Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Upon the surface of the bright side of the moon, the dust is merciless. Its edges are sharpened silver, clinging and sticking to skin or flesh, as if yearning to shed blood.

This is no different in the moon’s Hell, either. In Hell, however, the dust is not silver, but copper-crimson, immeasurably stained from the blood of the sinners who walk ever across it. And above those sinners, as if in mockery, is a starless sky home to only one faintly bleeding sun, soaking the lone and level sands with a harsh red light.

A single figure walks the endless expanse. By Hell’s design, no one else is there to even see a glimpse of her, nor will she see a glimpse of anyone else - the punishment dictated here is isolation for all, and there would be no exceptions - even if this figure is not here as punishment.

The harsh lunar wind whips fiercely against her, wildly billowing across her clothes - the black flowing garment of the Ministry of Right and Wrong. Behind her, gently floating slightly above her crimson-haired head, is a glowing red orb - a crimson Otherworld in miniature - anchored by a gold chain to a black collar around her neck.

As the cloth waves against the infernal winds, one can see along its finer edges the gold highlights of esteemed rank - clothes fit for even an empress. There is not even a single particle of that razor-edge dust on that clothing, nor the clothing’s wearer. The cutting sands deliberately avoid her, parting themselves from her as if in silent deference.

After all, even Hell itself must bend to its goddesses - to the one who is called Apotropaia, Enodia, Klêidouchos or a thousand other names besides.

To be honest, though, she prefers Hecatia Lapislazuli - or just Hecatia, if you can’t be bothered.

It’s exceedingly rare to see somebody in a position such as Hecatia’s doing…well, “field work”.

It’s not a question of eagerness or entitlement - Hecatia loves nothing more than to get her hands dirty once in a while. It’s instead an issue of bureaucracy; even in the hierarchy of Hell, the higher-up roles are administrative - or in her words, “boooooring”.

Fortunately, this was a welcome break from all that. As the resident triple-goddess, Hecatia was the most convenient pick to solve anything like this, since she could still be doing her regular duties at 66% capacity while she dealt with things.

The issue, as it seemed from reports of sinners, punishers, and patrols, was that there was something in Lunar Hell that was neither of those three. An intruder? A rogue oni? It didn’t quite matter apparently - all that did was that it didn’t belong to this place.

And all those much-needed extra details seemingly didn’t matter much to anybody else who had sent in a report, Hecatia observed. Only vague, unverifiable sightings, contradictory details, and a veritable army of missing underlings who Hecatia guessed must have bit off more than they could chew. Seriously, the issue had escalated up the hierarchy to her level, and, well…

When she thinks about it, Hecatia almost smiles. She has to wear her “work” clothes today, but as far as she was concerned, anything this exciting can’t really be called work. Whatever was rampaging here couldn’t be handled by the small fry, after all; it needed a big shot - a Goddess of Hell.

Now that was the stuff.

Hecatia flexes her fingers, closes her eyes and feels the air around her, the energies and threads of existence - of magic. It’s been a long while since she could go on such peaceful walks like this, and even longer since there was a chance to really show off.

She tries not to let that fact irk her, but still - she’s a goddess of magic, for Hell’s sake. Showing off should be just as important a priority to her as breathing is for humans.

Ah, well.

She’s getting closer now to the place she needs to be, the issue to resolve. There was no other justification for what she felt getting closer and closer - this strange anomaly, this dysregulation of the ambient magical landscape. It was likely the source of the issue, but she would need to be closer to properly identify it for herself. However, Hecatia didn’t exactly feel the need to hurry up anyways. This was the scenic route, after all-

Crunch.

Hecatia stops. She opens her eyes, her easygoing walk interrupted by the strangest of sounds. The only thing in this part of Hell is blood-soaked lunar dust and cold wind. What could possibly be crunching?

Her eyes move curiously to her right boot. Some red fluid seeps from beneath it. Hecatia lifts her foot to reveal a small crushed lily bud. Glowing faintly, leaking crimson fluid as if bleeding, its colour is somewhere between blood and sunset.

Hecatia watches that fluid - is it blood? - seep from the crushed lily bud and soak into the bloodstained sands. The liquid shimmers, and suddenly that copper-crimson is bleached away to a shade of clean lunar silver. Against the newly ivory sands, the flower bud, even if crushed underfoot, is astonishingly beautiful. Flawless, even.

Hecatia looks upwards from the crushed flower. She hadn’t even noticed it, closing her eyes in careless thought. There’s nothing much to open one’s eyes for in this part of hell, after all - or so she thought.

Because now, Lunar Hell is impossibly covered with thousands of lilies, all yet-to-bloom, all pale scarlet in faint pristine light, beautiful pinpricks of red across a vast expanse of shining alabaster. It’s a breathtaking sight…and definitely not anything in Hell should look like.

