Chapter 2: Shroud


Kyouko wasn't sure how long she had been standing in front of the forest.

The enormity of what had befallen both her and the world hadn`t settled upon her yet, and while she was still hazy and unfocused, she wasn't yet ready to plunge headlong into unknown territory. A distant part of her whispered that she was spared for a reason, and she didn't have the resolve to quash it as she normally would.

She might have stayed longer if not for the sun.

She looked back at the gate and falling snow. There was a small hole in the clouds through which a patch of sunlight was creeping towards her, she welcomed it. In retrospect, she probably should have been more cautious after looking into the gap. The sun was setting with a sickly, rusted colour and surrounded by a a black halo.

The rays immediately began to sear her flesh as the patch reached her. Stifling a cry, she backpedaled into the woods, stumbling through the shin-deep snow. Then a few seconds later she found herself on her hands and knees in it.

At least I can cool my burns.

Gritting her teeth, she forced herself back up, and then into a brisk walk. Nothing would get accomplished by standing around, wasting magic on burns and frostbite.


The trees were blackened husks, leering at her as followed the path deeper through them. She skirted a few treacherous shafts of sunlight filtering down as she went, but they gradually grew less frequent as the mesh of branches above thickened. Yet, somehow enough snow managed to get through to blanket the ground almost as thickly as outside.

She kept walking, walking until she needed magic to suppress the soreness in her legs, until looking back only revealed branches and snow, until she had lost all track of time. Even stark, harsh light at the end of the tunnel would have been more comforting than the cavernous darkness she spied at both ends. Even searching for the witch`s energy yielded no sense of progress; the sheer reach and intensity of its influence destroyed and useful sense of scale and distance.

The lone magi tripped and landed in the snow once again; for a moment, she considered staying there. The numbness was very inviting. But then a shred of will power pushed her to her feet, and she continued forward-

Or was this backwards? Which way had she been facing?

Why am I bothering?

How did she intend to face this witch alone when Walpurgisnacht had overwhelmed her, Homura and Mami?

Suddenly, Kyouko was acutely aware that the older girl was no longer with her, and that she probably didn't get lucky enough to survive.

The vermilion girl reached out telepathically, searching for the slightest brush of another consciousness, to no avail.

She was alone again.

It hurt even more than she had imagined. Yet, it was familiar to her, it was the very same pain over which she had sworn to use magic only for herself. But she couldn't regret opening herself again; the time they had spent together, their final battle, it had been worth it.

She looked around at the mourning world, preserved under an icy burial shroud.

There was nothing left for her here.

Mami, did you keep your promise?

Kyouko's partner could have been waiting for her already.

Souls gems were actually quite fragile, she recalled. She pulled her own from her chest; her fingers were waxy and numb: frostbite. Her eyes were watering and her face stung from the wind. As she stared at the dazzling blackness at the core, her mind worked slowly; one thought broke through the mire.

I want to see Mami again.

Whilst pondering how best to break it, she gazed at her reflection in the surface; there was a mark on her neck. It too, was familiar. An alarm was ringing shrilly in the back of her mind, screaming at her to stop and think as she raised the gem over her head.

That mark had almost looked like-

It had nearly reminded her of-

A witch's kiss!

Suddenly she was aware of the foreign magic permeating her mind; she nearly dropped her soul gem in her haste to stop the throw. Although still in a haze, she regained her faculties enough to examine the mark in her reflection again, before focusing her own magic, erasing it. A witch powerful enough to kiss a hardened magi was a fearsome enemy indeed.

As the lancer regained her faculties, she located her footprints in the snow and prepared to continue.

And perhaps...?

She reached out again, mind and magic both clear this time. Her consciousness expanded outward, combing the barrier until-

There was someone else. Faint, but undeniably present.

"Mami!"

A moment of heart-pounding excitement and terror passed before she received a weak connection, "...Youko..."

"Where are you?"

"...Can't hear..."

