Work Text:
It went like this:
Garnet loved her pa. She still does, when she's being honest. He was always here and gone, supposedly out looking for work but really out playing cards but really dabbling in something that nobody ought to be dabbling in. Garnet remembers more than anything the way his hands looked when he shuffled his cards, the deft movements as he showed her how to manipulate them in ways nobody could.
Garnet's mother, a gentle but not weak woman, who still invokes Her Majesty in the cadence that Garnet has taken for herself despite hands hardened by Nevada soil, loved him overwhelmingly, bitterly, furiously. When the time came, she did what she had to do. She didn't even hesitate.
And so, Garnet has something of both of them. She has her father's deck, still smelling ever so slightly like him, and when the time comes to make something of it, she doesn't hesitate either.
--
It went like this:
When the Barricade went up, Corazon was long dead, having passed at a very old age, almost literally on a pile of money, surrounded by his prolific descendants and a legend that was already in progress. Dob was also dead; it wasn't as happy of an ending, but he died in an incredibly romantic way, and for Dob, that was just as good.
Merilwen and Egbert were still alive, having progressed in their druidic powers and service to La Vache Mauve, respectively, so far that their bodies had become almost deathless. Surely it ruined their day. Maybe it killed them. Prudence has no idea, because she was one with the void at the time.
Cthulhu's promise to His worshippers is that He will eat them last. Prudence believed this, and she was correct. However, it did mean that He ate her. That was how she met her end, finally swallowed into His protection, and she experienced the limitless expanse of time that followed as a cycle of sorrow and pleasure and pain that would have driven anyone else mad, but she is the beloved of Cthulhu, His perfect blood-red thorn, bride and child and priestess, sweeping into infinity and expanding, rising, growing, verdant and sickly and horrifying, perfection itself-
And then it stopped.
No one has asked Prudence how it felt. She wouldn't be able to say. There isn't a way for her to articulate that it felt like experiencing every denied orgasm that everyone in the history of the world has ever not had all at once; she also couldn't express that it was the most glorious relief but also the most devastating sorrow, all of it whipped together, inseparable. She doesn't realize that she purely blacked out for a hundred years, floated catatonic through the void of space, no one to mark her passing, no one to wonder where she was. She was supposed to be dead. There wasn't even enough in her to wish she was.
She woke up, eventually, or maybe just came to. Everything was wrong, inappropriate; there was nothing but void, no sound of the hideous movements of the Great Old Ones. The vacuum had the peculiar smell of an anti-magic field, wrinkling her nose.
"Aw, man," Prudence said to herself, in a voice that shook the nearby stars.
--
It is June in Nevada, and Garnet's father is dead.
Garnet is nineteen, more than old enough to know she's not being told something. She does not know that the manitou won; she never finds out that her mother blew the head of the thing possessing her father clean off with a double-barreled shotgun. She knows even then that her mother has done her a kindness by telling her that her father has passed on, instead of letting her live in hope.
Her father's cards are scattered across the table in the back room, and she carefully gathers them up, giving them an easy overhand shuffle as she thinks. It seems so natural to deal out a few hands of poker. Her fingers go to make the movements without any conscious thought. She stops, realizes what she's doing, realizing what she's about to do.
Then she keeps going.
--
It is whenever in the void of space. It's fundamentally always the same time in the void of space. Prudence doesn't know that this particular void is in a special realm, perhaps predetermined as her landing zone by the fact that it is incredibly magical. She is, of course, somewhere within the Deadlands.
None of this means anything to her, not yet. She is so horrendously bored. She's good at making her own fun, it comes from living in a cult, but she's just floating. She's not even really feeling anything. She feels a horrible crushing sense of loss when she thinks about Cthulhu, estranged from her maybe forever, like a sucking wound in her chest. That's all she's got: she feels bored, she feels alone, that's it.
A feeling comes over her, an odd pulling sensation. She hasn't felt anything in so long that it's startling, offensive, but she goes anyway. Suddenly she's out of the void, coasting through some twisted version of Geth; she's kinda into it, the gnarled trees and blighted landscape suiting her sensibilities. The force pulls and pulls and sets her on her feet, outside a closed door that opens at her approach.
When a huckster calls the devil forth, power calls to power. A huckster cannot choose what power will listen.
The room is dark, lit only by one weak lantern, Prudence entirely in shadow. "Are you the manitou?" the young woman asks, when Prudence sits down at the table.
Prudence has not the first clue what a manitou is. "Who wants to know?"
"I've come to make a deal, like my father did," she says.
"I'm listening," Prudence says.
"I want power," she says, her voice shaking just the slightest bit.
This is extremely interesting to Prudence. As far as she's aware, she doesn't even have the powers she came to the void with. She leans forward, entering the circle of light cast by the lantern above them for the first time, and the girl flinches back just the tiniest bit. She is scared, and she can't tell Prudence has nothing up her sleeve.
"What will you give me for it, kid?" Prudence says, smile full of teeth.
"Fancy a hand of poker?" she says, indicating the cards on the table.
"And when I win?" Prudence asks.
"I'll live to serve you, and you can have my body for a puppet," she says.
Prudence frowns. "Are you coming on to me?"
She either doesn't understand what Prudence meant or just wants to move along, because she doesn't address it. "If I win, you agree to give me power."
"Sounds an awful lot like you're fishing for a patron, kid," Prudence says skeptically.
"Garnet," she says firmly. "My name is Garnet."
True names have power. Prudence doesn't actually know how to use them for anything, but they're good to have, for sure.
"I'm not an idiot, Garnet," Prudence says. She glances pointedly at the cards in front of them. "You always deal a hand after the player joins the table."
"My apologies," Garnet says, not revealing whether it was an oversight or an intentional gambit. She'd be a hard nut to crack. Prudence does not have the power to be a patron of anything except maybe a low-rent bard. "Five-card draw?"
"Sure," Prudence says.
Garnet sweeps up the cards, shuffles, and deals again, an action so fluid and easy that she must have practiced it thousands of times. For a moment it reminds Prudence of Corazon, and her stomach tightens. There's no time for that, and even if there were, she wouldn't want to do it.
Garnet sets the deck down and picks up her cards. Prudence decides that now is not the time, and she picks up her own. She's not actually very good at poker, because it's boring. She should have asked how many she gets to redraw, because her hand is bullshit: no straight, no pairs, not even a face card, if it came to that.
Garnet puts down two cards, drawing new ones, but Prudence just stares at hers. She realizes she doesn't need to draw. The faces change themselves, realigning the world as it should be.
"I call," Prudence says, and she lays down a handful of spades with a smirk. "Royal flush."
Garnet looks at her, completely unfazed. She fans out a run of diamonds: ten, jack, queen, king, ace.
"Huh," Prudence says.
"What a coincidence," Garnet says.
"So, what's the play?" Prudence asks. "How do we resolve this?"
Garnet shrugs. "I reckon you owe me and I owe you."
"This is starting to sound an awful lot like a pact," Prudence says.
"People call it many things, I suppose," Garnet says. Prudence sees straight through her: out of her depth, terrified, but with such a smooth exterior that you'd think nothing was happening at all.
It's been a long time since Prudence so much as had a conversation with another being, but she knows potential when she sees it.
"Then we have a deal," Prudence says, her eyes glowing yellow. "I'll be seeing you, kid."
And then Garnet is sitting in the back room of her family's home, exactly where she was. Her cards are back in her hand, and they feel no different. It's bizarre to think that they might be meaningless, just a focus, just a hand-me-down, a memento.
She hasn't noticed the lick of flame as she runs her thumb down the top edge.
She has this feeling like this isn't how it was meant to go. The manitou is supposed to be indefinite, a creature of smoke and nothingness, sometimes a massive animal which is Wrong. Garnet showed up and played cards with a beautiful lady who happened to be bright red.
The horns were weird. Do the horns count? Do animals even have horns like that? Garnet needs a drink before she figures it out.
--
So Prudence is in the Deadlands now. Yeah, yeah, ghastly Otherworld, we've all seen it. She finds out that's what it's named pretty quickly, because it's not exactly a secret. There are other beings here, though they seem not to want to communicate, and there's a bunch of- Let's not get precious about it. There is a mishmash of stuff all over the shop that is definitely the remnants of unhallowed offerings. At least that kind of thing is familiar to her.
There are loads of buildings, though they're in various states of disrepair. She claims a room in an old hotel, where there are, regrettably, no bathrobes to steal. The only thing to be done is to regroup, try to find the boundaries of this new world.
Not long after Garnet turns up, Prudence is attacked. It's not a humanoid, probably, but it definitely did enter her room without going through the door. It's a nine foot tall being of shadow with horrible proportions, seeming to be all elbows but utterly lacking the soothing composition and clean symmetry of a spider.
This is when Prudence discovers two things.
The first is that everything that happened to her, everything she's seen, it burnt something out in her. She reaches inside on instinct and finds not an ounce of fear, not even a brush of anxiety. There's a monster in her face. It's annoying. It needs to stop.
The second comes when she raises her hand. On instinct she readies an eldritch blast in both palms, and she unleashes both of them at once. They are somehow not eldritch at all, fueled by something else. They're so powerful together that the blast sends the shadow monster into the wall, impacting with a sickening thud, and the recoil sends Prudence into the opposite wall, knocking the wind out of her.
