Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It was a cool evening in the cooling-season as Tanya walked through the orchard. She could feel the sun’s teeth letting go as it dropped below hills to the west; and there was no frost on the ground yet, only dew. Winter’s grip was slowly tightening on the world.

Tanya was marking trees for pruning, and making a note of their general health. In the later evening, she abruptly decided as she hopped silently over a puddle and ignored the Jäger failing to follow her stealthily, she would do maintenance on some of the equipment in the barn-cave at base. It still wasn’t really anything like safe to send a mixed group to Beetleburg, the nearest city— and even if it was, Tanya didn’t know where to start understanding the thing around Mechanicsburg. Mechanicsberg? Tanya didn’t even know how to ask the difference, or which one it was— so.

She did what she could.

Tanya had walked the edge of the wall that Wulfenbach guy had laid around the city, and by her count there was about two-hundred hectares of land, most of it in trees. Nearer to the city was all fields— hay, wheat, whatever else left a nice big killbox and didn’t mind getting covered in dying soldiers and broken machinery. This part, near the base, was walnuts. Frau Lilith, back at the base, had helped lay out a good garden for veggies. She’d seemed interested in the idea of a forest garden, once Tanya drew it out instead of trying to use words. The Boys wanted meat, of course, but that was even odds on ‘not happening’, despite their best efforts.

The mixed cover-crop fields were already harvested, which made Tanya grin. Even in the orange light— all that black, catching different in the light. And the Jäger had gasped, a little. That’s right— last time she was out this way, it’d all been growing, still.

Tanya tied off her last few ribbons to the trees what needed looked at, and headed back to base. Along the way she picked up a few giant snails that were good for eating, a third of the leaves off a broad-leaf plant Frau Lilith used to steam grain-potatoes in, and that was all. Not bad for a little ramble through the walnut orchard.

Tanya ambled up the road as the sun settled down to sleep. The wind ruffled her curling black hair and closed her squinting eyes, even though there wasn’t much in the way of dust. She was the only figure on the road, there. The road stretched in dull brown, neither a beginning nor an end in sight, and no signage that Tanya could read. She could tell they were billboards, at least, and the lettering was distinctly colored enough from the background that she could say, with some surety, it existed— but she could not read it. It was all blurry. Normally, the thing to do would be gather up all the dosh the girls had found during their knocking over and escape of Sturmhalten (plus also when they went back to steal everything not sufficiently nailed down because it was evacuated and not even guarded), and make an appointment with an occulist in Mechanicsburg, but, well. The next nearest place was Beetleburg, and— Well.

Luckily, everything a person had to do to farm properly was what Tanya was already doing, just, y’know, with fruits and nuts and so on.

Maxim, following Miss Tanya, did his best to be quiet. He shook warm blood back into his toes and did not know that was enough for her to hear him. Also, there are market-day villages in full swing and furore that are quieter than Maxim doing his best to sneak through the woods— which is a long and poetic way of saying he made no more noise than an errant squirrel. Tanya just knew he was there. Also, he was not sneaking quite as sneakily as he could, because he’d realized Miss Tanya could not see particularly well at all— but that’s neither here nor there. She wasn’t using her eyes to track him at all.

Tanya, or Tatiana if you were one of her girls and trying to get her full attention, was a Heterodyne, of course. There was her smell, that particular odor of home that so endeared her to those Jägerkin that had searched for a thread of hope in the blood; and her particular habit of mouth-music, two-toned oscillations creating their own distinct beat through the rattle and bump of mouth-based drums. Maxim had heard a lot of different Heterodynes heterodyning— Miss Agatha’s was more, what was the word, sympathetic? Like a full house of musical instruments, not much drumming to speak of. Very like the Young Masters, after a fashion— not quite the harmonious counterpoint, but closer to that. A chamber orchestra, that’s the phrase!

Tanya was not like that, heterodyning, is all he meant to think.

Tanya’s heterodyning sounded a bit like a drum-line rattling out orders for a fully fielded army. Some of the older boys quite liked it, and by extension her, for that.

Maxim liked her for her face. She had thin lips on a mouth a little too wide, which was always twitching into frowns and smiles and pouts and who knew what else— That was straight from Master Egregious, according to ol’ Marceau. Maxim rather thought she looked like Miss Malificea, or even poor Miss Omnifarious, but that was just his opinion. 

Her brown eyes bulged a bit in their sockets, which Maxim remembered seeing last on a few of the old mistresses by way of Master Robur; and her figure was stretched out like liquorice twists. She had a big proud nose from Iran and long black hair that twisted like snakes from Greece— probably from her mama, whoever that was. She was gawky— she gangled, instead of walking, like all her joints were rubber bands and all her bones were spring-sticks in the old-fashioned all-wood wagons that didn’t even get built outside of small Wasteland villages anymore.

Maxim couldn’t call her clothing fashionable. It was all… bland. Her shirt was an ordinary sailor’s sloppy castoff, and she wore a blue wool vest over the shirt, with buttons weren’t even proper trilobites but bits of animal bones cut smooth but not quite polished. Over all of that she wore a pair of off-green dungarees one of her girls had found on that Wulfenbach airship.

Maxim hated the whole look. It didn’t flatter Miss Tanya’s figure at all. Worse was the fact that she adored these clothes— would sleep in them, even, if Frau Lilith hadn’t put a stop to that.

In the harvest season (which meant now), she’d added wool sleeves that tied on under her armpits that popped out through her vest, and thick steel-colored stockings made of wool finer than spidersilk… which, frankly, Maxim was a bit jealous of. He was jealous of Miss Tanya’s boots, too, but only because he’d never quite seen a pair of boots that were so sturdy and yet so comfortable looking— neatly stitched, brown, tall, sturdy, with a wide gusset instead of a tongue so that she could walk through any puddle and never get wet feet, and a nearly flat heel.

Maxim looked damn fine in his cavalry boots. They were not, however, meant for walking around in. And of course he was detached, so he still had the good marching legs—

As winter really set in, Tanya had produced more to layer on: a pretty green-and-yellow jumper, a heavy blue-grey wool skirt with daisies embroidered at the hem, and a second vest made of the skin of a sheep with a high wide collar over a very well made hood.

Tanya’s kokoshnik was one of the prettiest hats Maxim had ever seen in his long, long life. It was a plain white cloth on which red figures of birds, fruit, flowers, horses, and hawks had been cross-stitched in bright red thread. If all of her clothing had been so beautiful, Ognian would have been… more content. As it was—

“Maxim?” Miss Tanya said, not really looking at him.

“Yez, Mizz Tanya?” Maxim replied after a long, quiet moment to wonder how she always knew it was him.

”Do you have time to get measured for new socks, or do you have patrol?” Miss Tanya asked.

”Hy haff time, Mizz. Tanya,” Maxim said, his grin audible even if Tanya couldn’t see it.

“And while we’re there, we’ll get you measured up for some new boots; Lola has been wanting to make you a pair,” Miss Tanya declared, smiling not even a little.

But oh, Miss Tanya was a good girl, a good little Mistress— practical and forthright. So— commanding— and yet, so regimented and stiff. Hardly ever a rant from this one; but then, with her Troubles, a rant would be quite something to see…

Such a lovely Heterodyne they’d found in Sturmhalten!

Tanya, and her girls, flooded out of the hell under Sturmhalten. You wouldn’t think some fifteen-thousand teenage girls (and otherwise) could move through an entire city without being seen even once. The only reason they managed something close to it was by venting the majority of their spleen on the ancient Sturmvoraus chapel in which a strange engine of death had been built.

A beautiful arrangement of wires, cables, brass, and glass— shattered and broken in moments, under the weight of bare fists and a hammer made of sapphire, artificial crystal, and monstrous bone. They were not able to save the girl in the pretty underwears from getting zapped in the chapel of death, but she didn’t die like they did— like Tanya, like Sabrina, like Maxine, like Winifred and Anastasia, like Henrietta, like Josephine, like Fortitude, like Lula and Lola, like Mary and Anna and Emma and Elizabeth and Minerva and Margaret and Ida and Alice and Bertha and Sarah and Clara and Fran and Ella and Cora and Martha and Laura and Nell and Grace and Katharine and Maude and Mabel and Bernice and Jenny and Gertrude and Julia and Dorothy and Edith and Rose and Lily and Ada and Olivia and Helen and Jessica and Dylan and Louise and Ethel and Myrtle and Eve and Lena and Lana and Lara and Lucy and Edna and Pearl and Daisy and Florence and Dora and Nora and Vanessa and Natalia and Sonia and Agatha, too, not just the one in the chair for a little bit but all the other ones.

What, you think Agatha Heterodyne is the only Agatha in Europa? Agatha is one of the most popular names for the 188–‘s, one in every fifty women you’d meet of Agatha Heterodyne’s age would be named Agatha. Should be named Agatha. In fact, is named Agatha. This is why so many of her famous adventures are named ‘Agatha H. and the Wurgleburglemumbly-bump’. It’s not because of writing conventions, precisely— that’s the ‘and the’ part. Her name is written that way because that’s how you know which fucking Agatha the story is about.

In any case: no, Agatha Heterodyne did not have her soul struck from her body in a flash of horrible light— not permanently, at least. Oh, sure, the Other— Lucretzia Mongfish— was brainzapped back to life, wearing her own daughter like a suit made of flesh. And yes, she lived, oh, just about ten seconds past the zappening? Yeah, a simple count of ten; and then Tanya’s Anti-Slavery Destructive Resonator Melodion (Pocket-Edition) For The Destruction Of This Pitiful Heaven erased her from the beacon engine and the meatware she’d finally managed to load into, blew out probably fifteen tons of wiring in the palace, vaporized a big chunk of wall, destroyed every cryptorevenant engine in the city, and also burst one of Agatha Heterodyne’s eardrums. Luckily, this also blew out the main fuse on the lightning moat, so, exiting directly through the hole in the wall, on their appropriated spiders, horse-shaped clanks, and winged gliding contraptions… after some of the girls violently murdered Highpriestess Vrin and her assistants… was doable.

With some small, not so terribly important, hrm, provisos. Like aiming Agatha Heterodyne’s vomit so it wouldn’t cause slip hazards. Also perhaps finding her some pants? And, naturally, stealing everything that wasn’t nailed down too tightly.

Sabrina had to make what are known as ‘field command decisions’ while Tanya figured out the rest of their exit strategy. Luckily, they managed to pick up some of Agatha H.’s friends along the way. Unluckily, it was at this exact moment that Baron Wulfenbach descended en mass, cordoning off the entire town and generally being a huge pain in the ass. Luckily, the streets of the whole entire town were deserted, they’d broken all the hive engines and killed all the Geisterdamen Deepdown to make stealing all their stuff easier, and collapsed the tunnels behind them. Unluckily, Anevka-the-robot-princess was doing her own thing, and also being a huge pain in the ass. Luckily, Prince Aaronev Tarvek Sturmvoraus’ lab was right there for the using. Unluckily, at that time Tanya needed about thirty minutes of uninterrupted heterodyning to speak with words intelligible to other people. Luckily, Agatha isn’t the only Heterodyne to make other Sparks— in point of fact, it’s a bit of a family specialty.

