Infernal Investigations

The scream echoed about as I slowly trailed off, the breath out of my lungs, as I lay on the bed.

Okay. There were going to be words. Anger got me out of bed, into the hallway.

Same mirror. Same windows leading out to the sea. Approaching the doorway at the end, same muffled voices. I slammed it open.

One, two, three, four. They'd gained a friend at the countertop, playing Hang the Queen still. The Thief-Queen waved merrily from the game. I let out a forced, strained chuckle as I made my way down the stairs. I nearly fell twice, and the Xang got out of her chair, but I made it down before I needed help from any of them.

"The hold's full of corpses," I told the assembled group, still busy enjoying their drinks and playing cards on my shop floor. "Why is the hold full of corpses? Why is there a graveyard down there?"

"I don't know," The Thief-Queen said, dealing out a deck of cards. "Why do you have a bunch of corpses in the hold of your soul, me?"

"If you find your soul full of the dead, consider it the fault of the one who put them there," said the new card players. "I believe that would be you, my dear. Maybe consider why they are there?"

I glared at her. She was, much like all of us, an exact physical copy of me, only dressed in an ornate dress in blue evening dress, an ornate evening dress accentuated with a plethora of jewelry. Gems that my eye determined to be real, not fake ones either.

"Where the hells did you come from?" I asked her, and got a look barely above scorning in reply.

The Thief Queen coughed awkwardly. "So remember the first couple weeks in the Quarter, when moth-"

"Don't," I said, glaring at her.

"Don't be a bitch," The Thief Queen replied. "While I'm in your head, I can't not think of her as my mother. But yeah, remember when you got robbed early on, and left beaten, and you were lying in the street? And she held you while you sobbed and sang, and you were hoping for anyone or anything to rescue you?"

"You mind happened across a most satisfying notion," the fourth one said, and I turned my glare to her instead. "Oh, don't look at me like that. You were so enamored with this idea when it happened upon you. What if your mother had you with some hidden noble who just happened to be Infernal? To be fair, you were partially right, and thus I sprang into existence. Sad that I do not actually exist, and instead you bear a closer resemblance to this ruffian."

"Yes, thank you so much for thinking of this path," The Thief-Queen said, shooting me a baleful look.

"Do not compare me to this one," I muttered. "No distractions. Why are there corpses that make me experience their deaths when they touched me? Why is Golvar down there?"

"It is your own mind," the Xang said, trying to lay a comforting hand on me, and I shrugged it off with an annoyed grimace. "What answers might be there are as known to you as much as to the rest of us."

"Partially," the Arcanist said. "Let's not pretend we all carry some rather large blinders to this as much as she does."

"Nah, my sight is as unclear as the sky of our fair city," the Thief-Queen said, leaning back and considering her cards. "I'll deal myself in for three."

"I'm still waiting on some words that are actually useful," I said, crossing my arms.

The Thief-Queen laughed. "What, do you need other people to do your thinking for you?"

"Don't be cruel," the Xang said disapprovingly, the other two not seeming pleased either.

"I'm looking for alternative perspectives before venturing into something I've already failed once," I said irritably. "So I don't repeat mistakes. Aren't you all here to provide alternative perspectives anyway?"

"Suppose so. Let me guess, you found something you could hit and immediately decided to hit it?" the Thief-Queen asked.

I glared at her. "By the principles of experimentation, it was worth at least trying."

"Yeah? Hey, the only one of us in an accredited guild, is it a good idea to start an experiment by physically trying to beat it up?"

"No," The Arcanist said mildly, putting two of her cards down. "Deal, by the way."

"Give me a second, I'm explaining things here," the Thief Queen said. "'Sides, cards you turned in, ones on top, you aren't winning this hand."

"Are you cheating-"

"How many cards did you mark, you little-"

"Of course the one of us from the gutter-"

"Enough!" I yelled, slamming my hands down on the countertop. Its surface shook, the entire room shook as a peal of thunder echoed across the room. "It's infuriating enough being stuck like this, it's even worse having to do it with you four! Just give me a straight answer! Please!"

"Figure it out for yourself?" The Thief-Queen suggested, and I glared at her.

"Oh, yes, brilliant suggestion. Why do I even have you around?"

She shrugged. "Even if we could, how do you think you'd react to one of us just spelling it out for you, Mal? Like I know what my reaction would be to this one barking my character flaws in my face! And despite having a broomstick up her ass, I actually like this one, unlike others!"