The Goddess of Hell glances around. Pristine lilies and clean silver sands as far as the eye can see. To change the landscape of Hell itself into this flawless beauty…the gall.

Hecatia flexes her fingers, and her orbiting planet clings closely to her, glowing with an almost protective glare. As she picks up the crushed lily bud, watching its ruined nascent petals inexplicably fade into nothingness, something like excitement spreads across her face. This was going to be interesting.

As she makes her way across the lilyfield, Hecatia realises she can see the stars again. That sorry browning void above her had given way to a canvas of pristine midnight, dotted with thousands of distant lights. Each and every light - a star - shone upon the scarlet lilies in scintillating, nameless beauty.

Her eyes rise to meet them. The arrangement of stars here is completely unfamiliar - she cannot recognise a single constellation visible from the Moon, the Earth, or the myriad Otherworlds. She raises a hand to pinch her chin, and then almost chuckles. The sky, too?

…oh, the absolute gall.

When she meets whoever’s doing this, she thinks she’s going to have to give a stern talking-to, at the very least. Just another step forward, and-

Hecatia stops. She looks behind her, then at her own hands, and then finally, back towards the unfamiliar sky. To one less attuned to the workings of magic, it was improbable to notice and even more difficult to guard against, but Hecatia knows it when she feels it.

With each step, something unseen grew stronger, closer, and nearer to her. There was some force trying to act upon the Goddess of Hell, one which had grown in intensity as she neared closer to its source. It flowed and ebbed around her, reaching toward her, trying to touch her existence with myriad surfaces and uncountable fingers. That fact isn’t what worries her; magic isn’t the only thing that always tries to act on its surroundings.

The thing that worries her is that she’s got no idea what this force even is - seriously. She couldn’t even tentatively name it - it was nothing she had seen before, nothing she had felt before, operating by no logic that she was aware of, or maybe could ever be made aware of.

And yet…she knew despite this that it was trying to take something from her. The force around her was trying to take some part from her, bleach it clean away so that the rest of her could be free from it, so that the rest of her could return to, or revert to, or become…something. Something else - something she, again, could not find the words to describe - could not name.

Hecatia is stopped for a short while, still staring into the unfamiliar sky. And then, with a brief blink of her eyes, and a snap of her fingers, she continues walking.

Upon its golden chain, the orbiting crimson orb behind her suddenly blazes like a freshly lit torch. The deep, stained crimson of the Otherworld seethes with a retaliatory power, pushing away the pristine force around her with the weight of its sullied existence. Like a small sun, it casts a filthy, hellish light upon the impossibly clean landscape - as if shouting its defiance against its pristine, beautiful surroundings.

Neither the lily buds nor the stars respond. Their silence is poignant - as if mocking.

At last, Hecatia sees something besides sand, lilies, and stars.

Before her, now not even a kilometre away, there’s a spot of magenta, black, and red. Hecatia coolly exhales and stops walking. She was close enough, now and could know with absolute certainty: yes, that was the source of this power. It had to be. The force acting on her had direction, and there was where it pointed from.

She squints. She thinks she sees a head, and hands held out by the sides of a waist. It’s something person-like. Exciting.

Breaking the pristine silence, she lets out a simple, casual greeting. Truthfully, it’s absolutely insane to try to strike up a conversation at this distance, but anything from a voice so loud carrying so far a distance would be a great way to grab someone’s attention.

“HEEEEEEY!”

The cry echoes across the space. The distant figure does not acknowledge it.

Seriously? Hecatia wants to ask. Come on.

The miniature otherworld behind Hecatia begins to glow white-hot, as bright as a star.

Look this way.

Massive flames begin to spread from behind the Goddess of Hell, lashing at her surroundings with impossibly scorching heat. The air takes on a quality of ozone and seared flesh, and the flames spread, roaring like a vicious beast, heaving and screaming in a terrible conflagration of infernal magic. They whip, lick, and blast outwards violently from their glowing epicentre, like some terrible combination between solar flare and volcanic eruption.

The firestorm shakes and bellows like a great, chained animal. Its presence is earthshakingly loud, visible on a scale matched only by the sun, and terrifying to witness from even kilometres away.

Behold! The Goddess of Hell, and her infernal power! the display shouts with godly force.

And the figure does not acknowledge it. The figure does not even offer a brief turn of their head, or even any movement at all.

Hecatia raises a single hand. The flames briefly calm, awaiting her command.

“Alright then, buzzkill. Maybe you’ll see me…”

Hecatia calmly lowers her hand, and points.

“...now.”

The firestorm hurtles at a vicious speed towards the distant figure, roaring free from the chain’s golden grasp like a hellhound snapping free from its leash. As if in imitation of a stellar giant, the firestorm moves at unbelievable speed for its mass, pushing the air aside so quickly as to scorch shockwaves in its path.

