Ashtoreth sat in her chair, practically sprawling, and stared at the ceiling. She wove a claw through the air to conjure the glamour of a long-stemmed wooden pipe packed with a flavorful medley of skingrasses, lit it, then took a puff and blew a smoke ring.

"The King of Hell is untouchable," she said. "And you don't need to spend your entire life hearing that he's beyond the power of gods in order to feel it as soon as you see him. He doesn't need to raise his voice or flex his power to conform people to the warped reality that follows him wherever he goes, a reality that composes the ultimate morality of all Hell: do things that please the King… and don't do things that displease him."

She ran her thumb across the smooth surface of her pipe as smoke rose from the bowl in coils. Even to Ashtoreth, her father was mostly myth.

"When he speaks to you," she said. "It's like you're touching something that exists beyond concepts like free will. You get the feeling…" She frowned, struggling to find the words. "It's not that he can read your mind. It's that he's ancient, beyond ancient. He's so old, so wise, so cunning that he doesn't have to read your mind; he knows what you're thinking, what everyone is thinking. And that's okay—because he helps you think it. Helps you find the best conclusions."

She took a puff, focusing on the flavor and feel of the smoke, keeping herself grounded in the present moment as she sifted through her memories.

"When he speaks, his voice feels like it's not just coming from him, but from inside your own body. It's like deep down in the core of you, you resonate with his words no matter they are. Like your very soul knows the truth of everything he says.

"And when you look into his eyes, and he looks into yours… it's like you're seeing something you're not supposed to." She shook her head. "No. Different than that. It's like… you've been allowed to see something awesome and wonderful that you have no right to see… like you should be grateful for what you've been shown."

She could hear her voice darkening as she went on, becoming more tired. She tried to steel herself—it was going to get worse.

"I don't know what it's like to spend a lifetime without watching the people around me constantly scramble to do everything they can to keep one person happy. Every piece of the culture I come from is…" she gestured vaguely, searching for words. "It's engraved with his hegemony, and so it can be hard to notice it just because it's everywhere. And there is no other order; there's no bill of rights or set of laws which negotiates with his desires. No restraints. Killing people, stealing anything, betraying your own dreams, turning against your family… the order of Hell is that all of these things are natural and expected, so long as you perceive them to be in the interests of the King."

She reached up and fiddled with one of her hair ties. He didn't like twintails. He liked it long and straight—he liked the hair that Pluto wore, poor girl.

She drew herself back into the moment. "Personally?" she said. "I don't even know him that well. Yeah, I saw more of him than my sisters did—but I have dozens of brothers and sisters who are still alive, and he spends more time with the boys than the girls. So sure, I was his favorite in my generation… but that only means so much." She paused, her mouth becoming a thin line. "Even if he always made it feel like so much more."

She took another puff from her pipe, breathing the smoke out through her noise. "I was as much raised by mine and my sister's mothers as I was him… but more than that, I was raised by teachers and instructors. And one instructor, the main instructor…"

She paused again, closing her eyes to take a deep breath through her mouth. "I hated her," she said. "Nerien—Master Nerien. She was very, very good at getting me to learn." Her mouth twisted in a grimace. "And she was cruel. She didn't need to be, either. The lessons were cruel enough already…"

How to recite every bad thing about her early childhood training without while thinking about it as little as possible? It was a problem. She reached down to stroke Dazel's fur, and he nuzzled her. Having physical sensations to focus on—that helped.

"High intensity combat training. Invasive psychic procedures to correct techniques which have been learned wrong and further reinforce the ones that have been learned right. Constant combat—we were tightly tethered within the dojo, and so it wasn't so bad if we went too hard and one of us died. Still bad, of course, but not something you'd be failed for."

Despite her efforts, a flood of uninvited, unpleasant memories flashed through her mind like a slideshow. "Sleep deprivation training. Language deprivation training. General cognition deprivation training. They moved us into each other's bodies and made us use each other's techniques to see how well we could adapt to different fighting styles. They transformed us into monsters so that we could learn how they moved, how their physical brains affected their mental processes… dragons, you see, are afflicted with a kind of tainted pride, feel an insecurity that drives them onward as much as if they had a cattleprod permanently stuck in their backs."

She eyed Frost, whose face was softened with sympathy, and then Kylie, who was clenching her jaw as she stared at the ceiling. Then she drew her legs up onto the chair with her, hugging her knees to her chest as Dazel hopped up to drape himself over her shoulder.

"They'd give us slaves," she said at last. "And… benchmarks. Goals, I mean. I, um, it would be like… get this one to answer to a new name and deny their old one without using violence. Get that one to confess to a crime they didn't commit without using violence. I was good at all of it. All of it."

No, she thought to herself. Not just me. We were good at all of it.

You and me, Ashtoreth.

You and me, Ashtoreth.

You and—

She gritted her teeth, refocusing. "And through it all was Master Nerien," she said. "My personal instructor. She used to show us the failures before they were taken away—you had to stay near the bottom for a long while in order to be failed. Sometimes she made me eat some… and she made me thank her for it, and call it… well. Call it what we all call it. The flesh of the unworthy."

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Ashtoreth sighed. "It's hard to talk about why I hated her so much," she said. "It wasn't really the training, it was… oh, it's hard to put it into words. It's just… it was like she made war on whatever I was trying to be. Any role I adopted, she tried to crush. She was older than me, smarter than me, stronger than me and knew more. I didn't even know what she was doing, not really."

Another puff. She hoped the humans didn't mind the smell of burning skingrass.

