Eidren didn’t care to respond, so in the zone he was, saving his Fairy Tale Princess.

  Eidren puppet-leaped Vilithe with Aryssal lesser grasp to the top of the unlocked reaver, still whining and crying about the wounds in its inner body. Immediately Vilithe felt gentle shocking jolts from her jumpsuit course up her meridian lines warning her of Danger! Danger!

  Netzach leapt forward, pushing off from her bike, still throttled at top gear, using the boost in momentum to propel her further in a Wu Xia aerial lunge at Vilithe with two jagged and serrated knives. “HI-YAH!” she screamed, unheard under her pressurized bodysuit’s breathing helm.

  Yet even with this crazy hai flying at her with two daggers, she felt so safe. Like Eidren was holding her, behind her, guiding her arms, holding her waist to guide her aim, and her positioning. She just wanted to spin around and kiss her embraced lover.

  But he wasn’t really embracing her, was he? It just felt like it.

  BR-RAP-PAP-PAP-

  Puppet-aiming at the crotch to let the recoil rip the line of fire all the way up the psion’s spine, Eidren lit up every part of Netzach’s torso and skull. It was easy to predict where she was going to go, which was right at Vi. As the hollow point bullets struck Netzach midair, she jerked and shuddered and was spiked and propelled up and up even further into the air, what with Aryss’s weak grasp, as the burst followed through with her trajectory. Finally, Eidren stopped firing, unwilling to waste any more bullets on a target that was already well done and smoked.

  The flailing body of Netzach tumbled further and further away in the lesser grasp, finally striking the ground, and rag-dolling, and spilling black blood everywhere, before the frail body further crumpled, rapidly depressurized by the many tears in her suit, as well as tears into her body itself, and imploded into a shriveled mess under Aryssal depressurized anti-skies. Oof, the shlemiel Netzach was not so favored anymore.

  Does this feel like an embrace?

  The boss five swung-carved their bikes to a side stop. This was not just some psion. Was this an assassin? Her training in the weapons of the hand was supreme. Perhaps they could make this Vilithe Callethe their new Malkuth. And Hod, and Yesod, and Netzach. Damn, they needed to do quite a few more ‘recruitment’ runs because of this worker.

  And then Vilithe, close enough to probe their minds, thought that maybe she could end this without further bloodshed. If they could see that she was not the one who took the Last Rogue Queen Talisa’s life – well, okay, she kind of was involved – and was instead her chosen heir, the Rogue Princess out to avenge all Elvankind, then maybe they would drop their weapons and ceh [扯], that is, fuck off.

  The caress of Eidren’s psionic energy had rejuvenated Vi, and she summoned Ex-Queen Talisa with ease. She now appeared before them, bouffant and perfect features and royal spirit suit gown with all the accouterments and fancy nazge bling and everything. It might have been a bit overdone.

  “You rogues! You should all be ashamed of yourself! Do you know who you’re dealing with? This is the newly crowned Rogue Princess of both Clans Talauth and Callethe! You have undone yourselves with this final mistake. Leave now and we might spare you.”

  Vi leapt up to the top of the reaver and posed heroically, hopefully to add a bonus to her intimidation roll. But she kept her heels rocked back on the edge of the hatch in case she needed a quick exit back down.

  Keter’s expression could not be scryed behind her own breathing helm, but she telepathed to her sisters-

  This is a hallucination, right?

  The rest of them, too afraid of her to disagree, suggest that it might be something more, all just nodded in agreement, which Keter did not need to look at to sense.

  Without her own body with proper bioelectrical reserves to power the spirits for true psionics, the ninth simulacrum of Talisa couldn’t really do jill but hallucinate. So, she continued to berate them, hoping to buy her daughter-in-law some time by bluffing.

  “A pity. I will break your minds casually then. Feed upon your fear-”

  Keter doubled up in laughter.

  With but just a single lagging beat, the other five also doubled up in laughter.

  This went on for a while until Keter had to rudely elbow Chokhmah in the shoulder as if to note to her that hey! This is your cue!

  Chokmah grinned a wicked grin, the wickedest, most deranged kind of crazed grin she could scrunch her little tight, plasticine, spirit-pulled, botulism-toxin-frozen face could muster.

  But no one could see it because she was wearing a pressurized breathing helmet, because well, she was on Aryss.

  And then she cackled and screeched in the evilest possible voice her dainty little soprano register could conjure, “We do not fear anything, because we serve the devil!”

  But no one could hear her because there is no air to carry sound in Aryss. Not to mention it was all just muffled under her helm, even if they could, anyway.

  Keter facepalmed her mitted hand to her own helm.

  Can you try telepathing?

  Oh, right. We do not fear anything! We serve the devil! She pointed at Keter.

  Vilithe put both hands on her hips, let her waist sway to the side a bit as if to indicate- are you for real right now? And telepathed back, in very matter of fact Vi fashion,

  …the devil doesn’t exist.

