Half a dozen tendrils battered into me as I jumped up into my shop, pain blossoming around my side as they sent me flying through my open window. I shattered in mid-air, spiraling off in a hundred directions. Then I was jumping through the hole again, sabers stabbing into the devil.

"Disappointing/sad old/ancient one," I taunted/teased it as bone cut deep, slicing through chitin and the foul-smelling innards underneath. Entrails spilled/fell out, ichor spraying across the room as I ducked backward. A wave of fatigue/exhaustion washed/came over me, but now that I was tapped/hooked into the primal flame within, all it took was a tweak to scour my mind and veins, preventing sleep by making everything agony instead.

"Is this really the only/single trick up your sleeve?" I said, blood leaking out of my eyes as it moved forward over the hole, going for the hostages now that its ambush had been ruined. Was it trying to force my nature to fight itself by making me choose between protecting them and ending it? Or just regular hostage taking?

There was an easy solution. One that might be for the best, if I couldn't make it back from this. An accidental touch was one thing; what I'd done was deliberate. Depending on how deep it went, there might be no coming back. I might as well finish what had been started, and end the leverage it thought it had. Just go back, eat and-

I shuddered, forcing that all-too-familiar voice out of my mind. Touching diabolism was making that feel far too tempting, a whispered seduction that everything would be better down there. Devil eat devil, no need to worry about betrayals and feelings and emotions, just go down there, and let the jealousy I already felt be all that defined me.

"I have but a single trick?" The devil asked, half a dozen tendrils moving it forward. The bedbug shell around it had taken a beating. It's chitin looked melted and waxy where I hadn't torn it open with blows from my weapon. Ichor and foul-smelling grey guts were falling/leaking from the rents I'd made. "You seem overly fond of the one you've found."

"True," I/she said as a second me/he leapt out of the hole behind it, my hand turned into a claw piercing/stabbing through chitin at where I'd felt/touched the true Devil inside.

Nothing, nothing but more dead flesh. A limb emerged, spiking through where my heart would be if I'd remained Infernal. It speared me through a wall, pinning me. A second later, my other body had charged forward, bone saber cutting through that limb, dodging out of the way of a retaliatory strike.

My second self tried to pull the limb out, flesh dissolving where it had touched. The Imp yammered in my head about the diabolism needed to counter the poison while the first of me tried to keep the devil busy with harrying blows.

"You think I wouldn't move where I am the moment you touched me?" The Devil said, roaring with anger, as a tendril sent me flying into a rack of empty shelving. "Enough of these games, I will-"

A roar as a gun fired, a bullet punching right through the center of its head. It burned as soon as it touched devil flesh, a bright white light that forced my eyes to water with black diabolism. I moved backwards, turning to face the gunner.

Dr. Dawes was crouched behind a set of shelves, firing his revolver again and again. More blessed bullets burned chunks out of the devil, the first three in the head, the second three in the center mass. Ichor and dead flesh poured out, but no sign of hitting the devil inside.

"Oh joy, it's one of these," Dr. Dawes said. "Anyone have a shotgun? Miss Harrow?"

The other sleepers were awakening now, and the reaction from the trained intelligence agents was immediate. Unfortunately, also predictable.

Two bullets hit me, and I howled/screamed as blessed metal bit into my flesh. They ate at me like acid, flesh melting around the holes they punched through me. Both remained buried inside my chest and head, respectively. One eye was melting/boiling out of its socket, grazed as it fell, liquified to the floor.

"Damn your eyes," the second me said, pulling the acidic sloth devil's limb out. "We're on your side!"

"It's Miss Harrow!" Doctor Dawes yelled. "Hold your-damnations!"

The sloth devil charged, ten feet tall and half as wide as he charged through my store floor. It almost toppled Tolman, who lunged across the floor. Tendrils reached out, grasping for people. It grabbed a still-prone Gregory, who had yet to wake up, and my second body was already running for the devil.

A screaming intelligence agent was fed into its gullet by the tendrils, flesh being flayed by the array of teeth, pincers, and tendrils ripping the skin off the bone, blood spraying out. I ejected the blessed bullets just in time for it to spit the skeleton out, picked clean with not even a scrap of skin or flesh left on them.

Those bones twitched, started to move, pale crimson flesh forming on them. Bones lengthened and curved, rows of teeth emerging from the-

My eyes burned again as Dr. Dawes fired a bullet into them. It collapsed, the lesser devil being born unable to withstand the holy bullet.

