Wintergreen

a properly laid and unlit campfire is a summoning circle for the lesser-known succubus Irinvia, Bringer of Flame, Wearer of Flannel, Seducer of Outdoorspeople.

once summoned, campers may attempt to bargain a fraction of their souls to Irinvia for either carnal entertainments, wilderness knowledge, or to conjure the one critical item that they forgot somewhere between packing list and woods (typically a can opener, a hammer with a stake extractor, or bug spray that isn't expired).

despite the majestic tone of her shoulders, the perfection of her pixie cut, and the artful wrap of her shell jacket around her generous hips, Irinvia has claimed more souls from replacing flashlight batteries alone than she ever has from carnal entertainments or instructive nature hikes. □

It was barely even a hack, really. She was just passing through and dropped in to say hi. She regretted that she couldn’t stay longer.

You work out later that she must have noticed your gaming PC was unlocked while you were in the bathroom, dropped a DLL into the game’s folder in %AppData% that redirected a slowly increasing percentage of texture loads.

You’re headset on and half an hour in when you first wonder what she’s up to. Usually this game’s a good way to clear your head: a mild workout, a repetitive core loop. You’re distracted enough by what she might be doing in her little apartment right now, a city away, what expression is on her face, whether she’s thinking of you, that your concentration slips and you take a hit. Damn. You had a good combo going.

Between levels, in the hub, you see her face on a poster. Well, someone that looks like her. Probably stock art. You should take a screenshot. You flick a joystick and teleport over and it’s gone, replaced by a higher level of detail. Just seeing what you hoped to see, perhaps.

You’re halfway through a difficult section, waiting for a cooldown, when you see her. Absolutely for sure. She’s slightly sideways and stretched as an impact decal across a wall, but that’s her. You know those square frames, those glittering eyes, that smug smile. Is the texture asset an easter egg? Did she work on this game? She never said. This time, you take a screenshot.

And then a storm of particle-effect-heavy enemy weapons fire detonates over your head. Their shrapnel is hundreds of replicas of her face, billboarded, facing you, still facing as you move again, and then they fade. You bring up a weapon to respond, on reflex, and its ammo counter is an orange version of her; you fire, and she’s gone again.

You keep playing. You don’t usually get this far. You might break a personal record before you text her to say, haha, good one, you got me. You dodge, you weave, you counterattack, as more and more surfaces are replaced with her. She’s everywhere. On your blade. In the clouds. Warped across the surface of enemy mechs.

You can’t handle it any more. Every texture is her, walls and floor and units and explosions all blurring together, inferable only by where there are seams between her, ripples across the face of her regard. You’re suddenly short of breath.

You kneel, dropping to a real floor jarringly just short of the virtual floor. You let the controllers slip from your grasp and thrust your hands into your pants, into your underwear, to where they’ll do some good. The headset still shows you the game world, a churning kaleidoscope of her, everywhere.

You finish hard, panting, almost sobbing, alone in your living room, underwear slick with fluids, headset still tying you to your gaming rig, a tether to her will. Your body shakes.

An unclear moment later, you shrug the headset off. You’re sweaty, your eyes are a little twitchy, you must look a mess, but the only thing you want to do now is grab your phone. You open the chat client, thumbs tapping out what you feel is an eloquent complaint, or a greeting, or a declaration of surrender:

HEY.

So, you found it? :3

… yes.

□

succubi adapt to their prey thru both classical and pseudo-Lamarckian evolution. this is why we had medieval succubi who scared the shit out of monks, but they've since become modern breeds like the hot ones on metal album covers, or adorkable software-engineer-eating specialists like Mel. imagine how that process might have proceeded in other timelines:

succubus #1: yeah i'm from Earth-1, i mean, it's okay. but look at you! you're like eight feet tall and covered in armor plating and spikes and shit! hardcore! so that's what humans over there are into, huh?

succubus #2: i'm considered pretty runty for Earth-26, actually. i have to stick to the low-radiation zones most of the time, but i do get to meet all sorts of interesting humans that can't handle the "heat"!

#1: that's a gnarly scar, can i ask…

#2: oh yeah, aren't your humans… excitable? ours sure are! i was wondering, because you barely seem to have to subdue yours, given your thin hide and almost total lack of blast marks. does that get dull?

#1: uh

#2: i'm sorry, do you not have foreplay on Earth-1? you know, with the missiles?

#1: no it's like. whips. or cuddling. usually one of those, sometimes both? missiles seem kinda… extra

#2: not even lasers?

#1: not even… lasers… wait. okay. like approximately. how much of your "humans" are metal?

#2: like most of them. the outside anyway. and the bones

#1: and they're… tall?

#2: oh, yes, sometimes tens of meters

#1: and how many legs?

#2: four to eight is common but y'know, takes all sorts, right?

#1: okay no? there's like one sort. okay two-ish and they come in colors, but the details barely matter. one more question, i'm sorry, you've been so interesting

#2: no go ahead, i do love talking about my job

#1: do yours beep

#2: do yours not?

#1: okay i see the problem. yours actually all died out a while ago, and you've adapted to try to fuck their surviving autonomous war machinery, haven't you

#2: honey, what do you mean, "try"

this post has received a voice-acted adaptation from the talented Lily Vers, who is not on Cohost, so here is a Fedi link: