Violence, sexual violence, body hatred, endangered pregnancy.

Tryst stood in front of the full-length mirror, and, there, she hesitated.

Her fear was not born of indecision. She knew what she had to do. All that was left was to take one last step.

After that, there would be no turning back.

But there was one final thing she needed to do before she left.

She had taken great care to make sure that she was not observed as she crept upstairs to the secret chamber she kept inside Adys’s court. Once inside, she had lit every candle, then locked the door. She had brought her few worldly possessions with her. They fit neatly inside a small pack, which lay on the floor, cinched and ready.

Except for Tryst, and her reflection in the mirror, the room was empty.

She inhaled a deep breath, held it. She closed her eyes. Then she untied the sash around her black hooded robe, and let the heavy fabric fall to the floor.

For a long, pregnant moment, Tryst stood there in silence, with her eyes clenched tight, hardly daring to breathe, until, finally, when she could bear it no longer, she opened her eyes, and she looked into the mirror, where she saw the reflection of her own naked body.

Tryst looked at her body – her horrible, devilish body – and she felt a wave of revulsion wash over her. It came surging up from the pit of her stomach, and, almost without meaning to, she bent slightly forward, and clasped a hand over her black lips.

For a moment, she simply stood there, staring at her reflection in the mirror, and she felt the same toxic mixture of anger, and shame, and loathing that she felt whenever she gazed upon her own form, and the contours of her hatred were deep and familiar.

Slowly, Tryst exhaled, and – with great difficulty – she resisted the urge to smash something.

She had hoped that maybe – just maybe – she might feel differently, now. Now that her body had changed. Now that her belly was swollen, and heavy with child.

Her child.

Tryst ran her hands over the blue-veined skin of her pregnant stomach. She felt an unusual warmth beneath her clawed fingertips, felt the strange sensation of harboring another life besides her own.

She had hoped – had prayed, even, without knowing to whom – that, once she was with child, she would be able to look herself in the mirror, and, instead of seeing a devil, she would see something else, something better.

Something that could love and be loved. Something she could feel good about being.

A mother.

But that wasn’t what she saw. She looked at herself, and she saw the same thing as she always had, and she hated it just the same as she had always hated it.

Not a mother. A monster.

Tryst stared the devilish body she’d been damned to live inside, and she hated it with a terrible, clinical specificity. She hated her bloodless, paper-white skin, which was cold to the touch on even the warmest day. She hated her cloven hooves, and her knees which bent back the wrong way, lending a vaguely animalistic cadence to her gait. She hated her barbed tail, and her black tongue, and her pointed horns.

But, most of all, she hated her eyes. Her sharp, yellow eyes, with their black slashes for pupils, and their knife-like stare.

Hers were predatory eyes, Tryst knew. Cruel, damnable eyes. Eyes meant to hunt, to sense prey in the darkness, to feed on those who fell beneath their gaze.

She wanted to close those jaundiced eyes, but she could not look away from herself. She could not look away from her own vile form.

And Tryst knew that she was vile. She knew that she was the fruit of a monstrous sin. She knew it because her own mother had told her. Even after her teeth had been pulled out, so that she could not bite, and her tongue had been cut out, so that she could not speak, she had still told Tryst the story of her birth, whispering each choked, half-formed syllable through the bars of the slave pen, while Tryst had sat, and listened, and learned of the original sin of her own conception.

When Tryst had confronted her father with what she had learned, he hadn’t even bothered to deny it. “Just a little tryst,” was all he’d said, as though that was all that needed to be said.

Just a little tryst.

So she had taken that word as her name. It was a reminder of what her father had done to her, of how he had cursed her to carry his blood, to live inside a devilish body like his. And so she was trapped. Trapped inside a body that represented everything she hated about him, everything she hated about herself, everything she did not want to be.

Because hers was a sinful body, bred to do sinful things. It was born from sin, and it longed to commit more sins, and it tormented her with the promise of pleasure and fulfilment if only she would give in to its urges, and use it as it was intended to be used.