Hecatia watches, counts to two, and then snaps.

The Goddess of Hell smiles as she hears an ear-splitting boom, and sees the flames violently spread in every direction, filling all that she can see with the might of its detonation. Everything in sight, for a few welcome moments, is dyed a blazing, infernal vermilion. Directly where she wanted it, too - a perfect warning shot.

She watches the scattered flames carefully, searching for a sign of acknowledgement or attention. She briefly considers the fact that she miscalculated and accidentally obliterated her target - and then decides that something that weak wouldn’t even be worth her time if that was the case.

Her eyes search and search and suddenly catch on a shining magenta light, twinkling amidst the flames. A single, pristine light, perfectly stationary amidst the firestorm, like a fixed star in a chaotic nebula.

And then its light suddenly intensifies in a blinding, all-encompassing flash, and-

Hecatia blinks. The flames are gone - the lilies are intact - the sky is smokeless - and the figure is closer, now, only some twenty paces away. Finally, it sees Hecatia, and Hecatia sees it - her.

The figure wears a robed garment evoking an eastern empress, rendered in black and gold and red. Atop flowing hair dyed with the colour of dawn, sits a crescent, crownlike accessory. Behind her, seven tall blazing magenta fires, extending outwards like tails, or the points of a crown.

Hecatia tilts her head in something like disappointment. Standard fare, really.

And then she sees the face.

Few things can give even a goddess pause. But somehow, one of them is the combination of a dead smile, a frozen expression, and two hollow eyes, reflecting the stillness of pooled blood above an impossibly vast, infinitely searing hatred.

Hecatia’s words exit her mouth a moment later than she would’ve liked them to. “Paying attention to me now?” she asks.

The seven-tailed stranger lets out no response. Her hands sit still at her sides. Hecatia watches them twitch slightly, then turn themselves, palms outward, fingers outstretched. The silence stretches, as thick as blood, as fragile as glass, and Hecatia feels a rush in her being for the first time in a decade.

She can feel it in the air, almost see it with her naked eyes: the force trying to act upon her, its fractal threads of pristine power, spilling forth from the stranger in every direction, emanating from a single hollow point - a point that watches her like a bleeding eye, that gazes at her with more loathing and contempt than anything with a name could hold, with more loathing and with more contempt than anything that could be named-

The hair on the back of her neck is standing on end. Her right hand twitches. It’s been a while since I’ve felt something like this, she realises, bemused.

Knowing this, she can’t help but let out a wicked smile. Finally.

The seven-tailed stranger takes a single murderous step forward.

A chance to show off.

Chapter Text

In Lunar Hell, a lunatic goddess suddenly bursts into abrupt, violent laughter. That much is normal; abruptly vanishing from her posting in a flash of light, though, definitely isn’t.

In Earth’s Hell, a blue-haired goddess suddenly goes silent mid-conversation with an underling. The underling asks her what’s wrong - the Goddess curses aloud, and the desk she sits at is suddenly empty.

Hecatia Lapislazuli’s eyes gleam with tricoloured light. From the collar on her neck sprout two golden chains, rattling violently, reaching to coil around two new-forming points of energy behind her.

The seven-tailed stranger acts almost immediately. In a blur of red and black and purple, they lunge forwards, a slender hand stretched forwards in a lethal blade of white light. Hecatia watches her adversary’s hand draw within a single cubit of her heart. She almost applauds the boldness - she almost cheers with excitement - she almost scoffs at the insolence.

And then two golden chains lock into place behind her.

With a sound between crackling lightning and metallic keening, two heavy otherworldy orbs, anchored to the goddess by golden chains, fly forward from behind her like planetary flails. A Moon in miniature catches the stranger’s hand with a force of cosmic impact - its sister, the Earth, rushes forward like a meteor to smash its pristine light aside. Lunatic yellow, abyssal blue, and flawless white briefly make devastating, planetary impact - and then Hecatia' slides backwards across the lily field, watching the figure of her adversary rebound upwards like a deflected arrow.

“Tch. So rude!” Hecatia mutters. “The other two-”

The Goddess of Hell’s head suddenly tilts rightwards. Her hair and eyes shift dichromatic yellow and blue, and the voice that follows is eerily doubled.

“-we,” Hecatia corrects, shouting across the sky with indignation, “-just got here!”

Her opponent makes no reply. As they fly backwards into the air, their seven tails burn intermittently in the air, each one of seven tails sputtering or blazing almost like a engine's exhaust - no, exactly like an engine’s exhaust, Hecatia realises, as the stranger’s path suddenly arcs upwards in a purple magenta trail.

