Voracity
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3.18 For Yuri, I Go Clubbing in Another Dimension
🕑 Added 2025-08-27 21:05:57 +0000 UTCMy first day back from the World of Glass is spent pigging out on sushi and chatting up my friends about Visage and the other mage factions. I carefully avoid mentioning anything about Hastur or the World of Glass, and I pop two edibles to help me crash at a reasonable time so I can reset my sleep schedule.
The next day, I purge any lingering drugs in my system and start planning my confrontation with Ferromancer.
That might be a needlessly hostile way to frame it, actually, but my trust in my mentor has dropped a lot since she left me to the mercy of the deimovore and has been hiding a personal relationship with one of the Syndicate. With the benefit of hindsight, I can’t disagree with her decision to let the deimovore encounter play out, but I also really don’t like the possibility that Ferromancer now knows the exact nature of my relationship to Striga—and Striga’s civilian identity, if she hadn’t already been told it.
I never pressed Ferromancer on her history because it wasn’t my business and I didn’t have any leverage to push with, but now things are different. I need to know her secrets, and she should know spilling those secrets is the only way to keep me on her side.
I hover outside the workshop—metaphorically, I’m not transformed—with a bag of sandwiches tucked under one arm, staring at the buzzer and chewing on my words. The sky is overcast and getting darker, but it’s not quite raining yet. Before I can hit the button, the garage door opens on its own.
“What, were you waiting for an invitation?” Erica asks wryly, standing just inside the entrance to her private pocket dimension. She’s back in business casual, power armor tucked away somewhere, and she has a lit cigarette burning down in one hand. It’s a surprising relief to see her face again, especially those keen eyes, ruddy orange and bright with intelligence.
“I wouldn’t have minded one, all things considered,” I grin. “A girl likes to feel wanted.”
She chuckles and waves me inside. We make our way to the kitchen, where I set my haul down and start separating out sandwiches: a Reuben for Ferromancer, a meatball sub for me, and an Italian for Bombshell, wherever she is. Erica whistles at the spread. “Well, well, you didn’t even skimp. That’s a pretty good-lookin’ bribe, doll. What’s the occasion?”
“Figured there was a conversation to have after everything that went down the other night. I also figured that was a conversation best had on a full stomach, so, here I am. Is Bombshell around or should I shove this in the fridge?”
Erica unwraps her Reuben and takes a seat. “Oh, she’s out roughing up someone who tried to stiff me. Did you know there’s a weed shop in this city that has a deal going with a magical girl?”
I give her an incredulous look as I tuck away the Italian and sit down across from her. “Yeah, I’ve been. Green Thumb’s place, right? What the hell did she want with you?”
“Stupidest shit I’ve ever dealt with.” Erica digs into her sandwich and makes a pleased noise before continuing, “The spell she’s got to fancy up her crop comes with a corresponding increase in certain biological demands. The nutrients and water are easy to get ahold of, but this is Forks; there’s no sun most of the time. At least, not enough for what she needs.”
“So, what, you built her a sunlight machine?” I raise an eyebrow and take a bite of my own sandwich.
“So I built her a sunlight machine!” she agrees cheerfully. “Of course, then she tried to cheat me. She insisted on certain payment channels that made it easy for her to pull her money out as soon as my back was turned, which I allowed because it’s a dumb as hell move to do a financial crime while you’re running a pot shop. I’m being nice by only sending Bombshell after her ass.”
“How restrained,” I grin. “But, seriously, she really thought she’d get away with that?”
Erica swallows another bite of her food, then shrugs. “She didn’t seem the smartest. She kept boasting about knowing Herbalist as if that meant something to me.”
“Huh. I guess they would have something to talk about, but if she thought that would protect her then she really doesn’t get how the game works.”
We make more small talk as we eat. Erica invites me to play Magic with a couple of her friends who live in the area, which is how I learn that she’s spent about as much time in Washington as in California. Playing more card games would be nice, and would help me come up with more ideas for monster designs—Ferromancer insists that she still has a great deal to teach me about creating and refining familiars, which I don’t disbelieve—but I give an evasive answer, not willing to commit to anything yet.
Erica finishes her meal first. She throws the wrapper away, grabs a beer from the fridge, and leans back in her chair, eyeing me. “Alright, I guess there’s no more putting this off. Ask.”