The shadow monster doesn't stand up for a moment, dazed, and Prudence senses weakness and fear, drinks it in, the taste delicious, sliding down her throat like honey.
"Oh, that's the stuff," Prudence says. She steps forward and expands, stalking over, and she stares down into what she figures is its face. "Go tell everybody, you little punk. You might be monsters, but I'm a god."
The shadow monster disappears in a puff of smoke and anxiety, and Prudence opens the door just next to where it was.
"Yeah, you better run!" Prudence shouts out of it. "There's more of that for all of you clowns!"
Then she slams the door.
She thinks that Cthulhu would have been so proud of her, and it dims her excitement a little bit. But wasn't that what he wanted for her? She never took over Geth, in the end. Maybe she has another chance to make that right, even though all her other chances are used up.
--
The huckster ways aren't actually all that difficult, once Garnet gets over the first hurdle. Her father told her once about the book; the one she has isn't the one he had, that one being in the grave with him, but she does find one without too much fuss. She thinks maybe if she hadn't met the manitou, she wouldn't even be able to read it, but everything is laid out so easily, like this whole enterprise is nothing at all.
Most hucksters, possibly as many as ninety percent of hucksters, get rumbled immediately. Usually, they hurt themselves or someone close to them, then they spend the rest of their lives trying desperately to undo it.
That's not what happens to Garnet. Amaryllis Munro looks out her kitchen window and sees her only daughter, the one thing she has left in this world, make a flourish with one hand followed by a shower of flame. Something inside her snaps, crushes like a vial of smelling salts, exists now only as shards and rage, overpowering even the love she has for her daughter, which was never a lie.
"I can't believe you," she spits at her daughter. "It killed your father, and now you're going to follow him? You genuinely think I'd support you in this ridiculous endeavor?"
"Yeah," Garnet says. "I thought you'd support me through anything."
Amaryllis is furious. "I supported your father, and it ended with his blood on my hands." Garnet takes a breath, flinching back. "I had to put your father down like a rabid dog, and you expect me to do that to my daughter?" She shakes her head, looking sick and stricken but absolutely steadfast. "Get out and don't come back. I won't have any part in it. You've cursed yourself in a way you can't undo, and I never want to see you again."
So Garnet goes out into the world. She was always going to; she probably should have within the year. She didn't picture having to go out without even her mother's goodbye. It is, of course, horrifically painful, and knowing what really happened to her father only makes a very troublesome picture much more complicated.
Away from the simplicity of the farm, life gets harder. It doesn't get to the point where she can't handle it, but she sure doesn't think she could get through it without Hoyle's Book of Games. Working on a farm is taxing physically, but Garnet hadn't realized how much she'd rely on her wits away from it. It's hard work but very simple to muck out a stable or bring in a harvest. Instead of any of that, Garnet is making deals constantly, judging people, trying to chart her own course in a bizarre landscape with nothing but her wits and some admittedly very powerful card tricks.
At the end of the day, she sits in her rented room; sometimes it's nicer, sometimes it's worse, but there's almost always a desk or a table. She sits down and deals out solitaire, over and over, unable to think anymore, needing anything to unwind.
It is not what she pictured.
--
As far as Prudence can tell, the operation basically goes like this: Garnet is some kind of warlock. She can call out to Prudence for aid, but Prudence only gives it to her if Garnet wins at a card game. Sometimes Garnet calls on her a lot, when things are rough. Sometimes they go a long while without seeing each other; Garnet is traveling, and Prudence figures she gets a day job or something during those times. It's not really her business.
Garnet's yet to lose, because Garnet is a card sharp. Prudence is also not cheating; after that first hand, she doesn't force her cards, just lets it happen as it happens. It goes very badly for Garnet if she loses, though Prudence hasn't decided what her terrible price is to be.
She gets bold, after the thing with the shadow monster. She's obviously overkill for a shadow monster, but that doesn't mean the shadow monster isn't just some scrub, like she's decided she's all-powerful after the equivalent of kicking a stray dog.
She susses out pretty quickly that there's no hierarchy, no government, so a display of power is the only thing for it. The Deadlands are mostly empty, a twisting realm where other creatures lurk but seem to always be out of place. She'll just call them out, and if they can't take her down, they should have the good sense to stay out of her way.
A big explosion has merit but is too ephemeral, so in the end Prudence decides to stake her claim. She walks until she finds a rise, right next to a desiccated river that makes a hideous sound. She stands right in front of it, obviously unarmed, wide open for an attack. She raises her arms, and great stone columns rise out of the ground. It feels like nothing, so she keeps going- a tower, a spire. She keeps building until what she sees in front of her is the house she always dreamed of having for herself. It's all deep black and slate gray, blood-red roses climbing up one wall. It is a thing of stunning beauty, something she's always wanted, and it took nothing.
She walks inside and closes the door. Behind her, a doormat appears on the step; it's a rugged gray weave, FUCK OFF written in curling black letters.
"This is a bit more like it," Prudence says. She needs more stuff to do and way more alcohol, but the vibes here are immaculate.
Something is odd about the way time passes here, and Prudence doesn't really know how long it takes Garnet to come back. She's getting the hang of some of this, and she's aware that she can direct Garnet, push her to where she wants when she feels Garnet approaching. She's got something new; it makes her feel more in control when Garnet has to come to her.
Prudence sits down in her large, imposing chair, and when Garnet walks in, Prudence has her elbows on the baize of the table, staring her down.
"Oh," Garnet says, looking around.
"What?" Prudence says. It's a very nice room, thank you, done in dark red and black velvet, the kind of place you couldn't forget was there to do evil things in. She did eventually decide that the golden lions were gauche in the bad way, but you can't have everything.
"This is all new," Garnet says.
"Yep," Prudence says, waving her hand at the poker table. It's supposed to have markings, probably, but Prudence hadn't been able to make them look right, seeing as how she doesn't know what they're supposed to say.
"It's very, um," Garnet says, and she doesn't seem to notice Prudence narrowing her eyes. "Imposing."
"Thank you," Prudence says, pleased.
"I, um," Garnet says, still seeming thrown. "I came by to see if I could borrow a cup of power."
Prudence snorts. "Sit."
Garnet sits down, producing her cards from her waistcoat. Prudence still doesn't really know what's going on here; she knows the procedure, but if Garnet is supposed to be her warlock, she's falling down on the job. You don't get to just sample infernal power and then go to work or whatever.
"I've got my clairaudient sensor up and running again," Prudence offers, as a conversation topic.
"You've got what now?" Garnet says, frowning.
"You know," Prudence says, though it's clear Garnet doesn't. "Clairaudient, like clairvoyant. I can hear anything I want to hear. The range is a work in progress, but it's not bad."
"You can just listen to me?" Garnet says, looking hesitant.
Prudence can't; Garnet lives on a different plane of existence. She could, but just finding where Garnet is physically located is almost impossible.
"Better get used to that kind of thing," Prudence says, bluffing wildly. "If you're gonna be my warlock, I'm not gonna ask your permission." Garnet is looking at the cards, not dealing, and Prudence needs to pull her out of it. "Why does everybody sound funny except you?"
"You mean my accent?" Garnet says, snapping out of it a little. "It's because they're American, or from the territories at least."
"Okay, fine," Prudence says. "What's an American?"
"You really aren't from around here," Garnet says.
"I'm from Geth," Prudence says.
"I figured you were from Hell," Garnet says, but she winces immediately once she's said it.
"Aw, thanks," Prudence says.
"You don't seem like the demons I've heard about," Garnet says.
"Well," Prudence says. "I'm not exactly a demon."
"What are you?" Garnet asks.
"I'm a tiefling," Prudence says. "Or I was, I guess."
"I don't know what that is," Garnet says, and while Prudence isn't hugely surprised, she does find it upsetting.
"It's not unlike a demon," Prudence says. "Tieflings are the children of demons." She frowns. "Kinda. They are the children that spring from infernal bloodlines."
"It's weird to think of you as having parents," Garnet says.
"I was a foundling," Prudence says. "Cthulhu was my real father. I always knew that deep down."
"Can you tell me about Cthulhu?" Garnet asks.
"I dunno," Prudence says. She hadn't meant to say that, didn't really realize she had. "Cthulhu is unknowable. He's an infinitely large celestial being made of horror and void. I also saw Him appear to me no more than six feet tall. He is omnipotent and petty, full of indifference and wrath, dead and living." She sighs, feeling empty. "I could never love anyone as much as I love Him, and every day away from Him is torture."
"I'm so sorry," Garnet says simply.
"Nothing to be sorry for," Prudence says. "His only promise to His faithful is that He would eat us last. He kept that promise."
"He ate you?" Garnet says, baffled.
"So, like," Prudence says, "when the Prophet Elijah was taken away by God, it wasn't because God killed him. He just abducted Elijah into Heaven. That's what Cthulhu did for me."
"How do you know a Bible story?" Garnet says, even more baffled.
"I found religion," Prudence says, just to amuse herself, but Garnet looks alarmed. "I've been reading literally every book I stumble over, and you would not believe the number of desecrated Bibles just lying all over. Some of them are pretty legible if you can get around the crosses gouged into them."