Moving freely upwards through the sky, the stranger raises both hands, gesturing to the sky as if in prostration - and suddenly the entire sky flickers and bleeds impossible white light across every surface. Shimmering abhorrently, scintillating beautifully, obliterating white light leaks from a single point of newborn radiance - a trembling, shivering, star.

For a single instant, the Goddess of Hell feels that star’s light fall onto her being. For that instant, she feels the light begin to utterly erase her, bleaching her away from existence, sending her back into beautiful, primordial nothingness. She winces in shock; she clenches her teeth in anger; she laughs in excitement - and the Moon behind her glows eagerly in response.

The light of the star falls away from the Goddess of Hell as a massive object suddenly rises from between her and the star. The star’s light suddenly grows perfectly still, ceasing to shiver, as its owner recognises the shape of the object that blots out the light of her star - its familiar craters, its pale reflected light.

And the pristine light replies with fury.

Hecatia, in the safety of shadow, watches all around her become blinding white as the infant star flashes with impossible radiance. A terrible boom and a pure-white shockwave emanate from behind the goddess’ newly conjured Moon, and Hecatia sees light spill from spreading cracks on its surface.

“Ahahahahaha! This one’s STRONG!” shouts one of Hecatia’s voices, laughing madly.

“Be careful!” another voice interjects from the same mouth, tinged with a strange melancholy. “They’re not wasting time with spellcard rules-”

“AHAHAHAHA, EVEN BETTER!”

Silver debris booms around her as Hecatia’s summoned Moon shatters into pieces. That hateful splendour spills across the lilyfield once more, but this time, Hecatia is ready. When the light falls upon her, she raises her left hand, letting her Moon follow, and the rays of annihilating light bend impossibly away from her, as if reflected or diverted by some great invisible mirror.

“Oh, STRANGER! BRAVO, BRAVO! That’s quite some incredible power!” Hecatia shrieks from her place beneath the star, beaming a lunatic smile, her hair and eyes shining eerie yellow. Her adversary above lets out no response, but her purple tails burn ever so slightly fiercer, ever so slightly defiant.

“Aww, shy? Come on, USE YOUR WORDS! You could at least-”

Upon one of her golden chains, the Moon glows ever brighter, and the light diverted away from Hecatia bends towards a singular, fixed point. As Hecatia speaks, the light refracted - reflected, now - grows sickly yellow, settling and solidifying at that point into a massive, lance-like form with a sharp, glowing tip.

“-SAY HELLO!”

The reflected lance lets out a dissonant, ear-splitting hum as it arcs through the sky at lightning speed, spraying a shower of pale gold across its flight path. In response, a ferocious gust of wind echoes through the lilyfield and Hecatia’s eyes notice a newly-moving black-and-purple blur blaze across the sky, directly away from the path of her projectile. For a brief moment, she watches, impressed, as her adversary flies through the sky, their child star following in a perfect orbit.

“Ahahahah, not bad, NOT BAD!”

But with a single flick of her left hand, and a twirling of the moon alongside it, the lance suddenly diverts from its failed path back towards its target, as if bouncing against some surface in the sky. It hurtles towards the seven-tailed stranger with a destined clarity, and yet as it strikes, its baleful glow intersects not with flesh, but the obliterating light of an orbiting star-

Another great flash of light fills the skies of Lunar Hell - this time, with the dying, mixing shades of sickly yellow and pristine white. From the flash falls a diminutive, fading spark - the death throes of a newborn star.

Hecatia laughs madly to herself as the light begins to fade. She’d say her enemy got lucky, but she knew better. Suddenly, she cuts herself off with a violent tilt of her head, her hair shifting in an instant to a deep, melancholy blue.

The Earth in miniature behind her begins to hum a noise like keening metal as a different Hecatia takes to the skies in grim pursuit, kept no longer away by the star’s annihilating light. Dark and inexplicably cobalt storm clouds begin to form in the sky, highlighting the blazing magenta-black of an opponent, far too distant than the Goddess of Hell would like.

“Oh, stranger, you know…” comes a different voice of the Goddess of Hell, trailing and wistful. In that same moment, Hecatia’s Earth pulses blue, and the sky suffocates into darkness, choked by new-formed clouds of stormy sapphire.

The clouds crackle cobalt lightning. With a single hand’s gesture, they heave and spill forth a great torrent of azure rain, each drop seething with ruinous magical energy.

“You can’t run from us!”

The stranger’s seven tails abruptly dim, letting out their signature blazes only in infrequent, deliberate bursts. The flight path of Hecatia’s quarry suddenly becomes jagged, flickering, erratic - and yet, she notes, not a drop of that lethal rain even touches her intended target.

But even if a butterfly surrounded by a thousand clutching hands can remain untouched, it cannot fly as fast and as straight as it used to. And so, Hecatia, flying freely through her rainpour, easily closes the distance to lethal range. A wicked smile forms on her lips as the Otherworld crackles with malevolent light.