  Keter shook her fist, a total sign of weakness. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the realms that she didn’t exist!

  Vi let her arms drop to her side and straightened her back, completely nonplussed. The Usual Suspects? Really? Weren’t they cancelled, like, forever ago?

  Eidren thought to Vi, Vi! What’s up with the lip? Might I remind you it’s six against one here? He worried.

  Vi, cocksure and precocious as always, thought back to him, Relax Eidrie, I’m just demoralizing them. Besides, how cocky were you back in the Lava Tube to Avecia? And you killed her no problem.

  Might I remind you that she was my sister?!

  Sorry, boo.

  Chokmah now looked really confused. She did not understand that reference. Clearly Keter and the goyim were referencing something, but trying to follow it only led Chokmah into an eerie hole in her mind, one that shouldn’t be there. What the rest of the Serpent Sisters did not know was that although they all had to forsake their memories for induction, it was the Keters, and only the Keters, who had full access to the psionic legacy, all the better to control the Serpent Sisters under her. So she put both hands on Keters shoulder to shake her and get her attention. What is the farshtunken[????????????] fonferer [???????????] telepathing about? I thought we all erased our memories and replaced them with those of whoever we replaced! Are you holding something back from us, Anti-Goddess? Because if you are, that’s farkakte [???????????]. She couldn’t quite place why, but she felt something was amiss. Those same words that Keter always used – the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince that she didn’t exist – no longer felt quite as original.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Binah folded her arms and looked at Keter, suspect.

  Keter said nothing and just seethed. She would not deem this with a response. She had more important things to deal with. She shoved Chokhma off her. How Keter wished that Binah would just kill Chokmah.

  Sensing the advantage, the Rogue Princess pointed at Keter and thought to them all, you don’t even have a limp.

  Keter both roared into her mask and telepathed a rageful, “The whole point was that he didn’t have a limp to begin with!”

  Pedantic and condescending in classic Vi manner- Then how exactly are you convincing me that you don’t exist? I mean you’re just plain straight up announcing yourself as the devil- your sis just called you ‘Anti-Goddess’. If so, why are you picking on me, a vassal then? Shouldn’t you be robbing Amallarkeans? Shouldn’t you be fighting the Traitor Empress, if you were really her supposed ‘Great Adversary’?

  Vi took a beat to scry why-

  Or are you just too afraid?

  Check, and mate.

  Cowards the lot of you. Some Satan you are.

  Demoralization success.

  Now Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferet were all looking at Keter with arms folded. Oy vey! They had just suffered a half team wipe! What kind of leadership was this? Maybe this Vi should be their new Keter the Fifth!

  Keter was no slouch, and she stayed quick on her own toes, just as she kept her sisters, because she knew that’s what it took to dance to the top and stay at the top. It was just musical chairs really. She just needed to sing a sweet song to keep dancing. Just keep moving. Always improvise, no matter what happens. If you never plan, you will never get caught without the ability to adapt.

  Keter whipped out the secret stash of knowledge she had hidden away, having guessed that this liability, that Keter’s secret remembering should be discovered, would eventually occur. Then she launched into a thought-monologue to her audience. Her sales pitch for the new and improved faith:

  Listen sisters, this is a great opportunity for me to really get into the nuts and bolts of that new direction I’ve been thinking to you all about these last few lunas.

  I’m just kind of sick of this black and white, good versus evil, completely Manichean conception of struggle against the Goddess, where we must be the bad guys, the bad gurls, and think the worst versions of ourselves. Because let’s face it- it doesn’t make us any nicer to each other, and that just sucks right? Why make our own lives harder?

  I’m just not a big fan of the old school Satanism you know. Forget that alta kaka [?????? ??????]. It’s kind of boring. It’s like, it’s totally defined in opposition to the primary- the Good, the Goddess, the Angels, all that. Lucifer is just the best angel, who fell, right? It’s almost as if some sort of shadow, oppositional Other, is necessary to help define the self. As if the Imperium’s own idea of themselves as the good gurls requires a boogeyman or scapegoat to be the bad gurls, because if the gurls that they fight are the supposed ‘baddies’, then they must be the good gurls, right?

  Why should we let ourselves be defined by that kind of orientalist thinking?

  And since she had psionically unpackaged all the relevant information necessary to totally comprehend what she was talking about, in fact giving them a total slanted bias, all the Serpent Sisters started putting their fingers to their chins and nodding along and thinking yeah, you know what? That makes a lot of sense.

  Vi was beginning to get a bit worried, because she logically knew where Keter the Fourth was going with this.