All of this evened out to a getaway that more or less went exactly the way you remember it going, plus or minus a few small details that will only matter later, and not at all to Tatiana Heterodyne.

The actual laws Tanya was accused of breaking? The Pax Transylvania? Well, of course she broke it, Tanya got stolen away when she was five, and they did not do her the courtesy of slitting her throat after lobotomizing her. She’s been in hell ever since; and so she does not know the summation of the Pax Transylvania. Tanya does not know she is to Keep the Peace, Turn Over Other Technology to The Baron, Pay Taxes, and Not Be A Pirate. She would do this anyway,but she didn’t know she was supposed to as a matter of course.

As for what Tanya had to say about it—

“I have heard crimes against me. I cry ignorance, but this is weak justification, I know. My final request before sentencing is to have few words to say, and maybe small favor,” Tanya said, looking up at The Baron. Tanya’s voice is absolutely nothing like Lucretzia Mongfish’s; not in pitch, tambor, color, harmonics— nothing. She doesn’t sound much like Agatha H., in that sense. You have to have more than a single generation’s familiarity with the family to see it straight out.

”I will allow it,” Baron Wulfenbach said, after a moment to try and find the trick. He didn’t.

“You sir, with high hat. Would kindly remove it?” Tanya asked politely, standing up from the plain wooden chair sat in the market square of Sturmhalten, pointing at a soldier with a particularly tall hat.

The Wulfenbach soldier removed his hat with a delicate hand and a mocking smirk.

”Thank you. I know now all your faces. For I have died once, and I shall die again— but if is life after death, I will return and Fucking Kill All Of You. And if is no life after death, I Will Return and Fucking Kill All of You,” Tanya said, her head ringed with what would be described as glowing orbs of rainbows, each one twitching and wriggling to certain tones and sounds in her voice, in the air, in the world. The red stitching on her white gown was like bloodspatters— a strange Russian apparition from a time that was not. Her hair moved in a breeze that wasn’t there.

“You say you have come for to kill me? Fine. Kill Me. We Find Out What Happen, Together!” Tanya said, grinning with a terrifying lack of anything resembling joy in her mouth.

Aside from what could be attributed to a juvenile self-protection field, there was every indication that she really was there, and this was a classic (if stunningly crass) mad-girl rant— so far as Baron Klaus Wulfenbach could tell, this little Russian girl with the unfortunate face broke through, went deep into Sparkfugue, knocked over Balan’s Gap, and wasn’t willing to back down now that he’d arrived. She certainly had the height and clothing to make her a distant Wastelander, which explained her lack of knowledge pertaining to the Pax— but her pride, as usual, was her undoing. A shame— but not anything he hadn’t seen before.

Klaus gave the sign. The Wulfenbach firing squad raised their guns and fired. Bullets ripped through the projections of hard light, the projector, and all the furniture (including the bodies of girls that didn’t survive re-souling) they’d set up, before a bullet hit the failsafe and the whole thing exploded leaving nothing but ashes and little bits of scrap. Yes, it was all destroyed— but not Tanya or her girls, who were all in a hastily prepared stateroom on a Wulfenbach airship, as a circus(?) flew them all away.

Sure, Tanya’s crazy— but she’s not actually stupid. If you’re trying to leave, well, leave.

That was that job well and done— and also, as a handy distraction, all the beasts and monsters of hell were boiling up after them.

The hazy colors around everything were a little annoying, but Tanya didn’t use her eyes much for anything anyway. The next step was… Sabrina touching her arm and saying “there is a dead one named Lars, and they are sad he is dead. Can you help?”

”Take me to them,” Tanya said, holding out her hand.

Sabrina’s clawed fingers were gentle as always around Tanya’s. That was the point, really, of putting a soul in a body. In a world of hideous evil, community and care was the only thing worth making.

Tanya was led through the glowing haze and nonsense. As ever, her eyes were of no good use— so, she just closed them after one too many shimmering shapes turned into weird faces she didn’t really know. The constant shift of light and shadow was giving her a headache, and the colors weren’t leaving quickly, but that was fine. The body was unusual in that it wasn’t female, but otherwise the damage was… ah, no. Temperature: too cold; limbs: too stiff; nowhere near enough blood— Prognosis?

”No,” Tanya said, sadly. “I cannot.”

”Why?” Sabrina asked. She still believed her Tanya was able to do anything, after all.

”He dead too long,” Tanya said, after going ‘b-ts-k-b-ts-k-b-ts-k-b-ts-k’ to warm up her mouth. The music that came out after was definitely music, though not like anyone had heard before. The gasps that came from somewhere as Tanya did the thing she had to do to speak words was summarily ignored, because she had more to say. “By time I made tools to make tools to make tools to wake him, he rot away. I am sorry for loss; I cannot fix.”

Tanya rattled out another bit of mouth-music, mostly drums, some tones— there was a small someone making soft noises of awe?— before Tanya turned to Sabrina expectantly. Her music stopped.

”Yes— all girls are on ship. We are away from hell, and pitiful heaven above hell has been knocked over; all song of death targets killed. We has looting; and I am getting lovely new hat, and many hatpins. Nothing of value has been lost. There are also strangers, but they seem nice? And new girl is throwing up again,” Sabrina answered succinctly.

Tanya nodded. A quick, quick, she needed a name for what she was doing. Beatboxing came to mind, for whatever reason— good enough. Tanya beatboxed to find the words she needed, then spoke. “Apply woundsleep; and when she under, make looking at ear. One break, I smell blood; check to see if only little hole, or we need replacing. Count of girls; count of supplies and loot; find map. We go to ground soon. Resting; observe new world in turns.”

”Okay,” Sabrina said. “I will do this. What you do?”

Tanya beatboxed, paused, beatboxed again, and said, “Eat, sleep; is time for resting. My eyes seeing funny colors again, so sleep off mushroom sickness also. B-ts-k-ts— Maybe bath? Different clothes also; but that is later.”

”I find new clothes for you,” Sabrina said, smiling so wide Tanya could hear it.

There were more gasps as Sabrina smiled, but Tanya did not know why, or care.

Tanya hadn’t known until that evening that bathing was supposed to be nice. It was supposed to have water that was warm or hot, and lots of it, with soap instead of clean sand and grit. Even so, she was still shockingly clean going in for a bath; and cleaner coming out. New clothes make the new woman, as they say— and in this case, a new woman looked exactly like the old one with much shinier hair.

Tanya changed into a pair of linen drawers and chemise they’d found in one of the chests that was mostly in Tanya’s size, aside from being a little loose around her shoulders and chest. They went all the way down to her wrists and ankles, and had clever little strings to tighten them down properly. Over that went a pair of sailor’s combinations Aranea had copied in her marvelous keep-warm silk. Aranea’s keep warm silk was a wonderful thing— an extraordinarily loose weave with an astoundingly fluffy pile, such that when worn in motion all the air went through to the skin, but at rest, all the body heat was kept close. It was stretchy, soft, easily washed, and never stained or kept a smell. The gusset for peeing through in both layers was nice and long, with a big wide flap for maneuverability. Even if the linen combos didn’t quite fit Tanya, the silk ones snugged everything up nicely.

Over these went a long shirt— it hung down past her hips and was nearly falling off at her shoulders. The sleeves fit perfectly, though, so Tanya made do by folding and quick-stitching a bright red string through the collar, to keep it closed. She’d make more modifications later, of course. Then her tried-and-true supporting vest, a thing which was mostly there because Tanya wanted to pretend she had a bust to emphasize. She didn’t; but she liked to pretend she did. It looked something like a pair of stays, had no real boning, and was mostly there for to squish up the shirt to her body. Over that went an actual wool vest they’d fished out of a river in upper-purgatory, scrubbed clean, and mended. It had buttons made of bone that did not shine in the light.

A pair of dust-green denim coveralls from somewhere on the ship came next, with a nice-enough leather belt to help it stay up on her hips. Tanya liked the coveralls because there was already a loop on for any tool she wanted to have on her; and her hammer fit nicely; and the sleeves fit her too. New foot wraps for her feet; and her old boots smelled like they’d been oiled. Oh, and the laces had been changed— still no aglets. One day.

Tanya braided her hair in two long neat braids, wrapped them with ribbon, and tied up her hair. She tied on her kokoshnik over her hair— the only pretty thing she still had, made larger and longer and never lost, and it’d dried after being washed just fine— and felt like a human being again. She’d never stopped being human, but even so— even so.

Tanya had also forgotten that food was supposed to taste good, but that was alright, she could learn again; and, better than that, there was a lot of it. Enough that everyone got a full meal immediately!

Tanya could only get through about half her meal before she had to stop because her tummy hurt. Also, the original message Agatha Heterodyne recorded, yes, in her underthings, was partially broadcast— minus the stuff about turning herself in. Sabrina thought it prudent to remove that stuff, and then there wasn’t time to ask— so now, they are on the run.

Sabrina is a natural at the ‘mysterious disappearance’ part of a story, but perhaps not so good at the ‘furious battle’ or the ‘broadcasting important information’. Tanya would’ve done something about it, but she didn’t really care about the rest of these details and it was also bedtime. So, she went to bed.

Agatha was so exhausted that, after being dosed with some very potent ichor of somnia cut with feverbark tisane, she slept straight through the sensation of her eardrum ‘inflating’, and the screaming agony that followed after having it burst, aside from the immediate dizziness and vomiting— and further, she slept straight through getting treated for this injury. She slept through Tanya’s declaration that Lars could not be saved by her hands; the Jägers realizing there were two heirs, not one; and a bunch of general housekeeping and shuffling.

Tanya and Freddie didn’t, but they had resolved to fix what they broke, so that was as it should’ve been. They also had significantly more skill in not letting the fire of creation burn away their self-care habits; so that was alright.

In terms of what actually happened— to cause the damage— a little bit of water had been left in Agatha H.’s ear from bathing or sweating or just getting water in her ear, causing some relatively mild inflammation at the height of the pitiful heavens. Under her unusual circumstance of staying awake for several days in a row, her internal defenses were overworked, and when her eardrum was exposed to the high-frequency destructive resonance produced by the Melodion… it broke.

This is, of course, both extraordinarily painful and a solvable problem.

The initial treatment, administered as soon as Agatha H. was made to pass out, was a powerful tincture made of very old and very strong whiskey and a variety of mosses and mushrooms that provided potent pain relief. Three droplets mixed into a spoonful of clean water and gently poured into her wounded ear provided immediate aid. Her painfever dropped; and the agony in her face eased away after no more than a count of one-hundred-eighty. To allow for best absorption, Freddie decided to leave her in her woundsleep and gather necessary supplies, which necessitated a bit of hissing and growling at the girls to get it together, talk to Josephine, and so on and so on.

Freddie’s portable pharmacy was what happened when a hearth witch got to work in an abandoned laboratory. It had at least small vials— repurposed perfume sample vials— of almost everything imaginable, and many things that weren’t. Tanya knew all the things in there, and so did not bother herself with listing off this or that chemic or druge. What mattered was the actual care to give— So!

