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I Summon the All-Seeing Eye	By : all_possible_worlds Category: +S through Z > Star vs. The Forces of Evil Views: 29523 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Star Vs. the Forces of Evil or its characters. I made no money from writing this story.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Chapter 15: To Keep the Peace, We Will Play the Game
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To keep the peace, we will play the game
Royal secret from royal shame
- The Songstrel Ruberiot (original continuity)
----------
"I will hunt down the remains of the monster army, and scatter them, without country or leadership," had spoken Moon the Undaunted. Moon the Lizard-vanquisher. Moon the Mighty Warrior Queen of Mewni. Moon the God-damned Fool!
Turns out that, unlike breaking The General's siege in the first place, hunting down a disbanding army of various non-human monsters involved a lot less brave proclamations and regal last stands than one might imagine. What it did involve, however, were way too many months-long tracking expeditions through the most recondite wastelands that Mewni and the surrounding lands had to offer: scorching desert after damned scorching desert, barren tundra after miserable barren tundra, icky swamp after bloody icky swamp! They were lizards, for Selena's sake! Of course they all went into hiding in swamps. No, not near swamps, or around swamps, in them! As in: inside the yucky leach-infested waters. And where they hid, Moon the Undaunted, Queen of Mewni, had to follow.
It was not like she could just send the royal knights, either, and use her time to focus on administering and rebuilding her kingdom. Even though she certainly had a better brain for that than half of the damned royal council. Her best friend, and ambiguous sweetheart, River, stayed on her behalf, as the queen's chosen representative. He did so, even though he hated the bureaucracy as much as she welcomed it, and would have been much happier than her pursuing Toffee's former goons across the land.
But, no, young Queen Moon had to go on every single hunt herself, which meant leaving someone she trusted behind. The lizards did not run from the knights of Mewni, and they certainly did not run from River Johansen, they ran from her! A seventeen year old awkward girl in ill fitting plate armor, who could barely drag around her two longswords, much less swing them at them with any degree of precision. But she had the magic wand, and she had the spell that could kill them permanently; the power which would break that which couldn't be broken. Never mind that she did not plan to use Eclipsa's dark powers ever again in her life. As long as the monsters didn't know that, she could make them flee by her mere presence.
She had to admit that she sometimes enjoyed her newly found reputation as a powerful warrior and no-nonsense queen. She certainly liked that more than the 'perfect little princess' facade she had been forced to take on all those years prior. But either was as much a fiction as the other, and in the end, the only thing she was, behind it all, was Moon. Not Queen Moon of Mewni. Not Moon the Undaunted. Just, you know, Moon. Right now, back at her castle after five weeks out in the wilderness, just-Moon needed a bath.
"Oh, My Queen, welcome back," a mischievous voice greeted her from the ledge of a balcony, as she climbed the stairway up the tower to her royal bed, and bath, chambers. The inter-dimensional sorceress looked at her with both overt mockery and genuine delight to see her back.
"Hekapoo," Moon replied evenly. "I suppose I could say the same. Didn't know you were in Mewni."
"Well, you know, My Queen," she stressed and dragged out the title to the point of ridicule, never mind the fact that Hekapoo was one of the few people in Moon's life who were most definitely not among her subjects. She had been doing that ever since Moon defeated Toffee, way over two years ago now. Then again, they didn't cross paths so often after that. They were both rather busy people these days. "I have had my own pest control problems to deal with, dimension hopping abominations and the like. Very dull stuff. How goes, well, doing your job? I heard you are, how shall I put it? ...literally swamped with work."
"It goes: tiring, wet and rather stinky," the mewman counted with her fingers. "So while I am glad you are deigning to honor us with your always charming presence and sense of wit, Hekapoo, I do really have to take a shower now."
"Of course, My Queen," the council member bowed, way too deeply for it to be sincere. "Let me know if you need any, well, assistance."
"Assistance with what?" she responded without thinking, "Showering?"
She suddenly realized what she was saying, and felt the embarrassment creep up to her cheeks. She hoped the mud and dirt in her face would conceal her blush. What the hell had she just said? She looked at Hekapoo, who shrugged. Wait, had the sorceress actually been proposing, no... no way. It couldn't be.
Moon had to admit that she enjoyed her rare verbal sparing with the Forger of Scissors more than a little. She liked River, a lot, no change on that count. But one of the things that had made him stand out, was that he believed in her when no one else would. Now they all believed in her, and Hekapoo was the one who challenged her, when no one else dared. The one person undaunted by Moon the Undaunted. The only one, well, other than Moon herself, secretly poking fun at the fiction of the great warrior queen.
