11: Abraxas
Curling columns of withered roots twisted and coiled in intricate patchworks across the cylindrical den of the archon, each root tipped by a pulsing red barb like a scorpion's stinger. An undulating sea of thorns swirled around the archon's bulblike main body, an impenetrable web so dense it was unclear where the roots even began. They seemed to spill from the million tiny tunnels that perforated the den, but they also seemed to rise from the mire or extend from the base of the bulb. Trying to make sense of such a multifarious legion had little point.
And yet Delaney teetered on the edge of the tunnel and peered into the seething mass in search of her companions. Poor Sloan and Winnipeg had simply disappeared beneath the tides, where who knew what fate befell them. Delaney sighed, tried to wear a concerned face. Even when nobody watched she stressed the importance of appearances. If she forced herself to undergo the rote motions long enough, eventually they would form habit and then nobody, not even herself, would be able to tell her from the real thing.
At least in this case she did have some genuine concern, if not for the wellbeing of her friends (Poor Sloan, she tried to tell herself, but their icy parting made it especially difficult), but for the defense of her allies. She needed their firepower. You can't heal something to death, unless it's one of those old timey role-playing games where cures re-kill the undead. What an easy world if real life worked that way!
No no no, stupid Delaney, what are you even thinking? Can't you demonstrate a shred of compassion? Sloan is probably being torn apart by those roots. Sloan's nice, isn't she? She didn't call you a freak or try to kill you, even after the Claudia story. That's way more kindness than a degenerate like you deserves! But if Sloan did die, Delaney would forget in a week. But that's not the point! Do good deeds, remember? That is the purpose of a Magical Girl—your purpose! That means saving people, even if they're total strangers. You can do it, Delaney! You can save them!
"I can save them!" Delaney howled at the archon. She sprinted off the edge and plunged into the thorny sea.
Moments before she struck the top layer of roots, she tucked her legs under her chin in cannonball position and surrounded herself in a barrier. By folding up she could minimize the barrier and emphasize its strength. Thus, when the barrier struck the roots it did not pop, even as the thorns jabbed against it and pressed pointed indentations in the rubbery shield. She pinballed down the crevices between the roots, her body bouncing within the bubbly confines. She cartwheeled and rotated in air, quickly growing dizzy (she had low tolerance for these things). As she forced down nausea, she maintained the stream of magic necessary to maintain her barrier as it bashed against root after root, until the bubble ricocheted off something and fell freely until it hit a liquid surface with a wet slap.
It was the lagoon. Under the canopy, roots were more sparse. Although not sparse enough to be unavoidable obstacles.
She broke her bubble and instantly formed another beneath her feet as she resumed a standing position in one elegant motion. Beneath the canopy the lagoon exuded an ominous antilight that reflected the rippling motions of the roots above. The immense lower half of the archon's bulb occupied most of the available space. Delaney had landed near the outskirts of the room, near the walls, and she quickly scanned the area for her hapless companions.
It took only moments for a root to uncoil itself from the canopy and strike at her with the red-tipped barb. She was so preoccupied she did not even dodge and the barb impaled her in the stomach. Silly Delaney! Always getting into trouble with your affable distractedness. You stupid stupid fucking fuck.
No time for self-loathing! The root yanked back and dragged her with it. The massive hole in her stomach felt so bizarre, a complete absence of guts, most of her intestines obliterated. Painless, of course. Just a weird physical emptiness.
The root tried to pull her into the writhing mass above. Her body had risen halfway when she wedged her staff against the barb for leverage and unhooked herself. She healed the gaping hole in her stomach before she even hit the water, and she didn't hit the water because she summoned a flotilla of bubbles to catch her.
Okay, time to get serious. She couldn't have massive plant appendages impaling her all the time, that would be quite inconvenient. Throwing up a barrier to defend her from another grasping root, she made graceful leaps from bubble to bubble to weave between obstacles and delve deeper into the den. Her first goal was to reconvene with her fellows. Then they could figure a plan to strike back.
She soon encountered one of her dear companions, Winnipeg. The girl was engaged in fierce combat against the groping plant tentacles, hacking and slashing with her samurai sword. She bounced between the undulating appendages while severing others to drop flailing into the quagmire. Personal kerfuffles aside, Delaney respected Winnipeg's technical competence. Of course, Winnipeg's technical competence was the whole reason the Incubator dragged her to the party in the first place. She had no further function than to provide offensive excellence where Delaney could not and Sloan could not yet, which Delaney had always considered something of an oversight, a flaw in the machine. It seemed Winnipeg could be employed more efficiently, or else remain uninvolved altogether. Especially since the Kyubster had conspired behind their backs to include a fourth girl.
Oh well. The Incubator knew best about everything. Like always.
Enough dallying! Stupid Delaney, you're only embarking on these pointless mental monologues to delay your assistance. Succor awaits! She rode her magic carpet of bubbles to the battlefield and waved her staff to summon barriers around the more feisty-looking roots. Winnipeg, ignoring her, plunged deeper into the fray. She had adjusted her stroke and could now slice clean through a root with one fluid motion.
"Hello hello!" said Delaney. "I'm here to help. Where's Sloan?"
Winnipeg lopped off the barb of a root that swooped in to strike, flipped over the resulting spray of pus, and ran along the root's toppling spine to cut down two more roots before they even got a chance to look at her funny. More roots dangled from the canopy to replace the fallen, and Winnipeg had soon returned airborne to close the gap.
Perhaps you didn't hear me, said Delaney. Do you know where our dear Sloan's wandered off to?
Four more roots dropped one after another—hack slash chop slice! Winnipeg paused for a moment atop a headless creeper and wiped her brow with the back of her hand.
I'm busy.
And off to whack more weeds. Delaney sighed and summoned a halfhearted barrier to defend herself from a root that had taken an unhealthy interest in her.
There's no end to these roots, dear. We'll have to be more creative than simply attack attack attack if we want to do any direct damage to the archon.
Then get creative. I have not the luxury of standing still to ponder battle tactics.
Roots fell as other roots emerged from the lagoon. The bulb in the center of the arena pulsed with the thousands of roots that fed it, pumping oil in thick, visible knots through the thorny veins.
You know, said Delaney, If you helped me find Sloan, maybe we'd have enough firepower to free time for brainstorming, hm?
Winnipeg slashed another root and landed on yet another near Delaney, conspicuously foregoing the nice bubble Delaney had placed for her to use as a perch. I don't know where she is. We were separated.
Thank you for answering in such a timely fashion! I'll simply have to find her myself. She broadcasted her thoughts to the airwaves. Sloan love, where oh where have you gone?
No use, said Winnipeg. She blitzed back into the battle. I already hailed both her and you. Unless you heard and simply decided not to respond, I believe the archon is restricting the range of our telepathy.