After allowing Agatha’s ear to drain, sponge-thread was carefully inserted to absorb oozing blood, fluid, and unabsorbed tincture. This took perhaps a count of seven-thousand two-hundred, at which point the sponge-thread was gently removed and pink-volume soundgel was applied via pipette. Freddie had better control for delicate operations, but Tanya made the call for which strength of soundgel to use. Pink-volume wasn’t the best or worst, merely the most versatile, and as it was made with cave-bee honey, would not create an infection in the ear. Generally, it had the least side effects.

Finally, two drops of sknew, to repair the actual surface of the eardrum. Fill the rest of the ear canal with air-melting wax, add a bandage with softmoss batting over the whole ear to help Agatha H. remember she’s injured, still, and that should do it. No damage to the ear structure itself; no post-rupture injuries, either.

Tanya had to beatbox for three-hundred before she could explain to Zeetha of green hair what she and Freddie were doing and why; and she watched them do it, too. When they were done, Zeetha was given the instructions for recovery, not that there were many once her fever went down again. It was a good sign.

“Please watch her for dizziness and more vomit. Hearing on that side will be patchy for two, mebbe four days. Tinnitus— um, ringing in ears? Yes, this might occur; if it does, I will teach you therapeutic maneuver to teach her to do. Also works for being too close to explosions,” Freddie said, her soft lilt and delicate rasp adding a sort of airy lightness to the Romanian that always felt so heavy in her ears. It was, of course, unmistakable that a Russian had taught her Romanian, but she wasn’t unintelligible. Not like Nora-who-Cooks. That one didn’t make a single lick of sense. She was much better at cooking now, though.

Zeetha quite liked learning the odd thumping technique; and promised that yes, she would keep an eye on her Zumil and make sure she kept the bandage on for at least the next three sleeps. Tanya was busy putting everything away and cleaning up, so she didn’t listen— and also, there were injuries she could hear, and was thinking over how to fix?

So.

The next one for Tanya to examine was a green person named Dimo who was missing almost whole entire arm. It had, unfortunately, turned into green goo.

”Oh, sure, goomelt. Very common problem in hell; so, is easy-peasy couple of hours fixing job. You wanting new meat arm, or new machine arm?” Tanya asked, after beatboxing her words into place. Her head turned a little to orient her much more useful ears on the quiet purple-grey one, there was something about the way she sounded when she spoke— and this, incidentally, turned her face more towards Dimo. “Both will hurt like cyka blyat.”

“Uh, vhichever is easier, Miz Tanya,” Dimo said, beaming. Tanya could vaguely hear his face creaking. She, of course, had closed her useless eyes to work on Agatha H., and just never bothered opening them.

”We have more meat supply,” Freddie said thoughtfully, when Tanya turned her face in her general direction. “And while Max could theoretically build a mechanical arm, Lula would want to be involved and that’s not going to work without a forge or a smithy.”

“Meat, then,” Tanya said with a shrug, followed by a quick blip of beatboxing. “Have usual girls image his remaining arm, and plan for a much longer than usual session of shaping. Go through whole questions listing for to using his arm, that arm; and prepare double dosage of blood replacement fluid.”

”Ah, he is much larger,” Freddie nodded. “We’ll try to scale the tolerances accordingly.”

”Aim a little stronger, rather than weaker,” Tanya advised bluntly, before her words left again. She made a variety of bubbling and farting noises, before continuing, “And try for five-times stretch, rather than usual ten.”

”Cloth is not going to like that at all,” Freddie said, frowning.

”Cloth will not like it? What else is new,” Tanya said, smirking wryly.

The actual process of replacing Dimo’s arm with an arm made of meat came down, in the end, to two processes Tanya didn’t need to oversee but had to because of Dimo’s own personal comfort. Olga, with the bright orange and black hair, who stuck his remaining arm in a giant vacuum tube and spun the chunk of spinning wheel-with-magnets-on until the little lightning cracked hard and made the image of his bones appear on the thin piece of giant mushroom paper— was one process. This lightning-born image of bones was cut out with the paper-cutting knives, reversed, cut again in the bone trace bonewood, and taken to the Amys who would make the bones.

That took maybe three-thousand six-hundred, and then the bones were cured in the bone dip, checked for quality, arranged appropriately, and sent to the weavers.

”Five? Five? You trying to break my hammers, Tanya?” Cloth said, her entire voice a scowl.

”Cloth, come feel this,” Tanya said, no beatboxing needed.

Dimo was treated to being felt up by a woman wearing what seemed like six skirts swirling like a multi-colored tassel over wide hips, and a colorful cloth belt and apron full of sewing tools, and a blouse that fully exposed two perfect melon-sized breasts. Her name was Cloth; and her hands were thick, bigger than his— and he felt it when she squeezed and pressed and tugged on the meat of his remaining arm. Dimo did not like being the cause of a frown on such a beautiful woman, with her soft oval face with the flushed cheeks and her big dark eyes and her hair, her Valois-red shining hair all bound together in loops and buns and braids, pearls and colorful stones on strings woven through the strands, her pale blue-green-white skin smelling like summer rain, her nipples the exact same color of green as her lips—

“Five, okay,” Cloth said, a frown marring her lovely face. “I can do it; but if it breaks my hammers—”

”I build another for you, da,” Tanya said with a long-suffering sigh.

Cloth, once called ‘Anya’ as the soldiers marched on her home, and almost certainly related somehow to Aaronev Tarvek Sturmvoraus— It’s always that hair— As it turned out, was the head of a whole collection of absurdly pretty women, dressed fairly similarly what with the whole entirely bared chest thing— all of them with some shade of red hair and varying skin colors, all of them beautiful, all of them Jägerfrauen— And all of them got to work cutting and layering strips of mushroom-fiber, clear silk threads, and bits of prepared Dimo-did-not-know together in— in muscles. They hammered and beat these muscles, added more fiber, and did it again; and again— until they’d done it five times over, and yes, one of the hammers had cracked right through the head. Tanya had sighed and put that one in her pocket.

The arm that was put together was pale, almost the color of milk if all the yellow in milk wasn’t there— maybe goat’s milk? It had been a long time since Dimo had seen any. It looked very much like an arm without skin— the shoulder, the bicep, everything. It was all there. Even his claws!

Just, huh, no skin— no, not no skin! No color in the skin, no pigment!

The new flesh arm was almost entirely see-through, right to the bones! And his arm bones were a rather handsome shade of pink, too.

After all of that, fitting took maybe ten minutes by Dimo’s estimate, and most of that was because Frau Cloth kept giggling when his fur rubbed between her breasts. Always a very nice feature.

Actually putting the arm on? That was Tanya.

It was honestly one of the least painful things Dimo had ever experienced at the hands of a hearth-witch. The little gold needles didn’t feel like anything much, even when she hooked them up to the vinegar batteries; and actually feeling the bone in the new arm ‘click’ into place felt… bad in a way that felt good. It didn’t really hurt when Dimo suddenly regained sensation in his new-gone-here-again arm, or even when Tanya started smearing what smelled like a mixture of clay and yogurt over it. Dimo had expected the drip getting screwed into his thigh to hurt, but no— a big stab with the pilot-needle, and then it was just… in. They had a little screw-gun for it specifically. The mud-yoghurt was actually kind of nice because his arm was starting to feel buzzy and hot?

No, what hurt was when the electricity from the vinegar-jar batteries catalyzed the blood in his new veins and jump-started the Jägerization process. Jägerization itself is always the most painful thing most Jägerkin experience in their long lives. Dimo was simply lucky enough to live through it twice. He would be hard pressed to say if the whole body experience was worse than just his arm. At least by the end, as the weird yogurt-clay mix flaked off, he had a pale green arm covered in fur again? Felt the same as it always had, if ever so slightly… not.

Dimo also got a snail boiled in goat butter and moss (with cave salt, minced deep-root shallot, flat-stem parsley-mold, chiveweed, ground pepperblood, a very expensive white wine, and goat’s cream) in a crispy pastry shaped like a snail shell for being such a good boy and not scratching out the drip-feed screwed into his thigh bone! This new Miss Tanya’s minions really knew how to treat a guy, though where she’d found fifteen-thousand beautiful Jägerfrauen was a question…

Especially that one with the fancy high hat! Yow! What a woman!

Nearly-five-years-old Tatiana Darbendi laid on top of the stove, under the littlest window, and watched the snow fall down over the zigzag streets. It caught on red roof tiles and shimmering cloaks, and made the sea look moldy. It looked like the cheeses in Aunt Ludmilla’s dairy. It looked like mama’s almond tart that fell behind the cabinet when baba threw the plate at her head.

She was not sleeping. Aunt Ludmilla had been angry again. Her bed wasn’t cold, or anything like that. She was tired, too. Every time she closed her eyes she could smell it.

It was a cold night. The house was so cold that Aunt Ludmilla had scrubbed her part by part and put her in all her clothes, even her new boots, and covered her in a fur and a quilt. The breeze was quiet, for once, and the snow fell slow and thick, draping the world in a hush that only got deeper and colder as the sun quickly set. There was no moon; and so instead Tatiana marveled at the river of starlight through gummy eyes. Her bed was soft, her blankets warm, and she had mostly stopped crying. Aunt Ludmilla had scared her more than hurt her, and most of her distress was at her Aunt’s distress; and then the cat, and the small wrigglings, and they had to waste firewood because Tatiana…

Normal children didn’t cut open cats to see the kittens.

Tatiana Darbendi had been dumped with Aunt Ludmilla because her hair was black as ink and curly, and her mama had red hair, and her mama’s husband wasn’t really her baba because he had blond hair, and that wasn’t possible. Mama had a new family in Paris; and baba-not-really was out at sea again. Maybe that would’ve always happened— but Tatiana wasn’t stupid.

She knew it happened faster because of her.

Tatiana felt herself drifting away, in her sadness, and quietly knew: ‘Something’s bad inside me. It makes me not… myself.’

Tatiana knew this to be true. If there was not something wrong with her, why didn’t her parents or any of her grandparents show willing and take her in? Because: they Knew. Aunt Ludmilla was probably going to find someone else to keep her tomorrow. Aunt Ludmilla Knew too, now.

Tatiana, sniffling in the cold, snuggled down in her bedclothes miserably. She was not young enough to be unaware that when a grown-up started crying after screaming and shaking you by the shoulders it was a bad sign. Especially with a knife in your hands and a dead cat at your feet.

After a deep hot sigh turned white the air, Tatiana’s eyes closed. Her worried face smoothed slowly into soft sleep.

She dropped quickly; quicker than she ever had before. She had the faint thought that she would apologize in the morning and promise to never do it again.

Like so many things in her life, it made no difference.

The Geisterdame had stolen her, blankets and all, out the window before the bells struck three hours after midnight.

The twice-late-to-her-grave girl named Ta-ya ran her fingers over the scratches on the wall and matched them to the picture puzzle in her head. Her shirt was worn through. Her skirt was in tatters. Her boots were pinching her feet or rubbing on her blisters. The music she could not describe was back but that was okay, it was hers; she recognized it as hers.

There was no one here but her and the monsters in the dark and the woman she couldn’t understand.

Ta-ya was going to change that.