All of the books fall to her at a touch, even though they're in a dozen languages. That part she doesn't mind so much.
"Why are there defaced Bibles?" Garnet asks.
"I was really hoping you knew," Prudence says. She lifts her hand and a specimen that's sitting in her library appears in it. She dangles it by a cover. "This does nothing for me. No frame of reference. I'm more mad about the torn out pages than anything." She eyes Garnet, then shakes it around. "It bothers you, though."
"Yeah," Garnet admits.
"Interesting," Prudence says. She tosses the book into the air and it disappears, gone back to where it was. "If you get to ask me prying questions, then I get to ask you."
"Alright," Garnet says.
"Where'd you get those cards?" Prudence asks.
"They were my father's," Garnet says.
"Right," Prudence says, her eyebrows going up. "Are you indifferent, or mourning with dignity, or looking for the real killer-"
"I know who killed him," Garnet says immediately.
"Okay," Prudence says.
Garnet knows that the answer is "My mother killed my father," but is that even true? "My father killed himself" isn't any better.
"My father got himself killed," Garnet says, because that's the truth of it. "It was a manitou problem."
"Seems like it's going around," Prudence says. She lays her cards on the table. "Pair of aces."
"Three of a kind," Garnet says.
"Goddammit," Prudence says. She doesn't actually have to do anything to transfer her power to Garnet, though sometimes she puts out her hand like she's blowing it off her palm. She has to do something to entertain herself.
Then Prudence, essentially, slams her door shut, ejecting Garnet into the world. Prudence needs more contact, more of anything, some conversation. Sometimes she doesn't have that in her. She can't entertain guests all the time.
--
Garnet wonders about Prudence sometimes. She sees so little of Prudence-
That's not strictly true. A lot of the time she shows up in this flimsy peignoir thing that she wears with the confidence of someone who's incredibly attractive and not even a little bit body shy. She kind of feels like that's just what Prudence wears around the house; she'd say something like "I'm not changing just because somebody shows up to bother me" and make it Garnet's problem that she looked.
Prudence looks like some evil queen from a fairytale, and Garnet, who hadn't really known she even had an opinion about sex, can't stop looking at her strong thighs, her robe open just enough to show so much-
The point is that Garnet doesn't see Prudence often, and she wonders what Prudence must be doing. Garnet hasn't really seen the Deadlands outside of the room where she sees Prudence, though she thinks Prudence lives in some big house. There's nothing in the Deadlands except the manitou, which are all-powerful there. Garnet wonders if Prudence has anybody to talk to, if that's a thing Prudence even wants.
Garnet has no suggestions. Every once in a while, she writes to her mother, who never writes back. She has nothing and nobody else; everybody is a mark. That's what she agreed to when she chose to be a huckster, and that's how it's going.
Prudence has never actually said to her that she should look over her shoulder or mistrust every glance. Her father taught her that. Prudence just approves of it.
--
Due to the way this whole thing works, sometimes Garnet arrives from a perfectly normal day, just topping off her power in case of emergencies. Other times, Garnet is in the middle of a fight and needs it urgently. Prudence can tell the difference between the two, but Garnet doesn't actually move all that much faster. There's some kind of time dilation going on here. Playing a hand of poker isn't instant by any means, and surely she should get a wiggle on.
"How much does time slow down for you?" Prudence asks.
Garnet has her game face on, and she looks up in confusion when things don't follow the formula. "What?"
"Up there," Prudence says, even though based on her knowledge, the Deadlands float on the waking world, like one of those toys where a ball is suspended within a sphere, where she might just slide up to Garnet.
"Oh," Garnet says. "I dunno, actually. I think it's just a few seconds, but I- I mean, I'm not there to see."
"Right, yeah," Prudence says.
Prudence has been sitting here wanting a conversation from anyone. The only interaction she's had in days is the injured shadow monster who lopes around behind the house. Sometimes she leaves corn out for it, though it's incredibly jarring to watch it eat.
"What are we doing here, Garnet?" Prudence says, in a fit of pique.
"We're playing cards," Garnet says. When Prudence is clearly unsatisfied, she adds, "In order to have a symbolic duel that determines whether you lend me your power?"
"Doesn't that get tedious for you?" Prudence says. "I could give you so much more power if you'd just act like a proper warlock."
"I still don't understand what that means," Garnet says.
"I don't understand where the issue is," Prudence says. "Swear fealty and promise to do my bidding over all things, and I can offer you cosmic power. It's not complicated."
"I think maybe we should just play cards," Garnet says.
"I didn't know you were such a coward," Prudence says. She tosses her cards onto the table. "You can have what you want. Get out and don't come back until you've made up your mind."
And Garnet is ejected from the Deadlands.
Truly and genuinely, Garnet has no idea what Prudence is talking about. Hucksters are called warlocks sometimes. So are patent medicine salesmen and faith healers. There is no set of warlock rules, no description she could read and carefully follow, nothing like Hoyle's that she can just pick up and obey.
She doesn't have a ton of time to think about it, because a woman armed with a bowie knife is coming at her with speed.
--
And finally Garnet comes to Prudence without her cards in hand.
She literally has her cards in hand. She arranged them to play grandfather's clock and came to the understanding that, somehow, if she just fell inside the circle, she'd go where she wanted to go.
She's surprised Prudence, who's reading a book; somehow she's wearing even less clothing than usual, which confirms Garnet's suspicions. There is something on the floor next to her, and it hurts Garnet's head to look at it.
"Don't just stare at Grimmy," Prudence chides, skritching the shadow monster behind the ear. It wiggles a little, settling back down again.
"Uh," Garnet says. "My apologies."
"What do you need?" Prudence asks.
"To make the time go faster?" Garnet says, shrugging. "I'm on a train and I hate being there."
Prudence is pretty sure Garnet doesn't have friends, but then again, neither does Prudence, not anymore. "Pull up a chair."
"I might need your help more for the next little bit," Garnet says.
Prudence shrugs. "You know where to find me." Neither of them say anything for a while, just sort of looking at each other, at the wall, at the lantern over the table.
"Answer me this," Prudence says. "What do other patrons do?"
"Like, the other patrons on the train?" Garnet says, frowning.
Prudence rolls her eyes. "No, the other warlock patrons." Garnet doesn't say anything. "Like, y'know. Manitous or whatever."
"Oh," Garnet says, nonplussed. "Huh. Some of them just scream and gibber. Some of them are insidious and seductive. I reckon hucksters attract the latter because their game is-" She considers her words. "Civilized? Regimented?"
"The thinking man's manitou," Prudence says.
"Right," Garnet says. "Are you saying you don't know how to be a manitou?"
"What?" Prudence says. "No."
"It's just, you know," Garnet says. "I mean, you always turn up when I call. Most hucksters end up working with multiple manitous. I'm pretty sure that the harrowed just have the same one all the time, but I'm sure if I wanted, I could call another-"
Prudence's eyes flash yellow, the ground trembling. "You so much as look at another patron, I'll torture you to death over the course of decades and burn everything you've ever loved to the ground."
Garnet draws back. Prudence likes how fear looks on her, the way it makes her breath catch. She has every right, every responsibility to be afraid of Prudence. Prudence never even promised that she'd eat Garnet last.
And then Prudence snaps out of it. That was really intense, even for her. It feels completely in keeping for somebody who's basically an evil extraplanar demigod from beyond the stars. For the Prudence who does things like tend to the cactuses that grow around her manor, it's a lot.
"You should get back to your train," Prudence mutters. Grim Tidings lets out a whimper, and she strokes his head.
"Do you really want me to?" Garnet says, concerned. Prudence looks up, and Garnet is looking back at her like you'd look at an ailing friend. Prudence hates it, because she's not anybody's friend and she's not capable of ailing. Garnet's only being kind because she doesn't believe Prudence is what she said she is.
But in the moment, Prudence is still feeling a little bewildered and sore, so she just doesn't say anything.
"Do you like to play chess?" Garnet asks.
"For what stakes?" Prudence asks.
"Just to pass the time," Garnet says. She shrugs. "Most of my ways of relating to people are game-based."
Prudence looks at her for a moment. She reaches down and pulls up on nothing, her hand describing a pedestal, then a board. She waves and two sets of chess pieces arise from its surface.
"Oh, these are tacky," Prudence says, picking up one of the pieces. Garnet's not sure what's wrong with them, but Prudence makes a motion like she's scattering them to the winds. They're replaced with something thorny, altogether more ostentatious.
"That's so much better," Prudence says. The black pieces are in front of Garnet, the white pieces in front of herself. "Smoke before fire," she adds, when Garnet doesn't move.
Garnet picks up one of her knights and places it on a square.
"Bold," Prudence says.
"I don't think you'd like it if I wasn't," Garnet says, and Prudence gives a little smile.
--
Garnet is outside of Flagstaff when it finally happens. It's lovely country, and the shiny new city is bustling. There's still plenty of lawlessness in a town like that, plenty of shady poker dens where someone like Garnet is readily welcomed, so long as she'll shut her mouth.
Garnet is actually excellent at shutting her mouth. She can make easy dealer's patter when it suits the players, but when it doesn't, she says nothing other than "Ante."
