormous pile-up of side-effects that came with it.

  Let’s see… Symptoms may include, but are not limited to: hallucinations: all senses, delusions of grandeur, speaking in tongues, memory fracture? I don’t know what that is, but it sounds rough.

  I skipped down a bit.

  Blah, blah… wow! Lust grade six?! I thought it only went up to five. And of course, that had its own set of side-effects. Permanent engorgement of sex organs, constant pre-cum seepage, erosion of sexual partner discrimination: total… yada yada… Compulsive howling? Our head tilted to one side. It certainly painted a mental image.

  I read on, mostly skimming by that point.

  Obsessive romantic infatuation: Xhinn. We rolled our eyes.

  Compulsive self harm, self-destructive bravery, suicidal depression? Moving into yandere territory here.

  I skipped ahead.

  Extreme loss of appetite… Ah, here’s unconsciousness!

  Heart arrhythmia, tingling in the extremities… blah blah…

  Intestinal transmutations: anal—we blinked, having to reread that one. What the…?

  “Anal lubrication?! Oh, come on!”

  “Really? I thought you might enjoy that one.”

  Our hands waved randomly through the air, flabbergasted. “Why would I enjoy that one? Why would Xhinn enjoy that one?!”

  We might have sounded a little shrill.

  “There are a lot of men who enjoy prostate stimulation. And a goddess of her power could easily—”

  “Don’t care!” I interrupted quickly. There was no way I would be going down that route. “I do not enjoy prostate stimulation.”

  “Oh, you’ve tried it before, then?”

  We sputtered. “No!”

  “Then how do you—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore!”

  “You mean to tell me that after all this time in my body, you still do not understand the craving for a nice… insertion?” we asked with a pout.

  Our eyes went flat. There were a lot of things this body craved, but I was nowhere close to processing the need for my own dick. And therapy was in short supply on this world.

  “That is not the same thing, and you know it.”

  “So you do understand.”

  “I don’t like anal, Mia!”

  “Fine.” With an exaggerated sigh, we turned our attention back to the chalkboard. “As you can see, Xhinn’s influence is not something we could have brushed off lightly, even if we had access to your higher functions. Fortunately, we do not. It would have been a tremendous waste.”

  “A waste?” We flung a hand toward where the unseen hand was still scribbling out the list, which by that point had filled out every available space on the board. “You call that a waste?!”

  “Most of those are side-effects stemming from the mental assault of having come into such close contact with Her substance. Once we pacify that, the rest will subside.”

  “Okay. That still doesn’t explain why it’s a waste.”

  “Ah! Now, this is where it gets interesting.”

  We leaned forward conspiratorially… with ourselves. I really needed to get out of this body.

  “You see, by accepting a lesser version of a Status Ailment as permanent, we can increase the potency of whatever skill we choose as recompense by orders of magnitude, and effectively cure ourselves of it in a stroke!”

  Our head bobbled vaguely in the affirmative.

  “I… already knew that, Mia. You told me about it yourself. That’s what Jax and Arx did to help them counteract the Lust Ailment.”

  “You know nothing!” we barked in denial before explaining, “They were not suffering under it; they forced themselves to suffer it in order to buffer a related positive. It’s a useful but far-weaker alternative. This will involve using an Ailment we had no part in inflicting upon ourselves. And a powerful one at that. Just think of the potential.”

  Our brow knitted together as I considered the distinction Mia was trying to make.

  “So, you’re saying we should have inflicted Lust on Jax and Arx first before giving them that skill?”

  “Well…” We shook our head slightly. “Yes? Definitely. If you could have found a way to pull it off. Like I said, it doesn’t count if it’s self-induced.”

  “Damn.” I had a lot of ways of inflicting Lust on a person, but it was kind of rare to encounter it in the wild. So while this was regrettable, there was not much we could have done back then to take advantage of the information, even had we known about it. “If only we’d met that Despoiler bandit sooner.”

  “A Despoiler?”

  “Yeah, that was before you were created. Some Outlaw threw a Lust potion at us.”

  “How idiotic. Against you?”

  “That’s what I said. Anyway, you’d think someone would have mentioned this before. I mean, Xhinn was spying on us back then. In fact, I’m pretty sure it was her that gave us the idea for that skill in the first place.”

  “That is not her domain!” we snapped, suddenly furious. “It’s no wonder she mucked it up.”

  “Okay… fair,” we agreed quickly. “But what about Bline? She could have at least dropped a hint that we were about to screw up.”