Hekapoo was also the one person that could respect her royal magic, but also understand its limits. Alright, the only person that wasn't her great-great-great-grandma encased in ice, a literal wizened old goat, a giant cosmic entity taking calls through a crystal ball, or a magical elf living inside a book. None of them counted. Not, you know, in that way. In the way in which Hekapoo's hips moved and drew Moon's furtive eyes to the sorceress backside every time she left the room. The way she licked her lips, and the edge of her small fangs, with slow expert motions. The way in which her smile promised wicked things to the young queen if she only ever took her up on her ever more blatant innuendos.
Dammit, Moon had thought not being able to decide between war and peace, or between which boy she liked, was hard enough. Now it turned out that winning the war was so much easier than maintaining the peace, and she didn't even know if she liked boys or girls in the first place!
"Well, My Queen, as your humble advisor, I am glad to offer my assistance, with whatever you might desire..." Hekapoo finally replied, after letting her bright yellow eyes linger over the monarch body for a while, as she considered the question. Moon swallowed hard. The feisty sorceress had been teasing her for a while, or so she had thought, never quite certain if it was only her own overactive imagination. But there was no mistaking this offer, though. It was a straight line if she'd ever heard one. The older woman was literally offering to join the young queen in the shower!
"Eh... I... I mean..." she stammered. "Look, Hekapoo, I... you are... is not that I don't... Sorry! Going to shower now, sorry!"
Young queen Moon raced up the stairs, leaving behind an unsurprised, even grinning, Hekapoo. She ran to her room, through the back door of her bedchamber, into the royal bath. Moments later she was alone, laying inside the tub, letting the hot water embrace her, reminding her of the heat that the fiery sorceress herself radiated, and feeling... quite daunted.
----
"I am love, all-conquering"
The words were clearly nonsense, but the cold eldritch tone with which the emerald apparition spoke them rendered them a clear threat. Moon closed her eyes for just an instant, taking a moment to collect all that she was: queen, mother, warrior, mage, wife, lover, protector. She dipped down and summoned the magic around her into a powerful shielding bubble.
Not a moment too soon. The being from the meteor raised a diaphanous hand, and the sound of thunder followed. The closed glass doors that led to the ceremonial balcony shattered into a million pieces, each becoming a fast and deadly projectile, flung towards her, the songstrell, and her royal guards. The barrier spell held back the shards, protecting Moon and her subjects. All around them, tapestries, furniture, and even the stone walls themselves were ravaged by the ferocious crystal hailstorm.
The green fiery body floated in, slowly gliding behind the glass barrage. As it left the conflagration outside, its outline became more and more clear. It was made entirely of ghostly green flames, with two obvious exceptions: its head was an ornate silver mask fixed in an unsettlingly calm rictus, and its arms ended in two silvery gauntlets of similarly intricate design.
With reflexes honed through a lifetime of experience, Moon moved to counterattack. She raised her left hand and five rays of bright blue light emerged, one from each of her fingers, crisscrossing in the air and taking separate paths to converge on the creature's position, giving it no way to escape or avoid the hit. They all connected. A deafening brassy sound ringed inside Moon's head, and a sharp jolt of pain shot through her arm, right before it fell, numb and useless, to her side.
Moon had experienced magic resonance before, but never like this. Whatever the being was, it was not just magical in nature, it was made of magic itself. Worse than that, it was magical energy so antithetical to her own, that a direct hit with her spells resulted in catastrophic levels of backslash. Which meant... "Oh, no!"
The creature pointed at the glimmering blue bubble shield around her and the mewman soldiers. Suddenly, a green tint began spreading through the spell. A second later, the bubble popped, explosively. It threw the queen of Mewni back a dozen paces, slamming her against the throne room's back wall. She felt dizzy and disoriented.
"Protect the queen!" the guards shouted, charging the apparition, as Ruberiot ran for cover under a chair. They fought valiantly, and briefly, and so regrettably pointlessly. They never stood a chance. Some managed to hit the assailant with their weapons, while it reached out to gently tap the rest with the fingers of its gloves. In both cases, the final effect was exactly the same: the merest contact between them and the apparition sent each knight flying through the air with a blinding flash. They convulsed for a while after hitting the ground, as if struck by a lightning. Whether they were in agony then, or dead before they even landed, was anyone's guess. What was certain is that once the spasms stopped, the brave men would never move again.
"W... what do you want?" Moon asked.
The creature turned its expressionless mask towards her, then, by way of a response, it raised a silvery hand and pointed it at her chest. Arcs of green arcane power begun discharging all around in the magically saturated air. Moon closed her eyes, and tried desperately to summon all that she was once more, hoping against hope it would be enough.
----
"You summoned me, My Queen," the fiery sorceress asked sardonically, as she walked into the Mewni council room. At the end of the table, Moon sat regally. She wore her battle armor, clean and shinny this time around. No swords to be seen. Her wand, the true symbol of her power, laid in front of her on the table. As Hekapoo arrived, the young monarch made a show of moving the wand from her left to her right side, as if re-arranging a piece of tableware.