The stranger pauses in her impossible rain dance to glance behind her at the pursuing goddess. In a single blink, Hecatia’s hair and eyes suddenly flicker from dark blue to deep, burning red. A gloomy frown vanishes into a wicked, excited smile, and fire begins to coalesce from nowhere into the miniature Otherworld flying at her back.

“You both took your sweet time, huh?”

Hecatia raises both her hands.

“Watch closely, you two.”

A deep, terrible roaring begins to echo throughout the skies. Between Hecatia’s hands, the miniature Otherworld burns like a blood-soaked sun, hellish flames coalescing towards it with ever-greater intensity and speed, joining their beings together into a single, final, point of calamity. As the growing inferno soaks the cobalt clouds in hellish red, Hecatia watches those magenta tails dart downwards, burning intensely like a desperately falling comet, back towards the lily field, back towards safety or deliverance. It’s too little, too late.

The inferno - a new, fleeting, furious sun - rages free from its leash, following its prey in an ultimate, vicious approach. Through the flames, Hecatia sees the seven-tailed stranger, out of room, out of time, standing straight upon the ground - silently facing down the fast-moving cataclysm with an unexplainable serenity.

It’s a solemn, eerie sight, to be so perfectly unmoving before such great, devastating power. But Hecatia doesn’t really care about that. Instead, she waits, counts to three, and snaps her fingers.

The firestorm makes landfall.

Its shockwave is strong enough to completely level a city; its flames are hot enough to scour a continent clean of life. It makes an impact strong enough to be felt from even three or four Hells away - a true testament to the power of a Goddess of Hell.

As all below her grows the deep red of hellfire, as all beneath her is engulfed in limitless flame, Hecatia lets out a light girlish laugh.

“And that is how we do it,” she declares to her two other selves.

The flames roar for what seems like an eternity, and Hecatia takes those few, long-lasting moments to exult in her strength, in herself. But, as the rain continues to fall, its lethal sapphire a comforting, soothing blanket, the hellfire fades to smoke. Hecatia’s laugh trails off into a chuckle of quiet satisfaction. She lets out a long, deep, exhale - and her hair suddenly shifts back to deep blue.

“Geeze, you almost forgot the second part of the act…” comes a whining voice. “Remember? ‘The rain of Earthen Hell to put out the Otherworldly Hell’! You came up with it yourself!”

Hecatia’s head twitches again, her hair jerking violently back to crimson. “Oh yeah, I did. Sorry, I just haven’t been able to show off like this in ages, so-”

“…do you see it?”

Hecatia flinches. What was that noise? All is uncertain hissing and the endless sound of heavy rain. That didn’t sound like any of her. Did she really hear that? Did she imagine it-

“The lilies are beginning to bloom.”

And suddenly, the sky is visible again, its unfamiliar stars looking downwards with the brightest and most hateful of gazes.

And suddenly, the world is beautiful and pure and clean again - not stained with the glow of Hell, but something deeper, purer, more beautiful and more terrible than anything with a name could ever know.

What-

Across the lily field, each and every last budding flower opens its petals to the sky, their scarlet lights cast heavenwards, arcing and winding like clutching vines, surging like wind-blown seeds. Across the lily field, a million pristine lights and a million more glow alive, brimming with resentful power, with murderous intent.

For the first time in a very, very, long time, the Goddess of Hell - all of her - is in awe. All she can do is stare - stare at the seven-tailed stranger, stare at whatever could’ve withstood such an incredible assault of magic and hellfire, stare at the thing that now gestured to the sky, arms outstretched upwards in false prostration, in mocking enmity.

From the stranger’s mouth, in a spotless, speakerless voice, soaked with ownerless anguish - a name.

“Oh, Chang’e-”

The glow of the lilies begin to intensify - their light shooting taller upwards, their crimson petals blowing free. Even so high above the ground, all Hecatia can feel around her is limitless animosity, the untouchable fractal threads of a purest and simplest hatred, unfolding and emerging into fatal blooming form.

The voice’s tone has changed now, its deep sadness boiling - no, incandescing - into something white-hot and terrible.

“Are you watching?”

Something like fear - no, that can’t be right - settles into Hecatia’s stomach. Behind the Goddess of Hell, all three of the Moon, the Earth, and the Otherworld blaze anew, brighter than they ever have in millennia. Hecatia closes her eyes, strains with all her mights; she needs all three of all of her, right here, right now-

“Even if we are unable to dwell together under heaven-”

And suddenly there are three goddesses in the sky, each flickering red or flickering yellow or flickering blue, joining hands, each one of three wills overflowing with the force of their godly magic-

“It is my hatred alone that will be refined”

And in a flash-

all the world in a nameless red.

