Interlude: Strix Striga

Six Years Ago

“Hastur!” Sophia called out. “I’m back. Let’s talk.”

She drifted through a secret place in the depths of the World of Glass, watching stars and planets float by as she approached a ring of stone inscribed with Hastur’s symbol. As soon as her feet touched the ground, a swirl of yellow marked the arrival of the King, who bowed to Sophia with great ostentation and presence.

“My favorite mortal,” the King said with benevolent warmth. “It’s so good to see you again, Sophia.” She cocked her head to the side, face invisible beneath the hood of her yellow cloak and a pallid, smiling mask. “Is this about that girl again?”

“Of course it’s about that girl again!” Sophia said, exasperated. Immediately she set to pacing, the tattered tendrils of the King following along behind and around her but never getting in her way. “It’s absolutely maddening being close to her all the time, knowing how she feels about me, and not being able to tell her that I love her back—which I know is exactly what you intended, so don’t you dare act smug about this!”

“Me?” Hastur raised strips of yellow cloth to her center mass, mask contorted into an exaggerated expression of shock and horror. “Why, I would never!” Then she laughed, mask returned to its face of cheer. “Really, my dear, you mustn’t blame the messenger.”

Sophia ignored the King in Yellow, still pacing. “It was bad enough before we spent a night naked in bed together—and god, I wanted to take that further—but now I know exactly how good her skin feels on mine and I cannot imagine wanting anything more. Ugh, she’s just so cute! The way she dreams up deranged scenarios to ramble about, that infectious sense of humor, her damned persistence!” Sophia clutched at her hair and ground her teeth. “I want to kiss her so bad!”

“But you can’t,” Hastur said, suddenly gentle.

Sophia whirled on the King and grabbed a floating length of fabric. With eyes wide, distress written over every inch of her face, she pleaded, “Let me try again. I can get it right this time, I know I can.”

“I must remind you of the dangers,” Hastur said firmly. “Even a mind as well-trained as yours can be broken by this kind of thing.”

“Ten loops,” Sophia insisted. “If I can’t solve it in ten more iterations, pull me out and I’ll go back to the drawing board. Come on, Hastur, we’ve done this song and dance before. I’ve proven I can handle a bit of repetition.”

“And yet,” the King mused, “you always come out of the loop crying. Yes, yes, no need to argue further. I will assist you, of course. You know the routine by now: invoke your power and I shall do the rest.”

“Thank you,” Sophia said with clear relief. She marshaled herself, closed her eyes, and spoke the words: “Athena, show me the path to victory.”

Strix Striga’s superpower was, in a word, information. Every piece of data she collected was fed into an ever-expanding and ever-sharpening model of the universe. Its ultimate, ideal form was the recreation of Laplace’s demon: the prediction of future events through perfect knowledge of matter and forces. In practice, her human senses fell far short of the granularity and accuracy required to achieve such a form, but they were still more than sufficient to grant her a considerable edge against any opponent—with the exception of the Jovians and egregores, who were excluded by design from Athena’s careful eye.

It was noticing this exclusion that had first led Striga down the path of rebellion, and much of her skill with Athena was owed to experimenting around the limitations of that exclusion. She could not directly model the Jovians, but she could model sets of behavior that, coincidentally, aligned with what she understood of the Jovians. She could not pierce the veil with Athena, but by habitually asking if she was under a veiling effect she could then begin to brute force it conventionally.

Developing her dream-sense had given Athena more data to work with, as had befriending the Morrigan and witnessing her own experiments with pocketspace manipulation and words of power. Making an alliance with Minerva had bolstered Striga further—rather fittingly—but even that paled in comparison to what Hastur was capable of granting.

From Sophia’s perspective, at the moment she activated her power, time itself was reset.

Taken back a year to a perfect simulation of the world as it was, Sophia did the one thing she desired most: she went to her closest friend, Rachel, and confessed her love. What followed were four months of domestic bliss, and then Rachel died.

It was the same every time: as soon as she entered a relationship with Rachel, the clock ticked down to her beloved's inevitable demise, murdered by pawns of the Jovians to hurt their greatest opponent, Strix Striga. She had tried to stop it hundreds of times, and every time she had failed. No matter what she did, intimacy was incompatible with Rachel’s survival.

The only world where Rachel lived was a world where Sophia kept her at arm’s length. And even that line would end in tragedy if Sophia couldn’t stop Jupiter from destroying Earth.

Sophia emerged from the tenth loop of the evening—her 283rd attempt in total—and fell to her knees, sobbing and wretched. “Why?” she cried. “Why can’t I have her? What do I have to do, Hastur?”

The King in Yellow smiled down at the distraught heroine. “It’s quite simple, my dear. It’s exactly what I told you the first time we met: you have to save the world. You’re the only one who can. It’s your destiny. So chin up, and let’s get to work.”

Present Day

Strix Striga sat alone in the dark and thought about how she was going to save the world. The end was nearer, now, just a single short year away. That particular revelation had forced her hand—forced her to induct more names into her circle of trust—and now the allies she had recruited to her cause would have to be measured, lest the whole endeavor collapse from within.