"Ooh," Delaney said. "What an interesting power. Our archon appears to have a whole goodie bag of neat mental tricks! So much more fun than the boring old brute in Saskatoon."
Winnipeg continued to hack roots despite the tedium and obvious pointlessness of the endeavor. She should give up, just like Delaney was going to give up the tedium and pointlessness of attempting conversation with a brick wall! Why waste the energy, when she had a Sloan to save?
When she turned to continue her search, however, she discovered that many more roots had sprouted from the liquid below, a dense jungle of vines as thick as tree trunks.
"Winnipeg, I recall Kyubey informing me you had some sort of massive AoE finisher attack."
Aiyoee.
"No silly, A-o-E. Area of effect? Don't you know anything?"
The point of a finisher is that it finishes. I must ensure it slays the foe, else I will be too drained to fight.
Yeah, yeah. But after enough of these roots they'd be tuckered out anyway. Delaney could maintain a bunch of weak barriers for a long time or a few strong barriers for a small time but eventually even she went kaput. Her last dance with an archon had been a dicey affair, so if possible she'd prefer to preserve her strength the second time around. Finding a weakpoint now instead of dithering with saplings unto infinitum would go a long way!
She observed the battlefield again and racked her brains. Massive and impenetrable main body of the archon, okay. Obviously they needed the bulb to bloom and reveal something inside. But physical attacks refused to dent the tough exterior shell. What else did the bulb have? The roots. But they had destroyed millions of roots by now (okay, maybe like fifty) without a single shift in the bulb's demeanor. Not that bulbs have demeanor. You know what she meant.
The bulb both respired and perspired the black oil that flooded the lower reaches of the den. Considering the new wraiths the archon created were born in the sweaty beads that bubbled through the epidermis, Delaney conjectured the oil was the energy source the archon recycled endlessly to work its photosynthetic processes, with water substituted for oil and darkness(?) substituted for light. Ergo:
?CO2 + ?C8H18 → Wraiths + Hatred
Which meant if they cut the roots feeding it, they could at least disrupt it. However, the roots were replaced instantaneously, making the task unfeasible. But wait! Removing the receptacles was but one option. What if they removed the elements of the equation itself?
"Winnipeg! Let's drain the pool," said Delaney.
Winnipeg did not reply. Maybe she did not hear. Oh, well. Delaney directed her bubbles to ferry her close enough to the lagoon to stoop and slide her staff through the murky liquid. It stuck to the red jewel at the top of the scepter and dribbled down the shaft, eventually pooling atop her hand. She sniffed it, drew back from the sour odor.
Hm. It had a thicker consistency than water but overall demonstrated no spectacular properties. The conundrum of draining the lagoon was mere logistics. Pumping mechanisms were out of the question, as the bulb could pump liquid out of the pool in immense quantities without depleting it (assuming the chemical reaction occurring inside the archon diminished the total amount of oil, which made scientific sense but not, she supposed, magical sense). A drain, perhaps using one of the tunnels that already ringed the den, was a more technologically feasible option but it would take a long long time for the liquid to siphon completely. Winnipeg had wind magic, perhaps they could suck up the liquid in a massive vortex, seal it into a bubble barrier, and dispose of it all at once? But that would require extreme magical exertion on both Delaney and Winnipeg's part. Hm hm hm.
The placid surface of the pond broke and the static-shrouded head of a wraith emerged, a single hand groping for her. With nary a thought, she brought her spiked ruby heel down on its head, goring it where its eye should be and sending it sinking back into the mire.
Wait a second! If it really was oil...
"Winnipeg!" She looked up. Winnipeg's status remained unchanged; perpetual and fruitless warfare. "Winnipeg, are you perchance a smoker?"
Is that more combat jargon you wish to berate me for not knowing?
"No, silly, I mean as in cigarettes? Personally I can't stand what tobacco does to my teeth, but—"
I find smoking repulsive.
"I figured you might say that. Oh well. Do you think Sloan smokes? This isn't idle chitchat, by the way, I have a practical purpose for asking."
Winnipeg removed two more roots. Did she never tire? I have not once witnessed Fargo smoking.
Another wraith emerged from the swamp near Delaney. Or maybe the same wraith? She kicked it again for good measure. "Yeah, but we've really only known her for less than a day. She strikes me as a smoker, honestly. It would match her aesthetic!"
No response. Delaney scrunched her mouth. She wished Winnipeg would just say when she was done with a conversation instead of aborting it entirely. Like, okay, Delaney had done some not nice things to her, and in fact part of her plan had been for Winnipeg to specifically dislike her (and like Sloan instead), but really. Basic communication, girl! If Delaney could overcome the swollen nothingness inside herself to engage in social etiquette that almost brought her literal physical pain, Winnipeg could at least reciprocate.
Like honestly. What hardships did Winnipeg even have? Boo hoo, she didn't love her ex-boyfriend or whatever that story was. And she acted so entitled, so pretentious. It would be so easy for Delaney to summon a barrier right in front of Winnipeg's path. She imagined the bubble deflecting Winnipeg, knocking the momentum right out of her, the little body losing its grace and control and bouncing hopelessly toward the murk. The barbs of the roots pouncing, impaling her from multiple sides at once, ripping her body apart. Avenging their severed brethren by severing her limbs and head, devouring the worthless torso like so many serpents.
No, Delaney! Stupid stupid stupid. She knocked a fist against her head, reveling in the dull thunk that signified a brainless skull. Stop thinking such psychotic things, you dolt. Think about good things! Like how happy all three of you will be when you defeat the archon. She squeezed her eyes shut and imagined the scene, but no matter how she tried she could not muster the same detail and relish as her fantasy of Winnipeg's grisly death. The three of them stood as sketchy figures in a plain with no background, cardboard cutouts more than people. If she removed herself from the image things got a little easier, but not enough.
The same wraith from before wrapped a slimy claw around her ankle. She bashed in its cranium with her staff.
Time to spark her dumb self into action and find Sloan. Bubbles, away! They skittered over the oil lagoon in unified motion, taking her along for the ride. The den was a deceptively expansive space. The various roots emerging throughout the swamp gave it a sylvan appearance, like narrow tree trunks along a empty dale. The wiggling thorns had an odd optic effect, cutting unusual zigzag forms through what should have been a plane of parallels and perpendiculars. It made it hard to focus; the roots had a hypnotic sway, a kind of entrancing dance as they pumped fuel to the core. Could this be another of the archon's perception-altering powers, or simply crazy old Delaney acting a little loopy again? Let's go with the former.
She rattled her empty brains with another good knock. "Sloan love!" she shouted. She cupped her hands to her mouth and shouted again. "SLOOOOOOOAN LOOOOOOVE!"