She was born in a body that was a weapon. It was good at killing, and Tryst knew how to use it for that purpose. By tradition, the devilkin of her father’s clan prized their spears and knives, seeing those weapons as symbols of their prowess and virility. But Tryst had never needed a weapon to kill. Her claws were her knives. Her tail was her spear. She knew how to wield them, and they wanted to be wielded. She could still remember the rush of adrenalin she had felt, the first time she had torn out a throat. She remembered what it felt like to sink her claws into soft, giving skin. She remembered that first hint of resistance as she started to pull, to tear through muscle and sinew. She remembered the warm splash of arterial blood across her face as the flesh had given way. More than anything, she remembered how that act of violence had made her feel: powerful, and excited, and present. She remembered how her nerves had tingled with a terrible pleasure, how all of her senses had seemed to come alive, how time itself had slowed to a crawl as she looked right into the eyes of her father, and watched him die.

In that moment, she had felt as though her body were crying out to her: This is how I am meant to be used! Give me what I want, and I will show you how much you will like it. You will know such pleasures as you would tremble to imagine. At long last, you will be fulfilled.

The temptation was even worse when she used her magic, when she felt her body fill with dark and terrible energy. She could feel her mana throbbing inside her, and she knew it wanted to use her as a conduit to do terrible things. And the mana made her feel good. It made her want to do those terrible things. Because there was a special kind of presence that she only felt when she held another living soul between her hands and drained that soul dry. First came a sense of mounting anticipation, as she siphoned the very life away from her victim and drew that power into herself. That was a pleasure which grew and grew as she drank and drank, and it reached its apex in that singular moment when her victim was suspended between life and death, tethered to the world of the living by only the thinnest thread.

In that moment, Tryst felt suffused with dark, profane power, and it thrilled her to her core.

Then, when she pushed her victim over the edge, she would watch as the last flicker of life vanished from his eyes, and the sense of release she felt was horrible, wonderful, and complete.

It was only in dark, terrible moments like those, when she submitted to the basest of her urges, that Tryst felt as though she fit her form, as though she belonged inside her own skin. And she took that fact as confirmation of her own damnation, as the final proof of her irreparable fiendishness. Her very existence was a crime for which there could be no forgiveness, and from which there could be no escape. Whatever humanity she had inherited by blood was buried so deep beneath the overwhelming and elemental evil of her own devilishness that she clung to its existence mainly as an article of faith, rather than because she could feel any trace of goodness inside herself.

What she felt inside herself was base, and sinful. What she saw in the mirror was the same. Sharp teeth. Black tongue. Pointed horns.

Diabolic. Just like her.

In the mirror, Tryst watched the way that light and shadow played across her body with a sense of morbid fascination. She ran a blackened claw across the curves of her paper-white skin, and she almost felt as though she weren’t touching herself at all, as though the body whose lines she traced hadn’t been meant for her, as though it belonged to someone else entirely.

Tryst swallowed, and she tasted bile.

She knew there were men who found her body alluring, and she knew how to make herself alluring to them. How to carry herself, how to compose herself. How to reveal just a hint of skin, while offering the promise of much, much more. How to dangle the exotic, the enticing, the forbidden, in front of those who looked upon her with lustful eyes.

She had rules. Humans only, and healthy ones. They were always blindfolded, and they were always gagged, because it was bad enough that she had to feel their hands on her devilkin body, that she had to feel the way her devilkin body responded to them. It was bad enough to know what they were thinking as they touched her – that she was a creature of sin, and lust, who hungered for what they could do to her. But she couldn’t stand to see it in their eyes, to hear it in their voices. So the blindfold and the gag were essential as she suffered through the act.

And she did suffer. Every second felt like a violation, every sensation felt like an attack. The pain was both physical and emotional, and it was so intense that, before long, she would have to bite down on something just to keep from screaming, and to close her eyes just to keep from crying.

And, when she closed her eyes, what she saw – what she always saw – was her father’s face, leering at her, reminding her of how she herself had been conceived: in violence, and sin.