"Go get Tagashin," I said to him, straightening up. My second self had already halted, keeping a wary distance from it. It had Gregory held in half a dozen tendrils, one wrapped around his neck. "Failing that, get some heavier firepower. I'll try to stall it."

Dr. Dawes opened his mouth, clearly wanting to argue the point, but then nodded. I joined the other self in circling the sloth devil as Intelligence agents, and Tolman beat their swift retreat from the shop.

"Two options I/we/she see, little one," I crooned as the sloth-creature tried to pull more dead insects and flesh towards it for a thicker shell. With the reduced number of its swarm, not a very sturdy shield. "Either you retreat/run/flee back to the planes/home, or I rip/eat/tear your name out of you. Take/accept the loss, and you/they/it gets to live/persist for another century."

The other me paced on the opposite side of it. "Not your only options in truth/fact, but your only viable/possible one."

A pang of irritation at being corrected. Something had gone wrong with the copying in forming…this one? The other one? I/she ignored that question and tried to banish the differences from our heads. Now was not the time.

"And if I rip this one's head off?" The Devil said. "I'd argue a priest's soul, however meager, would make up for that."

"There is no way his soul is worth that much," I/he said with a smile. "Also, we'll shred/rip/tear your soul into pieces and bury you in the same vault Halspus keeps his soul-spikes."

The other me didn't even talk, instead a bone saber lancing forward, skewering/piercing the devil's flesh-shell in the eye. It turned around, tendril tightening around Gregory's neck, pulling back some.

"It's not greed/want/desire," I told the scrambling/fleeing thing. "I'm just envious that you already have a much closer relationship than I/we ever got with him so quickly."

The most disgusting part of that is you actually believe it in your core, The Imp muttered. Whenever this is over, and I cannot believe I am stating this, we need to have someone-

I cut the Imp off and enjoyed for a second its feeling of sheer outrage over the fact I could do that now. Not for long, I knew, and already it was breaking through that barrier, but for one single, blessed moment, complete and utter silence.

The devil pulled Gregory close, three limbs wrapped around him, keeping him restrained/held.

"Anything else and-"

"Go ahead," I said, tone amused. "Threaten him. See if I care."

The devil cocked it's head to the side. "You don't care for this one?"

"Maybe," I answered in sing-song, a half dozen voices blended into mocking melody. "But not really relevant."

The devil paused, then realized what I meant as it glanced down.

Gregory had worked his hand up and pointed it directly underneath the devil's chin. The second was grasping the base of the tentacle holding his neck.

I closed both sets of eyes before he blasted the underside of the devil's with light. Even still, my skin felt like little needles were biting it, and my eyes ached as I opened it to see if he needed help.

The devil's bedbug face was roasted. Its surface was just cracked and blackened skin. One pincer had fallen out, the other ripping out with a crack as Gregory grasped it.

Tendrils and limbs pulled tighter around him.

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"I am quite tired of being treated like everyone's punching bag, thank you," Gregory said angrily, his entire body glowing with Light. The sloth devil screamed as every part of it that touched him burst into white flames.

I/we/she/he closed both our sets of eyes as the Light scoured it, trying to keep them from being burnt once again. By the time we opened them, the Devil had fallen back some, Gregory facing it, Light building up along his arms. I'd seen that once before, in his father's ballroom.

"No, wait don't do tha-" The me behind the devil got out before a wave of Light burst into being, scouring half of my shop floor.

I/she/we/he screamed as light ate at one of us. The same burning as at that party when we/I'd urged him to use it to clear the ballroom of Infernals. Screaming as skin ruptured, as organs burned, as bones melted.

My remaining body swore as the painful white glare faded from my eyes, striding forward.

The Light had left my shop untouched, barely a scratch on it except for what was left of the two devils it had caught. The Sloth devil's lower half still stood, blackened and charred. Liquified bits of its interior leaked out of cracked and desiccated skin. The rest of it was splattered across my shop in an orange film. The wave of light had left nothing larger than that left.

For the other devil it had touched..

"I/she would prefer/like a warning/caution before you do that," I snapped, as my formed mirror twin finished melting into a puddle of smoldering flesh and bone. Most of the Light had been blocked by the Sloth devil, but enough had gotten through to melt me. The spark of life was still there, but barely.

"Malvia, what in the Hells did you do to yourself?" He asked me, ignoring my question.

"Not quite/precisely in the Hells," I said, poking the sloth Devil's corpse with a saber, then grinned with several mouths at Gregory. "I should be a little envious that you took that kill from me, but it was very impressive."

"I'll repeat the question," he said, looking up, and it actually hurt seeing concern in his eyes. "What the Hells did you do to yourself?"