  We growled a bit more before letting our anger go with a sniff. “Her priority does not rest in instruction. You didn’t ‘screw up.’ You simply used a less-effective method. From her point of view, all that matters is that it worked.”

  “I guess you’re right.” We straightened again resignedly. “She’s very much the make-your-mistakes-and-learn-from-them type, isn’t she? I’m glad you didn’t inherit that feature.”

  “I have different priorities.”

  We would have favored ourselves with a look had we the ability to make eye-contact. “Such as?”

  “Such as making my master and his servants the strongest beings in existence,” we proclaimed with a smile. “To wit! You have long proclaimed yourself a Wizard-in-training. We can use this to jumpstart that goal by leagues and bounds.”

  That had my attention. “I’m listening.”

  “Observe.”

  With a wave of our hand, the chalkboard erased itself, replaced by a series of Words. Or so I assumed from the context. Most of the symbols were unfamiliar, but I knew a couple of them from their having been permanently embedded within my subconscious.

  “Something BE something something TOILET—” we began to mutter, but we interrupted ourselves.

  “Never mind what it says, it’s just an example. You can see the Words, correct? All of them?”

  “Yeah?”

  We giggled excitedly. “I knew it! Okay, think back… erm… the Stele. You remember the Words engraved there?”

  “I remember that there were Words engraved there. But I couldn’t see them like these. They kind of… slipped out of my mind the second I looked away.”

  We nodded along. “That is how the Unknown are supposed to behave, yes. And yet you can see them here. Somehow, your power over the fabric pierces the Veil.”

  I was still on the fence about referring to perfectly normal human dreams as some kind of power over the fabric. Still, it was undeniable that I could perceive the Words on that chalkboard and recall the general shape of them afterward. If Mia was to be believed—and I saw no reason why she might be lying—I should not have been able to do that. Maybe there was something to this dreaming business after all.

  “Okay? I guess that… could be useful.”

  “It has already proven useful. You have even used Words you learned here, yet do not know, in spells!”

  “I used a Word to create a barely controlled effect that almost got us all killed,” we corrected ourselves. “I was only guessing at what it meant. And there’s no guarantee when or where I’ll have another dream that’s lucid enough to learn more.”

  “Ah, but what if we could carry your ability to pierce the Veil into the waking world?”

  Now she really had my attention. “You can do that?”

  We smiled knowingly. “To the Words, what is established… is. And with the Keeper’s essence to fuel it? Ha! The Veil will have no choice but to part to our Will.”

  Our head tilted back, thinking.

  The implications here were too large to ignore. With the ability to study the Words at my beck and call, it was entirely possible I might one day wield them as effortlessly as Xhinn without having to conquer a different Dungeon for every single one. Of course, I would have to learn how to Say them aloud before I could pull that off, and I knew from experience that was no mean feat. But writing them down had its own sort of power!

  Plus, this kind of ability was just the sort of thing I liked: broad-reaching and multi-use.

  “The Keeper, huh?”

  We waved a hand quickly through the air. “Yes, yes. The Gatekeeper, the Keeper of the Words, Mistress of the Labyrinth… all titles to mean the same thing: Xhinn holds the keys to the Words. And She has given us a piece of that key—a piece of Herself. We must seize it!”

  We filled our lungs, then let it out in a slow exhale. “You make a good argument, Mia, but what about the side-effects?”

  “For that, you must gamble. This is a part of Her body we are talking about. It will entail accepting it into your essential nature.”

  Our lips drew into a pained grimace. I would not have liked the sound of that even if this was from a regular goddess, but from the Demon Queen? I was already carrying a bit of Her soul around, and I had seen the effects of that firsthand. Subjecting myself to more seemed like a recipe for disaster.

  “It won’t turn me into a chick, will it?”

  We chortled with sudden mirth at the question. “Would that really be so bad?”

  Our hand came up to tease one of our nipples, but we swatted it away quickly.

  “Stop that,” we grumbled. “I guess… I could get used to it. If I had to. But the girls would be devastated.”

  “As would Xhinn, I should think.” We winked at ourselves. “I wouldn’t worry about it, my lord. She might occasionally tease you with such things, but she would never suffer the permanent loss of your manhood. And this is the only certain way I know of to wake you without aid.”