That's probably why she's not actually involved in whatever's going on. She thinks maybe the situation is a business partner who's mad about the take. It doesn't matter, because a couple of men busted in with pistols ready and she grabbed the cashbox and bolted out the back door.
Unfortunately, it wasn't the quick break she expected. She got out into the alleyway, sure, and she was still holding the money. But three of them followed her, and she was never getting out of this without a hex. She had not a wisp of power to her name, situations on the road wearing it out, and she slid her deck out of her waistcoat like it was second nature.
"Oh hey," Prudence says. She appears to be reading a newspaper, only it's got upside down crosses and pentagrams on it. "Can you believe this? They've scribbled all over the funnies."
"I've got three big sons of bitches bearing down on me," Garnet says.
"Then deal," Prudence says, and Garnet quickly deals their hands. She's been fond of five card stud lately. It feels like it speeds up the process, though she's really not sure it does.
"I call," Prudence says, way sooner than Garnet would like. Garnet is aware at this point that while Prudence can force the cards to do what she wants, she doesn't. "Four of a kind."
"Uh," Garnet says, looking down at nothing except king high.
"You've lost," Prudence says, her smile wide and full of teeth. "You know what happens."
"Yeah," Garnet says, a sick feeling in her stomach. "Go easy on them."
"Nah," Prudence says, and both her and Garnet's eyes flash bright yellow.
Garnet comes to with blood all over her, in the same alleyway in Flagstaff. There's so much that her shirt is probably ruined. She has absolutely no recollection of what happened, and what she sees when she looks down at the ground in front of her makes the bile rise in her throat.
She makes a snap decision, stripping out of her waistcoat and shirt and just leaving them there. She bolts out of the alley; she's not far from the edge of the town, where the city gives in to the tree line. She's out and into the woods in minutes. She runs until she absolutely has to stop, out of breath, leaning against a tree for comfort.
She fucked up, she fucked up, no wonder it ended for her father like it did, she can't believe she could be so stupid. She's been so good. She's been so careful. It's been so easy to win at poker, so she's just kept doing it, kept on thinking that she could outsmart the manitou. Prudence is so pretty and somehow so sad, and Garnet thought they had something. Prudence made those guys look like they weren't even human, and she used Garnet's body to do it, like she was just a puppet, like Garnet always knew she was capable of doing.
She can't do that again, ever.
She has to find a river or something to wash up in, and then she has to go.
--
Prudence thinks Garnet might be dead.
Garnet hasn't been around in what feels like a year, though Prudence has no way of knowing what it feels like on Earth. She is so bored; she doesn't understand why being in the void felt so much less boring. Here she's got the occasional book, she can play catch with Grim Tidings, there are things to be done and she is so incredibly tired of all of it already.
She has tried to leave, to try to go back to Geth. She knows it's a stupid idea, that her life is over and there is nothing for her there, but much more importantly, she just doesn't know how. There are ways to enter the Deadlands; you can offer a deal or a wager, you can use objects of power to let yourself in, you can simply walk into the Deadlands at certain portals. However, Earth and the Deadlands are linked, a world and its mirror. Try to even figure out where Geth would be is like being at the bottom of a well, climbing out so untenable that the outside might as well not exist.
Even if she could get back, there's nothing to go back to. She was there when Dob died. They all were. They finally confronted Liliana, at long last putting an end to her tyranny. Liliana was strong, but they'd been getting stronger, and in the end, they had an incredibly cursed locket, and they only had to get it next to her skin.
Dob grabbed it barehanded even though it sizzled against his skin, and he looked at Corazon. "Write me into a book," he said, looking so brave and so foolish, and then he was taking off across the battlefield. In the end he died in Liliana's arms, as he'd so often wanted; she also died in his, which had never been the plan.
They mourned because nobody wanted Dob to be dead, and then they went on. They all knew that was it for the Guild, but adventuring parties always break up. That's the way the game works. Egbert founded a temple set in the middle of a lush meadow, and Merilwen just kept going out into the world, always seeking more. Neither of them are dead, probably. They just live in another dimension, and if Prudence could bridge that divide, maybe she could reach them again. That's not great, but it's not the same as losing them.
Prudence was eaten almost immediately after Corazon died. She hadn't spoken to him in years. He died with his family, his wife and his daughters and his grandsons. She had literally just heard, a letter he had arranged to send her that she never got to read, the courier still on the doorstep, the envelope still clutched in her fist when she experienced the revelation, borne into the void and swallowed.
At the time, she didn't think about it, not even once. She was riding the pleasure and pain of the presence of Cthulhu; when she thinks about it she still bites her lip. There was no room to be sad. Sadness is nothing, because it means nothing to the Great Old Ones.
She doesn't know if she has it in her to be sad anymore. It's kind of a waste, because for her, there will never be any Great Old Ones again.
Prudence spent most of her life trying to be left alone. She made every attempt to push people away, and only a few people ever wanted to break through that. Now it feels like a gnawing pit of pain.
Garnet is gone too, maybe forever. Prudence has nothing left to give. She has her books and her monster companion and that is almost certainly all he will ever have.
"I am determined to prove a villain," she says to her looking glass, and contemplates white streaks for her hair.
--
Garnet made a choice when she became a huckster, but there's no law that says she can't make that choice again.
It has been over a year. She found a farm to work on; they'd been skeptical, but she'd worked hard, and they paid her enough and didn't ask any questions. She hadn't thrown away her copy of Hoyle's, because a thing like that is too dangerous to discard. She lived a normal, simple life. She was even making headway on speaking to her mother again.
When Garnet turns back up, Prudence looks different. Garnet would swear her horns look longer. She's wearing all black, and it comes up to her throat, nothing soft about her. Something has happened to her without Garnet. Things have also happened to Garnet without Prudence, to be fair.
"What are you here for?" Prudence asks, looking unimpressed.
"I don't want to ever be out of power again," Garnet says.
"You've got the taste for it, huh," Prudence says, with an unpleasant smile.
"Sure," Garnet says.
"What happened to you?" Prudence says, like she's sensed something.
Garnet just really doesn't want to talk about it. It was Hoyle's that did her in. There was a new girl working, sharing the loft that Garnet slept in, and she didn't like Garnet immediately. She went digging in Garnet's things one day and found the book, and very unfortunately, she recognized it for what it is. She started shouting about their employers and calling the law and what she'd accuse Garnet of first. Garnet had nothing to defend herself with, no way to stop her. There was no power to reach for, just desperation and her bare hands.
Garnet made it look like self-defense, but she could not make it look like an accident.
"I don't understand any of this," Garnet says instead. "I don't know what a warlock is. That's just a word that gets thrown around."
"A warlock makes a pact with a patron for power," Prudence says.
"What did you have to do?" Garnet asks.
"This isn't about me," Prudence snaps, because sometimes she likes to think about Cthulhu, and other times it just hurts. Also she was a small child at the center of the worship of a cult, so it's not applicable.
"What do you want me to do?" Garnet asks.
Prudence realizes that she has Garnet's life, her safety, her security, her wellbeing in the palm of her hand. She could snuff it out and nobody could stop her. She could just as easily cultivate it, really create something out of her, not this piecemeal bullshit they've been dancing around.
Prudence snaps, and the poker table disappears.
"Get on your knees," she says.
Garnet looks taken aback. Prudence isn't an idiot; she knows Garnet looks at her tits, and if it bothered her, she'd cover them up. She really doesn't know how sexual she wants to make this, but the suggestion is obvious. Just in case it wasn't, she moves her legs apart; she's wearing leggings with a tunic, and the effect is working for her.
Garnet doesn't know what to do. She wants this, but she wants it in a defeated, tired way. She will never be anything but a huckster, but she'll still be a huckster whether she says yes or no.
"You'll feel better when you just do it," Prudence says. "The worst part of being evil is when you fight it."
"I'm not-" Garnet says.
"No, you definitely are," Prudence says. "What's your kill count? How long will it be before you do it again?"
Garnet thinks of the loft, and her stomach feels sour. "Can you keep me safe?"
"No," Prudence says. "That's your job. I make sure you can always do it." She shrugs. "Look, I can sit here and seduce you into it, but you already made up your mind. Don't worry about your conscience. It's a liar."
Garnet sighs. She steps forward, sinking to her knees in front of Prudence.
"There we are," Prudence says. She reaches out and runs her hands through Garnet's hair, and Garnet shuts her eyes. "You're gonna be a great warlock, you know that? You're smart and conscientious, and you'll be good at knowing when to use your power. You don't have to be sad about it. It's so much better than trying to pretend you're a normal person."
Prudence hasn't really noticed what's happening, but where her fingers run through Garnet's hair, it's turning lighter, redder. She's too focused on how Garnet is starting to relax under her hands. Garnet rests her head against Prudence's thigh, looking tired and soft.
"We're gonna do great things together, little warlock," Prudence says gently, and Garnet sighs.
--
And then Garnet is gone for a while, though not nearly as long.
Prudence thinks maybe it was the kneeling. Garnet obviously got off on the kneeling. Prudence really could have made her do anything, and maybe she will.