"Yes, Hekapoo," Moon spoke, in full formal register. "I'd like to," she paused, "conduct negotiations."
"Negotiations? In the middle of the night?" Hekapoo pointed out to the starlit sky through the window, then at the empty seats through the council table. What was the kid's game. Whatever it was, it was rather novel, which made it all the more tempting to play along. "Between Mewni and who? I don't really do ruling stuff, and you know I can't speak for the high commission on my own. So, who am I representing, then?"
"Yourself," the beautiful royal brat declared. "And I shall represent primarily my own interest, not that of Mewni," she clarified. "So, Hekapoo, I'd like you to elaborate as to the nature of the offer you made to me two months ago?"
The sorceress racked her brain to figure out whatever the young queen might be referencing. Two months was a long while, particularly if you spent over a hundred years of it on a dimension where time simply ran differently. But Hekapoo had impeccable memory, and, to be absolutely truthful, she had been thinking about the Queen of Mewni far more than she did about most people, during that vast time.
"Oh," she recalled, with a grin. So that was what this was about? This should prove rather amusing. "I offered to help her royal highness take a bath, if I recall correctly."
"Funny thing that," Moon spoke. Her tone was haughty and controlled, but Hekapoo could see her trembling ever so slightly, it made her own spine shiver in anticipation. "I recall water is not generally to your liking, Hekapoo, so why would you propose such a thing?"
"Simple, My Queen," she dragged her tongue over the uttered title, as she finally took a seat, right atop the table, on the side opposite of Moon. "It is the other factor in that scenario that would be to my liking."
"Myself," Moon stated, plainly, then raised an eyebrow. "Why?"
Hekapoo dragged a hand over the mahogany wood, pushing aside maps and notes, causing them to fall to the floor. "There are only a few people, of the vast many I meet in my line of work, whom I find, well... interesting. Lately, that includes you. My. Queen." She fixed her own eyes on those of the monarch of Mewni.
It was no lie, there were only so many mortals that the Forger of Scissors didn't come to find absolutely lame, or downright soporific, after mere minutes of interaction. When such a rare person presented himself or herself, it couldn't but pique her interest. It had been literally millennia, in her own subjective time, since she had met someone quite like Moon: at once so innocent and so strong, hard to predict, indomitable. Undaunted they called her and, however much she made fun of it, she had to agree the title fit.
"Shall I assume, from this little ambush of yours, that you find me interesting as well?" the sorceress asked, taking the offensive.
"What if I do?" was Moon's whole response.
"Then my offer... remains quite open," Hekapoo stated, running a finger through her own leg.
"As I said," the younger woman responded, in a surprisingly controlled tone. "We are conducting negotiations. I would hardly be a wise ruler if I agreed to an offer I didn't understand, would I? What exactly are you proposing?"
The sorceress was confused. As far as she was concerned, she was being exceedingly clear.
"Let me cut to the chase, Hekapoo," Moon interrupted her thoughts. "I am interested. Curious might be the better description. But there is another one I am interested in as well. He and I are not betrothed, and we don't owe each other anything right now, but longer term, I think it is only natural that I pick him, if he would have me. If I take you on your offer, Hekapoo, then I can't promise you I will be with you long term, and I can't even promise you I will acknowledge it to the outside world. As a queen, I have to do what's right for Mewni. That also means, that if this would in any way disturb my relations with the Magic High Commission, in a professional capacity, then I must decline..."
Hekapoo laughed raucously, almost rolling on the table at Moon's long monologue. So that was her concern? That was what troubled Queen Moon the Undaunted about her little offer? As the Forger of Scissors began punching the table in a fit of hysterics, Moon seemed shocked, almost offended. It had probably taken her a good long while to come up with that little speech in her head. She was sweet, and naive, and oh so young and tender. Hekapoo felt herself blush. Doing her best to keep a good thing going, she forced herself to calm down from her guffawing.
"Moon, I have been around longer than you can possibly conceive," she explained. "You would not be able to promise me the 'long term' even if you gave me your whole life, and, more to the point, I am definitely not asking you to do so! You have your one - the Johansen boy, right? - I have a half-dozen right now, give or take, across as many dimensions. And I assure you, I can be professional when needed too. You are not even the first Queen of Mewni I have had this dance with. Can you handle that?"
"I can," she replied simply, and the sorceress believed her easily, despite her young age. "How about my last request? This is between the two of us, no one else must know."
Hekapoo wasn't quite sure why that would be such a big deal. Then again, the internal affairs of Mewnian politics were, more often than not, too tedious for her to inform herself on them any more than was absolutely necessary. "Sure, whatever."