I was trying to find words when the sloth devil's remnants gurgled. We both turned to face it as its skin began to heal. Tendrils poked out of the soup of its innards, probing around and pulling remnants of its flesh back towards itself.

"It's still alive?" Gregory asked incredulously.

"Devils of this rank don't die unless you kill their true self, not the parts formed out of corpses and whatever else they scrounge up," I said, reaching with my hand inside the writhing flesh.

Pain, and I pulled/yanked my arm out, flesh scoured from it in many places, leaving just bare bones. Writhing strands of diabolism crawled across the bones, flesh rebuilding, scales reforming. It was not helpless anymore.

"Can you blast it again?" I hurriedly asked, sabers pushing out of my wrists again.

"Not like that, little bursts, but I run the risk of burning myself ou-"

"Get with the others, and fetch/find Barnes."

"I am not running from-"

"You will die if you stay here," I snarled at him. "If you do not have the Light to do that again, you are useless in this Gregory!"

He winced, then his face turned red. "Do not call me-"

"You will die here!" I roared at him. "Go!"

That got him moving, reluctantly, and I tried to figure out how to set this up. The thing was reforming fast, already mostly back to how it was before. Fighting it head-on wouldn't work. It had just taken a blow that could have killed it, and I doubted I could do any better than holy magic designed to kill these things. Damnations, if only its bugs hadn't stolen my holy water.

There's another option The Imp whispered in my ear and I cocked my head to the side.

"What," I said flatly, moving to the countertop.

The circle's downstairs, It said. There are enough souls in there to finish what you started-

"No," I said. "It would take too long. I have something better in mind."

Something more painful for myself, but wasn't it always that? I waited patiently for a couple of seconds as the Devil's flesh-shell reformed.

"Well," I said, sitting over on my countertop, wood creaking from my increased size. "It was a good effort, and I congratulate you on the effort, but since you've lost, would you mind please leaving my store?"

The devil's eyes blinked as it continued to swell, soon returning to its original size.

"Decide/make up your mind fast," I crooned, stretching lazily across my countertop as it stared uncomprehendingly at me. "Those mortals you mock so much, one among them left who has an archfey. And if you stay here long enough, you'll probably run across the Halspus priest."

"You are bluffing," The Devil said finally. "You were close, fledgling, but you haven't crossed over yet, and what does that leave all of this but a bluff?"

I kept my grin plastered on my face. Just because it was saying that did not mean conviction, even as I felt that burst of initial energy slowly fading now. Would it have changed if I hadn't let the thought of killing these people cross my mind? If I had gone through with it?

"Bluff or not," I said, even as more slipped through my fingers. "I still have quite a bit of diabolic power, and the means to make your life so much more painful. What even is in it for you anymore? The rest of the souls promised to you for your services? In the circle downstairs. The remaining souls in those circles? Also, through me, and if you think you can finish me off before the others fetch reinforcements?"

It stared at me for a few seconds, then it charged.

I jumped off the countertop. Hooves hitting the ground, I was running towards it, and tripped.

I tried to say something, only for my jaw not to even work. I was suddenly weak as a kitten, unable to move as a hammer of exhaustion hit me every second. Any energy I had was smashed out of me by the devil's diabolism as it moved forward, tendrils wrapping around me.

It was done playing.

Tearing, agonizing pain as it grasped my arm and pulled. I directed diabolism to grab onto it, and it responded sluggishly. My other arm stabbed a saber of bone into its head, barely strong enough to move at all, only for jaws to form, biting it. Bones shattered, splintered, flying all over the room. I stabbed it weakly with the shattered remnants, then channeled Hellfire along it, blue flowing flames pouring into its flesh, leaving trails of ice in its path.

It didn't care as it ripped my arm out of my socket.

"Are you sure you are envy?" It said as it tossed the limb to the side. "You bear the same overconfident arrogance of pride, to think that a bit of stolen soul-work and diabolsim from the hells could make you the match for a devil."

Flame and ice sprayed over it, and it ignored it all as it pulled. Its clawed leg tore at my side, ripping chunks of flesh and scales away as my arm wrenched, then tore free.

"You have not encountered many true devils, have you?" It said. "Just our lesser kin. I heard it is all that gets summoned here anymore, most times. A lesson you will not need soon. For ones such as us, you really must harm the devil inside. Otherwise? We. Will. Ignore. Any. Blow."

Each word was punctuated by a yank on my arm, ligaments and tendons tearing until, with a rip, it tore completely off.