Her voice echoed through the wobbly space. She tried to find a better word than space to describe it, but her surroundings seemed less and less to reflect any real-world concept or geography. What had she likened it to, again? A forest? No, nothing like that. She squinted her eyes and tried to force the vertical and horizontal and diagonal lines into focus, but they were just lines, just forms, jittering back and forth devoid of meaning, becoming Mondrian, becoming Pollack (Jackson, not Delaney). This was, this was, this was actually kinda difficult.
She slowed down her bubble raft and leaned over to catch a breather. Disorientation immediately took her and she lost sight of which way was up. She found out when she bent over to vomit.
What felt like all her guts streamed from her mouth and plopped into the black pool, leaving her an empty husk of skin with nothing inside. A painful cramp in her voided stomach caused her to kneel and grab at herself with both hands. She spat out the acrid backwash and clenched her teeth, wiping her lips with the back of one hand before another painful cramp doubled her over again.
What was going on? This couldn't be just a reaction to the motions of the roots. Her response had been too visceral to be based solely in imagery. But what...?
The root! The one that had impaled her. She had assumed her magic could counteract the venom. Had that been overconfident? Nothing else had touched her. It was the only way the archon could affect her so strongly. Then why did she not see some strange flashback of critical events in her life, like Sloan did? Why did she not see Claudia or the dog or her stepfather or anything except a nightmarish terrain of fragmentary lines and colors?
A small creature appeared beside her and she raised her hand to strike it before she realized it was the Incubator. Still clutching one arm tight to her stomach she tried to ask what he was doing there, but her mouth had turned to cotton and her tongue had swollen with bile. She lowered her hand on the Incubator's head (all he did was stare at her), but her fingers passed through and dipped into the oil where he sat.
An illusion. A hallucination—a byproduct of the venom coursing through her veins. But why him? Of all the terrible lousy things from her past, why the one thing with which she could on some level actually identify, and on another maybe even respect? If she had to sum up her relationship with the Incubator, that was it: benign, grudging respect. She certainly felt nothing so strong toward him as to merit his appearance in her delusions.
The cracks in the world around her sharpened with encroaching menace. She had a dull recollection of a parallel universe of roots and swamps. Her addled brain fired muted messages of danger through her nerves. She had to purge the toxins before the archon took the opportunity to destroy her.
She brought her teeth to her wrist and clamped deep into the artery. Sickly brown blood seeped, then sprayed, over her dress. She gnawed deeper into the vein, her blood propelling out in a voluminous arc.
A harsh crack in the world came crashing down on her. She barreled to the side and plunged into the tar, forcing herself under the surface despite the buoyancy that tried to push her back up. Her wrist continued to hemorrhage chunky globules of bilious plasma. The cracks and lines followed her underwater, even as the black oil stung her eyes and should have rendered all sight inoperable. All she needed was for enough blood to leave her that the effects would wear off, and then she could replenish her supply with simple magic. She applied pressure with her thumb to expel the blood faster.
The Incubator swam along in the murk, his fur remaining pure white despite the unctuous ooze around him. Why the Incubator? Why not Claudia? What was this hallucinogenic venom supposed to show?
More and more blood pumped out the frayed vein on her wrist. The Incubator grew transparent, began to fade. She blinked, forcing the oil from her eyelids, and when she opened them again she saw only blackness.
Phew! That was close. The first time she had ever felt herself in real danger during the entire expedition. She supposed it wouldn't be a good archon romp without at least one near-death experience.
Still submerged, she quickly filled herself with nice, clean blood and sealed the wound on her wrist. Unsure how far beneath the surface she had sunk, she began to swim upward.
Except something had snagged on her ankle. She kicked her foot but the thing remained tight, a single thin strand like seaweed. She tried to unhook herself, but the liquid the consistency of molasses devolved all motion to awkward underwater ballet. She found it difficult to even find her foot; it felt as though she had a foot somewhere but it was not connected to the rest of her body. Her fingers groped the muggy dullness. Oil began to seep into her nostrils but she guarded herself against it with a convenient nosebleed. She should have put up a barrier before she submerged. Normally she had the presence of mind for that, but the sickness and the confusion caused a momentary lapse in clarity. Again placing her in a more compromised position than she was used to. Was this how Winnipeg felt? Funny, considering to Delaney it all posed a minor inconvenience, and not an earth-shattering catastrophe.
She gave up on finding her foot. The thing wrapped around her ankle was attached to something of weight but it exerted no force beyond gravity, and even that was nullified by the buoyancy of the oil. Delaney propelled her arms and forced herself upward. She kicked her free leg and flailed and swam and had no idea if she made any progress at all.
Something tugged on her scalp. It was her hair. Unlike whatever clung to her ankle, this force was actively pulling, and actively pulling her upward. Her body began to rise and rise, and continued to rise, and just when she wondered how far she had left to rise she broke the surface.
Air, functionally unneeded but welcome nonetheless, flooded into her windpipes as she sputtered oil. A single gasping breath as the rest of her body came sailing out the lagoon. She landed on her raft of bubbles imagining herself like those birds in soap commercials who got trapped in oil slicks.
"I can't see anything," she told her rescuer.
"You got oil in your eyes," said Sloan.
A hand pressed against her face. When it went away, she could see again. A miracle! A miracle of totally bland magic.
And yep, she looked like a bird in a soap commercial. Oh dear lord.
"The hell happened to you," said Sloan. Her right arm dripped with oil. "I saw your bubbles and then ripples on the surface. Did you get—the fuck, how did this get here."
She pointed to the thing clutching Delaney's ankle. It was a small human hand, attached to a small human arm, attached to a small human corpse. The corpse was similarly drenched, but vaguely recognizable as female.
"Is this your friend Omaha," said Delaney.
"No, Winnipeg found it. How did it get here, did it... pull you under?"
"Nonsense," said Delaney. She pried the fingers from her leg. "It's a dead thing, it can't do that."
She gave the corpse an unceremonious push and watched it slowly sink beneath the surface. As the oil coagulated over Delaney's skin, she pulled herself to her feet and clapped her hands together.
"Oh yes, before I forget! Sloan, you smoke, correct?"
Sloan boggled at her. Her machine gun unleashed a salvo of unmanned fire to hold the roots at bay.
"It's a simple question, love."
After a brief pause, Sloan adjusted her collar and turned away. She had to shift her boots carefully to keep atop the bubbles. "I can't afford to smoke."
Delaney pouted her lips and whistled, except her lungs convulsed and she bent over to hack up some coal-colored stuff. After a few pats on her chest for good measure, she spat cutely. "Patooie!"
"You okay," Sloan asked, more as a formality.
"Dandy." Delaney hooked a thumb onto her tongue and scooped out more of the bitter paste. "But this is really important, love! Are you certain you don't have a lighter, or matches?"
Sloan waved her arm to redirect the aim of her gun. A disembodied root, fizzling at a sundered end, slapped against the lagoon. "I don't have jack shit. What's the purpose of this, I need you to help fight. There's too damn many of these things."