Prudence also got off on the kneeling. That had been a surprise. She'd been trying to manipulate Garnet using the fact that Garnet finds her sexually attractive; that's not the same thing as wanting someone, not even a little.
"Oh hey, it's you," Prudence says cooly.
"I'm sorry," Garnet says, out of breath. "I have a lot to explain. Can we play cards?"
"Fine," Prudence says.
"I promise I'll be back," Garnet says. "I just need to take care of some things."
"Five card stud," Prudence says, and Garnet deals the cards.
"I started traveling with some people," Garnet offers. Prudence thought that might be the case; she'd mentioned something about leaving to accept a bounty.
"Hm," Prudence says. She should change her cards just to teach Garnet a lesson.
"One of them is, um," Garnet says, in a way that makes Prudence look up at her. "She's very pretty."
"Okay," Prudence says, obviously annoyed. "I don't have to give you my blessing."
"Oh, I mean," Garnet says. "Not like that."
Yes, like that, Prudence wants to say, but your patron is not your girlfriend.
"I was going to tell you about my plans, but now I think you don't have the time," Prudence says, because being petty and powerful goes hand in hand.
"I really am sorry," Garnet says.
"Yeah, I'm sure you are," Prudence says.
Garnet gets what she needs and leaves.
Prudence really does have plans. She banishes the poker table and brings down the panel on the wall that's hiding a large black mirror. She runs her hand over it, and it ripples like water.
There's Garnet, doing a nice maneuver with fire, always a classic. There's a few other people, obviously known to Garnet. The one with the feathers in her hair is almost certainly the girl.
"Boring," Prudence says, just to make herself feel better. If Garnet would pick some dime-a-dozen saloon girl over Prudence, that's on Garnet.
It picks up Prudence's spirits a little bit. Garnet does dip in a little more often, more for acute spellcasting needs than simple power. Prudence honestly doesn't know if the pact is working. She's never been a patron and this isn't Geth.
"What happened with your girl, anyway?" Prudence asks, when Garnet turns up again.
"Between me and her?" Garnet says, sounding a little chagrined. "Nothing. I guess I didn't have the shot I thought I did."
Prudence should say something here. Garnet looks sad. She's not good with that kind of thing. She also has a very small amount of romantic experience, if she's supposed to give advice.
"There was a guy," Prudence blurts out. "This one time. There was a guy. He was in love with me."
"What did you do about it?" Garnet asks.
It's not exactly a question Prudence wants to answer. Corazon may have said that he loved her, but it turned out that his patience was not infinite. He moved on, married someone else, died old and fat and happy without Prudence there. He'd almost certainly have been worse off if she'd stayed.
"Uh," Prudence says. "I didn't."
"You didn't?" Garnet says skeptically.
"I just waited him out until he got bored and moved along," Prudence admits.
"That is doing something," Garnet says. "You made a choice."
Prudence rolls her eyes. "Did I, though?"
"Yes," Garnet says, and the force of it gives Prudence pause. "You knew what it would take to have him and you didn't do it. You chose not to have him, knowing you could have."
"Huh," Prudence says.
"Did you want him?" Garnet says.
"Didn't know then, don't know now," Prudence says. "What about you? Surely there were men."
"Oh," Garnet says. "I'm pretty sure I like women, at this point."
"Good for you," Prudence says.
"You never-" Garnet says, trailing off.
Prudence gives her a look. "With how bad I was at men, you think I was any better with women?"
"I've made it awkward," Garnet says, after a moment.
"Yeah, probably," Prudence says, though surely Prudence made it awkward.
"I should go," Garnet says.
"Be safe," Prudence says, and she doesn't know why she said it. She thinks about it when Garnet is gone.
--
The whole thing with Victoria and then the Horsemen and then Conquest moves very quickly. They're in the Deadlands, walking into Victoria's house; Garnet is stuck in some kind of trap that leads to Edie absolutely trying to kill her and getting extremely close. It would be amazing if Prudence just busted in through the wall and started kicking the shit out of Victoria; it would be wonderful if Prudence could pull Edie off of her. Unfortunately, Prudence is incredibly powerful but not omnipotent, and within Victoria's house, Prudence can't even see her.
However, they do leave Victoria's house, Conquest broken, the walls of the mansion beginning to shudder ever so faintly. That's when a massive winged something comes screeching out of the sky, spreading out in a puff of smoke and landing heavily on the ground. The figure is humanoid but slightly too big, wearing a traveling cloak so dark that it seems to absorb the light.
"Out of my fucking way, nerd," it says, shoving past Silas.
Garnet is so tired and so wounded that she kind of doesn't parse what's happening. To everyone else, the figure comes up behind her, arms outstretched, and grabs Garnet before she can even react.
"Prudence," Garnet sighs.
"Who did this to you?" Prudence snarls, holding Garnet to her tightly.
Edie goes completely still.
"Conquest," Garnet says. "The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse."
"So some fucking two-bit liar," Prudence says. "What has it done to you?"
"Beat me within an inch of my life," Garnet says, with a little laugh. "Easy stuff."
Nate looks to Silas, who shrugs, looking bewildered. Nate's met his manitou, and it was not pleasant. It was also not a huge, beautiful woman with twisted black horns. It does not look like a storybook villain and most certainly has never shown up to hold him.
Edie carefully walks away, putting the two of them between her and Prudence. Delacy is just there staring, openly fascinated, his eyes big. Edie takes him by the arm and carries him along with her; he makes a noise of protest, but she's not swayed.
"Let's hope the boy is just excited to see two women cuddle," Silas mutters. "I'll take a voyeur over a second huckster any day."
Neither Garnet nor Prudence is paying attention to this. "That's her house," Garnet says. She's resting her head against Prudence's shoulder, and she nods to it. "She hired us wanting us to destroy the entire world."
"Oh, hell no," Prudence says. "If you destroy the world for somebody, you destroy it for me."
"Would you want me to?" Garnet asks.
"That's always Plan B," Prudence says. "But what do I care if the world is destroyed? I don't even live there."
"Can I ask you for something?" Garnet says.
"You can ask," Prudence says.
"I think we're gonna go back," Garnet says. "If- I would hate to go this far and Victoria, Conquest, whoever, just walk straight out of her house and start over."
"You owe me," Prudence says, holding Garnet to her for a moment more and then letting go.
They do travel back to the waking world. They split the take, but nobody's interested in splitting themselves up. They go back to Croyd's Wrath together, looking for a new plan. Garnet is conveyed to the doctor, who gives her a little glass bottle after Silas stares at him hard enough. A shot of that, and everything feels much better, at least for now.
They go to the saloon, which is mostly dead but will serve them some dinner. Garnet sits at the bar; everybody will regret it if she has a drink, so she's sipping from a glass of tea and playing quadrille.
Delacy hops up onto the stool next to her, sitting there with his glass of milk.
"How come you get to consort with a demon?" he asks, because of course he does.
"Get is a strange word," Garnet says.
"Nate says you're not born a huckster," Delacy says.
"I suppose that's true," Garnet says. "But I have to accept that everyone around me must make a terrible sacrifice if I get it wrong."
"Why is that a problem?" Delacy says, with a kind of bone-chilling innocence that explains how he executed a man in broad daylight in front of his adoring fans. "What does she look like?"
"Didn't you see her?" Garnet asks.
Delacy shakes his head. "I saw her face, but that was it. She had that big cloak."
"Oh," Garnet says. "She's got red skin, and yellow eyes, and black curly horns with gold bands on them. Typical stuff."
"Is she, y'know," Delacy says, looking shifty. "Is she a devil, or is she a devil lady?"
"Is there a difference?" Garnet asks.
"You get pictures of devils in Bible stories," Silas says, from behind Delacy, and Delacy scrunches up his face, knowing he's been rumbled. "You get devil ladies in the type of pictures the boy here ain't old enough to be knowing about."
"Everybody knows about devil ladies," Delacy mutters stubbornly, moping off to cause some other kind of trouble.
Sometimes Garnet worries about Delacy's development, living out on the edge of nowhere with only adults, but only a normal teenage boy could find out she makes deals with an eldritch entity and ask if it was hot.
"Just between us," Silas says, motioning for a refill. "Is she a devil lady?"
"Yeah," Garnet admits.
"I don't really condone consorting with devils," Silas says, "but if you had to, surely you'd rather an attractive devil."
"Don't you think it would lead you further into Perdition?" Garnet says.
Silas gives her a look. "Begging your pardon, Miss Garnet, but at this point, surely you weren't thinking you were gonna get out."
"Well," Garnet says.
"Anyway, nobody looks at somebody like that without intent already in place," Silas says.
"You mean me or her?" Garnet says.
"I think you know exactly what I mean," Silas says, picking up his whiskey. "Much obliged," he tells the bartender, and he leaves Garnet to her thoughts.
Garnet's thoughts are not where Garnet wants to be. She's just gonna go sleep off this morphine and make a new plan.
--
It should be said, for legal reasons, that Prudence doesn't destroy Conquest's mansion.
Prudence is there when it's destroyed. She's sitting in a nice chair, her two shadow monsters beside her, just keeping an eye on the situation. She is there because she's prepared to execute Conquest by whatever means necessary. She doesn't like the competition, and she doesn't like how Garnet looked, beaten within an inch of her life.