Chapter Text

When the light fades, Lunar Hell is as bleak and as brown as it ever had been. The dust is once more deeply stained with eons’ worth of sinner’s blood, the sky once more a mocking starless insult to all that dwelt beneath it. All is silent save for the howling, cold wind.

Atop lone and level sands, a figure sits on its knees, face cast downwards into the sand, seven magenta tails burning with a weak flame. For the kneeling figure, the lunar dust is close enough to cling, to cut her to shreds and yet it does not - it cannot - and blows away harmlessly as if repelled by her fundamental existence.

A deep, resonant keening can be heard in the sky. Three identical figures float side-by-side, above the kneeling figure. Each of them holds, in both hands, an entire realm in miniature - the Earth, the Moon, and the Otherworld. Around all three of them, like a protective egg, is a glowing translucent shell, textured trichromatically with millennia of knowledge, history, and magic. It’s a great, ancient secret of trinitarian protection - a trump card, and an ace-in-the-hole, of an immensely powerful Goddess of Hell.

A moment passes - and then it flickers, and gives out. It just barely worked.

All three figures let out an exhale as the barrier fades around them, watching the figure with shock - with curiosity - with relief. But the central of the three figures, the crimson-haired, gestures to the other two - let me handle this - and begins to float downwards.

The yellow-haired goddess cheerfully shrugs and then vanishes in a flash of pale yellow light. Her free-floating Moon races to join her red-haired counterpart, extending a golden chain to meet her.

The blue-haired goddess purses her lips, eyes wide with concern - and then deeply sighs, fading into the midnight blue of the sky. Her Earth, in turn, floats gently downwards, anchoring itself anew to its new, Otherworldly owner.

Black boots make delicate contact with lunar sand. They take three steps forward, and the goddess’ shadow falls upon the seven-tailed stranger. She crosses her arms and looks down at her immobile adversary.

“Hey,” she says, “What gives?”

Silence.

“It’s been a long, long time since somebody has made me that scared. I haven’t needed to use all three of myself at once in…”

Hecatia trails off. It’s difficult to speak, this close to this other, silent being.

The being looks up, scarlet eyes still and empty as if somewhere else. Hecatia meets them with her own, even if it takes all her might to do so. For some reason, she feels as if she cannot bear to be closer to this thing any longer, but there are things she needs to say to it - things she wants to say to it.

What the hell are you?

You’re far too dangerous to be kept alive.

Why did we stop playing? We were having so much fun.

“...I never got your name.”

The seven-tailed stranger - was that a scoff? - blinks, and suddenly bends lower to the ground, bowing her head in apology.

“Hecatia Lapislazuli…”

One of the Goddess of Hell’s fingers twitches. She hadn’t even introduced herself. Hearing her name spoken like that, all slowly and certainly, by that voice…she shivers.

And why was that voice sounding as if it came from some other place? Even as Hecatia saw and heard the words escape the mouth, why did the voice feel somehow speakerless?

“I must apologise. My tantrum must’ve caused you and this place quite the trouble.”

Hecatia quizically raises an eyebrow, surprised curiosity pushing past her growing sense of unease. “Tantrum?” she asks. “That whole thing, with the flowers, the sky, the stars - was a tantrum? Like, a temper tantrum?”

The stranger nods. Hecatia pauses.

“Sorry to hear, I guess, but uh…you shouldn’t throw tantrums like that in here. Or even really be in here, I mean.”

The stranger further bows her head.

“I apologise again. I am here, temporarily, not by my own will, but rather by the cunning of my nemeses. You may understand why I grew displeased. ”

The stranger falls back into silence. Head bowed downwards - politely waiting for Hecatia’s response? The sudden politeness, coming from this person, takes a while for Hecatia to process. She’s almost flattered.

“Well. At least we had some fun…processing your emotions..? I mean - I can get you out of here really easy if you want, so just gimme a sec…”

Hecatia shuts her eyes for a brief moment, and the Moon behind her glows faintly. A faint jingling of keys can be heard. Then she snaps them back open and casually smiles.

“Aha, there we go. They don’t call me Klêidouchos for nothing.”

The stranger raises her head, eyes cast upwards now, and Hecatia needs to briefly glance away from that gaze. They were done fighting, all’s-well-that-ends-well, right? So why were those eyes still so hateful? Would they ever be anything else?

Hecatia’s eyes look towards a distant horizon before continuing.

“Pick a direction away from me and just walk, and you’ll end up in a familiar place back on Earth…oh! Before you go, I need your name.”

The stranger is silent.

“We’ve never met, right? C’mon, you already somehow know mine, and I have a job to do, y’know.”

A false, dead smile curls the stranger’s lips, and she rises. Some fundamental sense of wrongness weighs heavy on the air as the seven-tailed stranger unfolds upwards to her full height, as she makes herself known against the sky and sand. Maybe Hecatia would’ve preferred it if the stranger had knelt.