Dishware that felt like glass or ceramic, very smooth, sat on the stone slab. A crate was dragged over so she could reach— the thin corpse of someone smaller than her, with it’s head cut open and it’s melted brains removed, and the long-haired head, and the other head from the spike monster with the fur(?) There was a spider cut in pieces and hung on the wall because she didn’t trust blood or hemolymph that color, and the vanishing wall scorpion was over there. She had all her mis en place done— brain, brain, nerve fiber, rendered scorpion venoms to meld disparate flesh, cartilaginous chitin from the spider abdomen to amend the skull, fresh hyper-tilapia skin to amend the skin, sections of scalp from the white ladymonster and the monsterman to patch over what the girl didn’t have any more…

The music had made her idea sound so simple, but Ta-ya had been alive too long now to just trust her simple ideas. Instead, she forced herself to plan it out properly even though she wanted, with all her tiny body, to just do it right now.

Taylor ran her hands over her plans one more time, and nodded. She walked over to the sink-trough, where the water was always flowing, and she washed her hands there. She scrubbed up to her elbows; and she scrubbed under her nails.

There was no light. The air reeked of blood and bile. Ta-ya, humming along to the music in her head, stood unsteady on the crate. She picked up slippery chunks of brain she’d prepared as carefully as she could, and began to layer them into the cleaned mould of the girl-corpse’s head. She took the eyes from the man, because they were a better fit than the woman’s; but her cerebellum had more wrinkles on it, which fit better in her song. The man’s limbic system was more intact; the woman’s thalamus and hypothalamus was better. His medulla oblongata; her pons; his brain stem; her cerebellum. Their frontal lobes just barely came up to a whole brain; her parietal lobe with stuff from the scorpion and spider for bits she knew should be there but neither man nor woman had. The spider had better parts for some of the temporal lobe, and the scorpion for where it connected to the vestibular system; but the man’s temporal lobe was only half there, with the rest having to come from the woman. The occipital lobe in the man was more intact than the woman’s, but neither of them had anything like whole brains, and a lot of spider nerves had to be used to bridge gaps, and a lot of scorpion fat to insulate them.

Ta-ya had to make do and mend a lot of meat. She only hoped she did it right, instead of crazy.

She carefully dripped and smeared rendered venom here and there and everywhere, until a complete brain was inside the corpse’s skull. The man had more live bones, so she’d made the blood from his thigh bone marrow. The woman’s hair was softer, so she tried to use more of her scalp than his, but there just wasn’t enough of it. A shame— but what can you do? At least the hair was all more or less the same length. Small mercies.

Ta-ya carefully packed the new brain and it’s stem and it’s eyes into place. She didn’t have a better way of getting the eyes in the right spot other than sucking them through the skull holes with her mouth. Luckily, they were only a few millimeters too big, so she didn’t accidentally break them or anything. She spat onto the floor after each eye, and counted herself lucky to have sewn the eyelids shut before installing the eyes. And laid in shields from the spider’s eye-caps, so the corneas weren’t scratched. By her mind-song the eyelid stitches were to be removed when the heart beat on it’s own.

Ta-ya didn’t have a better metric for when that would be.

The man’s vestibular nerves were not there, but she’d known that when she took his brain out. The woman’s were also not there, on account of all the acid-water that went in them before she retrieved her. Luckily, the man’s actual ear bones and ear-drums were fine; and the spider and scorpion both had excellent hearing, or tremor-sense, and that was it.

Done.

Fill the gaps with cartilage, reapply the bones of the skull, bone-sealing venom preparation; close up the skin and stitch up the scalp. Dissolving stitches at the surface, with care to make them invisible once healed. Add prepared bandages for seeping, the ones with the final venom-honey preparation to reduce possibility of infection. Turn on the pump; open the valve for blood flow; and after six-hundred seconds, flip the switch that goes to the water-voltaic straws.

Ta-ya, who had died twice, did these things. She cleaned herself and her work-station up as she counted to six hundred, tears of horror running down her face and lice in her filthy hair, under the rag she’d tied down to have some lab safety, dammit. Just because she was so alone and scared did not give her the right to cut up dead people and make a friend. Just because they were dead did not mean they didn’t have rights.

Ta-ya flipped the switch at six-hundred, and throttled the pump to have something more like a dialysis-stable flow, to help encourage rejuvenation and revival. The corpses hadn’t rotted on the slab; but that only accounted for after Ta-ya got them here.

While Ta-ya waited, she cut all the hair off her head, and then she shaved it. Every time she felt a crawling blood-sucking thief, she crushed it; and then she washed with the last preparation of scorpion venom, which burned like fire on her temples and down to her ears.

Ta-ya— Tanya— Tatiana— would never get lice again. Mosquitos and ticks would never bite her. Even fleas would avoid her skin. And, because she cares, she had done this for her on the slab, too; and all the girls that would follow, not that Ta-ya knew that there would be more. Not yet.

She found all the trash and threw it into the echo-y hole in the floor. She swept the shelf she slept on again, and found another tunic that hung on her like a dress. She belted it with a piece of string. She laid a thin blanket over the body on the slab, which was not bolted or tied down, and put her fingers into the hand of the body she’d remade. She laid down her head.

She hummed to the comforting song in her head. It sounded like a lullaby she remembered her mama singing. Or was it Mom? Or just her; and it didn’t matter.

The weight of the woman’s cold metal hand on her back was nice— but she needed— she needed—

What Tanya could not know was that she had found a victim of Lucretzia Mongfish and Aaronev Wilhelm Sturmvoraus’ scheming for something like immortality, a geisterdame, and a detached Jägerherr. She could not know how much of the Jäegerbrau was sequestered in the bone-marrow, or what it was doing to the body whose hand she held, or how much of the Jäger named Saeed really went into the body named Sabrina— or, for that matter, how much of Sanvikka the Geisterdame was left in the mix also.

She definitely couldn’t know that Saeed’s blood type, even after Jägerization, was O-negative.

What Ta-ya knew? —She had been alone for too long. She was afraid. She needed help. She needed a hug— from something like her. The blood from the bone had helped her think better, made her aches and pains go away; made it so she could hear the music in her head again. The chalice had done more than that— but not yet enough.

The woman and Ta-ya alone were not enough.

Maybe a third would be.

Maybe.

Sa— Sa— Sa— woke up, and heard that sound of home. It was impossibly dark here. It smelled like everything good. Someone knew all at once that they would follow the bearer of this scent, this song, this soft silky velvet scalp, anywhere in the world.

Someone closed their hand around the hand that held their own. When it squeezed— they squeezed back.

Tears rolled down their face. The smell of tears and home and blood, so much blood—

In a pitiful room in heaven, there was a chair under a city made of metal and glass— the throne of a goddess. A small girl with black hair, bulging eyes, a wide mouth, and terror— was strapped to it, sat atop two pillows and a crate that once held apple juice.

When the Priestess and her assistants called the lightning down to make a road for their goddess’s soul to walk, it broke the girl strapped to the throne. She was killed in a flash of light— her soul severed from her body— her mind in ruins.

In purgatory, under the pitiful heavens, the animal body of the girl still breathed. Instincts, base and nothing like admirable, went to work. Without the filter of the mind, a music grew and grew, filling all the broken space in her bleeding head.

If Tatiana Darbendi Heterodyne had been allowed to grow up a little more, she would’ve discovered the name for what she wanted to be when she grew up was ‘doctor’ or perhaps ‘surgeon’.

Almost eight-hundred thousand young girls with the Spark were not allowed to grow up and become, or Become.

And of those eight-hundred thousand young girls and women (or children too young to be spotted as otherwise) with enough Spark to catch the attention of the Geisterdamen, to become soulless— seated on the throne of a fell goddess in a flash of terrible light— Tatiana, of Hell, was only able to put souls back into fifteen-thousand forty-two of those pitiful bodies struck without.

Tanya wasn’t allowed. She is not what she could have been— and what she is? Isn’t bad at all.

And so it was that the Queen of Witches rose up in the darkness; and at her back—

”Is nothing for with me; is for them,” Tanya explained after beatboxing a quick refrain of boots-kats-boots-kats. “I lead because they following; I cannot lead them into a city with nowhere to return to. City is dangerous; this, I remember. So, I will take maybe few caves and some wasteland along road to Mechanicsburg, where any village used to be; we build our new home there, easy couple of days job. Then we get things together, we go to city in small groups, we see about maybe trading, maybe getting glasses, maybe anything.”

“Are you sure, Tanya?” Agatha H. asked a little too loudly before wincing and rubbing at her still-bandaged ear. “I think your people would be welcome in Mechanicsburg, and it would make a lot of things much easier if—”

“Aggie,” Tanya said firmly before pausing to beatbox. She beatboxed for a while, actually.

Agatha H. didn’t manage to have friends growing up. Certainly, she was one of many Agathas wandering Beetleburg— but she was never quite anyone’s Agatha H. Certainly never anyone’s ‘Aggie’; and yet, this girl her Jägers insisted was as Heterodyne as she was, broken like she was only forced to be— to this stranger who looked at her, looked after her, with such kindness…

“You are misunderstanding basic principle of leadership. They do not follow me because I am leading. I lead because they are following. I am responsible for their care, safety, and some comforts. Fifteen-thousand refugees is too many for city when we can build new home and live there ourselves; is not just about need and want, but pride, too. Theirs; cities; and my own. Eventually, they will feel safe enough to go to city; but that is not now,” Tanya said, not unkindly. Her wide mouth turned up in a gentle smile, and her brown, bulging eyes— crinkled at the corners.

She was hollow-cheeked, ugly, and plain— and so beautiful in that moment that Agatha’s breath caught in her chest.

”You really care about them,” Agatha said.

”Of course; they are mine, and I, theirs,” Tanya said with a nod. “They do not want go to city. They want home like hell of before, but better. Okay, we do this, no problem. They save me from despair— I save them from fear. This is purpose of community, friendship, and love. Is entire point of being alive.”

“But— the wasteland is dangerous, a-and, and I won’t be able to—” Agatha started to say.

She gasped as Tanya’s thick, rough hand wrapped around her own. It wasn’t sandpaper-rough like Agatha’s hand— it was rough like the paw-pad skin of a large dog, and a little colder than she expected.

”You are misunderstanding again. This is not ‘goodbye’; is ‘see you soon-and-later’. One day I will return to your side, Aggie. Until then, you go. Find out about your family. See your house and city. Is okay,” Tanya said, still smiling. “And if you do not like it, or does not work out, can come stay with us. You are our kin, after all. Is good to visit with family, da, I am remembering this also.”

“What do you mean?” Agatha asked, leaning in.

The Jägers, who had been holding back tears, leaned in from their spots holding up walls in the stateroom. Yes, the very one Tanya had used to fool the Baron some days ago. The machinery in there had been carefully disassembled and packed away. The various sheets of silk and bone fiber and stone-paper had been taken down.

It was still the best room to have secret meetings in, apparently; so, that’s what they were doing.

Tanya sighed. She thought about how to begin. Then, she checked the pockets of her coveralls, nodded thoughtfully, and stood.

”Is easier for me to showing you,” Tanya said. “I fixing myself better; but I still broken from Throne of Heaven. Words are hard.”

Tanya beatboxed— heterodyned— a symphony of drumbeats and rhythms as a stick of white chalk, and then a lump of charcoal, and then a giant snailshell full of ochre and animal fat shifted and twisted through her hands. Fractal images grew and bent across the vast grey wall of the barren room. Agatha’s own heterodyning soon joined, as she followed along with the marvelous notation. No discernable words were visible— nothing but the occasional drawing of a girl’s face. Tellingly, to Agatha at least, was that it was never the same girl twice. Never the same person twice.