  Meaning She would have known this was a likely outcome after having dosed me. And given that I had been out for over three days, no aid had been found. I was not surprised. Raialie had been short on healers before getting swallowed, and the few who were left were stretched to the breaking point. From what I had seen, most of those were focused on putting people back together again, not cleansing them of goddess secretions.

  “She cares about my manhood, huh? You’re sure about that?”

  “Quite sure.”

  We nodded along, following the logic. I had to suppose it would be hard to score a touchdown without an end zone, but I still had to worry about it bringing me closer into alignment with the Demon Queen. It was a terrifying prospect, but my only other option was to wait in here, trapped inside an increasingly horny Mia, until my girls found a healer. That could take months!

  On the upside, this might make the goddess less inclined to continue torturing me. That particular goddess, anyway.

  “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  Our hands balled into fists with excitement. “You mean you’ll take the skill?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Well, I mean…” I could feel our body tense as an unfamiliar tremble worked its way into our jaw. “I suppose you don’t have to take that… that specific—f-fuck! Fuck this! Fuck you! Best… best… you’ve no idea the… the… idiot monkey fucker!—that specific skill. You could take almost anything related to Her and still benefit. A-And if you’re set against using the nectar—wasteful! Whale jizz! Weaponized man-gina!—I suppose I could craft a le-les-lesser resistance skill—fuck no! Terrible! Teeth! Teeth—for you. With that, you’d have at least some chance of waking again. Eventually.”

  We shook our head through our panting, long used to these antics. It seemed she was not immune to all questions while we were one. “No need to ask what you think of those options. But how long is eventually?”

  “With your Stats?” Our eyes screwed up to think. “It would take at least a year to—”

  “A year?!”

  “—a year to gain a skill level sufficient to have any chance at all. After that, it would be down to fate. And we only have the one skill point.”

  “Well, that’s out.”

  “Oh, thank you, Master.” Our shoulders slumped, and we placed a hand over our heart. “I’d have sooner bitten our own tongue off than have done that to you.”

  “But you’d be fine with the alternative?”

  “Absolutely!” we exclaimed. “I told you, my priority is your strength. Your Power! The thought of discarding a drop of divine essence through a fear of the unknown is… is…”

  “I get it, Mia,” I cut in. “I guess I’m just not as excited as you over the prospect of accelerating my changes.”

  “Changes…” We scoffed. “You’ve had a slight change in diet.”

  “Being forced to eat pussy is not what I would call a slight change!”

  “Don’t be crass. And you require purified Life Energy. Not just any maiden’s flower would suffice for that.”

  “I know… I know.” We began to pace. “Semantics don’t change the facts, though. My diet is exactly the same as Lynnria’s. That is not a coincidence.”

  “So now you worry over becoming some male version of your Dolilim? What next, I wonder? Will your fretting never cease?”

  “It’s not the physical parts I’m worried about,” we persisted. “It’s that they don’t care about anything or anyone other than me. Most people would call that evil.”

  “They also care about one another,” we argued before amending, “to a lesser degree. But I doubt altering your moral center would be of any more interest to Xhinn than your gender.”

  “What would be of interest to her?”

  “Now that, finally, is a good question,” we exclaimed. “What does She want? Answer that, and you might gain some insight into what Her influence might do.”

  “Well…” Our mouth worked for a moment before I threw my hands in the air. “I don’t know! You tell me. I already find Her unbearably attractive. And terrifying, and… and… a lot of things. Does she want me to… to complement her Dungeons or something? To go around giving Mouths head pats?”

  “Perhaps something as simple as finding her less unbearable?” we suggested. “It’s what I would want in her position.”

  Our head rocked back at the obviousness of it.

  “Right…” we drawled. “I guess it would be hard to score if the goal post keeps running from you.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind.” We waggled our fingers next to our ear. “Internal sports metaphors.”

  We nodded uncertainly. “So, you’re satisfied then? We can proceed?”

  “I guess…”

  We squealed. “Oh, never fear, Lord Master! This will be incredible, I promise you.”

  I was still pretty nervous about this, but when your own body is vibrating with excitement, it can be difficult not to be swept along by it. So, with a wry sort of smile on our lips, I agreed.

  “Alright, Mia. I’m in your hands. Make this a good one.”

  “Yes, my lord!”

  How's everyone doing today? Good? Bad? Hanging in there?

  Personally, I'm gearing up to premier a community theater production of Shakespeare in Hollywood, so I'm exhausted from hell week. But I'm excited :) I'll be playing as Dick Powell/Lysander.