Oh, and her hair. She whipped the once-white strands into a ponytail and wrung them over her shoulder. "Sloan dear, that's the problem I'm attempting to solve. Don't you know what oil does?"
It took a few seconds for the realization to dawn on Sloan's face with comical eye-widening. Sloan, you can be such a dunce sometimes.
"Shit," she said. "Shit, that's genius! Uh..." Sloan rifled through her pockets, her sullied arm smearing oil everywhere. Several upturned pockets later, she slumped her shoulders. "I got nothing."
"Oh, rats!" said Delaney. "And you know Winnipeg's so straightedge. Can't your light magic do anything?"
The machine gun rattled. "It's just light," said Sloan. "Random ass magical light only loosely connected to the laws of physics. It gives barely any heat. Like, the tiniest amount—"
Again the epiphany face, although this time Delaney hadn't the foggiest why as she puzzled in search of some alternative method to create fire, wondering if they could gather any sticks and dry brush to create it the neanderthal way (really, you'd think something as elementary as fire would be easy peasy) or else drum up some hitherto-subconscious magical power, or else attempt a chemical reaction to cause conflagration (the hemoglobin in her blood had the formula C2952H4664O832N812S8Fe4, surely a reaction creating enough heat for flash point was possible with enough ingenuity and magical chicanery). But she let Sloan say whatever it was she was going to say.
"Give me your glasses," said Sloan.
"Um, why?"
"Just do it, we don't have time."
Delaney fished into the folds of her filthy dress and found her similarly-filthy glasses. Sloan snatched them and daubed a saliva-slicked thumb against the lenses.
"Now paper or something like it," said Sloan as she furiously wiped away oil.
"I don't think I have anything like that," said Delaney. She usually didn't even know where her civilian things wound up when she transformed into Magical Girl apparel.
Sloan held the glasses to her eyes and squinted. She resumed wiping. "The map, gimme the map."
"The map." The map? "Oh! The map!"
She had kept the map of Williston in a safe place, partially to remember where it was and partially because she was paranoid of Winnipeg finding and destroying it (a paranoia that, in retrospect, sounded pretty silly). She daintily lifted a leg behind her and slid a finger into her ruby heel to pop it from her foot. Tucked snug under the insole were the folded pieces of her dear map.
"Now tell me, love, what do you need this for?"
"To burn it."
Delaney had been proffering the parchment, but at Sloan's statement she retracted her hand. "What! But, but it's my map!"
"If we win this fight we won't need it anymore," said Sloan. "Stop fucking around and give it!"
Did Sloan even realize the amount of effort it took to find a detailed print map of a backwater hick town in rural North Dakota? How many archives, how many bureaucratic labyrinths had Delaney plundered to procure this one map, which had served them so well despite Winnipeg's rather rude defacement? And now Sloan wanted to burn it? And she was so testy, too!
Delaney thought to voice her opinions when Sloan seized her wrist and wrenched the paper from her hand, ignoring her indignant shriek. Once the paper had been pried from her fingers, however, Delaney no longer felt so attached and let Sloan off with a minor harrumph.
With one extended hand holding the crumpled pieces of map and the other holding the glasses, Sloan positioned herself precariously on the bubbles, squinting her eyes and measuring the distance between the two seemingly random objects. She held the glasses to her face while she extended the map away from her, and then pulled it back close.
"Excuse the intrusion, love, but what is it exactly you are doing?"
"Ever fry ants?" said Sloan.
"Ants."
"You know, with a magnifying glass."
"I thought that was something rustic children did, but only in nostalgic movies."
Sloan shut one eye and bit her lip. A vague glow emanated from the hand holding the glasses. "In fact I never did it either. Before Minneapolis I lived in Arizona. Lots of sun all the time. Sometimes I thought about going out and frying ants, but it was always too damn hot."
"Um, okay!" said Delaney.
"The point is, same logic here. You take a glass, focus light through it, and presto! Shit gets hot." The aura engulfed her hand in light. Delaney shielded her face and cast a glance over her shoulder to check how Sloan's gun was holding up in the constant war of the roots. She applied a few bubbles to aid the defense.
She didn't have the heart to tell Sloan her scheme lacked scientific feasibility. Ignoring the suboptimal use of non-prescription reading lenses as a substitute for the uniform regularity and superior convexity of a magnifying glass, the laws of entropy meant no matter the focusing power of her lens Sloan could not create heat that exceeded the temperature of the heat's source, i.e. the orb of light in her hand. And since the orb gave off little heat, by Sloan's own admission and Delaney's observation, this was an exercise in futility.
At least she thought that until a small charred mark appeared on the tip of the map. Delaney lowered her hand and squinted. The mark spread, the map bending and decaying as if animated in stop-motion, the red lines of Williston contorting and ultimately dissolving into nothingness, the town becoming effigy, an erasure in facsimile. But it made no scientific sense! Entropy—
Delaney, you idiot. The powers of a Magical Girl were specifically harnessed to combat entropy. Their magic was emotion transformed into literal power. Sloan's belief in her ability meant more than the scientific processes guiding it, as she literally traded chunks of her soul for a desired outcome. Hence a Magical Girl's most vital attribute: Creativity.
(And the capacity of their gem, of course. Delaney had no doubt this minor act of combusting a paper cost Sloan more than the machine gun had in the past ten minutes.)
The second the map caught flame Sloan shut off her light and tossed the glasses back to Delaney. She cupped a hand around the inchoate flicker, gently blowing and protecting it from the stagnant airless air that surrounded them. The fire grew; more of Williston was seared away.
"Wow, love! Amazing!" Delaney clapped her hands with the wet thwack of oil.
Sloan's eyes did not leave the flame. She bent close, almost singeing her nose, her lips pursed to feed it with oxygen from deep inside. Once the map had lit up like a torch, Sloan held out her arm and let it drop.
Delaney, who was drenched in the stuff, basically caught fire instantly as an inferno detonated around them. Flames spread to Sloan's similarly-drenched arm and she staggered back with a grunt of surprise. Before either of them became charbroiled, Delaney drenched them with a deluge of blood and enveloped them in a protective bubble.
The bubble ascended into the air. Sloan staggered back, checking the damage (she had lost a good part of her sleeve) as Delaney coalesced the bloody runoff and added it to the shell of the bubble around them. Leaving them spic and span, no oil, no blood. Their clothes had not fared well, of course. Apart from Sloan's sleeve, the hem of Delaney's gown had become a series of burnt strips that flittered around her legs. God dammit. It was always the worst when your clothes got ruined. It could be so difficult to mend magical apparel if you lacked the appropriate skills.
Think fashion later, Delaney! The flames had spread across the surface of the lagoon, consuming the bounteous fuel. Pillars of smoke rose into the cavern, swirling among the roots like twisted tendrils of yet another creature. The archon or something else loosed an arrhythmic squeal that seemed less pained than annoyed.