There were a dozen things she wanted to say to Mami, and while she wasn't sure she would have be able to express them in words to begin with, she was still frustrated that they would have to wait.

"I'll find you."

Newly invigorated, Kyouko began running down the path; moments later, the trees started to thin out once more and the ground began to slope upwards.

She was almost out; the irony of nearly having ended it all so close to the end was not lost on her.

As the branches over her head grew sparser the gray sky greeted her once again. It wasn't significantly brighter, but she was perfectly content with that if it meant avoiding the abhorrent sun.

Once only saplings remained at her sides, she stopped to look around; a cliff face rose steeply to her right and fell steeply to her left. She was near the bottom of a spiral path traveling clockwise up a massive hill.

Or perhaps it was simply a tiny mountain?

In any case, she estimated it to be about the height of a five storied building, one which she didn't have the patience to slowly circle.

A rush a magic to her legs was all that was needed to send her leaping up the cliff face to the next tier of the path; thrice more and she was standing on the snowy peak.

The view was breathtaking, certainly not beautiful, but breathtaking nonetheless.

From her vantage point she could see deep into the barrier; the heavily snow-burdened clouds swallowed up the sky over the entire land, allowing only the occasional crepuscular ray of sickly orange to slip through. It was not an elegant winter either; high winds howled and the thick, ashen snow came in claustrophobic volumes, seeming as though it might swallow her at any moment.

On the other side of the hill the trees became less numerous, but with a correspondent increase in size, several even coming to her own eye level.

Though a lapse in the snowfall she was able to see what lay beyond even those: another gate like the one she had woken up near. Even at her height, she could see no way around. The only differences between the two were colour, and the fact that this one was open.

She was closer this time, so when she reached out to Mami, the connection came through strong and clear.

"Kyouko? Thank goodness you're safe!"

"..."

"Kyouko?"

"Yeah, I'm glad we made it too. Listen, we need to regroup; do you see that huge hill?"

"I take it you want to meet there?"

"Yeah."

"Very well, but I have a familiar to deal with first."

Was that a roar she heard echoing out from below?

"Mami, by any chance, are you in an area with huge trees?"

"I am."

The distant register of a rifle confirmed her suspicions.

"I'll meet you halfway."

Kyouko summoned the spear to her hand; it seemed it would be of use yet.

Then she returned to the path below; from there one of ancient trees was close enough to make a leap of faith. She took a running start before launching herself from the edge, simultaneously extending her spear. With a practiced motion she cracked it like a whip, sending the head out in an overhead arc before it wrapped itself around one of the tree's warped limbs. The makeshift grapple held, and she allowed it to carry her until she was perpendicular to the branch before letting go.

In the back her mind she realized how fortunate it was that she had learned how to fall properly. The blanket of snow deadened the impact, so as she hit the ground and rolled, her still-empowered legs hardly felt it.

There were flashes coming through the snow drifts in the distance and Mami's rifles could clearly be heard amongst the shrill winds. Kyouko maintained her momentum, the roll segueing into a sprint as she reformed her spear once more.

In her experience it was actually better not to warn someone before springing to their aid, lest they become distracted by the greeting and subsequently incapacitated.

The fact that it made her feel like an action hero was certainly a benefit as well.

But alas, she didn't have time to revel in the sensation as she vaulted Mami from behind and engaged-

An angel?

Or a crude approximation of one, at least. It stood nearly thrice her height and its bones were the only part of it distinctly present: deep blue ice carvings which mimicked the human skeleton on a grander scale. These were surrounded in glimmering particles and sheets of creased light which suggested a more substantial body, but refused to detail it. The red magi blinked, thinking the creature's wings were a mere trick of the eye; seemingly transient, they reminded her of the light lines in a long-exposure photograph.

She supposed it was actually truer to the biblical angels than the popular image of them. Back when she was a member of the Sakura church, she had been stunned by the number of followers who had never actually read the holy texts. Most people never learned that real angels were not merely winged humans.