“How do you know Delilah?” I ask immediately. “You made it clear you have some kind of personal history with her, and it didn’t seem positive.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Ferromancer sighs. “I dislike dwelling on my past, but I guess you’ve earned some real answers. Buckle in, ‘cause I’m gonna start at the beginning.”
“I have time.”
She takes a long drink, sets it down, and launches in. “My parents split when I was young. My father stayed in California while my mother moved back to Washington, and they shipped me back and forth between them every couple years. School wasn’t bad, but moving so much was a pretty big incentive to focus on education over making friends. I never felt like I belonged anywhere until the day I met Delilah.”
My interest sharpens, but I don’t let it seep into my expression or posture. That makes her sound a lot more important than I thought she’d be. Who the hell was Delilah? Outwardly, I just nod and say, “Go on.”
“She was a splash of the real world that I sorely needed after my sheltered upbringing. She was a liar and a thief, but I liked that; being around her made me feel like I’d been living my whole life with my eyes closed. I changed my college plans to stay close to her. And then, as I worked hard on my degree and we made plans to move in together once it was done, the Jovians made us an offer.”
There’s a wistful melancholy to how Erica describes her relationship with Delilah that has me convinced they were an item even before she mentions moving in. I mean, Sophie and I live together and we’re not dating, but that is a maddening state of affairs that I have plans to correct. I do not for a second believe that Erica and Delilah have not swapped spit.
“We didn’t share a power,” she continues, “but we were selected at the same time, and the cats pretty clearly expected us to operate as a unit, which we did. We had fun, but we were more careful than a lot of our peers, and that got us noticed in a different way; within a few months of stepping onto the scene, we received an invitation to do some work for the Syndicate. We said yes, and in short order we found ourselves full members.”
This time, I don’t manage to stifle my reaction in time, and I visibly stiffen. “When was this?” I ask carefully.
Erica takes another drink. “Yeah, that’s a fair reaction. It was early days in their organization, before the fascists took over and made that the party line, but I won’t lie and tell you they were absent back then; we just didn’t care. Politics was the furthest thing from our minds. To us, the Syndicate was a form of liberation. We did as we pleased, running mercenary work in the shadows and moving on crime rings to make them ours. She was the knife hand and I was the clear eye. Together, we felt unstoppable.”
It’s strange to think of Ferromancer in her youth, even if I knew intellectually that she wasn’t always the experienced veteran she presents herself as. I definitely wasn’t expecting her origins to be with the Syndicate, though. She’s clearly not the same person she was back then, but how much can a person really change? “Then what happened?”
“Then I stabbed her in the back,” Erica laughs. It’s a bleak, bitter sound. “The Syndicate is awful, Rachel, and not just politically. Being in there isolates you, twists you, turns you into someone who can only see victory and death. I started to think I was better than the ‘baseline’ humans, and better than all the magical girls, and from there it was a short jump to thinking I was better than my fellow witches. I saw an opportunity for advancement, and all it cost was betraying the only person I had ever felt at home with. It ruined us both.
“Delilah didn’t take my betrayal lying down. I thought I was too clever to need her, and I thought she needed me too much to accomplish anything on her own. Foolish. She killed me in my home, I killed her in hers, and then she got me with a poison that should have finished me off and closed our three—that she thought had, for years. In the dust after, Delilah fell deep into the Syndicate’s clutches and became something of a believer. I stopped believing in anything.”
I whistle. “Pretty nasty. I’m surprised she was willing to come to your demo in the workshop after all that, or into the World of Glass with you.” So Erica has a history of betraying her partners. More reason to be on my guard.
Ferromancer shrugs. “Like I said, she became a believer. When power is the only thing that matters, there’s not a lot you won’t do to get your hands on it. The demo was a test; I invited her there as a show of good faith, a sign that the old troubles were behind us. If either of us tried to settle the score, well, the results wouldn’t have been pretty. Striga reached out to her pretty shortly after through the channels I’d opened.”
And there’s the reason I haven’t cut ties already. “How do you know Striga?” I demand. “How long have you been part of her conspiracy?”