Just a little tryst.

She had forced herself to do it, more times than she would ever have believed possible, and it had never gotten any easier.

It had never gotten any easier, and it had never gotten her what she wanted, either.

The humans were not the problem. They were young, and fecund – she always made sure of that. Nor was the problem the act itself. Excruciating though it was, she could accomplish her part in it.

No. Just like with everything else, the problem was her body. Her body simply refused to give her the one and only thing she wanted from it.

Her body, which was so well-suited for taking life, would not allow her to create one. It denied her the one good and pure thing she thought she might possibly be capable of doing.

That was the ultimate betrayal. That was the ultimate curse. That was why she felt so much hate for the sight which always greeted her in the mirror.

So she had struck her deal.

She had weighed her options carefully. She had approached scores of demons upon scores of worlds, working single-mindedly to craft the right bargain, at the right time. And, when she had finally done it, and signed her name in blood, she had pledged her immortal soul in exchange for the child she now felt growing within her, and she had done it gladly.

She had done it for the child.

Her child.

Because the child was hers, in every meaningful sense. That was the purpose of the ritual.

And, while the child would be hers, it would not be cursed with her body.

That was the other purpose of the ritual.

The child could not be totally cleansed of her devilkin blood, but it could be made as human as possible. It would not have to share her form. It would not have to inherit her wickedness. It would not have to feel her urges. It would not have to fight her temptations. It would be pure, and innocent, and free. It would have a body that could love, and could be loved.

It would have a beautiful, human body.

It would be a beautiful, human child.

Giving birth to that child would be the only good thing her body had ever done.

Which was why, as Tryst held her pregnant belly in her hands, and stared at the reflection of her devilkin body in the mirror, she knew that she had to leave Phostus. She had to leave, and she had to leave that night.

Because the child would come soon. She could feel as much. And she needed to get away from the damned world where it had been conceived. She needed her child to be born someplace where there were no demons, where there were no devils, where the land itself wasn’t suffused with black mana. Someplace where it would never have to know the sins she had committed to bring it into being. Someplace where she herself could try to bury the horrible, nagging fear which ate away at her from the dark recesses of her mind.

The fear that the child would see her for the monster she was.

The fear that the child would recoil at the sight of her vile, devilkin form.

Or – worst of all – the fear that the ritual had failed, and that her own darkness would taint the life growing inside her. That her child, like her, would be damned before it had ever been born.

To leave Phostus would be to break her compact with Adys, but Tryst had never intended to honor her deal. She had lingered for as long as she had only out of suspicion, waiting to be sure that the pregnancy was developing properly, and that the child was as she had been promised. Until the child was born, there would be no way for her to put her mind fully at ease, but there had been no surprises yet, no setbacks. So that was encouraging, if nothing else.

And now it was time to leave. To leave with her baby, and with her soul.

To leave, and to never come back.

Tryst gathered up her robe from the cold floor and slipped it over her shoulders. Then she bent over – an act which was becoming more difficult by the day – and shouldered her pack.

She ‘walked best when the smell of blood was in her nostrils, so she drew one razor claw across the inside of her own elbow, and she held it beneath her nose, smelling the harsh, iron smell of her own blood. Then she stuck her finger in her mouth and licked it clean, with her black, reptilian tongue. The taste seemed to ignite something inside her, and she felt her body respond, as though it had been waiting, coiled and ready, for just that little hint of pain and violence. She could feel dark, black mana welling inside her – tickling her, teasing her, tempting her to use it, and promising to make her feel better about everything if only she did.

Tryst closed her eyes, and she prepared to ‘walk.

The sensation of planeswalking was familiar to her. It always began with a tingling at the base of her spine, a sort of pins-and-needles feeling which rose up her back as she stepped through the veil and into the Blind Eternities. She took that step by imagining that she stood before a night-black curtain, made from the deepest, richest velvet. She would focus her mind and her mana upon that aetherial curtain, and she would picture herself reaching out, gathering one of its heavy folds in her hand. Then she would part the curtain, and, through the gap, she could see the swirling chaos of the Eternities. She would step through, and she would travel across realities, following the pricking of her skin as it guided her to the place she meant to go.