"It worked," said Sloan.
"I know! Very good, love," said Delaney. She inspected one of her long white gloves, which had been rendered basically worthless by the fire. Finger by finger she removed it. The other glove was okay, so despite the asymmetry she left it. No point in wastefulness!
Something landed atop the bubble with a boing. It was Winnipeg, crouched low and on her knees. One sword held the drawn katana while the other smoothed down her skirt due to her compromising position directly above them.
What's all this, she said.
I set stuff on fire, said Sloan.
"Oh, just get in here already." Delaney waved her staff and made her bubble semipermeable. Winnipeg's body sank through until the blood no longer supported her and she plopped between them with a healthy splat.
She quickly rearranged herself (Shame! Delaney loved seeing dear Winnipeg in undignified positions) and shuffled to Sloan's side of the bubble to stare onto the hellscape below.
"The fire is having an effect already," said Winnipeg.
A true statement! The myriad roots had abandoned their previous interests and now roared through the air, some ablaze, attending to the main bulb, beating back the flames with invertebrate slaps against the oilfield. A root very near their bubble wagged back and forth as fire enveloped it, filling the air with psychic shrieks until it went rigid and sunk into the flames.
"The bulb," said Sloan.
She pointed. At first, Delaney could not see what Sloan indicated, but as the motions grew more pronounced it became clear the bulb was opening.
By now almost the entire mammoth cavern of the archon had filled with engorged smoke columns, but the archon itself remained visible through sheer immensity. The bulb as one unified being shuddered and woke. The leathery black skin peeled away into four massive petals, vast triangular strips like pieces of circus tent. Although the bulb had been only unbroken blackness on the outside, its inner skin swarmed with a hodgepodge of bright and exuberant colors: reds, greens, blues, oranges, yellows. Sometimes polka dots, sometimes stripes, sometimes plaid. Sloan couldn't tell for sure but she thought the colors were changing as she looked, like the inside of the archon had no distinct identity, rather a constantly shifting one.
Delaney's bubble rose above the blooming petals, exacerbating the disorientation of the inner skin with the flickering flames and squirming roots beneath. The petals scraped against the walls of the den, their immense surface area blocking most of the smoke. At the center of the four petals was nothing but a round and dark depression into which nothing could be perceived. From this hole rose the stem of the flower that had before adorned the top of the archon.
Until the archon had fully bloomed, the flower remained unchanged, small and unassuming in the enormity of the space around it. But once the four petals (or flaps of skin, or whatever—Sloan didn't know jack dick about plant biology, and she doubted the archon knew either) had settled, the flower changed. Not with any kind of transformation sequence or visible mutation. One moment it was the flower, and the next Sloan had to rub her eyes to make sure she was seeing things correctly, because all at once it had become something else.
Delaney rolled onto her back and laughed hysterically. Sloan and Winnipeg glanced at her once and turned back to the archon. The stalk of the flower had become a long, thick neck, adorned with technicolor feathers, swaying to and fro in a vaguely hypnotic dance. The head of the thing was unseeable behind a strange round mask that at first had a Pablo Picasso African tribal vibe, all empty black eyes and scarification, but like the colors of the petals seemed to change before Sloan's eyes, until she could no longer tell which was actually changing: the archon or her sight.
The features arranged into a semblance of structure and form, assembling themselves across the mask until they became...
Clair Ibsen? Her face, at least, and a pretty stunning likeness. Sloan was more impressed than anything. Unlike her prior hallucination, it was obvious the mask was mere mimicry. Just Clair Ibsen's stupid face openmouthed like a grouper, her same bleach white skin and platinum hair hanging in gangly strands.
Sloan folded her arms. "Let's fucking kill this thing already."
"I assume it takes a different appearance for you than for me," said Winnipeg.
"Ditto for Delaney," said Sloan.
Delaney stifled her sniggering with a hiccup and climbed to her feet, wiping the corners of her eyes. "Oh my. Sorry, dears. But if you could see what I see on that thing's face..."
"Whatever it is, it's a distraction," said Sloan. "Ignore it and proceed as usual. Let's unleash some heavy duty firepower into this thing, enough to see if it takes damage. Once we have an idea of its abilities, we can figure a better plan. Keep in communication."
Delaney ahemed and affected a more serious tone. "It blocks telepathy. If we move too far apart we can't stay in contact."
"We'll deal as we go," said Sloan. "Pop the bubble."
The bubble popped. The three girls dispersed like spores from a pod and descended on a rising coil of roots and thorns. Sloan concentrated on sticking a landing on a narrow sliver of root and managed to succeed with acrobatic aplomb, not even impaling her foot on a thorn or anything. She materialized her gun in her hands and dashed along the trajectory of the root.
Winnipeg had landed on a nearly parallel root. Together they dashed at an almost ninety-degree angle toward the masked head of the archon, blasting and slicing at the infestation that sought to batter them back. A root swiped low at Sloan's legs but she leapt with instinctual reflexes and sharpened perspective. Around her, blood bubbles deflected other attackers, although Sloan had no time to find Delaney among the bramble. Ahead stretched the archon and her salvation.
The petals of the archon trembled and spewed a million tiny pollen particles into the air. In a nebulous other world Delaney shouted not to breathe. But as the spores surrounded her and filled the entire cavernous den, how could she not breathe? With so much excitement, so much furor surging through her. She bit her lip and tried to close her lungs, tried to subsist on soul energy alone as she sprinted from root to root, leaping across the narrow and constantly-shifting platforms to her ultimate goal. But the allergens clotted her eyes; her vision grew subdued despite the magical perspicacity of her sight.
Ahead loomed the archon. Its mask continued to adapt. Now the visage of Clair Ibsen seemed even more lifelike, even more real, although it still painted the ridiculous image of a human head atop a long furred throat emerging from a massive flower. The roots whipped furiously at her but despite the spores she staved onward. Winnipeg and Delaney had fallen out of sight; only the archon existed. The archon with Clair Ibsen's face. She reached the end of one root and bounded into the air, heaving her gun in front of her and blasting the face with as good as she could give. The light tore through a few flaming roots and battered the face itself with a tinny twang before bouncing off in every direction.
The face stared at her, unharmed, unblinking. She should have expected a normal attack to fail, and yet she had committed fully to it and now hung in the opiate air surrounded by twitching vines and toxic thorns.
As her body reached the zenith of its leap and came crashing down to the petals below (why had she thrown herself so far forward for an attack she knew wouldn't work, why why why), Winnipeg soared past frozen like a ballerina, one leg bent at the knee and the other straight, her arms splayed like wings and her katana shining. Behind her swirled a cyclone of fire, the winds of her magic funneling the pyre from the lagoon in a massive topsy-turvy column. A gust caught Sloan from behind and dragged her along, heat lapping at her skin.