"Then," Moon smiled, with transparently forced confidence, "I believe we have reached acceptable terms."
The sorceress licked her lips, and lazily stretched herself over the table, closing the distance between herself and the Butterfly child (and she'd be a child to her, even if she were a hundred rather than just seventeen). As she did, the forger leaned forward, showing the goods to Moon, through the low cut of her dress.
"So... ehm... now what?" the queen spoke, suddenly sounding very unsure. So much power, so much control, and yet so inexperienced. Deflowering her was going to be the most fun thing she did in ages, Hekapoo thought to herself.
"Now you shut up, your majesty," she replied, "and you let me give you what you bargained so hard for."
She leaned forward and kissed the queen's closed lips, enjoying the way she tensed in nervous anticipation. Hekapoo inhaled the scent of the young ruler. Apparently the song was right, she did smell of lavender. But she also smelled of sweat, and determination, and over two years of pent up desire. Moon Butterfly slowly opened her lips to receive her proving tongue. Soon after surrendering, she was meeting it hungrily with her own.
The forger ran a hand slowly up the length of the queen's arm. It was indeed silky soft as well. Despite the heat she knew her own skin radiated, her touch seemed to leave gossebumps wherever it trod. Her pointy ears could hear the beating of the girl's heart, still so pure, and yet so eager.
Carefully, she began removing the loose-fitting armor, piece by piece. It was harder work than most any garment, and even the sorceress could not easily break it apart, had she tried, for the armor was of course magical in nature. It frustrated her at every step, increasing her own sense of urgency. For a second she wondered if Moon had planned it so. No way, the young queen was too inexperienced in this matters to plan a trick like that, was she not?
Moon herself ran her fingers through Hekapoo's long hair, carefully avoiding the crackling flame. She firmly caressed the base of her right horn, which sent a pleasurable shiver through her skull. They removed each other's crown at once. Moments later, the forger finally managed to unburden the queen of her steel breastplate. A blue cotton blouse beneath peaked up just barely, with the ruler's small breasts. She ran two white hands over them, savoring the gasp that action elicited from the mewman sovereign.
"Anyone played with them yet?" the forger quipped. "Other than yourself?" she teased.
"None of your, ah, business, H-poo," Moon retorted.
The sorceress simply took the opportunity to sneak her hands under the blouse, to tease them directly, with soft calculated pinches. However, as she began to lift the fabric, the queen interrupted her, "Wait, I want to see yours first..."
"As you command, My Queen," Hekapoo quipped, and gladly pulled down her top, letting her, quite significant if she could say so herself, assets, out into the night air. To her surprise, Moon moved quickly, and soon she felt the mewman's lips close around her left breast. She suckled like a babe, with hungry abandon, and it did things for Hekapoo she didn't think anything did for her anymore. The young queen alternated circling with her tongue and literally sucking on them, and she eventually begun switching from one breast to the other. What she lacked in technique she more than made up in enthusiasm. It also didn't hurt that the Forger of Scissors found the whole situation unbelievably erotic.
"Queen Moon," she eventually interrupted her new lover, "lie on the table." she commanded. The most powerful woman in all of Mewnie did exactly as she asked.
It took agonizing minutes to remove the lower half of the royal battle armor, but eventually Hekapoo had her price. She ran her hands along the length of the queen's legs once and again, making her whimper, then she ran her tongue over the same path.
"Hekapoo, please," Moon begged. The vulnerable yet desirous tone almost sent the older woman over the edge from just the sound of it.
"Please what, My Queen?" she teased her one final time.
"Please... lick me... you know, there," the mewman whimpered as she parted her legs. The armor in her words and actions as discarded as that which used to cover her body.
"As you command, My Queen," Hekapoo replied. She kissed Moon's other lips and rolled her tongue over the sides and length of her opening. Gently at first, she drew the girl's arousal, until the always composed Moon was trashing around, yelping softly as she bit her own hand, and pushing herself pleadingly onto the sorceress face. When it seemed like the mewman couldn't take more of her slow torture, she began picking up the pace, running her tongue in circles around the mewman's most private nub, gently sucking into it. She settled into a much faster rhythm soon, and then stayed there, as the queen of Mewnie trembled and broke into loud lustful moans. Her hands grasped at the important papers in the table and crumpled them beyond recognition, her legs flailed and kicked down a globe and her own royal wand. She came violently, sweetly, and gloriously, under the forger's careful ministrations.
Another day, not far from that one in fact, and many more times after that, the young queen would repay the favor. But for now, the fiery woman was quite content with this conclusion. She had finally gotten through all the walls of Moon the Undaunted.
"Ah... ah...," Moon breathed heavily. She was almost as red as the sorceress hair. "You don't think... do you think... anyone heard that?"