Quite clearly, in the negative space, was Lucretzia Mongfish— broken, scattered, trapped— in a hell beyond the reach of time. She was haloed in wasps and her own interlocking hands. She was mad— not the fun, elaborate madness of passionate creation, no— she was grief-mad, trap-mad, chewing herself apart mad, a self-devouring serpent too hungry to realize it was already dead.

Beyond was a single glimpse of all possible reality, as clear to see as a spider’s web scattered with droplets of morning dew. This, for Tanya at least, with some notation in Mathematical Language, was all the explanation necessary. Tanya had never actually written the whole thing out for anyone… ever. It felt good to have it all out of her head.

—there being the True Issue at hand with so-called ‘Sparks’; hereafter I shall refer to these as ‘Flames’ meaning to the works or products of Creation; and ‘Fires’, to differentiate from ‘Spark’ as a phenomena of the brain, referring to one-or-many who Create. If you are reading this as some sort of assigned text, or out of order, please refer to chapter Two, titled ‘Collaboration en Fugue’.

There are many difficult processes that we have replaced with technology, often to our benefit. The washing machine replaces washing clothes by hand; the spinning wheel replaces drop spindles— However, most people believe that having the Flame of Creation burning in your soul is tantamount to replacing thinking. The ability to think is set quite apart from the ability to create, or Create. Control and oppression can only occur in systems where the individual is limited in their ability to think for themselves. Continuing in the practice of thinking is what allows resistance to these forces.

’This Flame replaces Thinking’ is not a new problem. It is a very old problem. Those individuals that complain of Flames today would have complained about calculators and books. As a student of History, I can tell you: they did, in their time.

There are records from Centuries— even Millennia— ago of Fires in their time, complaining that these new-fangled ‘Books’ were turning their students lazy and quarrelsome. Why, they could barely recite any poems in entirety anymore, never mind grand sagas of age!

There are still people alive today who remember life before widely available calculators, and some complained— then and now— that bringing them into schools has dealt a ruinous blow to Mathematical Education, and now these young people don’t even know how to use a slide-rule. There are those who consider doing the logarithm the right way to be the long way, rather than looking it up in the big book of logs; that some intrinsic value is lost when a letter is typed instead of written; and you will never have a pair of socks (or foot wraps, or leg wraps) that fit better than the ones you’ve made yourself. There are even those who insist that using an abacus is much faster than any calculator— for every number-intensive task imaginable..

The most terrible thing is: these belly-achers are not Wrong.

The human brain (or equivalent, as I make no judgements on the nature of Your Self), can, when called upon, perform incredible feats of memorization. Bards and skalds still memorize and recite poems and epics that are thousands of lines long. This skill is largely lost to most of the population.

It is not needed; and so it is not practiced.

There is a distinctive generational gap between the people who trained on slide-rules and abacuses, and those who trained on calculators for the work of Mathematical Reasoning. There are grown adults, living their lives, who cannot do math— not even the basic arithmetic necessary to figure down from one-hundred.

I have gone into a shop, bought an item for sixteen dollars (Paxter-Guilder), given the cashier a twenty and one because I want back a five, and have seen them with my own eyes stare at the money in mute incomprehension. They do not know what to do. They do not know how to subtract sixteen from twenty-one. They do not know how to calculate a percentage-based tip (gratuity).

They did not exercise the parts of their brain that could do these things, because they always had a calculator to do it for them.

In the cities, newer point-of-sale machines compensate for this gap in generational knowledge by automatically calculating and dispensing the required change, with no arithmetic necessary from the cashier. I fully expect that, as time marches ever Onward, we will devise more ways for a calculator— and whatever other tool we require— to be at hand, and keep less in our brains, without it ever being a problem… until it is a problem.

Those who complain that tools-to-replace-thinking would reduce the ability of the broad population to exercise these cognitive skills are not Wrong. They are, however, missing a key component of the adoption of these tools— simply: are the skills they replace still necessary? Are not the Flames of Creation simply the latest in a long series of tools-replacing-thought that has, broadly, worked out well for us? What’s different?

To my mind, there are two major differences in tool-replaces-thought and Flame-replaces-Thought.

The first: Previous instances of replacement involved cognitive skills that were discrete, and in the day-to-day, unnecessary outlays of Energy. Most people don’t need to memorize thousands of lines of poetry, do multiplication and division in their heads, make their own socks, and whatever else. Most people don’t need more than simple algebra in their daily lives.

Flames are different. The cognitive skill that Fires abandon is more than ‘how to write my own notes’ or ‘identify the capital of Greece’. It encompasses the entire field of being able to generate new thoughts; of being able to curate and analyze new information; of being able to follow logical trains to their conclusions Without becoming sidetracked or submitting to internal pressures or fancies; of being able to construct rational arguments— Of being able to express yourself in any Structured way, intelligible to people who are not ‘you’. These tools of cognition are not occasionally used: they are, one hopes, in constant daily use, with no time for oxidation or dulling of well honed edges.

The second: in instances of a tool replacing a cognitive process, the tool is good at what it does. A calculator may have replaced reckoning, but calculators are good at what they do. A calculator, given the correct inputs, will give the correct outputs.

Flames are not calculators. A Flame will tell you, confidently and unhesitantly and Dangerously that 2+2=5, and it will not care that the amount of math that has to happen to make that correct breaks reality for it’s lack of being shown. Books may have replaced memorization; but a fact, once printed in a book, is fairly stable. Getting corrections printed is expensive— so, prudent authors, spendthrift to the last, take pains to ensure their manuscripts are correct before they are sent to the printers.

Imprudence, a lack of Thinking by another name, tries to use the death-ray without checking that the power source won’t overload and snuff the Fire.

Humans, as a whole, have an excellent energy economy that can be summarized as: if I can be lazy, I will.

This is not an ethical judgement. This is how life works. All animals, which humans are, will not do something the hard way if they can do it the easy way. This basic principle of Conservation of Resources is universal and morally neutral. Cognition is biologically expensive, and though our environments may differ, every living sophont still goes through every day choosing what is valuable enough to expend resources on, and what is not.

The main issue with a young Fire choosing to replace ‘thought’ with ‘sparks’ is simply: it is much easier to allow every random thought to run away into the Flames if you have replaced your ‘thinking’ with ‘sparks’. And to be clear, it is a choice. It is an easy choice.

If I can be lazy, I will.

I spent most of my life unable to be lazy— if I was not thinking, constantly, short-mid-and-long-term, I would die. Thus, while many Fires my age have stoked their ability to manipulate Flame to unimaginable heights— I have honed my ability to choose which sparks I allow to become Flames at all.

The Spark of Creation is often mistaken for the Flame itself. Many will say that you are a Spark if you have the Spark— but this is not so. I have started many Fires in my life. Not every spark can catch flame; become fire. Lots of them just don’t make it.

Sparks are gifts. The danger of them is not in them, simply because at most, they sting your skin. It’s when they catch that they become… more. Uncaught sparks are easily snuffed. Newly caught sparks are dangerous— to themselves, mostly. If they are not laid in a bed of tinder gently, or worked into a firm ember and gently breathed for until they can catch, they die.

Without fire, in all it’s forms, humanity cannot exist. Fire is the first invention of the indivisible world. Fire is what burns. Fire is incredible and dangerous and what every human knows instinctively as both safety and harm. The yellow color of flame is what tells you ‘it’s time to go to bed’; the flame lets us bend metal, heat water, turn mud into pottery and sand into glass; the flame is what burns us, and our world, and in those ashes, renewal.

Fire is what we recognize in a person with ‘the Spark’.

Fire is what creates The World.

Fire is what we are reaching out for in that lantern called ‘Art’; and Fire is what we recognize in ourselves and each other as ‘The Soul’.

The Soul is what the Other constrains, with it’s slaver wasps and it’s machinations.

Fire is really effective against Wasps— and Other things.

No wonder the Other fights Fires, even now, having lost everything. 

---

—Excerpt of “Spark and Flame”, written by Tatiana ‘Witch-Queen’ Heterodyne, Cave Town Re-Improved Press, First Edition; second copy sent directly to Eternal Library with Tatiana’s personal annotations, and short note on frontspiece, reading: “Please stop saying I am Queen of anything. I’m just a hearth witch, me. Also, please stop stealing our archivists, we need them. Or at least send more athletic apprentices in our exchanges, this crop is not suited to direct learning…”

Sabrina rolled her ankles a little and absently tapped on her basket again. It wasn’t heavy on top of her head, just little awkward— she should’ve had Nora pack all this into wide one, not just whatever she had on hand.

It was after time thing had come down, after they’d tentatively started visiting Mechanicsburg with the Jägerherren— after Sabrina had finished writing down saga of efforts during their time apart. She wrote it like she sang it, during her moments of free time during her turn on gathering-duty. Perhaps she was only Jägerkin in world who could. Certainly, she was only other General they had, according to Dimo.

Sabrina still wasn’t entirely sure what General of Jägerkin actually was. To hunt she was doing, only have to learn new monsters, da; and then, to homing in new caves and ranging out at dawn and dusk, da, that is doing; and then, to finding these supplies they is needing— food, soap, materials for building new town, da, that is doing.

It is more than Sabrina knew how to fix; and Tanya did not know where starting from to go? So, they move on from time thing, and settle in. Is strange to have so much more space, and also less than ever; and Sabrina does not know how to like it.

Tanya loved it. Tanya loved learning new things and meeting new people, though, so that was as it should be. The food was good too— more of it, lots of it, enough so all the ‘frauen were having their menses regularly and climbing the walls when Sabrina command-decided that until they had enough contraceptives, there would be no climbing of the ‘herren.

It all came down to killing babies.

Oh, sure, climb Jägerherren if you wanted, no problem, and when you get pregnant and we cannot stop this, who will be killing baby? We do not have enough food to be feeding everyone more than twice a day, how we feeding babies on these rations— and then they did have enough food for babies, after that first winter, and suddenly Herr Adam and Frau Lilith were having their own long-awaited baby. By then, of course, enough of the girls actually saw or gossiped about what having a baby was really like— which only made the need for contraception more acute.

Trusty Maiden’s Weed is a colloquial term (and common name) for a broad category of abortifacient herbs and plant-materials (called ‘drugs’ when dried) that grow over most of Europa. The most common are savin, pennyroal, rue, and ergot; much easier to grow and gather, at least outside of England?

Yarrow’s stems, leaves, and flowers; cohosh roots; maidenhair fern fronds, angélica root, chamomile flowers, shepherd’s purse leaves and stems and flowers, a shitwhack of fennel seeds-root-and-leaves, hops (a fruit used to make beer shippable), St. John’s wort, juniper berries, motherwort, bugleweed, buckthorn, rhubarb, rosemary, comfrey, feverfew, clover, fenugreek, cat’s claw, and basically every edible fungus known to mad science or God. Yes, even the usually edible ones.