Buildings in the Deadlands aren't really buildings. They don't really exist. They are reflections of the mental state and potency of the people who create them. Prudence doesn't know Conquest's story and doesn't need to; she'll never see the house's mirror in the real world. She can see that the house is already shaking, and she watches Conquest's strength fail, her faith gone, her hope destroyed. The house shudders itself apart, pieces of it ceasing to exist as they fall away.
"I should have brought marshmallows," Prudence says. Her shadow monster nuzzles her for head scratches. Things are normal again.
--
Garnet doesn't have a plan when she wakes up, because of course she doesn't. They're in one of the rooms above the saloon; Garnet doesn't remember coming up here, but she was on a lot of morphine. Edie is there, sitting on the other bed and lacing up her corset. She hasn't noticed that Garnet is awake, and Garnet just does not know what to say to her. She's almost certain that Edie never realized that Garnet was interested in her.
What would have happened if she had?
If Prudence finds out Edie's the one who almost killed Garnet, Prudence will kill Edie, and it won't be pretty. Prudence would have done the same thing if they'd broken up. She might have done the same thing if Edie had made any move at all. Garnet's head is swimming, and it's not the morphine this time.
"Why, Garnet," Edie says, noticing that Garnet is awake. "How are you feeling, sugar?"
"Fine," Garnet says. She'd like six or seven hours of sleep, but she's got things to do.
"Do you want me to get you some more morphine?" Edie asks, sitting down on Garnet's bed.
"I'd rather hold off," Garnet says. "I am feeling a little better."
"I feel terrible about what happened," Edie says. "I never wanted to hurt you like that."
"No, I know," Garnet says. "And I couldn't expect you not to defend your brother."
Edie smiles. "Think we should call it even?"
Garnet's mind is kind of all over the place, even though she's having this conversation now. Surely a few weeks ago, Garnet's heart would have skipped a beat at being this close. Now she's thinking about going back to the Deadlands.
"I will if you will," Garnet says, and Edie kisses her forehead, in an entirely sisterly way.
Edie gets up, going back to getting dressed. "Was that the manitou, in front of Victoria's house?" she asks. "It's just that it's usually hard for people to see them unless they're read in."
"I mean, I suppose so," Garnet says. "She's, um." She's never attempted to explain any of this, and as with any two groups of friends who don't know each other, bringing it all together is very hard. "She's my patron."
Edie's hands still, and she looks up, looking at Garnet in the mirror over the basin.
That's when Garnet realizes that while Prudence means "a semi-divine figure who provides power in exchange for fealty", Edie, a resident of the demimonde, heard it as "a person who pays the bills, potentially over an extended period, who you don't turn down if they want to take you to bed."
"Oh," Edie says.
Garnet doesn't really know how to negotiate out of having just said what she said. Before she can try, she thinks about all those exposed thighs, full breasts with fabric barely hanging on. She thinks about being on her knees at Prudence's feet, and she knows without a doubt that she'd pay almost any price if she could only touch.
That she feels that way isn't a shock. How much she feels that way is very surprising.
"I hope that you're being safe," Edie says, frowning.
"I don't think there could be anything less safe," Garnet says.
"While I'm sure that's part of the appeal-" Edie says, but there's a knock.
"Miss Edie?" Silas calls. "Are you decent?"
"No, but I've got my clothes on," Edie responds. "I'll come to you, Garnet's still resting." She turns back to Garnet. "Are you gonna be alright?"
"I'll be fine," Garnet says, on the verge of doing something extremely stupid.
"I'll be back in a couple of minutes," Edie responds, and she walks out, shutting the door behind her.
Garnet gets up, goes into the hallway, takes the back staircase, and is gone up the road towards Victoria's.
--
Prudence is feeling pretty good today, actually. She got to see an enemy destroyed, Grim Tidings and Portent got their zoomies out, she got to intimidate all of Garnet's friends. She's just been seeing to her cactuses, now headed back inside to see if there's anything to read.
Prudence stops.
She stands there perfectly still for a moment. Then she raises her arm and snaps her fingers, and Garnet appears in front of her.
"You realize that the Deadlands are a non-euclidian hellscape and you could have ended up millions of miles from my house?" Prudence says. She's too fascinated by how ridiculous it is to really be mean.
"I, uh," Garnet says. "I wanted to see you, and it- I don't want to play cards."
"You need to sit down," Prudence says. "You look like you're going to die."
"It's alright," Garnet says, though she sits down in one of Prudence's big chairs.
"No, it isn't," Prudence says. "Why are you on my doorstep halfway to bleeding out?"
Garnet closes her eyes. "Now it seems silly."
"I guess we're doing this now," Prudence says, and Garnet hears her rubbing her hands together. "If this kills you, my bad."
Prudence puts her hands on Garnet's shoulders, and something passes through them. Garnet's body jolts. She'd been in so much more pain than she realized, the severity of it clouding her mind. It still hurts afterwards; she wouldn't be able to explain that it hurts in her body and not in her head, the ache unpleasant but not so bad that it messes with her mind.
"Ow," Garnet says.
"Who did this to you?" Prudence demands.
"Conquest," Garnet says.
"Don't lie to me," Prudence says flatly.
"She stole the mind from one of my friends and convinced them I was a monster," Garnet says. "That's her doing it, no matter who actually attacked me."
"Hm," Prudence says. "Well. That does color things, sure. Anyway, why did you come up here?"
"I don't think I was thinking clearly," Garnet says.
"You should be by now, so make something up," Prudence says.
Garnet wonders if there's anything she can do to make this situation better, but there probably isn't. This is a silly thing she's done. Edie will walk back in and Garnet will be gone, and there won't be an explanation.
That's not true, though she doesn't know it. She is gravely injured and not nearly as quiet as she thought, and Edie and Silas watched her leave.
"You reckon we should stop her?" Silas asked.
"I think she might be going to the Deadlands," Edie said, frowning.
"I think she might be going to the Deadlands to-" Silas said, and he made a very evocative hand motion.
"Why, Silas Flint," Edie said, swatting him on the arm. "How do you even know what that is?"
"I wanted to see you," Garnet says. "I don't have a good reason to give you. I-" She shrugs. "That's everything. I never see you unless I want something. I don't want that to be the only thing between us."
Prudence looks her up and down, considering her.
Prudence is an ageless, deathless cosmic entity who was in her seventies when she was raptured, but for some reason her physical form is arrested at where she was when she was about thirty-six years old. She looks good, but she's looked good since long before anybody should have been looking. Being worshiped for her body isn't new and is rarely welcome. She's been messing with Garnet by being sexy at her, but Prudence really just wanted to make her uncomfortable.
"It would never work," Prudence says.
"Because you're a demigod and I'm your warlock?" Garnet asks.
"No," Prudence says, just to be contrary, "because I'm casually cruel and emotionally unavailable."
Garnet shakes her head. "You've never been casual about being cruel in your life."
Prudence is quietly pleased; that part is true. She's very deliberate about it.
"I'm sorry," Garnet says, looking so disappointed. She stands up from her chair. "I shouldn't have done this. I wasn't thinking straight."
"I mean obviously you weren't thinking straight," Prudence says.
"I wish there was more," Garnet says. "That's all, I guess."
It's so weird; Prudence would have very confidently said she was straight. In a very real way, she's been straight for hundreds of years. However, if she were straight, she wouldn't be enjoying the way Garnet is looking at her, open and full of want, adrift. Garnet would let her do anything, and Prudence is really getting off on that.
"Huh," Prudence says. She rubs her fingers together, looking at them critically, then touches her finger to the hollow of Garnet's throat. There's nothing at first, but then Garnet takes a shuddering breath. She sags, clutching her stomach. "You liked that, didn't you?"
"I don't know," Garnet says, still going through the aftershocks of having the most intense orgasm of her life out of nowhere, her body clenching around nothing. "It- it was good, but it hurt."
"If that hurt, let me torture you," Prudence says.
Garnet looks torn. "Are you sure?"
"Are you?" Prudence returns.
"What do you want to do?" Garnet says.
"What don't I want to do?" Prudence says. She lays her hand on Garnet's throat, not applying any pressure but definitely sending a message. "I think this time I'll make you come until you beg me to stop."
"Will you stop if I beg?" Garnet asks.
"Probably not," Prudence says. "I'm an evil entity from beyond the stars, not your little girlfriend. I'm only asking because I like you."
"What do you want me to do?" Garnet says, and she looks terrified, but under it there's such an intense longing that Prudence feels like she can sense it under her fingers.
Prudence draws back her other hand, and her nails grow into claws. She rakes them down Garnet's shirt, the material splitting open. She's wearing something under it, a tighter layer, and Prudence drags one claw down the center of it, exposing Garnet to her. The things she could do, that Garnet would let her have and beg her for. She could get very used to this.
"We're gonna have a whole lot of fun," Prudence says, her eyes glowing bright. She clenches her hand just a little, and Garnet shakes, her hips working. Prudence lets it go for a moment, then hits her again. There are tears starting to come to the corners of Garnet's eyes now.