"Probably," Hekapoo replied. "But hey, I kept my end of the bargain. I was discreet. Not my problem if you were not... My Queen."
----
"Moon!" Hekapoo shouted horrified as her portal opened right in the middle of Mewni's throne room. She spotted the queen immediately. She was laying on the floor, her eyes closed. The powerful mewman looked resigned and defeated, as a humanoid shape made of emerald blazes raised a hand ominously towards her prone body. The sorceress felt, more than saw, the devastating magical force building up within the apparition. No way to reach her on time, no way to block the attack even if she did, none except...
With swift movements, Hekapoo broke her own dimensional scissors into two separate blades, and with each half she cut a distinct portal through the fabric of space: one to her left and one to her right, facing each other. The far end of the first portal opened between Moon and her opponent, whereas the second portal connected only with the dark void between the stars, in some dimension far away from this. Once both portals were open, Hekapoo jumped back. It was not a second too early.
A huge blast of green flames emerged from the appendage of the woman-shaped conflagration. It went in through the first portal, which the sorceress had placed between it and Moon. The blast then emerged in the left side of the two consecutive openings that laid before the Forger of Scissors. Finally, the flames disappeared into the right-side portal, flowing harmlessly into the void. And yet, Hekapoo could sense a tremor as the magics passed through her gateways, as if reality itself shook as the malignant spell was forced through its walls more than once.
An expressionless silver mask turned towards her, and, fortunately, away from Moon. The abomination then began floating, slowly, in her direction.
"That's right, come at me, you big nasty candle!" It was something someone had once said to her, but, the sorceress felt, it applied even more so to this monstrosity.
All around herself, she began summoning her clones, until a veritable army stood ready to oppose the deadly intruder. They lunged forward as one, for that was what they were. Each of them wielding the divided scissors as a pair of daggers. If need be, they would rip the very fabric of the dimension to shreds, right from under this phantasm's flaming form. They would do that and more to protect Moon. Her friend. Her lover. Her queen.
The damned thing avoided every hit. Moving as fast as lightning itself. Perhaps literally so, for it was a being of light and flame. The creature avoided each and every one of her cuts. Miniature portals to nowhere opened and closed up in the air, so fast that no mewman eye could keep track of them, as Hekapoo slashed at the very foundations of space from every direction and every angle. Yet not a single one of them caught the incorporeal being. In the back of her mind, the sorceress imagined she could hear a laugh, as the expressionless mask stared back at her in contempt.
Hekapoo felt a pair of metallic fingers against her chest. The light physical impact was followed by an overwhelming magical current. It consumed her body, burning her insides to ashes, and extinguishing the flame that was her life. She felt herself die, again and again, as the creature popped her clones like soap bubbles. The agony of a dozen excruciatingly painful deaths was enough to paralyze her remaining selves, to cloud her thoughts, and to leave her unable to coordinate her one-woman assault force. Twice a dozen Hekapoos fell to the ground in unbearable agony.
----
"Thank you, Lekmet, Romulus, for your eloquent words. Mewni will of course support the Magic High Commission's edict on this matter," Moon proclaimed, with a nod.
It had been almost four years since she assumed the throne of Mewni, almost four years since she fought Toffee and became Moon the Undaunted. In that time, she had grown to be respected not only as a military leader, but also as one of the most competent administrators the kingdom had ever seen. Under her reign, Mewnie had grown more prosperous than it had been in over a century, at least for the mewmans, if not for the monsters. Slowly, she had gained the respect of all members of the high commission as well.
"Hekapoo, may we speak in private?" Moon asked, as the members of the commission begun making motions to leave.
"Of course, Queen Moon," the sorceress replied, with a polite business-like nod. But as soon as the last of their peers was out of sight, her expression turned into a knowing smirk. "Or should I say, My Queen?"
"Hekapoo... I am afraid we do have to talk, for real this time," the mewman continued, somberly. She avoided the other woman's eyes, knowing if she saw them she might not be able to continue. Instead, she looked out through the window.
"Really?" the sorceress asked, teasingly. "We do? I thought you just wanted to recreate our first time, Moon. Do you remember? It was right here."
The forger ran a finger suggestively through the surface of the council room's table. In the last two years, the two had met occasionally, as their incredibly demanding lives allowed. They had joined one another in the queen's chambers, out in the forest, across dimensions, and even in the long promised royal bath. They had never once revisited this room, except for official business. Yet, for many months after their first encounter, Moon always felt a perverse pleasure during long and boring debates around this table, recalling the much more exciting activities it had once witnessed.
"Hekapoo," the queen spoke in a quiet, tentative tone, one she rarely ever used anymore. She had become used to being sure about so much, yet now was so terribly unsure. Not of her decision, but of its consequences, and her own ability to follow through with them. "I am marrying River before the summer solstice."