Tanya asked Sabrina to establish enormous gardens of literally everything that even might cause a little tragedy to not occur, and then added literally every other seed they could lay hands on from all the gardening stores and home gardens of Sturmhalten. Sensibly under cover of trees, to avoid being spotted by road or by air. She was too busy figuring out how the cave-making gun in the storage room worked, how to make it something worth using— and designing Jägerbüttel with Freddie, Max, and whichever ‘herren wanted to join in that day.

They also robbed abandoned Sturmhalten— Balan’s Gap? It was a city nearby enough to make the run in two days, and it was empty of people and had no defenses, and they stripped it absolutely bare. You know how many actually useful contraceptives were in a city like Balan’s Gap? Only a little bit more than they needed for everyone to have a good hard fuck at least one time.

That was nowhere near enough— but it was a start.

Most of Sabrina’s first year was actually spent figuring out how to turn kilometers of Wasteland (as the airship flew) into viable farmland. Because Sabrina did not like doing work, she fix-angled a way to do as little work as possible for farming; and farming, if you were stupid about it, was all work.

Sabrina has not noticed that she’s some kind of Spark, mostly because her specialty takes at least two years to really show any signs of working, and she wasn’t focused on it, really. Then she was giving her input about how she wanted the cave-gardens set up, if she wanted any terraforming done on their half of the valley (neatly ignoring the Wulfenbach Exclusion Zone), how the river and roads ought to intersect… Sabrina knows about floodplains, and water-meadows, wetland and riparian, canopy-understory-shrubbery-herblayer-ground-cover-roots and vines; and harvesting schedules, and herding animals, and everything else that makes food abundant and babies possible. And also getting a handsome Jägerherr to lay excellent pipe on her behalf, but that’s neither here nor there, really…

Sabrina shifted her hips and waist as the vehicipede omnibus crested a low curve in the road and trundled down towards the Corbetite station. Two more of the friendly-looking hermit-crab clanks that were run as a local bus system were already there. Sabrina was on the green-shell, which was Mechanicsburg to Jägerbüttel with stops at Dairyshed, Greenbarn, and Heap.

She stood smoothly along with a few of the ‘frauen who were still considering moving to the city, caught her balance as the ‘bus scuttled to a stop, and made her way out and down, into the stinking air outside of Mechanicsburg. Her ‘bus pass made the counter go ‘ding’; which was much faster than carrying a bunch of bus tokens or spare change, Tanya was right.

She walked past the schedule posted for the train, accurate to the second, and the vibes-based ‘bus schedule— the Corbettite and the Rhiannonic having an ecclesiastical discussion with arms locked akimbo, or ‘arm wrestling’, as it were, while some of their young acolytes cheered and jeered, and while Corbettites had the liberty of free rides and sanctuary for all, a Rhiannonic ‘bus would only let you on for free, off was where you paid up— and down the steps with her tail held up for balance, just in case, and she was there.

Gargoyles and Jägerherren and tourists, oh, gross. Good ol’ Mechanicsburg.

Sabrina walked past billboards and benches and pretty hedges and the giant skeletons with golden trilobites— bit ostentatious— turned, and felt awkward as Dimo fell into step beside her. She wanted to hold his hand, but that would probably be weird? She was a real Jägerfrauen, she didn’t need to hold her— Dimo’s hand in the city. Even if it was smelly, and loud, and full of people, and kind of a lot. And her hand was kinda cold.

Sabrina shook her head a little and let her tail wrap back around her hips as Dimo took the basket. She tapped him on the thigh, right through the jacket and pants. He took his left hand out of the basket and shoved a crispy-snail pastry in his mouth. His right hand had already found her left, and woven their fingers together; yes, exactly like that.

Their rings, of course, were worn on necklaces under their clothes. They were both still entirely too hands on to actually wear them.

Sabrina had followed Dimo around on the ceiling and in the trees those first few months outside the Timething to learn his craft. Mostly she already knew how to do what he did, aside from fighting other human people and writing in cursive. It took three months for Dimo to smell Sabrina; and longer than that to actually see her. Getting the rest of the girls to mingle, that took all winter.

Sabrina had never been so cold. And worse, she had been hurting, to the point of tears— which made her angry, which only made the hurting worse. There was something in the new home caves, much better caves than hell, cleaner bigger nicer— something in them made Sabrina’s breasts swell. Worse, much worse, than the little puffing up that came before her menstruation. It wasn’t obvious— but they were hurting, tender to touch like bruises, such that wrapping into her armor and sneaking silks was almost more than she could bear. It did not improve.

Every move of her chest came with pain, and the days were miserable, and her nights were worse because that is when she was working.

The third week of winter in new home, Sabrina was trying to write a coherent report out of the many bits and pieces her girls had brought her. She winced as her breast brushed against her hand, then froze because her stomach felt wet. Something smelled—

Dimo’s office at that time was a big room with desks and bookshelves and maps on the wall. Sabrina took over his old one, a supply closet with some buckets and a board. Dimo had taken the chair with him, but Sabrina liked the big rock she’d brought in from outside; usually, anyway. There wasn’t anyone else in the room, and it was closing in on dawn, and she— she was so…

Under her velvet silks, under her goat-leather breastplate and silk jack, under her linen shirt— her shirt was wet. Her breast was warm, too warm, too full, hurting— why—

When Sabrina touched it, a drop of white beaded up on the nipple. She squeezed, dragging from deeper up where the pain was softer, through the nest of pain, to her nipple. A bigger drop of white formed and slid down. It smelled like milk but sweeter. She let go and swallowed a sob of pain and fear, what was wrong with her— Sabrina went to Freddie. Freddie was one of a few who would still be awake at this time. More importantly, Freddie was in charge of their Sanitarea, and could figure out what was going on.

Freddie— Winifred Woundbinder— is a tall, pale had-been Geisterdame that had defected to hell— to live amongst demons— and had become a demon herself. Her eyes were not the blank silk-white or even the silver of home, now, but orange, like an egg-yolk. Her long white hair had been shorn short, all honor forsaken; and with every passing day, her milk-white skin turned greener. Her hands and feet browned in the sun, now; and so, if you squinted, she looked a bit like a ripe dandelion.

Yes, yes, she was barred from home, and heaven, forever now. She would never again sing the songs of her childhood, never again sit at the loom, never again have quite so much faith that her Goddess was real and eternal and loved her and wanted her— for she was a Sinner now, a worthless hell-bound sinner, a faithless demon witch.

So were all her friends. Freddie loved her friends. She had been lost in the dark, head full of spores and fumes, crushed under stone— and the others only laughed and said it was what a fatass like her deserved for slowing them down. The demons of hell had rescued her then, and though it would have been the right thing, the moral thing, to sneak out during her turn at hunting and find the camp, and tell them, and kill them all…

Freddie trembled then, because she had to decide, forever, between two things, and she knew it then as she lived it now. She had stood a minute, two, ten, sort of holding her breath and staring down the hole that would take her back to all she knew, and then she said to herself— “All right, then, I’ll go to hell” — and turned away.

They were awful thoughts, and awful words, and she said them. And she let them stay said, and never thought again about reforming. She set the whole thing aside, and decided to take up wickedness again— as it was in her line, being the ugly daughter of a feckless scout-priestess and a surface-man with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and the Other wasn’t. And for a starter, she would become bound by blood and sacrifice to the other demons in their little patch of hell; and worse, she would take up her Sparky tendencies and let them burn her, burn her right through, and if she could think of worse, she would do that, too; because as long as Freddie was in, and in for good, she might as well steal the whole house, not just the children in it.

For reference, Freddie looks a bit like a dandelion, because, well— she’d joined up with them in hell, with Tanya the Witch, because Threadspinner Savika said she’d adopt her and civilize her, and Freddie couldn’t stand it. She’d been there before. No. No more.

Sabrina— metallic-gold eyes rimmed with crimson, set in a pale brown face with a waxy cast that implied she’d drowned and gotten back up. The fur on her body was clear and dense, which acted to suck all the light and sound away from her body when there was no light on her. Her hair in lavender and peach colored streaks in a dense field of white, like a sunrise on a field of snow. She was flat-chested usually, with the aid of her breastplate and bindings; and curvier now, with nearly a season’s worth of surface food in her belly. Her shoulders were broad and her actual waist was narrow. Her eyes sat too-big in her face, and her nose was slightly too small and too flat, and her lips made her look like she was always pouting. Their natural color was a dark purple-brown. Behind them were hundreds of needle-like fangs, themselves behind the more usual razor-sharp arrangement of Jägerteeth.

Her tail was organic, but looked like armor— like bone plates, or her own spine perhaps, with small white scales starting right between her shoulder blades and going down past her sacrum, extending into the tail. It could extend improbable distances, support immense weights, move with terrifying speed and force… It had something like a horn at the end, shaped like a xiphos, and sharp enough to cleave through… pretty much everything so far.

Her hat was a top-hat she’d swiped out of the pitiful heaven over her native hell, in Sturmhalten castle, or palace? Unclear which made which— but it was made of fur, and had a curled brim and a flare at the crown. The band she’d replaced with a green silk band she’d woven herself, because black on black was so fucking boring— and also the black ribbon could not stand up to her (stolen) hatpins, very embarrassing. She made bouquets out of the long floral pins, and rather liked the effect.

Freddie looked up from her painted notes as Sabrina scuttled down the wall. Her expression went from slight confusion to instant worry. She frowned, tucked a slithering curl of stark white hair behind her ear, and sniffed the air. Her red rimmed eyes and deer-like ears twisted as she identified the smell. Her long fingers landed on Sabrina’s hand. Sabrina couldn’t stop herself from squeezing, trapping Freddie’s hand in her fingers, squeezing.

”Sabrinya— you’re lactating,” Freddie said, the clinical word sounding no less bizarre in her mouth. “How long s’this been going?”

Freddie waited, and finally got a good look at Sabrina’s stance. Usually, Sabrina stood perfectly still, and moved like athletic animals fighting inside a silk velvet bag— like living poetry or perhaps some kind of song made of meat. Freddie forced herself to lock eyes with Sabrina— eggyolk orange to metallic gold— patient curiosity without judgement versus pained embarrassment.

Freddie won this usual exchange. That was why she was their Woundbinder, even without the ability to sew souls back into flesh.

”This… is now,” Sabrina finally forced out. “I— they have been hurting, badly, since we… settled in.”

”You are not pregnant,” Freddie didn’t quite ask. Sabrina shook her head once, trying not to squeeze her chest more. “I would have smelled it, da— okay… ah!”

Freddie stalked to her shelf of books, bookshelf, and pulled down a volume they’d taken from one of Sturmhalten’s many abandoned doctor’s offices. “…can be caused by certain drugs, especially opioids in conjunction with—” Freddie mumbled into her throat without opening her mouth, her apprehension changing to that bloodless worry the strange Frau Olga and sometimes Frau Lilith got. So, that was something— a reason. Sabrina felt something in her back uncoil. Freddie knew what was wrong.

Freddie closed the book and pulled down a small roll of fabric— her personal notes on the medical care she’d been doing— Sabrina… oh.

“I bear some blame in this,” Freddie said, her whole body emphasizing the frown on her face. “The treatment I gave you after we got rid of that von Blitzen-face and his stupid pop-up kestle, it had a drug that made this possible. It wouldn’t have done anything but these caves here have a moss that contains a spore, used in very common lactation-inducing medicine; and it reacts with the traces left in your blood. It should all be broken down in another sleep. Milk will stop in few weeks; and then it should be reabsorbed, into your body.”