"Your compliment is received most warmly," The Xang said sarcastically, while the Arcanist frowned.

"The Hells did I do that you don't like me?"

A crack raced through the wooden surface of the countertop as I glared at them, then barked a harsh laugh out.

"Why should I expect anything different? Help from myself? Is this some kind of pathetic joke?"

"Hey, call yourself a joke," the Thief-Queen said. "Leave me out of it."

"Shut up," I snapped. "This figures. I actually do something right for once in my life, and not only does it backfire, it lands me here, at risk of death. And here I am, trying to struggle through it, when I get ambushed by a host of corpses who make me relive how I killed them!"

The wood of the ship creaked ominously, but I ignored it and the sudden spray of salt water across my face as the wind began blowing once again.

"And then," I continued as the four of them continued to stare at me warily. "She sticks me in here, surrounded by reminders of what a failure I am!"

The Noble cocked an eyebrow. "Is that how you see us?"

"How can I not?" I snarled. "The four of you are the imaginings of a foolish, naive girl of how she could steer her life forward. I am the wreckage left after she actually tried to do that."

"You speak as if your life is already over," The Noble noted. "Are you really that fatalistic about your chances?"

"Look at where I am," I replied. "I am stuck, in my own head, fumbling around while being snarked at and insulted by better versions of me!"

Something cracked far beneath, the sound of splintering wood followed by rushing water as the deck lurched underhoof. I went down in a heap on the ground while the others got to their hooves.

"Yeah, that about figures," I muttered. "Am I not allowed to get angry without my mind deciding to start breaking apart?"

"No, your mind doesn't like being insulted by the idiot currently living-"

The Xang slapped the Thief-Queen across the side of her face, hard enough that the other fey spirit went down the floor, howling with a bright hand-shaped mark on the side of her face.

"Alright, you are shutting up and not speaking unless you have something positive to add," the Xang said to the Thief Queen. "Letting you take the lead under the assumption the one you picked was the closest to her actual being, but what was I thinking? Pricking her was going to make things better?"

"Better than thinking words alone could get through to this one," the Thief-Queen snarled. "She is completely-"

The Arcanist's tail wrapped around her head, clenching tight as it stopped her from talking.

"Perhaps a one on one conversation would work best?" the Xang suggested, inclining her head towards the open window.

I frowned. She was certainly the most polite of them, so far, but I was hardly going to be trusting of a Xang offering help. Even if that Xang was…whatever this messed-up fey nonsense was doing with my head.

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Still, it seemed a more sincere offer of help than the Thief-Queen, currently chewing on the tail of the placid Arcanist.

"Fine," I said, and we both walked over.

The waters weren't calm, and the wind balmy, but it somehow didn't hit my legs as I sat down on the window, just an unfortunate tilt away from plunging into the waters.

"I don't suppose I could entreat you to not do that?" the Xang said. "I'll go fetch some biscuits like our grandmother used to make them if you will."

"I'm not a child. Besides, no tea?" I quipped with a fragile smile.

"Tea is a balm for the soul," the Xang said. "Truly a wondrous drink, and a way to take the stress and tension out of the day. But let's not lie Malvia. You've become reliant on it. Overly reliant on it."

I chuckled bitterly. "If this is about to turn into a suggestion I don't drink tea, this conversation is destined for a short and violent end."

"No, it is not," the Xang said, patting my hand. I tensed for a second, then let myself relax. "But it isn't a lie that it is becoming something you need just to get through the day. Soon it'll be a thing where you can't get through the day without it, where not having any in your system will make you feel worse and even more off-balance."

"So I am going to be denied my tea," I muttered, staring at the waters. They remained placid, but had gone from blue to gray.

The Xang sighed. "Again, I'm not saying never drink tea, but you are becoming dependent on things to try and force yourself. Pushing harder and harder all the time."

"I push because the world demands it of me," I countered.

"I think we decided the world demanded it of us," she replied.

"Either way, I doubt I'm getting through this without a literal gallon of it every day," I muttered.

"Let me put it like this," she told me solemnly. "You don't want to become like those filthy barbarians who drink five cups of coffee just to last through the day, do you?"

A giggle escaped my lips before I could get control of them. I tried to stop myself, but more of them built up in my chest, crowding in my throat til I couldn't stop them. They built and built til I found myself doubled over, laughing until my chest hurt as it echoed across the waters.

Eventually I recovered enough, and the storminess of the waters had abated a little.

"Comparing me to coffee drinkers is such a low blow," I said. "Honestly, you claim the other one to prick the hardest, and then you deal me such an insult against my honor?"