"Cry for me," Prudence says, pinching Garnet's nipple and pulling it upwards. She gasps, going up onto her toes, and Prudence laughs. "What are you gonna do when I won't stop?"
"Do everything you want," Garnet says. "Please."
Prudence pulls her forward, and Garnet gasps as Prudence sinks her teeth into Garnet's throat. "You're gonna live to regret giving me so much latitude."
Garnet doesn't regret it for an instant. She's afraid; she's afraid of how intense it is, afraid that her body will just give out long before it's done. A mortal is almost certainly not supposed to go through this, and it's definitely more dangerous than what happened earlier today. Garnet can't fathom that anybody would want to stop feeling like this, no matter what it did to them.
Prudence is doing this because it's the highest love she can imagine giving someone: making them feel like Cthulhu made her feel. She knows Garnet is afraid, and that's good. Maybe that's why it really didn't work out with Corazon; he had no ability to be afraid of her. He thought she was softer than she was. He would be shocked she was doing this. That's a good trait in a friend, but it doesn't work for a lover, when you're a warlock.
Prudence isn't a warlock anymore. The pact is broken, the indelible unwritten. She's a patron. Her warlock's body and mind are hers to play with. No one else gets to decide what's enough.
When it's over, Garnet is kneeling on the floor next to Prudence. She has her head in her patron's lap, and Prudence is carding her fingers through it, her nails scratching pleasantly against Garnet's scalp.
"Do you want me to do something for you?" Garnet asks, sounding sleepy but peaceful.
Prudence almost asks what she's talking about, but then she realizes Garnet probably means head or something. Prudence is surprised to realize that she's very satisfied and not turned on at all. "Nah," she says. "I don't really need anything else."
"Will you, um," Garnet says, sounding both trepidatious and hopeful. "Will you want me to do that again?"
"Not tonight," Prudence says, because she has limits.
"That's not really what I meant," Garnet says.
Prudence realizes she can say anything she wants to. Nobody can or gets to tell her what the answer is. The power of being a patron is so strong that only she can define it. She's a little high on it right now, but that doesn't change anything.
"Yes," Prudence says. "Letting me torture you sexually is a warlock devotion. Can't be helped."
"Oh," Garnet says. She shifts a bit, getting more comfortable. "Okay."
They stay like that for a long while. Neither of them really have anything to say, but not in a bad way. It's nice to be here like this, even if Garnet does need to go back eventually.
Garnet looks fine when she leaves the Deadlands. Everything is chill and fine and good. She can style this out, not let anyone know she's doing the walk of shame from another dimension.
Nate is outside the saloon, puffing on a pipe and enjoying the stillness. He looks up when Garnet approaches. To Nate, Garnet does not look fine. Her shirt is only tucked on one side, there's a necklace of marks surrounding her throat, and she has a glassy-eyed look that Nate knows only means one thing.
"Nate, hi," Garnet says, leaning heavily on the porch rail.
"Good evening, Miss Garnet," Nate says. He's resolutely looking her in the eye. "The gentlemanly thing to do would be to offer you my coat, but you understand why that would be little comfort."
"Thank you," Garnet says. She puts her head against the railing. "You know stuff, right? Did you, um. Did you ever, uh, maybe hear about people having sex with God?"
Nate stares at her.
"Well, no," Nate says. "Quite the opposite, in fact. There are many tales about people having sex with the Devil."
"Oh thank god," Garnet sighs.
"They say great power can be achieved that way, at the price of one's soul," Nate continues, with a look like he hopes he's helping but is just going to keep going either way, "but that would require the Devil to literally exist and not be just, uh, just what we might term a tool of oppression manufactured by the church to manipulate the impoverished masses." He pauses. "Which of course I didn't say if anybody starts asking."
"I had sex with a devil," Garnet says.
"I want you to know I am not saying this because I don't believe you," Nate says firmly. "But we need to get you sitting down. You need some water, maybe a nip of brandy."
"Sure," Garnet says.
Nate walks her inside and sits her down in the lounge. Delacy spots them and comes over. "Will you get Miss Garnet a glass of brandy?" Nate asks him.
"Okay," Delacy says, headed off.
"You just relax," Nate says. "You'll be fine."
Delacy returns with Silas and Edie. "I think she's a bit addled from the heat, perhaps the morphine," Nate tells them. "She, well. She came in here saying something about having relations with God?"
"I knew it," Silas says. Edie keeps walking, going to join Garnet.
"That's such a terribly dangerous way of behaving," Nate says. "She can't be having relations with anybody in her state. She was beaten half to death yesterday. She needs to rest, not roll in the hay. She'll reopen her wounds."
"I gotta admit, Nate," Silas says. "That is not what I thought you were gonna say."
Edie sits down next to Garnet, taking her hand. "You alright, darlin'?" Edie asks.
Garnet really cares about Edie. That ship sailed a long time ago, and she doesn't really think about it anymore. She is thinking about it right now, for the simple and specific pleasure of knowing she never would have gotten fucked this good if things had worked out.
"I'm more than fine, Miss Edie," Garnet says.
Edie looks at her, and something passes between them. "Good for you, honey," she says softly, squeezing Garnet's fingers. "You deserve something for yourself."
"You wouldn't be saying that if you knew what she did," Garnet says, shutting her eyes.
"The hell I wouldn't," Edie says. "Had you walking all the way into Hell and leaving you looking like that? I want to ask her for pointers."
Garnet laughs. "She used some kind of healing magic on me first."
"Hold on, let me write this down," Edie says.
And life kind of goes on.
Prudence was kidding about the warlock devotion thing, but she thinks maybe she made it true somehow. They sure don't play poker as much as they used to, though Garnet still comes to her when she's in need. Garnet spends more time in her house; time is still weird between Earth and the Deadlands, and it makes it easier to carve out a little bit of room. Garnet is still traveling with the Wildcards, working on bounties, and she brings stacks of books back with her, things Prudence will like.
"What's this?" Prudence says, taking one off the most recent stack. Book offering day is her favorite day.
Garnet looks over. "Oh, he gave me that one on the house," she says. "I don't know why."
"Probably because he couldn't sell it," Prudence says. She starts flipping through it, but her hands still.
"What's wrong?" Garnet asks.
"It's, um," Prudence says. "It's nothing, just a stupid adventure story for stupid people." She tosses the book aside, though she immediately feels guilty.
She doesn't think about Corazon anymore- or Merilwen, or Egbert, or Dob, but she really doesn't think about Corazon. She knows she's never going back. She knows Corazon is dead. She's been in her feelings a little bit lately because, like, she's got this warlock and it's going really well, like it never did before, and why couldn't she have done this before now? She's pretty sure she's not a lesbian, which sucks because it would be the absolute easiest explanation.
"Are you sure?" Garnet says.
In the moment, Prudence can't put her defenses back up. She doesn't feel omnipotent; she just feels kind of bruised and sad.
"I told you there was a guy," Prudence says, and Garnet nods. "Well, he- He wrote books about our adventures, kinda like that one."
Prudence didn't read Corazon's books. Her tastes have expanded now, but at the time, she was only interested in tomes of great evil and hardcore pornography. Corazon's books portray Corazon, the character, as good, even though Corazon, the author, truly wasn't; also you barely got a fade to black. Boring.
"What happened to him?" Garnet asks gently.
"He," Prudence says. She pinches the bridge of her nose. "You have to understand that I'm a lot older than I look."
"Yeah," Garnet says.
"Not-" Prudence waves her hand. "This is how I looked in my prime. When I left Geth to be with Cthulhu, I was in my seventies. Without that context, this story is really different."
"Alright," Garnet says.
"We stopped traveling together when our friend died," Prudence says. "He tried to pursue me, I kept brushing him off, he got married to somebody else, and then thirty years later, he died."
"Okay," Garnet says.
"I hurt him really badly with my inaction," Prudence says. "I ruined our friendship. He was the only person who really cared for me, and I never even got any closure."
"Isn't the closure that he passed away?" Garnet says.
Prudence shakes her head. "I got a messenger telling me he'd passed away and that he'd left me a letter."
"What did the letter say?" Garnet asks.
"I don't know," Prudence says. "That was exactly when Cthulhu swallowed me."
"And you weren't angry?" Garnet says.
"Why would I be angry at Cthulhu?" Prudence says. "He always gave me what he promised."
"But you did get separated from Cthulhu," Garnet says. "You had time to read the letter."
"I don't have it anymore," Prudence says.
"Where is it?" Garnet says.
Prudence hasn't really thought about it. "I stuffed it in my pocket after the messenger gave it to me," she says.
"Then why don't you have it?" Garnet asks.
It shocks Prudence to realize that a huge part of the problem is that this wasn't what she was wearing when she left. She flicks a hand at herself, and she's wearing what she wore in her old age, all black with the belt pouches that had become popular, a ring of keys that are utterly inapplicable now. The tunic has slashed pockets, and she shoves her hands into them.
She pulls them out again, and in her left hand, she's holding an envelope.
Prudence stares at it. "I need you to leave while I do this."
"I get it, definitely," Garnet says. "Just call me when you need me, okay?"
Prudence wishes sometimes that Garnet were capable of not taking Prudence at her word; unfortunately Garnet is a normal person who gives people what they say they want. It leaves Garnet on Earth and Prudence alone in her house, with nothing but her thoughts.