Winnipeg raised her katana and launched the cyclone at the archon. It curved through the air like a gigantic drill and smashed into the mask. The archon chattered and clicked as flame enveloped it, catching on the feathers of its throat. The mask disappeared beneath the flames and the neck spasmed with jerky, birdlike motions. For a moment it appeared as though Winnipeg's attack had dealt a critical blow. But with one tremendous shake the archon cleared the flames, revealing the same Clair Ibsen mask-face with the features altered to fury.
Clair Ibsen unhinged her jaw with an electronic whirr. From the void within spewed an array of dazzling crystal shards. Winnipeg threw up a hand to defend the Soul Gem strung from her neck and Sloan had a mere moment to do likewise as the shards crashed against them.
What felt like about fifty jagged knives dug into Sloan's body. She gasped the breath she had shored to prevent inhaling the archon's pollen as foreign bodies plunged deep through her skin and diced her innards to ribbons. One thick blade gored her through the cheek. She tasted iron blood on her tongue and something hard like bone knocked against her teeth until she yanked it out.
It took her only a moment to identify the spade-shaped, blood-drenched object. Seeds. The archon had implanted them with seeds.
Still sailing on Winnipeg's current as it cycled them around the perimeter of the den, Sloan tore furiously at the seeds lodged in her chest and stomach, wrenching each out with a painful groan and hurling it away. She devoted part of her mind to her gun to keep the roots at bay, but it was tough to focus as she clawed more and more frantically at the seeds lodged inside her.
"Oh dear." Delaney rode by atop a small bubble. "That looks bad."
"More incoming," said Winnipeg.
The archon/Clair Ibsen bellowed again and spat another volley. A bubble ballooned to catch the spray, the seeds sticking in the bloody membrane.
"Hm, now let's take a looksie at these things." Delaney drifted next to Sloan and bent forward to examine the seeds still stuck in her skin. Sloan wrenched another out with a wheeze.
Before Delaney made much progress, a root whipped out of the bramble and ran her through the back. The bright red barb poked out her chest, spilling blood down the front of her gown.
Delaney jammed her staff into the wound and tried to pry herself free. The root reeled her back, her legs hanging uselessly as she disappeared into the thick tangle. The bubble she had erected to protect them from the archon's seeds burst.
"Shit," said Sloan. She extricated another seed and looked for Winnipeg. She was nearby, alternating between removing seeds from herself and lopping roots. "We need to regroup!"
The seeds still implanted in Winnipeg erupted in unison, sprouting wiry stems with knotted joints. Before Sloan could react her own seeds burst and ten or twenty stems coiled around her. They quickly bound her arms and enveloped her throat. The jagged joints dug into her skin and forced her to gasp for air, only to suck in a mouthful of spores. Her eyes bulged as her hands clenched into useless fists, her legs kicking as the wind dispersed and dropped her into the roots.
She struggled for air, her lungs already wilting from having held her breath. The stems that sprouted from the seeds sliced into her jacket and then her skin like razor wire. The bizarre image flashed into her mind of her school field trip to a packing plant and the way the workers used metal wire to cut thick blocks of cheese, the wire dragging through the yellow flesh with morbid effortlessness. Sloan had refused to watch.
As she fell she twisted in midair. A root rose up, its red barb poised to impale. The wire around her throat dug deep and all movement became impossible.
An invisible force pulled her out of the way. She sailed through the serpentine roots that lurched and struck at her, her body propelled beyond her control.
A tiny voice whispered in her ear: "Don't worry, I got you!" It was Omaha.
Get these things off me, said Sloan.
Omaha dropped onto a petal of the archon, still aglow with its multicolored panoply like a bright red strip of tarpaulin in an otherwise gray expanse. Sloan went invisible, causing the world to fade to a bleary and unclear vista. Omaha entered her view, wrapped in a long cowled cloak.
We have to be quick, said Omaha. She set Sloan onto the petal and materialized a long, curved scythe in her hand. She looked like a grim reaper. Even her gaunt pale face added to the aesthetic. The archon can surely sense us even if it cannot see us.
She swung the scythe with a deft motion and severed the roots around Sloan's body. Sloan rolled over and burst her arms free of the still-clutching roots, gasping for breath and pulling seeds from her body. Thousands of small lacerations littered her skin.
I only have basic curative magic, said Omaha, as if reading Sloan's mind. And it'll take too long to work. You'll have to bear it.
Whatever, Sloan could handle pain. The circumstances of her soulless body dampened it. Given time, she would regenerate naturally, although not within the frame of this fight—finding Delaney was paramount. And Winnipeg, shit. The archon had scattered them with remarkable efficiency.
Omaha, we need to find the others. You go for Delaney, I'll get Winnipeg.
Omaha flinched as a root roared overhead. She clutched her scythe tight and kept her hand like a vise on Sloan's wrist. Why should I go for Delaney? You need her to heal you, you should find her.
That doesn't matter. Delaney is more important to find. You can move undetected, you have the better chance. Don't argue.
Okay. Omaha nodded. Her cowl bobbed over her head and covered her eyes. She reached into her folds and retrieved a pendant on a necklace. You should take this, Sloan.
Sloan seized the pendant and examined it. It was Winnipeg's Soul Gem.
I could only carry one of you, but I needed to make sure the other wouldn't die. So I swiped Miss Dufresne's gem to keep her safe.
Smart work, said Sloan. The roots gathered closer and the Clair Ibsen mask of the archon seemed to look in their direction. Sloan wondered what Omaha saw in the mask, if the mask reflected something from inside each of them. Let's move, Omaha.
Omaha gave a surprisingly warm smile. Okay! Good luck, Sloan.
She let go. Sloan plunged back into the visible world; Omaha melded into nothingness. The Clair mask gaped its mouth and screeched in fury at the pest that appeared atop its petal. Roots tipped with red barbs careened from every direction, but Sloan was ready to fight and ready to run.
As the roots converged she materialized another machine gun and jumped into the air like a corkscrew, spewing cleansing light in a three-sixty degree torrent. The roots in her immediate vicinity fell squirming into the fires below.
The archon spat another volley of seeds at her. Sloan threw the gun in front of her and bounced across it like a platform, calling it back to her side as she soared through the air and somersaulted onto the spine of another root, the seeds whizzing past and striking nothing but air. She winced away the pain from her wounds and ignored the blood drizzling down her jacket as she sprinted down the root and peeled her eyes for Winnipeg. She tried to sharpen her eyesight but the spores in her irises nullified her efforts. She wondered about the pollen she had sucked into her lungs and hoped no wonky mindfucks would screw her over. The whole world around her seemed an incomprehensible cluster of nonsense, from the roots to the smoke to the monolithic proportions to the gaudy colors to Clair Ibsen's face attached to an avian neck but she was pretty sure that was all stuff that was actually happening. At least, she hoped so.
Winnipeg. Delaney. Where you at?