"Such offended words from someone who has drunk Hennison's within the last twenty-four hours!" the Xang said. "You claim to be a lover of tea when you pollute your mouth with that swill? You might as well bottle up the Nover, dump rotting seaweed into it, boil it, and claim that as tea!"

The genuine offense nearly had me laughing again, partially because it was mine.

"As nice as it would be to discuss tea, it's not the reason you brought me over here, is it?"

"No," the Xang agreed. "I brought you here so we could have a conversation with two slightly blunter tongues than the person insisting on dominating the conversation."

I spared a glance for the Thief-Queen, who apparently had chewed enough of the Arcanist's tail that she'd taken offense. Now she was face-down against the counter, being held in a hold I'd seen Tolman do before while the Arcanist and Noble chatted amicably.

"Right, her," I said. "This entire thing is bizarre, but she has not been helping in handling that at all."

"She's not wrong in what she says," the Xang said. "Just very much inclined to phrase everything in as acidic a fashion as possible. You have to keep in mind what we are born from."

"Yes, my mind," I said. "I remember that much."

"No. We're based on paths you devised in your head, your most optimistic outcomes and imaginings. That doesn't make us flawless Malvia."

"Less flaws than me," I said, watching the lapping waves. Whatever had broken belowdecks, it either wasn't visible or had fixed itself.

"Debatable. Keep in mind, this is not our best moment. But more relevantly, the one whose spent the most time acidicly jousting with you is the one you dreamt up without any connections or support network. She might talk about informants or someone she occasionally sees, but when you had that fantasy, did you imagine anyone by your side as a thief?"

I frowned. "Reaching that far back for what I was thinking is not an easy ask. But probably not."

"So she interacts with you like someone who doesn't have to worry about niceties and can cut with a tongue as much as they want," she said. "With some modification. She's the closest but we all take some from your current frame of mind as well."

"That's fair," I muttered. "I doubt a me that stayed with the Xangs would even be willing to talk to me as I am."

"Give yourself some credit. Some things shine through regardless of outside influence. But enough about that. You came seeking advice?"

"I came seeking answers," I said. "I feel like I'm going to be disappointed."

"Maybe," the Xang admitted, turning her gaze to the sea. "What are you expecting to find in here, Malvia?"

"A reason for why I'm here," I muttered. "And not either awake in the mortal world or the Hells."

"The reason is simple enough. The Revered one does care, despite your reluctance to admit so."

"Some offenses are not easy to forgive," I replied. "No matter how sincere the apology is afterwards."

"I'd say it seems minor, compared to some other's betrayals of you, but that's the point isn't it?" the Xang said. "It's a pattern you've found so often you've come to expect it and already commit those guilty of similar offenses to the same pit as the ones who deserve it."

I bristled. "Are you accusing me of suspecting everyone around me of being out to get me at a moment's notice?"

"No," she said. "Just those who you think might get close to you. Those who either aren't close or aren't in a relationship you can keep comfortably mercenary. Are you going to deny that?"

A snarled response was on my lips but I let it die. "Arguing that point would be..without a point I suppose."

"It's strangling you," the Xang said. "You go into everything waiting for the moment they stab you in the back or you get discarded because you aren't useful anymore. You want things to be purely transactions so that you don't need to invest emotionally into them."

"Has the world proven me wrong yet?" I asked, but she bulled onwards.

"And then, when you do, you pile all your hopes and dreams on them," The Xang added. "Which means you inevitably get upset when they deviate from the image of them in your head. Which then makes it even easier to think that avoiding any connections is the best way forward. Yes, you have been betrayed, but not all betrayals are made equal. Not every lessening of a relationship is a burning bridge set alight with Hellfire."

"Not really relevant," I said. "I'm dealing with a graveyard filled with people I've killed, not a group of people I'm waiting for their knives."

"If you think it'll end at a graveyard with the ghosts haunting you, you're sorely mistaken," the Xang said. "I think your mind fully capable of confronting you over this as it is over that."

"Haunting," I mused. "So if I dragged you down there and saw if you knew one of the old family methods of exorcism, that would do the trick?"

She gave me an unimpressed look cousin to one I'd gotten many times in my youth. "Very amusing. Does it need to be spelled out for you?"

"It doesn't," I said, looking down at the dark depths of the waters. "I don't revel in death. But I'm not going to state I regret deaths I did to protect myself. Ones I did for a cause I thought was good when I did them."