The sorceress blinked, and she looked perplexed for a second, hurt even. But in a moment that face was replaced by a soft smile, one Moon rarely saw in the forger's face. Not her usual smirk, and not the fake polite smile of the full officer of the Magic High Commission, but a genuine, if bittersweet, smile.
"He is an excellent choice, Moon," Hekapoo agreed. "He will be a good husband for you, and a good king for Mewni."
"Yes, thank you," Moon agreed. "But, well, you realize this means we can't continue... you know?"
"Yeah, no big deal, a brief fling for me, either way," the sorceress replied, but the queen could notice the slight tremor in her arm. "Did he know, though?"
"Yes," the mewman added, "he's known for a long time now."
"And I assume he asked for us to stop?!" Hekapoo sounded irritated, like she considered it rude for River to demand his own future wife to be loyal to him.
"No, Hekapoo, he didn't... but, I need to do what's good for the kingdom, and what's fair for him," Moon retorted. "It is my decision, not his. For what is worth, I am sorry..."
"Do you love him?"
"As much as I have ever loved anyone in my life," Moon admitted, truthfully. But she kept to herself the rest of her thought: 'just as much as I love you'.
----
Moon saw the bodies of her lover and friend collapse to the floor. The sight was enough to pull her back into her senses, and then a familiar voice drew her back into the fray.
"Darling, catch!" shouted River, as he threw her two swords at her, and ran down the stairs, unsheathing his own weapon. She knew he was not prepared for this fight, just as well as she knew she could never dissuade him from fighting alongside her.
Moon closed her eyes, and dipped down into her own being, summoning forth all her will to protect them all: her husband, her lover, her subjects. Radiant butterfly wings and four extra arms sprouted from her torso. She caught both the swords with the upper pair. The middle arm on her left side, however, still dangled down, immobile.
Fully transformed, she flew into the deadly circle in front of her, eyes narrowing in determination as she saw the abomination execute Hekapoo's motionless copies, one by one, with cold precise motions. She struck at the torso of the being with one of the Royal Vorpal Swords of Mewni. It passed through the jade-colored flames harmlessly. At least, Moon observed, the magic of the swords didn't seem to produce the same backslash as her own. On the other hand, the creature seemed to not even notice the hit, or herself, as it focused on exterminating the sorceress' avatars.
Determined to interrupt the massacre before it was too late, the queen pulled back into the air, and then, with all her strength, she charged downwards from the sky, pointing the tip of her right-hand sword towards the back of the silver mask. It was fortunately corporeal, and metal impacted metal with a deafening sound. But while the mask showed no dent from the hit, Moon's precious magical sword broke like glass. Pieces of steel flew all around them.
The mewman had managed to distract the phantasm, however, as the silvery face turned expressionless to face in her direction. Taking advantage of the distraction, ten Hekapoo clones rose back to their feet and lunged forwards at the same time towards the apparition.
"Moon!" she heard a cry echoed tenfold. "I know what she is! We need to get Star's wand! I should have realized before, whatever you do, don't..."
The being raised a single hand up into the sky, and an explosion of singular potency discharged into every direction. Moon was flung through the air once more, impacting into the ceiling. River, his valiant charge interrupted, was pushed away into the corner of the room, left unconscious by the strength of the blow. Hekapoos hit the walls all around the throne room, all but one vanishing on impact.
The fiery creature turned towards the one remaining Hekapoo, and began gliding leisurely in its direction. No! No way Moon would let this happen. She would not let her lover die before her very eyes. She would not let anyone else die. She was Moon the Undaunted! Moon the Lizard-vanquisher! Moon the Mighty Warrior Queen of Mewni! She claimed those titles and more, with all the might they might confer, and all the weight of their obligations!
She closed her eyes once more and pulled all her six hands together. Even her broken arm responded to her commands, thus was the strength of her will. She dipped down into herself, deeper than ever before, and summoned all she was, perhaps all she could ever be. Her hopes and her fears. Her anger and her love. The darkness from deepest depths. The light from highest heights. Magical resonance be damned. A ball of blue power, bright like the midday sun, burned in her hands, and from it extended forth a beam of pure magical power. A personal conjuration, wordless and nameless. The brightest spell of Moon the Undaunted!
The being turned once again to face her. From the flames emerged two other pairs of glove-less fiery arms. Six to match Moon's own. It mirrored the queen's gesture, and a ball of blackness, darker than the starless sky, emerged between its hands. A dark beam, contrasted by green fire, rose to meet Moon's spell.
"Moon, nooo!!" she heard Hekapoo cry out.