No luck. She looped the same words over in her mind in case she blundered into communication range, but if either girl was in a state to respond it would be miraculous. At least with Winnipeg's Soul Gem in her pocket she could be certain one of them wasn't dead. Wait. If Sloan had Winnipeg's gem, that meant Winnipeg was unconscious (technically dead), and had no way of hearing her. God dammit.
She danced from root to root. When she felt cheeky she levied gunfire at the Clair mask. No effect, even when she assaulted the feathery neck instead of the face. But each hit registered a solid, corporeal sound, unlike the earlier attacks against the bulb, which had been absorbed altogether. A concentrated attack from both her and Winnipeg might be able to—
There! Deep in the bramble, between columns of smoke and backdropped by flickering fire. An unmistakable flash of lavender that could have only originated from Winnipeg's uniform. Without hesitation, Sloan plunged into the depths. She skated down the roots in search of the small purple scrap her hazy half-blurred vision had espied, only doubting if she had seen anything at all once halfway down and the fire on the lagoon raged like the pits of hell rising to grasp her.
She waved her machine gun, whipping rays of erasure through roots and splattering white pus in every direction. Everywhere was some loony profusion of surreal imagery. She shoved a hand to her eyes and blasted herself with a beam of light, repairing the damage immediately with her magic. The trick worked for a few seconds, giving her a clearer perspective on her surroundings, but soon more spores dulled her visual senses. Her fucking kryptonite, she needed her eyes. They were the best thing about her, and this stupid fucking archon somehow knew exactly what to counter, since the spores seemed to have no additional effects whatsoever. Or was this another psychological thing? Was the blurred vision in her mind, did the other girls suffer different afflictions, each tailored to their perceived strengths? Nobody else had complained they couldn't see.
The flash of lavender scrolled across the periphery of her vision. She turned as something disappeared between two coiled roots. Had it been Winnipeg, or the archon fucking with her? Luring her deeper...
Fuck that shit. She would solve her problems exactly the way she knew best: blasting them to bits. She dove in the direction Winnipeg had fallen and obliterated the roots in front of her with her gun. As the way cleared, she saw with clarity now the small limp body of Winnipeg, stuck to a larger root by a thick thorn that had rammed through her back. Her mouth hung agape in immutable surprise and her eyes swam with a dim deadness.
Sloan landed beside her and yanked her arms to pull her from the roots. With a dose of magic to make the girl near weightless, she hoisted Winnipeg onto her back koala-like. Winnipeg's head nestled against the crook of Sloan's neck and her arms hung down Sloan's front, the pencil-thin wrists bound by one of Sloan's hands. The machine gun clenched in the other, Sloan assessed her position. She had landed deep into the seething nest of roots. Thorns thronged around her, poised to prick with debilitating toxin.
The way she had come, from above, had closed completely. No light filtered in and the world had grown dark around her. For Sloan "Light Is Kinda My Thing?" Redfearn, there could be no more inconsequential setback. She illuminated the area by blasting her gun into the roots below. A spire drilled deep in a perfect corkscrew. She followed the passage she cut.
"Wake up Winnipeg." Since up had ceased to be an option, she would eventually drop into the fires below. She needed Winnipeg's wind magic by then, but the tiny girl had been totally knocked out. As Sloan prodded her, she realized Winnipeg was still wearing her lavender ensemble even though her magic was inactive. No—not exactly the same as her Magical Girl outfit. A close enough replica to deceive at first glance. Winnipeg had literally reconstructed her uniform for civilian wear; was that dedication or insanity?
She obliterated a root and hellfire roared up to greet her. Already in free fall, Sloan angled for a low-hanging loop of thorny root and barely managed to hit it, her balance precarious.
"Wakey wakey Winnipeg, rise and shine." She jostled Winnipeg's head with her own as she warded away pursuing roots with her gun.
Winnipeg groaned, stirred. Her body trembled against Sloan's back. A foot struck spasmodically and jabbed Sloan in the thigh. She sputtered a little, coughed. Blood formed on her lower lip in a squash-colored bubble and burst, dribbling down her chin.
More and more roots emerged. "Get your shit together quick, sunshine, we gotta bounce."
"B... Buh..." said Winnipeg. One eyelid flickered open and drooped lazily.
Sloan swept her gun across the foes. "There we go, come on now."
"Buh, box... Box..."
Sloan persisted with gentle pleading and affected her most maternal tone (which was not very maternal). A barb lashed out and she scrambled aside to evade it, nearly toppling headlong off her constantly-shifting platform.
"Box... open the... box..."
"There's no goddam box," said Sloan. Was this just-woke-up-with-a-concussion speak or a delusion from the past incited by the thorn's poison? Sloan knew nothing about Winnipeg's past, had only the barest conception of how a box might factor into it. The only thing she could think was that one movie with Brad Pitt's wife's severed head in a box, but why she wasted precious cognitive capacity thinking about that right now who fucking knew.
"What's in... the box..."
The root on which Sloan stood had become too unstable. She bounded onto another, which afforded even less leg space than the previous. "Nothing's in the goddam box," she said.
Winnipeg hand seized Sloan's shoulder. "There's gotta be something in there!" A strange terror quavered in her voice.
The delusions had worked their way out of Sloan's system naturally after a short time. It must be a byproduct of their regenerative bodies or magical energy or whatever, Delaney probably had a better grasp on the theoretical aspects.
"Why," said Sloan. "Why's something gotta be there." She fried another root.
"It's the reason," Winnipeg mumbled. "It's the reason in the box. The purpose..."
"That makes no sense." Confront her on her bullshit, force her to realize the absurdity. Wake her from dreamland. It worked like that in the movies.
"If there's nothing... I need to know... the box... Open it..."
"THERE IS NO BOX."
She scanned the area. No more convenient roots. The nearest docile one was way in the distance, and the hostile ones sought a lapse in her concentration, an opening to exploit. The fires raged below and their smoke made searching for the closest enemies difficult.
"Has to be in the box... the reason for why... why I'm..."
"Winnipeg, don't wax philosophical on me—I need you to DO THINGS."
"The reason!"
"THE REASON IS WE DIE IF YOU DON'T!"
From a thick plume of smog a hitherto-unseen root lashed out. Sloan barely had time to register the attack and raise her gun to deflect the blow. The stinger crashed through the gears and machinery, destroying the well-oiled parts. The impact sent Sloan staggering—
—Into open air. She fell.
"WINNIPEG!"
A blast of wind surged in a vicious tornado. The fires were blasted away by the onslaught, caught in the whorl like thin threads of orange silk, lighting the gathered roots like fuses as fast-acting flame raced into the cluster above. Gravity ceased its pull and Sloan found herself suspended, no longer gripping Winnipeg but Winnipeg gripping her.
The young girl's eyes reflected the flames caught in the whirlwind. "What did I babble," she said.