All those late nights reading the bible beneath the candles returned to her for an instant; she remembered pondering the mighty Seraphim, whose true bodies were hidden by their six wings, never to be looked upon by mortal men. Supposedly, their brilliance was too great, and would burn away any who saw them, but perhaps they were "never to be looked upon," due to their transient nature, as with her opponent's?

"Kyouko!"

But her musings were promptly dispelled as the familiar lurched forwards and swung a massive, clawed hand at her head. Instincts and hundreds of battles worth of muscle memory took over as she back-stepped, feeling the claws sever a few errant hairs from her bangs. The maneuver brought her back to Mami's side.

The two made eye contact; nothing needed to be said as they began the battle anew.

The gunner peppered its upper body with gunfire, forcing it to raise its arms in defense. Simultaneously, Kyouko went in low, tearing into its right thigh and revealing that there was indeed flesh on the skeleton. Riding the momentum of her attack, she slipped past it to avoid a retaliatory strike before spinning, whipping her spear like a striking cobra to embed it between the familiar's wings.

The rogue angel wailed in pain, and what she assumed to be anger as she tore the spear out, taking a strip of the ethereal flesh with it, as well as a single wing.

Newly brought off-balance by its loss, the familiar was subjected to a flurry of attacks by the pair of puella magi. A spear driven through the knee, a musket ball shattering a wrist, a laceration along the spine, bullet holes between the ribs; until it could endure no more, and with a final cry dissolved into falling snow before the wind swept it away.

Kyouko planted her spear in the snow to lean on, drained from exertion and unsettled by the situation. While slow and clumsy, that familiar had taken an unprecedented amount of damage, even more than some witches she had faced. The two of them would not be able to win a large scale battle, so for the time being, she simply hoped those particular familiars were few in number.

On occasion she had wondered if slaughtering scores of familiars was somehow reprehensible, and for the moment she hadn't the strength to dismiss those questions. Killing witches had no associated moral dilemmas, they were creatures who knew only suffering and lived only to cause suffering. They couldn't return to human form without-

Oh, she remembered now.

Puella magi became witches. That was what happened to Madoka.

The lancer could feel her soul gem grow a fraction dimmer at the thought. But, she rationalized, it mattered not, for she had assumed that a blackened soul gem meant death to begin with. Effectively death and corruption were the same thing.

She hoped.

She desperately hoped that she wouldn't be conscious, or still herself, wallowing in her own despair if it ever came to that.

In the interest of not darkening her gem further, she switched trains of thought. Where has she been a moment ago?

Returning to human form...

Apparently it could be done with the power of a wish, but she had never seen or even heard of anyone doing so. As such, exterminating witches was almost always the only option.

Familiars were a different matter entirely. She had not the slightest idea as to their natures; painful like their mistresses was a tempting guess, yet many familiars seemed only to serve the whims of the witch instead of lashing out. They clearly felt pain and exhibited survival instinct, so she could only assume that they also possessed at least a rudimentary mental and emotional capacity. But was a short existence serving a crazed ruler worth living?

She supposed that was the reason so many escaped the barrier to try and become witches in their own right.

A branch broke in the distance, drawing her from her thoughts. Both magi turned back towards the mountain, searching for movement in the snow.

Then a second branch broke, then a third, and by the time the fourth came, pounding footsteps and flapping wings could be heard as well.

She turned to her partner, "We're not gonna make it if we fight every familiar we come across."

"I concur," Mami gestured to the open gate rising through the trees in the distance, "Let's go directly for the gate."

With that, the two took off running through the snow. Neither bothered to enhance their endurance magically, not that it would have been necessary to begin with; the strenuous life of the magical girl had left them both in peak fitness.

The familiars, surprisingly, given their capacity for flight, moved slowly and gradually lost ground. Yet they would not be deterred, each time the girls slowed for breath they would be greeted by the inexorable beating of wings in the distance.