Darkness and light collided, and a sound like the firing of a colossal cannon resounded through all the vastness of Mewni. Magical resonance like this world had never before seen reverberated through the air, before converging back onto Moon, and onto the emerald being. She felt as if her flesh was melting. Moon shed a last tear of regret, as her last thought went not to Hekapoo, or to River, but to her daughter, to Star, to a thought she had before she even met her. And then there was only darkness.
----
Hekapoo felt the queen's hand lazily drift across the back of her hair. Her other self, the one behind Moon, hugged her tightly in response. They were all naked in the royal bed, naked and spent. The mewman lied nested between the two clones, embracing one and being embraced by the other, while the sorceress enjoyed being at once the little and the big spoon.
"You know, Hekapoo, River and I are trying for a child," Moon stated, matter-of-factly.
King River, bless his soul, had suddenly remembered that he had an important hunt to lead, deep within the forest of certain death, for an elusive creature that came out only at night, exactly the one day the Forger of Scissors was around. Honestly, Moon had to be commended on her decision, for that if nothing else. It wasn't even that she and the queen's husband got along all that well, but apparently the king was glad to get out of the way if being with the sorceress made his wife happy. In fact, she suspected, it had probably been River that pushed Moon to go back on her previous decision to end things with her, less than a year after their marriage. Hekapoo had to say, to her own credit, that she had given it her best effort to make the man's wife very happy indeed.
"Well, glad to know you two are having fun," she quipped. Moon laughed. It was so rare for her to laugh these days.
"We are," Moon retorted. "Jealous?"
"Heh, pu-leeze, don't make me laugh," Hekapoo ran a finger along the mewman's back. "Should I tell you about this fighter I met on the arena of the underworld pits? He fought with a wooden twig and wouldn't even kill. He had muscles in places even I haven't seen before. Or about this guildmaster, lord of a far domain, with rituals that do things to you you can't even imagine? Or the gruff human colonel, deployed for years away from his wife? Or the dimensional priestess, sworn by sacred vows to chastity? Or the she-pirate, with the steel sharp wit and a tongue like the tide?"
"Alright, Hekapoo, I get the idea. But, well, do you tell them tales of the magical queen in the far away kingdom?" Moon asked, rather undaunted by the sorceress bragging.
"Not once," she grinned. "Because, as I remember, she swore me into silence."
Moon chuckled, but then went serious. She remained silent for a long while, and Hekapoo knew her well enough to know it had nothing to do with their discussion so far, or her own many affairs.
"You know," the queen's tone turned dark of a sudden, "I am scared."
"Scared?" Hekapoo asked curiously. "Of childbirth? You? My fierce queen undaunted?" she teased. But she turned the version of herself in front of Moon back to look at her directly, to embrace her from both sides.
"Heh, not the birth!" Moon rolled her eyes. "It is what comes after that worries me. Can I raise a kid? I try to be a good queen, I am not sure I can be a good wife... But I do wonder, can I ever be a good mother?"
"Are you asking me? You must truly be worried, then!" The Forger of Scissors had never been a mother, not once in endless centuries. She was ill suited to be the caring type. "Well, for what is worth, I am sure River will be a dotting father. And I know you can do anything you set your mind to... My Queen."
"Hekapoo, Toffee is still out there..." Moon closed her eyes, her voice sounded distant. "What if something happens? What if I can't be there, to be a mother, good or bad. I don't want my kid to have to go through what I went..."
Tears begun falling down the queen's cheeks. Tears long repressed, the scars left behind the queenly mask. The fire sorceress hugged her lover tightly, from all sides.
"Moon, it won't be like that," Hekapoo reassured her. "Even if there were a monster in this dumb dimension capable of besting you, he would first have to go through me!"
----
Mewni castle was built by ancient magics, cast by powerful queens of old. That was perhaps the only reason the place hadn't just been leveled to the ground by the clash between light and darkness. Even so, cracks ran across all walls, floor, and ceiling, of the royal throne room. Green flames crackled all around, burning ancient and priceless tapestries. Precious vitrails had been smashed to dust.
None of that was worth a damn, however. Not now that the one truly precious thing this place had ever held laid demolished on the ground: six motionless arms and two lifeless eyes, not even the movement of her breathing to be seen. Moon. Her precious Moon. Even if she lived to see the death of the whole multiverse, Hekapoo knew, she would never meet someone like her, not among a million lovers in a million far away lands.
In the middle of the room, offensive by its mere presence, stood a six armed body of emerald flames. It regarded the sorceress with a silvery visage of indolently rigid metal.
"I. Am. Going. To. End. You!" cried Hekapoo. It was a promise, a sacred covenant with all dimensions. She would avenge Moon. No other option existed. Not acceptance. Not failure. Not death.
Her flame became a blazing bonfire atop of her, her hair became a twisted in the air as if lifted by a tornado only she herself felt. There was only one of her left, but one was enough once all restrain had been abandoned. With her left blade, she cut a portal behind the apparition, and with her right, a portal directly in front of herself.