"We'd be in a lesson. I'd start reciting facts because I wanted to be praised for knowing things, because I wanted to be the knowledgeable archfiend… and she'd see that and find a way to make me something else… the pompous archfiend, the know-it-all, the girl who mistook memorizing rote facts for true wisdom.

"Or I'd start challenging the others to duels in our spare hours, because I wanted to seem like the keen archfiend, the one who was trying to get ahead… and she'd make it seem like I couldn't contain or control the violence in me, like it was a symptom of sickness. A real warrior is composed. Contained. Not eager for bloodshed because they're desperate to prove themselves."

She leaned her head back, closing her eyes a moment even though it made the memories feel more pressing. "She was an adult. I was a kid. Whatever I wanted to be, she could read it as plain as day… and would attack it."

She glanced back at the humans. Poor Frost had tears in his eyes, but then he'd asked to hear all this. It wasn't her fault if it upset him.

"It might all sound worse than it was," she said. "It was life. I was used to it. And there's worse lives to live."

"That doesn't mean you have to feel any one way about yours, Ashtoreth," said Frost.

"Is 'there's worse lives to live' the Hell version of 'there's children starving in Africa?'" Kylie asked.

"Heh," Ashtoreth said. "Maybe. But look, guys—self-pity and self-loathing are two very unhealthy forms of self-obsession. I don't want to break down crying and screaming woe is me unless I absolutely need to. Unless I can't stop myself."

"But do you want a hug?" Kylie asked quietly.

Ashtoreth gave Kylie a small smile—one that grew bigger and warmer the longer she wore it. What a sweet thing for Kylie to ask.

"In a bit," she said. "Definitely in a bit. Anyway, when I was nine—well, nine and two thirds—I won a tournament. It wasn't just any of our ordinary contests, either. Father was watching, and we knew it."

She took another puff from her pipe, then set her feet back on the floor and rested a hand on Dazel as he hopped back down into her lap. "Afterwards, dad came to see us. All of us, of course, but mostly me, his winner. We talked. And… I'm not sure why I said it. Why I wanted it. I… I think maybe he put me on the subject, but I can't remember for sure. All I know is that I started telling him about Master Nerien… telling him everything. Even embellishing some things."

She leaned and let a lazy smile come over her face. "And even though I knew he controlled everything, it was still such a shock what he said next, because the instructors… they were invincible. Untouchable. The clear rulers of my little world.

"But dad said that one day, when I was powerful enough, I could do whatever I wanted to Nerien. And then he told me that wouldn't you know it, he was powerful enough to do whatever he liked today." She paused, swallowed, then said the words that she could still remember perfectly. "And do you know what I want to do right now, Ashes? I want to give my special number one a special treat."

Her voice got about as dark as it went. "And he brought me to Nerien. Master Nerien."

She took a long draw from her pipe, the violet ember flaring in the dark as the dried grass sizzled. "I watched her skin bubble and crack, watched her eyes sizzle and pop, watched her whole body shrivel as the flames consumed her… and I took my cues from my father. I lay my head on his shoulder, breathed in the sweet smell of his beautiful hair, and I laughed and laughed and laughed."

She stared at the bowl of her pipe. "And I knew, without a shred of doubt, that I wanted the power to do to anyone what my father had done to her. Hellfire; I had to have it. But more than that… I had to have everything. I wanted the world my father had shown me; the one where I was showered with endless praise and anyone who hurt me died in agony. How could I have ever wanted anything else?

"Father warped me to the Seething Ocean in the innermost circle, a place so hot that it would have turned me to ash in a second if I hadn't been safe in the protection of his aura. There, in a place where only he could take us… where only we could go… he told me that he loved me."

Again, she shut her eyes, but this time she didn't shy away from the memory of looking into his crystal-bright eyes and being happier than she ever had been.

"He was so sorry about what Nerien had done in his name. We were hardhearted creatures, archfiends. To be powerful, we had to be tested. But Nerien had overstepped—oh yes."

She smiled. "And when I told him all the facts I knew, he said I must have been the smartest daughter he'd ever had. And when I told him all about my duels, he said I had the burning soul of a warrior."

You and me, Ashtoreth.

The words made everything suddenly crumble. Even the memory seemed to suddenly contain no happiness. A confused, dejected fury bubbled up in Ashtoreth, coming on as swift as lightning.

"A day," she said, the word wrenching its way out of her mouth as her face twisted in a grimace. "That's what it took him to make me love him like I loved nothing else in the entire universe. He held me… I was light as a feather and valuable as the cosmos itself. He held me close. So close. And he told me that I was good, so good. My father, I thought. He's mine."

She sighed, pushing away the nagging feeling that she should tell them the whole of the truth.

She'd been almost ten years old when it happened, and she hadn't been alone… not in her victory, not in her laughter, and not in her love.

"Anyway, that's my father," she said. "Or a bit of him, at least." She shrugged. "Maybe that was a strange way to tell it, but in my life he's mostly been in the background. He's a myth. He shows up, the whole world changes, and then he leaves." She paused, hesitating before quietly adding, "I think I still love him. It's just… built into the foundation, you know? But the hatred wins; not only does it burn hotter, it's right."

She leaned back again, closing her eyes and taking a few deep breaths. After a moment of silence, Frost asked, "Time for that hug now, Ashtoreth?"

You and me, Ashtoreth.

You and me.

Why won't you tell them about you and me?

Her eyes shot open. "Could be," she said. "But I don't know if the story's done yet. See, I despise my father, now, but there are other things that don't really change. Some things that get built… they stay forever."

She looked at the two humans from across the smokey room. "I still like watching my enemies burn alive."

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