  Keter continued, so I’ve been thinking that what we do is we pivot towards a more Left Hand Path, LaVeyan-esque style Satanism that really doesn’t look at things as black and white, but with moral relativism and with empathy for different worldviews, a celebration of the individual. I mean, it totally tracks for us elvans, right? It’s really a kind of a rational, self-interested, self-serving ethos of- hey, I exist, I won’t go to hell, nor heaven, when I die. I don’t want to mess with anyone else equally strong, or stronger, because it would threaten my own self-survival, it is in my interest to work with others, so why not just, well, prey on the weak? Together? Let’s go for a flatter organization instead of this weird, hierarchical Sefirot stuff. We can all just do our own thing and team up for collabs. It’ll be more like a co-working space, or a commune, or a co-op, instead of a cult. Like a Kibbutz! Doesn’t it, like, totally make sense for us? Like, this is totally giving Serpent Sisters energy.

  Chokmah, Binah, Chesed, Gevurah and Tiferet now all pumped their fists and arms up in unison and chanted under their helms, though only they themselves could hear it, but that was the only person they needed to hear:

  “HUZZAH!”

  “KE - TER, KE - TER, KE - TER, KE - TER!”

  “LEFT HAND PATH! WOO!”

  “WE KILL! WE KILL! WE KILL! WE KILL!”

  Mazel [???]! It worked! Inspiration- success! Though she did not have very much charisma, ruling by fear, the psionic legacy gave her everything she needed for a successful speech check to counter Vilithe’s speech check. Keter pumped her arms up in the air too. Triumphant. The unholy champion. The Anti-Goddess. The Satanic Cult Leader. No- Satanic Co-Op Leader. Queen Rebekah mamefakin’ Neumann, in the flesh. Elected, once again. Another term for the Fourth, bubbelah [?????? ].

  They had completely forgotten that Keter had just quite obviously shown she totally reneged on her promise, their collective promise to each other, to wipe her original memories to be replaced by the Serpent Sister she succeeded. Indeed, all the Keters had filed away in their minds the entire collected memories of all the ‘recruits’, kept hidden by repeated redaction. So happy were they that she had provided them with new knowledge that made them feel really good about themselves.

  And then all six of their psionic auras surged with newfound hope and faith in themselves, just like how Vilithe and Eidren’s psionic energies multiplied greatly when they were intertwined in endearment and care for each other, and Vi though, oh, diu [??].

  Eidren, still laying on the ground in the reaver, staring up at Jhynie through her legs, still totally gynospread, now even able to peek through the hem of her long dress’s skirt, though not on purpose, and all sweaty now, just facepalmed and thought to Vi, love, you just totally moralized them. You moralized them to the high holy hell, bae.

  Tell me something I don’t know, boo!

  ‘Sometimes my genius is almost frightening.’

  Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.

  Netzach’s flayed out identity had once been Baviya Adanbani.

  ‘Shlemiel’, Yiddish for ‘unlucky person’, or like the orcish ‘nurd’.

  ‘What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers.’

  Cantonese for ‘fuck off and leave her the fuck alone’. Perhaps not quite that harsh, just ‘leave’, but ‘fuck off and leave her the fuck alone’ was certainly Vi’s true meaning.

  She was a very vain worker before being inducted and overdid the spirit plastic surgery.

  The Godlikes Bryan Singer and Kevin Spacey and, yes, they were. Let’s not get into it.

  ‘Farshtunken’, Yiddish word with the meaning of ‘contemptible’ or ‘nasty’, or ‘smelly’. Root in the German word ‘verstunken’. Which was ironic, because at least Vi could still take a shower inside her reaver, even if the water was running low, while none of the Serpent Sisters had bathed in quite a while.

  ‘Fonferer’, Yiddish word meaning ‘double-talker’.

  ‘Farkakte’, Yiddish for ‘fucked up’.

  As usual too. Binah was suspicious of everything. That was her job, after all.

  Terrible strategy.

  Maybe you could say she planned this? Wow, Keter, wow.

  ‘Alta kaka’, yiddish for ‘old shit’.

  Let’s note that the Mystery of the Redeemer had nothing to do with the official Imperial Holy Canon. And nothing to do with the First Monotheistic Mystery, for that matter. Which should say something about these ‘Sefirots’. They’re not even Jewish!

  They had no space to speak of, they were nomads! Maybe the bikes? Don’t get into the real estate game, gurl, that isn’t tech. Masa Son, ancestor of Eidren’s dad, Masa, could regretfully tell you that.

  Things have really regressed, haven’t they? Feels almost like going backwards, as a general trend. From cult, to co-working space, to kibbutz, the opposite direction that WeWork took. For example, when did feudalism start trending again? Queens?! Well, maybe after the Million Wars. Or even before that. Morquarran Neo-Monarchists? For real? Did they forget why their country came to exist in the first place?

  Her excessive thinking of the word ‘like’ was giving Keter the Fourth mad valley gurl energy more than anything.

  If they thought they were going to enjoy converting their thievery into a gig economy, they would be sorely mistaken. If they ever had the chance to.

  ‘Mazel’, Yiddish word for ‘luck’, or ‘lucky’.

  No Clan at all, not anymore. Every member of Clan Neumann had died.

  ‘Bubbelah’, Yiddish term of endearment.