The second portal opened to the bottom of an ocean, deeper than any found on Earth or Mewni. Water sprung forth from it, pushed to supernatural velocity by thousands of atmospheres of pressure. It hit the creature of flame and lightning and it pushed it into the other gateway. Hekapoo tore a third hole into the fabric of this dimension to follow in pursuit, and closed all three portals with a gesture as soon as she was through. She would not dare devastate Mewni with what she needed to do. Honestly, she would barely have cared, except for it had been precious to Moon.
The place she had chosen to be the abomination's tomb was an empty dimension, pure whiteness as far as the eye could see, in every direction of the map. It had up and it had down, it had something that passed for ground - a blank marble-like expanse that formed an unending floor - but little else.
The green burning cosmic shit-stain stood up unharmed, with a gesture it instantaneously turned the water around it into vapor. Hekapoo begun to open up portals to the most inhospitable worlds of which she knew. Bursts of acid, hails of snow, burning lava, and a menagerie of infernal beasts, all came out of the many doors she cut. Yet the insufferable magic malediction with the silver face resisted all assaults. It stood there, impavid, taking all of her anger in silent mockery.
"Well, have it your way, you undeserving dimensional pustule! See how you like this one..." she flew up into the air, and raised her scissors, one final time, to cut a hole into the sky.
At the center of creation, like at the center of all things, laid a raging inferno of death and fire. Hekapoo braced herself, to open that final door, to the place that was the forge of universes in the same way that stars were the forges of planets. She knew the instant the tear opened, she herself would be incinerated into nothing, and she did not care, so long as her opponent died with her. So long as she could avenge Moon.
It did not happen so, however. The moment she lifted her scissors, a silver gauntlet caught them, forcing them shut. It had taken every attack so far without response, but this, apparently, it would not allow. Hekapoo felt the destructive magical force flowing through the blades of her scissors, as the phantasm held them. The magical instrument soaked the power, protecting its creator. It sent the magics far away, spreading the damage. Across universes, the forger knew, thousands of dimensional scissors were glowing green, burning up with arcane corruption, their etched names erased by a deadly hex aimed at herself.
"You know, I didn't come for her," Hekapoo heard the being speak, inside her own head. It finally spoke back to her now. Now that there was nothing left to say. "I came for you, she was merely in the way."
The sorceress eyes began to cry, despite herself, she felt herself crumble. It came for her? For her? That meant she had caused Moon to die. She had killed her. If she only had gone back, like the rest of the high commission, if she hadn't spent the night on Menwni. But then, why her?
"You already know why. Because you knew me, because you would eventually understand," the voice was cold and monotone, but the tone sounded somewhat like Moon's kid, like Star. "Since you touched me once, upon a dream."
Hekapoo had known what this being was, as soon as it had first touched her clones, because she had felt the magics that made it up once before. A dark spell, binding two people. A thread of lust atop a heavenly soul bond.
Then Hekapoo realized her mistake. She had come here to kill Moon's murderer, at any cost. Her own life a bargain by comparison. But not only was she bound to fail against such an overwhelming foe, even in victory, she would have dishonored Moon's memory. Moon would not have wanted her to avenger her death, she would have wanted her to allay her greatest fear: that her child would be left to stand alone against the night, as Moon herself once did.
She had to survive this! To escape somehow! To be there for Star. To warn her. To, to explain to her what this foe was, and... that it wasn't her fault, not really! Summoning all her resolve, Hekapoo let go of her scissors, and called upon the magics she had long used to forge them. With her bare hands, she tore a crack on the dimensional wall. It was not how it should be done, she wasn't even sure it could even be done like this, but she had to try. The pain was unbearable as she dug her own nails on the fabric of reality. She tumbled, rather than jumped, into her own portal. As she fell, the tunnel began to crumble around her, and she knew she would likely not make it whole to the other end.
'Well, if I can't, then perhaps that horror will not be able to get out from that place without a pair of scissors either,' Hekapoo thought, right before she lost consciousness.
----
Ruberiot crawled timidly from under the debris. The throne room was unrecognizable. His eyes hurt from the dryness and the flames. His leg felt painful and his chest sore. Everything around him was muted by the shock of what he had just gone through, but it remained hellish nonetheless. The stuff of a hundred epic and sorrowful arias. In the end, however, he had survived.
"I am alive! I am alive!" he shouted in relief.
"Not for long, boy," came a cold furious voice from right in front of him. Ruberiot looked up to see the king, King River, bruised and singed, kneeling over a still figure in the center of the room. He didn't turn away from the body, even as he spoke, "Not for long if you don't scram from here right this instant and leave me bloody well alone!!"
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