The gate gradually crept closer as the pair of magi proceeded, worryingly, however, the number of pursuers began to swell. There was no longer any doubt that they could not fight; based on sound alone Kyouko could count at least twenty familiars.

But then, finally, the exit was in reach. A frozen pond nearly the size of a football field stood before them, but beyond that, nestled in a thin layer of ordinary trees was the gate.

Mami put one foot onto the ice experimentally.

"I don't think that's gonna support you," Kyouko said.

"We don't have time to go around," the gunner responded, stepping fully onto the lake, "I'm afraid it'll have to."

The red magi could hardly think of a more unpleasant way to die than drowning. The feeling of suffocating in the freezing depths, watching the light fade away as her strength withered. Just considering it made her shiver. But the encroaching familiars prompted her to hold her tongue, and instead join her partner on the ice.

Mami sent a single ribbon slithering across the pond towards the center, where it wrapped around a boulder protruding through the surface. Once the wrap was secure she offered a hand to Kyouko.

"Ready?"

The lancer took it, and was about to ask for a moment's grace when the ribbon constricted and sent them skidding across the lake.

Under less desperate circumstances, it might have been fun. Mami relished the wind roaring in her ears, feeling the energy her momentum lent her; it almost reminded her of water skiing. Of course, water skiing didn't carry the risk of falling and cracking her skull open on the ice, but the sensation was still close enough for her to derive an ounce of enjoyment from it.

She had always pegged her partner as a thrill seeker, which made it all the more amusing when she glanced back. The vermilion girl had fallen onto her rear at some point, and was desperately clutching at the gunner's hand with an uncharacteristic terrified expression.

Unfortunately, Mami's amusement was cut short by a pressing need to prevent them from crashing into the boulder, but with both hands occupied, her options were limited.

"Kyouko! Push us to the side!"

Her partner obliged; reluctantly freeing her right hand and summoning her spear to it, she drove it into the ice at a shallow angle, failing to piece through fully and pushing them to the left. It was just enough, the two tore past unscathed. But as the sight of the fast approaching shore greeted them, Mami realized that she hadn't planned out their landing. Seemingly sensing this, or perhaps noticing herself, Kyouko began to dig in once more in hopes of slowing them down.

But it wasn't enough.

"Oh shi-"

The snowbank was unable to absorb the impact entirely, the red magi's momentum carrying her completely through it, before leaving her face down in the snow some distance away.

It pleased her to note that she no longer felt the urge to remain still and freeze; equally pleasing was the fact that her landing didn't break any bones. Although it did exacerbate the still severe bruising on the back of her head.

Could've been worse.

After a moment of recuperation, the dazed lancer regrouped with her partner. The escape over the pond had given the two of them more than a little breathing room, and with the gate so close, their chances of being caught were effectively nil.

Mami started forward again, "Let's not linger."

Kyouko fell in step with her mentor, feeling optimistic in spite of herself. Certainly, she couldn't fathom things getting any easier deeper inside the barrier, but with Mami at her side she was unshakable.

Should they fail, she wouldn't mind dying together.

Hopefully that sentiment would prove unnecessary.

The forest seemed to mirror her mood in its own way. The gate was a rich, inviting bronze which seemed to radiate warmth, and as the trees grew nearer to it, the cracked husks gradually gave way to healthy firs.

As they reached the entrance, the Crimson magi looked back one last time.

The familiars had stopped on the ice and were simply staring; after a few seconds they began to disperse back from whence they came.

She decided to count it as a blessing and not question it further.

As the partners crossed the threshold into the next region of the barrier, Kyouko could have sworn she saw a flash of pink through the pines ahead.


Author's Notes: This chapter was the one I had the most trouble coming up with ideas for. In my original plan, it was just a quick introduction to the barrier and transition into the events of the next chapter. Chapter 3 will the most heavily based around the interplay between, and relationship of, Mami and Kyouko.