Sabrina sighed out with relief. “It will go away,” she said.

“Da, is temporary. Until then… for the pain, you express the milk,” Freddie said with a prosaic shrug. “I have little sucker cups for helping to pull out nipples, and a small pump I can build for you? It is not as good as a baby, but it may help. Otherwise, we bind, keep clean, watch for infection. Or you find a lover?”

“I try here, da? And we see,” Sabrina said, finally. “And stupid jokes is another time, I think.”

”Da, okay,” Freddie said, rolling her eyes where Sabrina couldn’t see it.

Relief was negligible— and not worth the noise and discomfort of using the little pump. The suction cup things were not better. Sabrina kept bound, worked, and left her summarized reports on Dimo’s desk after organizing it each evening, writing quick summaries of dense blocks of information for her own sake and pinning them together with the little sword pins Nora didn’t need for h'ours d'evors. She double-entered all the expense reports and petty-cash lists into the book she kept in Dimo’s desk, and she filed receipts in order of date and then alphabet; and she updated her record of what they stole from where and who, the garden maps, her own scouting reports…

Honestly, she just snuck all her office stuff into Dimo’s much bigger and nicer office, while they were sleeping, and left before they came back. Very easy. At least it was until the bullshit with the lactation, and she had to walk on the ground like some kind of, of weakling—

And had to go through the damn door. Ugh. What was the point of all those nice wide ventilation shafts if she couldn’t creep through them? Fuck with it— she was done with her work, truly relieved to be done, and going to get some snow. The cold would help a little. Maybe she would be able to sleep.

The door opened too quickly under her hand and Sabrina stepped forward to collide with Dimo. Even in the most persistent pain of her life— the worst being reserved, still, for regrowing the end of her tail— Sabrina moved silently. Dimo didn’t notice her behind the door of the war room and also his, goddammit, office.

Shock and agony of pressure forced Sabrina back with a huff of pain. Dimo, however, could smell her now— and caught her arm as she twitched and stumbled. Her thick hand snapped tight around his wrist. Her tail twitched and kinked as she steadied herself. Sabrina sighed at Dimo’s expression of wary concern.

”Hyou’re… not,” Dimo said, staring at her chest, his nostrils flared. “But hyou’re in pain. Hy ken see it in hyour breathink.”

“Da, this is painful. Is nothing to do for it but cooling— was gonna get some snow—” Sabrina said tiredly, twisting her arm roughly to free herself from his grip. Dimo’s grip softened, but did not break. He stepped in through the door and shut it behind him.

Sabrina frowned up at him from close enough she could feel the heat from his body. All the Jägerherren were… warm— but Sabrina was always snooching and creeping around Dimo. She knew him best. He was very warm. After another breath, she dredged up some reserve of energy and, begrudgingly, stepped back.

“Is only for a few weeks,” Sabrina said with a roll of her eyes. “Chust reaction to recovery drug from that acid-spitter clank I help fight, da, with that von Blitzengaard. It heal on is own.”

”Ya, end hyu iz hurting the whole time,” Dimo said with a frown. “Hyu’re the only other General, Sabrina. What ken Hy do to make eet easier?”

“…be easier if I did have baby,” Sabrina sighed. She snorted as Dimo’s eyes bugged out, an actual smile flickering across the permadowner of her face. “Not like that— chust… it’d be right kind of helping. There is pump, but is noisy, and hurts.” Her voice had gotten gravellier as she spoke. Probably more than he wanted to know, but she was to tired now to care. “Cyka blyat, I am tired, Dimo.”

Dimo’s hand wasn’t holding Sabrina’s arm at all, now. His green skin and pale fur was hot against her velvet, dark and shadowy. He was still touching her, but not— not keeping her there anymore. Sabrina didn’t move away. She blinked and her eyes felt… gritty. Her jaw ached from the pain, because she was clenching it— ah hell.

”Say again, please,” Sabrina said, her voice like stones grinding together.

”V-vould it help if Hy did it?” Dimo said, an odd wobble in his voice.

Sabrina stared at him. He looked intensely awkward, gaze fixed on some point on the wall behind her, and entirely serious. There was just barely enough light for her to see him blushing. Blushing?

”Are you… offering..?” Sabrina asked, blushing slowly in response.

”My job is easier ven hyu ken do hyours,” Dimo said with a darkening blush. “End, hrm, eet is not… hard vork. If hyu vant…?”

Of course. The disappointment of Sabrina’s usual prospects concerning love and romance, or at least a good solid fucking, went to war with possibly actually being able to sleep soon. Her shoulders squared slightly. Her tail twisted and kinked again as her breasts throbbed.

He braved a look directly at her.

Well, he was the smart one…

That was enough to convince her of sincerity. Stupid, practical, utilitarian sincerity, devoid of… anything so foreign as desire. Not for weird flat-fish Sabrina, anyway. Genuinely trying to help, sure— for his own sake, sure, sure…

Sabrina really was so fucking tired.

“Please,” Sabrina said, three weeks of frustration and unending pain turning to— she was saying difficult words now. Too shy to look him in the eye— or maybe, as her breath hitched and her eyes burned, “Dimo, please.”

Getting from in the doorway, which Dimo had barred— right, that door could be barred from the inside— Sabrina remembered how hot Dimo’s hands were at the small of her back, his vague questions about how she wanted to do this… Sabrina remembered undoing her breast plate and tassets, her wraps and her shirt and her bindings, all of it above the waist. She remembered straddling him, in the jointed chair, and putting her hat on the desk a beat after Dimo did. She remembered his thighs feeling thick and hot under her, the weight of his hand at her back and how carefully he cupped her left breast.

Dimo’s lips closed over one nipple. He was not tentative, there was no irrelevant foreplay, and he did not bite or nibble. Just his slightly chapped lips, hot and sealing over her, a soft flexible tongue curving beneath like a whip of fire. Sabrina felt the draw of his breath through his nose in her velvet-short fur. The first suck drew pain out of her like poison from a wound, but she wasn’t actually poisoned— Pleasure hit like a slap of winter, better than winter, shocking like that first breath of really cold air, like mountains of cold, like acres, hectares, but it was all goodness and syrip-sweet and Sabrina was squeaking.

Dimo sucked and tugged and drank the sweetest milk he’d had in his entire life from one of the prettiest tits, and suddenly realized he’d never actually heard Sabrina laugh. He’d never seen her smile. For the first four months of knowing Miss Tanya, he’d been only half-sure she even existed— and here she was, laughing, as he sucked. Smiling, laughing, hips stuttering against his in a half-rocking motion, snow-rise hair falling out of it’s topknot—

A precious treasure for him to keep: Sabrina’s laughter. Beautiful, Dimo thought.

Dimo’s tongue moved with firm but gentle focus. The pressure was steady but not painful. Each suckle felt like another layer-minute-hour-day-lifetime of pain shaved away, his hot mouth sealed to her nipple, pressure-valve release, hot, hot, hot. The tug of pleasure from his mouth leapt down through her body to her— her uterus? Her vagina? Oh, oh she was soaked— soaking through, dripping, slick and wet and hot, her wax-pale parts flushing violently red.

It was the first comfort in days.

Dimo’s hand rubbed slow circles against Sabrina’s back. Surely it was involuntary, but… his hand was warm and soothing and nice, and she… wasn’t popular. Sabrina arched slightly and sighed, halfway to a whimper.

“Alright?” Dimo asked, his mouth leaving a sharply cold wet circle around her nipple, hard and aching and his tongue chasing drops that leaked up from the underside of her breast. His hand on her back still drew slow, warm strokes, pausing to rub the bone plates along her spine. A shiver ran up to her scalp even as—

“Da,” Sabrina replied, blinking her eyes open slowly to find him looking at her, intent and still blushing, lips red and shiny with— “Yes.”

“Goot,” Dimo half-muttered, moving to her right breast and— his slightly glowy yellow eyes fluttered closed, which made her clench, and then again as she watched his mouth open, his long tongue slide out over his lower lip, the gleam of sharp fangs— touch on her other ache, clearing out the nest, lips sealed tight and softly pulling pulling pulling, pressure-release swollen pain and stirring heat in her lower stomach, her thighs, her tail—

Sabrina made a sound she didn’t bother naming to herself and raised her clawed hands to Dimo’s shoulders. The cloth of his shirt and jacket between her fingertips felt— rough, but not bad. Her eyes fluttered shut again as the slow-building relief under his focused mouth swept her away.

Slowly, three-or-four switching sides, each: the pain went away. Sabrina knew the ache in her breasts had nothing to do with unnecessary milk production. She stopped him with a soft hand against his clavicle— no force to push him back, not necessary.

Dimo stopped himself, looked at her, asked— “Better?”

”So much,” she sighed.

Sabrina was leaning back into his hand now. Relief made a soft sweetness of her face that, Dimo realized, he hadn’t seen in nearly a month. She blushed as he looked at her, studied the relative size of her breasts and the tightness of her skin. He watched that vibrant pink wash down her body as he looked on.

Dimo caught a droplet of milk from the nipple he’d just released and as she made another adorable noise he licked it from his thumb. Her blush had darkened by the time he met her eyes again.

”Goot end even,” Dimo said, smirking slowly. “Guess Hy’m done, yah?”

”Hmmm,” Sabrina hummed. He was, technically, right. His help was given; she was relieved. She could go to bed.

It hadn’t been loud in the war office; and it wasn’t loud now. Dimo watched Sabrina consider him silently. He didn’t say more; didn’t touch her breasts again; didn’t put his hands anywhere suggestive. He didn’t move away, either. He just… waited, breath a little fast, mouth wet and tasting sweet; his cock a hard, hot line against her thigh. An open invitation, something like earnest desire; and he smelled like—

Sabrina shifted forward slightly, pressing against the hard ridge of his erection filling out the front of his trousers. Her vagina felt swollen and slick, aching inside on the edge of unpleasantness. Dimo’s hands moved to Sabrina’s hips, holding her still for a moment. Her tail swayed slowly at the base.

”If you do not want to, is no problem. I can take care of myself. But, if you do—” Sabrina made a sound that wasn’t a scream because of how good she felt.

Dimo had taken her hips in his hands and rolled himself against her.

“Hy do,” he said through a toothy grin, fingers kneading into her ass, claws tapping at her very flexible tail plates and dipping beneath the band of her trousers.

“Blin, that is good,” Sabrina sighed before wriggling off him for a moment, stripping off her trousers and her panties while he maneuvered out of his fly and whatever else until he’d pulled himself out, thick and red and twitching, covered in little barbs and oozing gently.

Sabrina was gently thwapped with the smell of him and actually felt something ooze out of her as she clenched with— wanting.

Sabrina straddled Dimo again, and he slid his hands down her back over her hips her thighs to curl one loose around her tail and the other pulled her in. She stretched herself open and reached down to guide him in, his cock hot and silky smooth and a little grippy, thick and lovely with spines that weren’t sharp but— She lowered herself, felt his boiling tip at her entrance, and he groaned as she slid down and she squeaked as he grabbed a handful of her ass and fucked himself in.