Only, this time, as she parted the curtain in her mind, and prepared to step through it, Tryst could feel that something was wrong – horribly and profoundly wrong. Her back tingled, and her skin pricked, as they both ought to. But she could feel something else, too. She could feel a horrible sensation rising up in the pit of her stomach and spreading through her whole body. It began as just a quiver, which she felt as she put her hand on the black curtain, but it quickly grew into a kind of wretched, yawning emptiness. She felt as though she were being hollowed-out from the inside, leaving only a gaping void to fill the empty space. Grotesque thoughts came flooding into her mind, and she was seized with the horrible image of her womb as a moldering sepulcher, with only a tiny, desiccated corpse inside it.

And that was when she realized what the sensation meant, what her body was trying to tell her: Hers was no longer the only soul bound up inside her body. Her spark did not encompass the baby growing inside her womb.

If she planeswalked, it would kill her child.

Kill it, or worse.

Inside the aetherial room of her imagination, Tryst snatched her hand away from the heavy, black curtain, and she threw her whole body backwards. Inside the physical room on Phostus, her yellow eyes shot wide, her mouth opened with a horrified gasp, and she stumbled back from the mirror. Her mind was swimming with panic and fear, and her breathing was fast and ragged, even as her senses slowly returned from the Eternities to physical reality. She felt the pricking on her skin fade away, felt the tingling sink back down her spine until it disappeared. She also felt the terrible feeling of wrongness inside her belly weaken and drain away, until all she could feel was the heaving of her own chest, and the coldness of the stone floor beneath her hooved feet, as her soul settled uneasily back into her flesh.

Slowly, the world returned to focus around her. She recognized the outlines of her small, locked room on the horrid, damned plane where she had struck her deal, and from where she now realized with a cold and terrible certainty that she could not leave.

She recognized the floor-length mirror which stood in front of her, with its silvered-glass face, and its scrolled golden frame.

She recognized the black-horned, yellow-eyed, barbed-tailed devilkin she saw staring back at her from inside the mirror.

She watched as the expression on her reflected face changed from horrified shock, to sickened disgust, to smoldering anger. She watched as her slit pupils narrowed to thin black slashes, and her tail lashed angrily behind her.

Then she screamed as loud as she could – a blood-curdling, fiendish scream – and she punched the mirror with a closed fist. The mirror’s face shattered into a thousand tiny shards, which rained down to the stone floor in a sharpened cascade of broken glass.

Tryst looked down at her balled fist, where she saw – but did not feel – blood oozing out from her cracked and cut knuckles. She wanted to hurt, wanted to feel pain. But, if anything, the sight of her own blood sent a surge of adrenalin through her body.

Then she felt something else. Something that pushed all other sensations out of her racing mind.

She felt her baby kick.

It was a small and sudden thing, but it was real, and she felt it. And, with it, she felt both relief, and shame.

Relief that her child was alive. That she had not stepped too far, that she had not severed her baby’s soul from her own.

Shame that her baby would be born on a blighted world ruled by demons, with a fool of a devilkin for a mother.

Tryst sank to the floor, where she sat in silence atop the glass shards of the broken mirror. She closed her eyes, and she thought about what it meant to be conceived in sin, to be born with a vile body – a body like hers.

But her child’s body would not be like hers. Her child would never have to look into a mirror, and feel disgust and revulsion.

Her child would be born, and it would grow to be normal, and happy, and human.

There was no sin Tryst would not commit to make that happen. There was no price she would not pay.

As though the baby inside her body could sense her thoughts, it kicked again.

Her child had fight in it.

It gets that from its mother, Tryst thought.

That thought was not a comforting one. Because Tryst knew where she herself had gotten it from.

The devilkin whispered to herself: “Just a little Tryst.”