Trust would be verified. Trust would be created. Trust would be enforced.

To her eye, every piece on the board could be sorted into one of two categories: threat or asset. Those categories were not quite in alignment with “allies or enemies,” as the late Delilah had demonstrated quite cleanly; an enemy could prove an asset, if handled adroitly, and an ally mismanaged could easily become a threat.

And the threats arrayed against her were many, though varying significantly in power and reach. In isolation, empowered champions like Delilah were simple to dispatch and offered a chance to strike at the egregores directly—enemies becoming assets—but Venus and Mars had other projects; the Visage Spire had a hidden purpose that would not be easily unveiled, and the Syndicate was planning something bigger than they ever had before.

More immediately, Echidna was on the move, and Striga strongly suspected that she would not be the only Catastrophe to visit Forks in the coming year. Phage’s presence was almost a certainty, given how much that one loved to frolic in the chaos of her destructive peers. Typhon was the wild card, random in her path of carnage, but she could be directed when the Jovians truly needed her presence. Striga’s distant comrades—the other champions of Minerva—had proven that fact at great cost.

There were threats inside every organization on the board, some obvious and some hidden. Thunderclap had been carefully manipulated into a more useful mindset, but there were many other magical girls quick to believe the “Solar” Jovians about the inherent evil of witches. Striga’s enemies had planted moles in all the major factions, and she only knew the identities of a few of them. She had tried to keep her own house in order, but she wasn’t so arrogant to assume she had succeeded completely.

The greater conspiracy, now assembled, would need to be watched carefully. The greatest difficulty of working with people smart enough to understand the true depth of Striga’s ability was that they could usually tell when they were being manipulated, which was why she had made no such attempt at the time of revelation. Better to lay her cards plainly than to control her conspirators’ reactions in the moment and risk them realizing the manipulation away from her sight.

Ferromancer was still an asset—she was too rational and too self-interested to even consider turning on Striga—but her personal feelings toward Striga had been damaged by a necessary deception. This had been accounted for, and would be mitigated in the days to come with careful effort. Ultimately, her knowledge of Ferromancer’s true nature made such effort unnecessary, but the relationship was worth cultivating as sincerely as she could manage.

Howl and Harlequin were also firmly in the asset camp, and were unlikely to need any special treatment. Howl’s annoyance was largely performative, and any actual disgruntlement would go away as soon as she was offered more information and more work. Harlequin wasn’t the type to even care about being deceived if the cause was just.

Agatha’s power had the potential to expose many of Striga’s schemes if she learned how to use it properly, but teaching her how to use it properly would dramatically increase the value of the asset. Her personality profile seemed inclined to favor Striga’s ultimate goals, but there were weaknesses that could be exploited by a capable opponent. Mentorship would be required, and assigning part of that task to Howl would strengthen the loyalties of both.

And then there was Archon.

The Jovians had finally made an aggressive move against Striga, and they’d made a critical mistake. The obsessive romantic they’d chosen carried a secret drive to “save” Striga—and the secrecy of that desire was something that Striga had to trust in, or her entire operation had been compromised from the start—which had made it trivially easy to induct her into the conspiracy and convince her to work with Striga instead of trying to defeat or abduct her. It felt too easy.

Prometheus was an absurdly potent power, yet they’d given it to someone with barely a shred of compatibility. Had Archon been selected purely on the basis of obsession? She had the wherewithal to concoct a moderately intelligent plan for defeating Striga, but acquiring the resources necessary would have, in all likelihood, taken more time than there was left in the game. There had to be another angle that Archon either hadn’t seen or wasn’t divulging.

That was another source of concern: the witch was a capable actor and Striga hadn’t learned her tells yet. Archon seemed extremely comfortable switching between masks when interacting with witches of different factions, and had proven disturbingly perceptive during their one-on-one conversation.

Who was she, really? How had she developed her fixation on Striga?

Archon had the potential to be a critically significant asset—especially with access to that teleporter artifact—but she could just as easily become a game-ending threat. She would need to be kept close and studied. She had seemed reasonable in their discussion, eager to help in any way she could, but it might prove necessary to placate her obsession with a slow campaign of increased proximity and token affection. Her perceptiveness could be an obstacle, but maybe not; assuming her rant was true, Archon probably wouldn’t mind being manipulated like that.

Striga grimaced. She hated thinking that way. Even on someone practically begging for it, even for a worthy cause, she hated using her power to influence people’s behavior. She hated the kinds of moral compromises that her crusade demanded of her. To save the world, she knew that sacrifices would have to be made. Even her principles. Even the people who trusted her.

She held only one exception: Rachel. It was her one hard line, the one thing that kept her grounded. No matter what, she would never use Athena on Rachel. Saving the world was a righteous cause, but Striga—no, Sophia—was only human, and there was a selfish desire at the heart of everything she did: one day, when the Jovians were gone and the world was set right, she would finally have her happy life with Rachel. She refused to compromise that dream by using her power to manipulate the one she loved.

Everyone else was fair game. To win—to save the world—to stop Jupiter, Mars, and Venus… she would use every tool available to her. It was the only way.

She hoped the world would forgive her.