“Since the night after Delilah nearly killed me,” she answers with a grin. My eyes widen in surprise and she continues, “She’d been tracking my movements and Delilah’s for some time, monitoring the Syndicate’s rising stars and waiting to see where we fell on her gameboard. She broke into my sanctum and interrogated me about the situation, wanting to hear my assessment of Delilah and how my own feelings about the Syndicate had changed. Drilled me on the Jovians, too. Thoroughest interview I’ve ever been in. At the end of it, she could have easily executed me—her ability to secure three quick kills was already known and feared by then—but she didn’t. Instead, she inducted me into the conspiracy and helped me keep my survival a secret from the Syndicate. I moved to California, finished my degree, and did my damnedest to convince the Jovians I was useful to them.”
I lean back in my chair, considering everything she’s said. “Striga has a lot on you,” I muse. “In your position, I’d be very interested in securing the loyalty of the girl chosen to be the anti-Striga, even if Striga’s goals align with your own. I suppose that explains why you haven’t told her who I am.”
“Or… it’s not my secret to share,” Erica says dryly. “Always considering the angles, aren’t you? I bet your darling roommate thinks the same way.” Well, it wasn’t really in doubt, but that’s confirmation she overheard everything in the deimovore fight. “She didn’t tell me anything about her real plan the other night, you know. She told me we were grooming Delilah to be our spy in the Syndicate, that her presence on the expedition was a test. Howl and I have been working with Striga for years, and we haven’t heard a peep about Mars or Hastur in all that time. I’m not exactly in a hurry to give her information she hasn’t directly tasked me with getting.”
I’m delighted that Ferromancer considers me similar to Sophia in any way. I am also very, very concerned about her knowing Sophia’s identity, but that might be paranoia; the Jovians know who she is, so they could leak that information at any time to any of Striga’s enemies—if they were willing to escalate the cold war, that is.
Erica doesn’t have any real reason to backstab Striga, does she? Striga may have kept secrets from her, but she also chose to trust Ferromancer and bring her into the conspiracy after witnessing her conflict with Delilah. Plus, I’m assuming Erica took the same oath as I did.
Arguably, I’m betraying Sophia by not telling her that Ferromancer knows, though I wasn’t certain how much she knew until just now. But telling Sophia would mean revealing who I am, which I can’t do until Thanksgiving unless I want to piss off the King in Yellow.
“Thank you,” I say, “whatever your reasons are. I’ll tell Striga when I’m ready.”
“Mm.” Ferromancer eyes me with an unreadable expression. “To be honest, I don’t think you should. It’ll cause a massive headache at a time when everyone needs to be focused on the endgame. Of course, I don’t think you should be chasing after her at all, but I know you won’t listen.”
“It’s none of your business,” I say sharply.
“It is my business,” she insists, leaning in. “I don’t teach corpses, and I quite like having you around. I’m serious, you do not want to go down the same path as Striga. The closer you get to her, the more she’ll demand of you. I respect the hell out of that woman, but no one should live like that.”
“This is not a discussion I am open to having.” I’m going to save her.
Erica sighs and rolls her eyes. “Yeah, alright. I know I can’t convince you in an afternoon. Just… keep it in mind. That woman is married to her work and there are easier fish in the sea. Might be good for you to explore your other options, even if she’s still your endgame.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Gonna tell me what those options are?”
“Well, I’m obviously one of them,” she says with a wink. “You are my type.”
Despite myself, and despite everything I’ve learned in the past few days, I still blush at flirtation that blatant. Concerns aside, Ferromancer is hot and I am gay. Sophia is my one true love, but lust is far less discriminate.
If it was nothing serious, just a bit of sex, then—no! Shut it! No cheating on Sophia, and especially not with the dangerous ex-Syndicate bad girl—ah, hmm, I begin to understand why I find her so tempting.
“You don’t tempt me,” I lie with a smug look. “But, please, do keep working for my attention. I like it.”
Erica laughs. “You’ve got such an ego. You’re lucky I find that cute.”
“Everything about me is cute! If you think otherwise, your taste is unsalvageable.”
We banter back and forth a bit more, Erica repeating her offer to play card games, and eventually I make my excuses and head out. I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about Ferromancer, but… I’ll keep spending time with her. It’ll be useful.
It might even be fun.
Comments
Lako
Thanks for the chapter!
VestedStream283
I really like the worldbuilding you're doing. The toxic yuri was what got my attention I'll admit, but the World of Glass is very cool. I like these sorts of alternate dimensions in fantasy.