That, and she’s noticeably taller than Hecatia - the Goddess of Hell needs to step back a bit and bend her head upwards to meet that perturbing gaze.

“This is our first meeting, and yes, I know your name. It is the nature of my power - and by the nature of that power, I cannot grant your request, for I have no name. My apologies.”

That doesn’t make any sense, Hecatia almost replies. But somehow she realises that the stranger’s words, by just a bit, somehow make other things not make sense…less.

If that makes any sense.

No, it really doesn’t, comes a weary, pointed response.

Are you stupid? another voice asks cheerily.

The seven-tailed stranger blinks and starts to turn away. Hecatia blinks, too - and then raises her hand, fingers straight upwards, palm facing outwards. Hold up.

“Okay, wait, no. Somebody as interesting as you doesn’t get to ‘not have a name’.”

The stranger stops right as the Goddess of Hell leans forward to scrutinise her. They both recoil at each other ever so slightly. Hecatia exhales out her nose.

“I need to call you something, don’t I?”

“Must you?” comes the displeased reply. “Can you?”

Hecatia ignores that, and raises two fingers to her chin in consideration. As she does so, the central of the stranger’s seven tails begin to flit sideways, back and forth, as if in irritation. Hecatia notices the tails, pauses for a moment, and then finds an idea.

“Ooooo, I know! Y’know what those big tails remind me of? I thought they worked like those fancy “jet planes” they have on Earth, but here they also remind me of a fox. And you said you were…what, pure? Plus, you’re like…”

Now, three of the central tails flit sideways, lashing like a flame. The stranger is scowling; Hecatia notes that the lesser attention of that hateful gaze could probably kill a person alone. But she’s not hesitating about that. Instead, she’s finding it eerily difficult to give a name to her reluctant conversational partner.

“...you’re like, from that ‘middle kingdom’, right? ‘Pure’, ‘fox’ - err…’chún’...wait, I don’t really like that. But the idea is good…”

She scrambles for ideas, something that fits, and she thinks back to the stranger’s words. To name this being…must she? Can she? What words could adequately describe what stood before her? What words could contain its existence with the familiarity and certainty of identity? Silence? Nothingness?

“I can try in the language of the rising sun, maybe - should still be right, so I’ll call you…”

Hecatia’s words suddenly die in her throat. The syllables she wants to enunciate are somehow formless, impossible to conjoin, slipping from her mind’s grasp. Why was this so difficult to do?

No, it’s not difficult, Hecatia intones with a triple voice in her mind. It can’t be this difficult.

All three of her orbs behind her momentarily glow with uncertain power, and Hecatia’s eyes suddenly blaze with authority, with will. She would command this to not be difficult, damnit, and it would obey, or she was not Hecatia Lapislazuli, Goddess of Hell.

And then, for a brief instant, the air has a sensation of clarity or condensation or containment-

“…Junko?”

A colder-than-usual wind blows across the stranger’s hair. The orbs dim; that peculiar sensation fades as quickly as it appeared. Yet somehow, the name, for just the smallest of instants, with just the faintest sense of rightness, sticks.

“Junko…yup. That’ll do.”

A moment’s silence.

The seven-tailed stranger tilts her head as if in curiosity, or surprise.

And in one clean motion, Junko dismissively turns away, as if this whole ordeal was a massive waste of her time. Hecatia almost pouts.

“Wait, one more thing!”

Junko doesn’t turn around - she’s starting to walk, now. Hecatia continues anyway - she doesn’t want to just let this person leave so easily. Somebody this interesting, this powerful…c’mon-

“Earlier, I heard you say something about a Chang’e, and-”

Junko stops immediately. All seven of her tails instantly deepen in colour, blazing like a freshly stoked fire. The wind suddenly grows silent, the sky even darker than usual.

Hecatia pauses, her words dying in her throat.

In agonising, excruciating, slowness - Junko turns around. As if it was the only thing that existed on Junko’s face, the pure fox turns back just enough to meet Hecatia with the gaze of a single, watching, hateful eye.

Hecatia, catching that eye’s attention, almost flinches - almost swears aloud - almost lets Junko walk away. She blinks, briefly pinned by that look like an insect underneath a needle, and then musters as much nonchalance as her being can afford.

“...and, uh, funny story: you could say I’ve got something of a grudge to take up with this Chang’e too, so, um…”

Hecatia extends a free hand forward, gesturing for a handshake, staring down that annihilating, single-eyed hatred with the most casual of smiles - at least that’s what she hopes is on her face.

“Wanna be friends? I mean, we’ve already done the essentials, y’know. Sharing enemies, giving each other nicknames, and even had a crazy fight…I mean, well, a great enemy makes an even greater friend, so-”

“What is your grudge with Chang’e?”