"Do you not regret them, or do you just claim you do and hide that part away with as much else as you can shove behind a mask?" She asked probingly. "For as much as you hate him, you seem to hang onto that listen of his quite strongly."

"It wasn't a bad lesson," I protested. "It's saved me more times than I can count."

"It was a lesson delivered to you when you'd killed your last friend, on a night when you were reeling," the Xang said calmly. "You know how he loves to operate. Why deny you were being molded into what he wanted? The one good thing is he overestimated his skill enough he thinks you killed every last version of yourself to become what he wanted. He thought he'd made a creature that he described. He was wrong?"

"Was he?" I asked her.

"That's something you need to ask yourself, but I ask you this, if you really care so little would you repeat what you did with Pieter again?"

I froze. "Of course not. It wasn't needed, and-"

"He was a traitor," she said. "You were fool enough to think only a talking too would be needed after, but what do you think is the chance that Golvar just wanted a live one to be used as a demonstration for later? We saw plenty of those later on in that crew."

"I know other things now that I didn't then," I said. "It's an unfair way to say it."

"An unfair way? That you'd be more inclined not to do the same things on that night?" the Xang asked. "Let's go for another one then much more recent. You threatened to bite the fingers off of a librarian, and were moments away from doing so, not so long ago."

"That is different, it was necessary," I said quickly. "If I hadn't done that, we never would have found out about Lord Montague's research into the shapechangers, how he was blackmailing them. Yes, it was messy work, but I would never torture him. It's ineffective at getting answers out of people."

"Truly the answer of someone who would not put people on the rack," she replied. "At least you stopped doing some of the things you did in the Flame, which I would count as mark in your favor."

"I'm shocked none of those masks have shown up," I muttered.

The Xang hesitated. "They are there, but they can't really act. They're just masks, not actual separate people in your head. Unless they have enough animus to become something else. They aren't really distinct entities, with one exception, and she is because you forged her out of diabolism."

"Is it a devil?" I asked her.

"If it was, the Revered One would have sniffed it out at the start," she began, then frowned as I sneered. "Don't give me that look. You know that the ability to smell the diabolic when it's unwarded is something powerful fey can do. If you had a second devil riding around in your head, it would have been sniffed out from the start. But diabolism has given it…something. You know it as well as I."

"I supposed I do," I muttered. When I had taken the diabolism inside myself to fight the Sloth devil, those affectations…I didn't think becoming a devil would naturally mean things like the layered voices and words would be common. "So she can definitely be running around here?"

"Or a fey spirit may assume her role," the Xang said. "Not all of us are of good judgment on deciding what will help you the most. But ignore her for now. If a mask does show up, it'll be the one you've pretended to be most of your life. The other ones never really had a chance to become prominent enough your mind would attach a special meaning, but this one you essentially became before taking it off."

I snorted. "I am that mask, and I didn't take it off, so-"

"Lily-"

My voice turned icy. "Don't."

"Fine, it's your right to abandon that name," the Xang admitted. "But pretending you are still the same as the mask you put on to survive in that gang is fooling no one. Except our dear brother who's arrogant enough to think your changes are due to not being under his tender wing. We think. But the point is, you are not the Malvia Harrow that ran with the Black Flame, as much as you might lean on that and slip back in it as needed."

I glared at her, but after a while sighed. "I can't deny that, not really. But answer me a question?"

"If I can, certainly."

"What is the point of this?" I said. "Being here, is it supposed to make what happens later with the Diabolism easier? Or am I just wandering around my own head waiting for my doom to arrive?"

"No doom is certain, and even if this doesn't make your chances better doesn't make it time wasted," she said. "Even if you consider it infuriating."

"I'm dealing with four other versions of myself," I drawled. "Even if none of us are perfect, that is the hells encapsulated."

"You do yourself a disservice as a conversationalist," she said. "But yes, you could wait here until the diabolism comes creeping in through the cracks and you do battle. Do you want to though?"

I considered it for a moment, then sighed. "I told myself when I pulled that devil's essence out of my mouth I was that I was playing a risk on digging myself out of a pit. I wish I had known how deep that pit was."

"A pit is as deep as we dig it," the Xang said. "At some point, the only way to start is to stop digging."

I nodded, then got off the window, moving back into the shop. Making my way to the trapdoor.

"We could talk a while more, if you want?" the Xang offered. "I'm sure we can convince the Thief to keep a polite tongue in her mouth after a while."

"Perhaps," I said. "But for right now let's see if I can start climbing instead of digging."