Even through the pain, I tried to change my form. New limbs pushing through, only to be sheared from me by the devil. It grabbed my now armless torso, pulling me into a massive bear hug. My rbs creaked, then snapped as it tightened, mouths forming on its skin and biting into my flesh, gnawing and chewing on me.

"I suppose if one must irritate a noble, one must do it properly," Another mouth on the devil said. "If I must invite your parents' dislike over slaying a child, it might as well be with that child's power digesting inside me."

I could see it now, even as other mouths bit into flesh. It's central maw opening, the devil's true self wriggling in its gullet, waiting for its meal. A writhing mass of black, oily tar that crawled up the throat, ready to consume me.

That's when the melted pile of the second me rose, reformed, and rushed at the devil.

I leaped, watching through two sets of eyes as I made it past the forming limbs on its back. My clawed hand jabbed forward, and I could feel my claws scrape it as I tore through flesh.

Not long enough, as forming limbs pulled me back, split skin forming into a jaw that bit into my forearm.

"Good try. But your impatience does you in. What could an upstart like you do against I? I have lived for millennia, fledgling. You will understand the difference, now."

"Now!"

The roar of guns broke the feeling of exhaustion, although maybe that was from the devil's shrieking as blessed bullets ate through its flesh. Intelligence agents, Tolman, Doctor Dawes, and a few figures I didn't recognize immediately opened fire from the shattered remnants of my front window.

Blessed rounds peppered the devil, making it shriek and lurch, but its jaws remained clamped around my arm.

Two figures ran in through the front door, black flames in their hands as I drove a fist right into its squishy, dead-flesh shell eye. Melissa and Alice came to a halt, streams of Hellfire firing forth at where it had me trapped.

The blasts of hellfire scorched my arm, burning flesh from bone, pain as they stripped everything off. But they did worse to the devil, burning bone and teeth and everything else. My freed hand plunged deep, grasping the oily mass of the devil, and pulled it out. I bit, teeth slicing through a foul-tasting flesh that bubbled and tasted like raw sewage, but I bit through it.

Then paused. What was I doing?

What should be done, part of me answered. Before I made the wrong choice, and returned to the weak shell I'd insisted on living as.

I could have this, what I was. Forever. Only even more, even better than I was currently. Oh, there's going to be problems the moment I don't let go of this. No one would tolerate a devil running around here. But did I need to stay here? Did I need to leave this a mask?

I wasn't quite the thing I'd pretended/to be down there. I was…closer to a mix. Maybe not as well-suited for the Hells as I'd been the first time. But maybe better suited for down there than up here.

The souls trapped inside the devil screamed/shrieked as my teeth closed/tightened around them. Why should that bother/matter to me? They were destined for the Hells anyway. They might as well be of some use to someone.

All I/we/she/he needed to do was swallow.

Moments passed like eternity. Two voices in my head urging for it. A fainter one saying no. What would I give up to leave here? Yes, it was a cruel world down there, but was it any crueler than up here?

Was there ever any digging myself out of the pit?

What worth was that question if I never even tried to find out?

I reached inside my throat, ignoring the protests of the Imp and the irritated needling of the other devil. I suppose that meant it would survive being absorbed by me in some fashion. It didn't matter anyway as I tore its oil soul out of my throat, tossing the patch of writhing black tar across my floor.

"I don't eat humans," I told it bluntly in multiple voices melded into a single melody. "What makes you think I'd find something just as close to my nature palatable?"

A wordless howl emerged from it as it moved across my floor, going for the dissolving remnants of its former body and the melting other me I'd created.

It mixed with the rotting remnants of its flesh, trying to mix and recreate something, anything to keep itself in this plane a little longer.

It screeched a moment later as a burst of holy flame ate it up.

"Is it dead now?" Gregory asked cautiously. Melissa and Alice approached the rotten corpse, hellfire ready in their hands.

"Yes," I said wearily in just a single, tired voice, and then let go of the diabolism.

Flesh and scales and other limbs sloughed off. The second me dissolved entirely, turning into rotting flesh in seconds. I'd spent every little bit of the Circle tainted diabolism on this, and now that I'd made my decision, the tethers to draw from the Hells themselves were closed. It would leave its marks, though, even as rotting flesh dripped onto the floor.

I shuddered, feeling the same as before, but different as I stumbled forward on unsteady hooves. The cold air felt strange, comforting, even as the stench of rotting devil flesh made me want to retch.

I took a tentative step forward and began to fall. A half-dozen sets of arms managed to catch me before I passed out.

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