The letter sits on the dresser in Prudence's bedroom, just staring silently out from its perch. Prudence doesn't know what to do with it. She has to read the letter. She's going to read that letter. When she opens that letter, Corazon will truly be dead. There will be no eternal maybe like there is for Egbert and Merilwen. Like Dob, he will be gone, and she will be finally, completely alone.
But she can't not read it. Somehow the thought of not doing it is so much worse; she pushed and she pushed until Corazon left her, but surely she never hated him so much that she wouldn't even read his final message.
She snatches the letter up all at once. The seal got broken somewhere along the line, and it just falls open.
Prudence,
If you're reading this, I'm already gone. I always thought it would be so cool to be able to time things to happen after I died, but it turns out you have to die in order to do that. It's lost its appeal.
I wish I could have said goodbye to you, but I know you wouldn't have wanted me to even if I offered. I hope that your life was what you needed it to be. You know that I loved you, but I don't expect that to mean anything now when it didn't mean anything back then.
In the end, I was happy. I hope you were happy too.
Signed,
CdB
Prudence lowers the letter, feeling numb. Suddenly there are tears dripping from her eyes. She sobs, unable to keep it in; it's good she's in the Deadlands, because the force of it sends a shockwave, shaking the land around her. Is this what grieving your best friend feels like? Is this what it means to delay millennia of sorrow? Is this what it feels like to know a dream is dead, because you strangled the life out of it? It fucking sucks.
In that moment, she is not a demigod or a patron or a warlock of Cthulhu. She is utterly miserable, the pain of it so sharp she can't breathe. She is so perfectly, terribly alone, sobbing into her hands and not even noticing that the walls of her house are cracking. Outside her shadow monsters are whining, scratching to get in, frantic with worry.
Garnet doubles over in the street, a pain in her stomach like she's been stabbed.
"Miss Garnet, are you quite alright?" Nate says.
"I have to get to the Deadlands," Garnet says, through gritted teeth. There are tears gushing from her eyes, and she has no idea why.
"What do you want us to do?" Edie asks. "You know we'll help you."
Garnet straightens up despite herself. She pulls her cards and fans them out. "Pick a card," she tells Edie.
Edie looks at her in alarm, but she doesn't try to countermand the request. She draws a card, looking warily at Garnet.
Garnet laughs, a little hysterical. "It's the Ace of Swords."
"Yeah," Edie says.
Garnet plucks the card out of her hand, and in one movement she slashes it through the air and passes through the pulsing, reverberating tear she's just put in reality. Before anyone can move towards it, the tear slaps shut behind her.
No one says anything for a moment.
"How'd you pull an Ace of Swords from a deck of playing cards?" Delacy asks Edie.
"That's a question to explore over whiskey," Silas says. "A lot of whiskey."
In the Deadlands, Prudence's house is starting to crack, her carefully chosen blacks and reds separating from each other, becoming nothing. She hasn't noticed and doesn't care. Nothing is in her but sorrow; nothing else matters.
And then there are hands on hers, gently taking them away from her face. Prudence is too miserable to protest, even though she's a mess.
"It's okay," Garnet says, wiping the tears away. "Everything is gonna be okay."
"I'm a monster," Prudence says.
"You're not a monster," Garnet says, which is an impressive feat for her, when she should know better.
Prudence shoves the letter into her hands. She probably shouldn't, because it might kill her or something, being an artifact from another world. Garnet unfolds the letter and reads it. Prudence feels like she can't breathe.
"You're not a monster," Garnet says, shrugging, as she folds up the letter. "Maybe you deserved for somebody to scold you a little bit, but everybody does sometimes." She holds up the letter. "This type of thing is more complicated than monsters."
"He was my best friend," Prudence says. "He's dead and he hated me."
Garnet grabs onto the nearest wall as the house shakes. "Why would you think he hated you?" she says gently. "He sounds like he loves you but he's frustrated. That's not the same thing."
Prudence is still crying, and the force of her sadness is going to kill Garnet. She's going to die in the middle of the Deadlands because her patron dropped a house on her, and the uniqueness of her death will not make it easier to swallow.
"Prudence, please," Garnet says. "He doesn't sound like he hates you. He sounds hurt and maybe angry."
Prudence raises her head. "He does?"
"Is that a good thing?" Garnet says, confused, but the house has stopped shaking, which is a plus.
"I already knew I hurt him," Prudence says.
"You made the letter appear," Garnet says. "Why don't you just bring him here and ask?"
"If I make him appear, I'll never know whether it's really him or just me projecting," Prudence says. "Besides, he doesn't belong to me. He belongs to the mother of his children who he was married to for thirty years, not his shitty ex-friend who didn't even have the good grace to let him down easy."
"You don't have to own him to miss him," Garnet says. "You're allowed to have complicated feelings about somebody. You're allowed to be sad that life didn't turn out how you wanted, even if you don't know what you wanted it to be."
Prudence sags, looking tired. That's when the door finally gives; Prudence's shadow monsters come bounding into the room, crowding in on both sides and sniffing at her. Prudence sighs. She grabs Garnet by the wrist and pulls her down into the pile; she needs to hold onto everything she has right now.
"It's gonna be alright," Garnet says, putting her arms around Prudence. This isn't what she signed up for. It's also something she couldn't deny anyone.
Prudence's shadow babies weird Garnet out a little bit, but the house isn't shaking, so she'll take it. They sit there for ages, until Prudence's breathing evens out. Garnet does have things to do, but the idea of leaving is completely untenable.
They do get off the floor, eventually. Garnet fixes her a drink, and they sit in Prudence's study. Prudence looks calmer, though still dejected.
"Maybe it would help to talk it out," Garnet says, petting one of the shadow monsters who won't leave her be. "What would you say if you could say anything else to him?"
"I don't have anything else to say to him," Prudence says. "He didn't do anything except want me more than I wanted him. If there's anyone I need to say something to, it's me."
There is silence as Prudence's eyes go wide. Suddenly it seems so simple. The link between this dimension and that one is Prudence. She can't go back because each dimension already has a Prudence. They slip against each other, they exist like marbles in a vase. Maybe making contact is the best she could ever do, but not trying is what got her here in the first place.
Prudence walks over to her chessboard. She runs her fingers over the pieces, thinking. She hovers over the knight, just about to pick it up.
"The queen is the most powerful piece," Garnet points out. "It can move in any direction."
Prudence moves her hand, picking up the queen. She holds it up to her mouth, whispering into it. She goes to the window, raises the sash, and then chucks the queen as hard as she possibly can. That's pretty damn hard when you're what she is, but she is trying to throw it into another reality, maybe also back in time.
Prudence lowers the sash, turning back around.
"Did it work?" Garnet asks.
Prudence shrugs. "I have no way of knowing. I just told myself something that I would find incredibly irritating."
"I guess that's one way of doing it," Garnet says. She stands up, walking over and putting her hands on Prudence's arms. "What can I do that would make you feel better?"
Garnet's a very even-tempered, collected person. Anybody would look at her and say she was normal to the point of being boring. Garnet is also a warlock who gave herself away for great power and never really looked back. Something is very wrong with her.
Prudence never felt any kind of way about anyone except Corazon and Cthulhu. She is beginning to feel some kind of way about Garnet. Out of the three of them, Garnet is the one who's here, with this Prudence who is stranded, still trying to put together a life. That isn't the only necessary qualification, but it sure doesn't hurt.
"You're clever," Prudence says. Her smile is all fangs, which is the only way Prudence knows how to be flirty. "You'll think of something."
--
"Hey, Prudence," Corazon says, a billion miles away, a lifetime ago.
Prudence doesn't look up. She's trying to translate this scroll they picked up, and it's not being cooperative. "What?"
"Do you wanna come have a glass of wine with me?" Corazon says. "The tavern in town has that stuff you like. I noticed it when we were there yesterday."
It isn't like a thunderbolt or a slap in the face; it isn't like her body moves without her, her voice professing her love with no input from her brain. She just has the sudden realization that if she never says yes even one time, she'll never know. There's time tomorrow to tell him to fuck off. A glass of wine is just a glass of wine, and it's not like Corazon could make her do anything she didn't want, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. But the idea of not knowing how it would have gone suddenly seems so terribly disappointing.
And that's it. The feeling doesn't come back, but she also doesn't recognize it as interference. There is one semi-divine, mostly-infernal nudge, all that made it through and all that ever will.
"Yeah, alright," Prudence says, rolling up the scroll.
"Really?" Corazon says, surprised.
"Sure," Prudence says. "That stuff's hard to come by."
"Great," Corazon says. In the secret, soft part of her, she finds him endearing when he's Corazon the confused and hopeful virgin, which is a shame, because it's blatantly obvious that his least favorite version of himself.
They go and have a drink. Whether one glass of wine changes anything at all is completely unknowable. Maybe he's murdered in the street on the way. Maybe she spies the love of her life across the bar and just leaves him there. It doesn't matter. The odds have shifted, and that's as much as anybody can do when they're blindly trying to rummage around in the past from a dimension- or many dimensions- away.
It ends differently. That's all anybody could hope for, when they hate how it ended the first time.