He filled her to stretching, so good, fuck, fuck, spines rubbing and touching and pressing. She rolled her hips against him and savored the thick boil-hot slide, just this side of hurting, so smooth and easy and even without— without kissing, without hugging or holding or even liking her, really, it was wonderful.

Dimo hissed out roughly, barely not a growl, and tightened his arm. He pulled them closer together. Smelled like a damn bordello in here now and everyone who walked in would know they— His mouth landed on her collar bone and bit, his breath moist and hot and his teeth gentle, following the throat-road up, licking at the pulse in the hollow of her neck, matting down her fur to her skin.

Dimo’s fur was soft under her hands. His hair was smooth and not greasy or stiff, and he purred when she started digging into the knots she felt there, scratched behind his ears and clenched when he purred against her chest.

After that was just… practical mechanics for Jägerkin, verra nize. At some point Dimo picked her up to press her flat to the, the ground? It let her brace her feet against the floor for the angle she craved. At another, after she came again— good goddamn, what a charged up little death ray, this one— Sabrina rolled them over and rode him like she had somewhere to be.

None of Miss Tanya’s Jägerfrauen had somewhere to be other than at her side.

Tanya had decided to stay outside Mechanicsburg to found her little town, after all— which quite naturally led to fighting absolutely everyone when they showed up right before the Timething. Tanya liked Aggie, and considered her kin after a fashion— and, more importantly, all of these assholes were part of the pitiful heavens, and thus morally entirely acceptable to kill.

Tanya would do this; all day, every day, no problem. Of course, Sabrina had to be at Tanya’s side; and all the girls followed Tanya too, so. That’s why none of them were in Mechanicsburg when The Timething. This is normal, and would be unremarkable were it not for the fifteen-thousand Jägerherren that had shown up to also fight absolutely everyone attacking their town.

And then, yes indeed: the Timething.

Anyway, Dimo had finally been summoned to the Jägerbüro, and so had Sabrina. It was right there in the vow; and also, Dimo had said she had to come with him because they’d want to talk to her too, and she heard him say ‘please don’t leave me’ with her heart and not her ears. That is how this usually goes, according to Oggie, who has been married before.

Mechanicsburg is okay, sort of, maybe. Sabrina only has Sturmhalten and Balan’s Gap and a little bit of Beetleburg to compare, at-speed at-night examinations, and the last for a run to the feed store. A city is a very flashy sort of place and Sabrina only sort-of likes it. But, Dimo is a city-boy through and through, and he already had a house here, so, she has to spend some of her time in town. This is, apparently, another marriage thing.

Sabrina thinks their home in Jägerbüttel is much nicer. Certainly the yard is bigger, and all their yard beasts make getting dinner together very simple affair— but, most of Dimo’s work is in city, and she can do hers by correspondence, so it’s fine.

Jägerhall is on way to Jägerbüro. Sabrina thinks Jägerhall is too loud. Is not like Hell, and certainly is not like Jägerbüttel— probably that is why they are going to Jägerbüro. Sabrina has fished Dimo out of Jägerhall a few times— and if that amount of carousing and having fun is usual, is no wonder why they go to Jägerbüro. No work can be done in a place like that.

Sabrina shifts next to Dimo as the weight of the bag over her shoulder digs a little into her shoulder. Dimo took her basket, so she took his case of brief reports and added it to her bag. It’s fair. And anyway, she knows he doesn’t eat right when she’s not around to make him. That’s why she stopped at Nora-that-Cooks restaurant-palace to get a basket of food fit for a long boring meeting. This went a long way to explaining the heft of the basket itself, and why it was so tall.

”Dimo, the generals are to liking me?” Sabrina asked plaintively, as they stepped through a side-gate in the many walls of this open-air cavern-warren. Sabrina, personally, still hadn’t actually found anything she couldn’t cut through with her tail, and so usually took a direct route out of the city when it was time to leave. The Castle, who had indeed gotten exactly what it asked for, had decided that letting this happen was for the best.

Dimo always found it a little disconcerting that he always got where he intended to go faster if he brought Sabrina— and faster than even that, if he was with Miss Tanya. He bounced the basket of incredibly delicious food higher on his shoulder and flashed some fangs at his— at Sabrina. Her wax-pale fingers were bloodless around the strap of her bulging Doom Wyrm leather bag.

“Ya, dey’re gonna like hyu,” Dimo said, bracing himself for the odd grinding sound of the usually annoying Hedge of Death Maze being quickly straightened out into a wide promenade, complete with statues of monsters and enemies and angels in agony and horror. Very classy. Lots of trilobite-en-skull like the little coins Greeks put over eyes in the funeral ceremony, yeah? And at the other end of the promenade— the Jägerbüro. Of course, during the most recent Dark Times, it’d been a souvenir shop and haberdasher. Well, okay, it still sold hats— the Mistress didn’t like disrupting the local economy— and that Jägerherr, Alvin, he was miserably sewing ribbon onto a straw hat. Served him right.

The pile of broken souvenirs was still on the ground outside one of the boarded-up windows, though.

Sabrina followed Dimo down the wide street lined with rosy hedges and weird objects d’art. What was wrong with some nicely painted skulls of beasts you’d slain yourself, she did not know— ah, but no time for landscaping irritations, they were here!

The inside of the Jägerbüro, past Miserable Alvin and his many hats he was not allowed to wear, not after what he did, was oppressively grey and smelled slightly damp. It immediately reminded Sabrina of the best parts of Hell, and did more to put her at ease than having Dimo right there with her.

“We gotz to get better chairs for in here,” Dimo sighed as he walked through. The part of his brain that still insisted it was a mere gruntling, like a Chief Minion that still insisted they were leaving for Paris goddammit, had shoved the door in when he’d heard ‘vhat hyu want’ when he’d knocked. The rest of his brain had seen what was in the actual meeting room, flinched away from overstuffed chairs and no footrests at all, and immediately turned to discuss it with Sabrina, his— who’d been the only reason he hadn’t legitimately become the world’s least fun Jäger.

“Da, these are not comfortable for long meetings,” Sabrina agreed, peering out from behind Dimo. “De stuffing will make your ass suffer in one hour, two tops. Where dishwares?”

“Cabinet behind General Øsk’s chair dere, vith de winged trilobites,” Dimo said, pointing with his scruffy chin.

“Ah, I see— excusing me please, General Øsk— did you eat all the snailsants already, or I is gettings platter?” Sabrina asked.

Dimo chewed through another snailsant, and checked the bag. He’d definitely eaten the last one, but if he just said that— wait— “Two bags! What kind of happetites they think ve have?”

“Da, I get food from Nora-that-Cooks, so,” Sabrina said, whipping her tail out to snipe the basket of food from Dimo.

It arced up and over General Øsk’s empty chair, and landed softly on top of her head. Dimo was still holding the bag of snailsants, but he didn’t open it to eat them. He didn’t dare. Sabrina’s tail was at his throat, after all.

This was nowhere near the first time Dimo had been held at sword point for a bag of pain au escargot. He knew what to do. That was why he caught the platter she threw behind her like a frisbee (without even bothering to look) and put all the pastries on the plate. Then he caught the bag of reports.

Dimo sighed, ignored the fact that General Gkika was absolutely laughing at him, and pulled out his not-actually-a-briefings-case-waitaminuite— “Agh!”

“Da, is briefcase, because it is case full of briefs, how you are this stubborn about things like this I do not understand,” Sabrina said, flipping out a tablecloth in one very smooth motion before stacking the basket in General Øsk’s non-existent grip and the various dishwares they’d need eventually in front of him-that-wasn’t-there. Because he was dead.

Dimo slapped down all his reports, separated neatly onto this or that miniature sword; and then he more carefully set down all of Sabrina’s reports, separated by the hatpins she didn’t like. Then he sat himself down, on the chair General Khrizhan slid out for him, put his head in his hands, and groaned.

”Hy still dun vanna bezah General,” Dimo did not quite wail through his hands.

”Give reports to other generals for reviewing, and have brunch,” Sabrina said with a smile that didn’t so much melt as obliterate the dead wax statue that her face usually appeared as.

”Yah, okay,” Dimo said, rubbing his face and passing the stacks of reports to General Goomblast, who had the longest arms and reached over the fastest. “Vhat ve having?”

“Da, we are having Nora-that-Cooks new meat and mash bowls in the pottery Olga and her girls is making, with green mosses and brown gravy and cloudberry jam; semechki, cherries, those little cheese wheels shaped like snails with the easy-peel wax, deviled eggs with bacon sprinkled on top,” Sabrina started to say. She pulled each item out as she did so, arranging it neatly down the middle of the table.

General Gkikka made a very delighted “Uh!” at the sight of those stacks of deviled eggs.

“No paprika?” General Koppelslav said, his goblin-ish face squashed into a half-frown.

”No, it is being recalcitrant this year, escaping the greenhouses too often to bear fruit— maybe next, da? Then there is wax paper fold of hot-spiced sausage, two sliced loaves of good bread from Mary-that-Bakes, and the rollwiches are this way: smeared with compound of goat butter and wild mosses, sorry, hhherbs, and minced meat which I think is quail and sheep because we have lots of that, and I am thinking pickled onions; and is more, somewhere. Da, roaches— fish, not bugs— in sunflower oil, death to all your asshole red and spicy sauce, berry-juice and beet-sugar saftdryk, bottle pickled onions, medium size wheel of cheese from Mary-that-Cow—” Sabrina kept going, in contravention to how big the basket seemed to be.

General Zog’s stark white eyebrows had colonized the green fur of his ancient head, nearly sliding his fez askew. He was reading the expense reports and comparing it to crop yields— well, it was called Jägerbüttel— ah, that would explain why they had so much food in town now… General Goomblast had already taken one of the usual carafes of water and doctored it with the saftdryk sirip, and it smelled like liquid summer in here now.

“—Roach mashed with boiled egg yolk and butter rollwich, still not bugs; marbled dormouse and cave lizard rollwiches; moss-and-bone soup, made with beef ribs, garden herbs, onions, mushrooms, stewing snails, and diced pondweed; beast soup with dumplings, beast is rest of that longleg mousebeast; fried roach which is still fish, not bugs; stewed long-fish with mushrooms, onions, and tiny meatballs—” Sabrina continued. The table began to look rather full.

“What kind of happetites do dey tink ve have?” Axel Higgs, more tanned than he’d been in centuries, said under his breath.

”—sliced cold sausage you is not supposed to cook, long-leg mouse-beast cutlets, roasted quail and cave lizard, snailsants, and Nora’s best stuffed mushrooms—” Sabrina said, setting down the biggest mushroom caps any of them except Dimo had ever seen, filled with the fancy filling what usually got served during the holidays and crusted over with richly browned cheese, “—and fruit jam, and best butter, and little spice cookies tasting like being hugged, and… ugh, pudding, with the rum sauce. That is all food.”

The table let out a plaintive groan; or perhaps it was a multitude of stomachs.

”Yah, okay; ve eat furst, and then ve do Generalink,” Dimo said, unfortunately cementing his place as newest general.

”What you is thinking I bring basket for,” Sabrina asked rhetorically, passing out napkins and cutlery and cups— well, they’d been needing a proper quartermaster for centuries, and they all knew that was a job for a General.