If Hecatia didn’t like how Junko said her own name, then hearing that other name, face-to-face and directed at her, was a thousand times worse. Even the sensation of Hell’s worst tortures, the attention of Hell’s most furious wrath, was finite - impossibly vast, sure, but ultimately finite. But Junko…

Hecatia shivers - genuinely, actually, shivers. She doesn’t want to think about it. She doesn’t need to think about it. Instead, she needs to answer a question.

“She’s a lunarian, isn’t she? I hate those absolute buzzkills…”

…no, that wasn’t right. Somehow, that felt like the wrong answer. Hecatia trails off, and Junko only stares at her in response - a stare as silent as death, as certain as a hateful star in the night sky. The Goddess of Hell blinks, looks at that single eye again, and suddenly the words spill from her mouth in a venom she was unaware she could even muster.

“Do you see that single sun in the sky? Used to be ten. Her jerkass husband shot down - killed - nine of them. Absolutely zero mercy. I think he’s dead now but-”

“He is. I killed him.”

Somebody like Hou Yi…Hecatia wants to ask how Junko did it - if she even did it. But looking into those eyes, she knows she doesn’t need to. She doesn’t even want to, thinking about it a bit more. She already knows - or she can guess.

“...good riddance. All of Hell’s been a much dimmer place since then, and those nine suns-”

Hecatia pauses. What was this feeling? It happened so long ago…so why now?

“-one of them I even made myself,” Hecatia adds, quietly. “His name was Apollo. I…still haven’t gotten over it.”

For an instant, Hecatia swears she sees that single glaring eye flit downwards with unrecognisable emotion. But in a single instant, it returns silently to its singular gaze - blazing, judging.

Silence.

And then Junko fully turns around, to bring the full attention of her eyes - two perfect hateful points - onto the Goddess of Hell. Hecatia meets them unsteadily. Her smile is gone.

After an eternity’s silence, Junko extends her hand to meet Hecatia’s outstretched one. Hecatia takes it wordlessly.

With a single motion, their hands clasp over the other.

And Hecatia flinches.

Junko’s hand is one of the most terrible things she’s ever touched.

Shaking somebody else’s hand shouldn’t feel violating - it shouldn’t feel like brushing a hand across the fur of an unseen, terrible monster. It shouldn’t feel like your hand is trying to decouple itself from you, from existence. It shouldn’t feel like-

Egodeath.

Dissolution.

Becoming one with all.

Becoming one with none.

The process by which an object is unnamed.

The process by which an object is made unnameable.

The trembling light of an annihilating star.

The hateful petals of a murderous lily.

██████-

“Hecatia?”

She blinks. That’s her name. The thing with her name has a thing attached to her wrist. That thing that has five other things - fingers - and it grabs and clutches-

Her…hand…pulls away from Junko as the handshake terminates. ‘Hand’. That’s what they were called - no, that’s their name, what they were. And yet-

She - Hecatia - blinks again. She’s shaking.

“Is all well? You look disturbed.”

Hecatia’s eyes refocus. She’s looking Junko dead in the eyes, transfixed by the sight of that pure fox as if caught between its jaws. Junko’s eyes burn with ever-present hatred, as always, and yet the expression on that pale face is a slight frown. Is that…concern?

Are you just oblivious?

Are you messing with me?

You are an absolute handful, and absolutely-

Hecatia puts a right hand on her hip.

-fascinating.

“Aww, what’s this all of a sudden?” the Goddess of Hell asks, voice teasing, her left hand covering her mouth in mock embarrassment.

Junko’s eyebrows and mouth waver upwards in an unreadable expression - wait, is that supposed to be a flustered smile? This thing…letting out a flustered smile? Are you kidding me?

Hecatia bursts out laughing. Equal parts ridiculous, charming, and terrifying - oh, she could get used to seeing that more often.

“We just agreed to be friends, no?” Junko replies quietly, as if…embarrassed? “Friends look out for one another, do they not?”

Hecatia can’t even tell if that delivery is supposed to be sarcastic. She briefly considers if it is, and briefly considers if it isn’t. And then she closes her eyes and laughs even harder.

“Ahahahaha…right, friends! Aw, we did just agree to that.”

Hecatia opens her eyes again, looking at what stands before her. Looked up towards its ever-burning hateful irises - its scowling eyebrows, its frowning face. She steps forward, past this nameless, beautiful, terrifying existence - this being called Junko - and then raises her left hand, to pat her new partner on the shoulder.

As her hand makes contact, she feels-

The process by which a name is created.

The process by which a name is destroyed.

A hollow point of bleeding anguish-

And the warm shoulder of a new friend.

“I look forward to being friends with you, Junko~”