"Nothing worth worrying about," said Sloan. Her legs dangled in the current. "Let's hit that fucking thing with everything we got."
Winnipeg nodded, her mouth still speckled with blood and a ghastly pallor denuding her carbuncular skin but the familiar determination not lost among it. The wind screeched a death-whistle as it heaved them through the air, their bodies cast uncontrollable toward the outer edges of the cavern. Winnipeg relinquished Sloan and seized her katana in both hands, channeling her energy as the massive force propelled them around the circumference of the lair. The fires curled and twisted like sunspots on the surface of a star galaxies away as Sloan and Winnipeg soared centrifugal, gaining momentum, gaining velocity. The gordian knot of roots churned and watched.
"Is this your finisher?" Sloan shouted. The wind swallowed her voice.
Is this your finisher?
Pah! said Winnipeg. This magic is not even offensive. My finisher will be the last thing you see in this fight, rest assured. We must remove that thing's mask and reveal its true form before I use it. Now hold on.
Sloan swam through the bustling air and wrapped her arms around Winnipeg's waist. Her thick coattails buffeted her legs.
By the way, Sloan said, I got something for you.
She held out the necklace with Winnipeg's Soul Gem. The purple stone was mired but not incorrigible. Winnipeg nodded and allowed Sloan to slide the necklace over her head, where it reclaimed its rightful position.
Now we ascend, said Winnipeg.
The wind shifted and launched them skyward. The roots twisted to meet them, a thousand barbs bared to impale. In an imperceptibly quick slash, the roots fell apart and Sloan and Winnipeg passed through a clean and blustery channel, a perfectly tubular passageway carved by Winnipeg's magic. The bramble corrected for its newfound cavity but by the time its immense multifaceted body even began to move they had burst back above the archon.
The archon turned its feathery neck and faced them with its mask. At first the Clair Ibsen face seemed to have lost most of its realism, but as it eyed them its features resumed a lifelike quality, brow furrowed and mouth twisted into a sneer.
No sign of Omaha or Delaney. But this was as good a chance as any to dent the thing's armor.
We hit it the best we got at the same time, said Sloan. We break the mask and then hope your finisher lives to its name.
It will, said Winnipeg. Are you prepared?
Sloan relinquished Winnipeg and flipped into the air. Another gun materialized in her hands.
Let's fuck this bitch up.
She squeezed the trigger but held her magic to charge the attack. The barrel of her gun span, churned, whirred, and grew translucent with the accumulated light within. Pain welled inside her as she drained thick chunks of her soul to build the attack stronger and stronger. Her arms and legs quivered uncontrollably; blood spurted from her numerous open wounds. Clair Ibsen's face leered at her as it expanded its mouth into an apocalyptic void.
The moment it spat another hefty volley of seeds Sloan released her magic. The gun roared with a grenade blast of light, a final spark that surged through the dead air and incinerated the seeds en route.
At the same time, Winnipeg rushed forward, traveling close behind the all-illuminating orb of pure power. For a brief moment of suspended silence the archon Clair Ibsen watched with dull apprehension, perhaps even fear—a sight that swelled Sloan with vindication as she rolled back from the recoil.
The orb struck the archon. At the moment of impact the orb collapsed and all light was sucked out of the cavern. The whole cylindrical structure plunged into the nonexistence of absolute darkness. One second passed, two seconds passed. Then the light flared in tumultuous eruption of sight and sound. A horrific roar accompanied the spreading particles as the archon lurched back with a vast bristling of its feathered throat. A billion tiny rivets spread across the Clair Ibsen mask like the craquelure of mummification.
In the next moment, Winnipeg, who had been behind the orb all along, whipped her arm horizontal across the mask. Clair Ibsen split in two, her mouth cut with a Glasgow smile. The two halves spread in opposite directions, afloat with ponderous sluggishness, as if physics itself had been staggered by the attack.
Clair Ibsen shattered.
A screaming blast sent Winnipeg hurtling backward. Both she and Fargo danced like rag dolls through the air, arms and limbs turned to jointless slabs of meat. Fargo struck the wall first, followed by Winnipeg.
Winnipeg groped for Fargo, caught an ankle, anchored herself to the larger girl. They hurtled in freeform plunge until Winnipeg collected her magic and caught them with an auspicious wind before they disappeared into the brier patch.
They righted themselves in midair and let go one another. Winnipeg brushed back her hair and faced her enemy, now bereft of the face of Stewart Wibaux (no doubt Fargo had seen the visage of Minneapolis; but Winnipeg wondered what form it had taken for Regina-Saskatoon). Bit by bit they had peeled away the archon's distractions. Now they knew its true face.
The archon—the real archon—had a long, serpentine head, bedecked with a pileated crest of so many vibrant shades of gray it seemed as though there had once been color, sapped away by an unknown eutrophication. A long, curved beak fashioned of pure ivory jutted from its face like an elephant tusk. Scrimshaw arabesques adorned the beak, harsh swirls and ingrained carvings of no immediate meaning. Above two tufts of feathers, where the archon's eyes should be, familiar electric static fizzed and crackled.
No more deceptions. This was its true face. It had to be its true face.
Winnipeg did not have the stamina or the soul to continue fighting if this was not its true face. With a deep puncture wound in her back and numerous lacerations across her skin, a stoic sealing of pain became less and less feasible if she wanted energy to spare for combat. She had rationed power for her finisher; it needed to work now.
She raised her katana overhead. Fargo sputtered something but Winnipeg ignored her as she focused her power into the sword. Her finisher had a five-second charge time. In magical combat five seconds was virtual eternity and the windup served as her otherwise infallible finisher's sole downside. Even Fargo's attack that had fractured the archon's mask had taken only half the time. But if Winnipeg could pull it off...
"BOURRASQUE—"
The archon opened its beak and loosed a nerve-shattering song. The sound waves traveled as a visible pulse through the den and knocked Winnipeg and Fargo back against the wall. Great chunks of earth broke from the ceiling and descended in rapid cascades.
Fargo grabbed Winnipeg and dove away from a falling boulder. The energy around Winnipeg's katana dissipated and the attack went unfinished.
They rebounded and lost control in the air. Winnipeg exerted her will on her wind magic to fight against their schizoid trajectory, but the petals swirled beneath, vivid oranges and greens, so freakishly colorful in an otherwise colorless realm that it stirred faint feelings of nausea. The walls of the den continued to rumble and quake as the petals curled upward. No—not curling upward. Spreading. The petals were becoming the walls around them. The vibrant pigmentation bled from the petals onto the ashen surfaces and swallowed the world in obnoxious polka dot wallpaper. The transformation happened with torpid slowness and yet seemed to happen all at once; the walls and fires stripped away until all sense of direction disappeared and they entered a nebulous dimension of tropical clown colors. The only distinguishable object in the entire semipermanent haze was the archon itself, the vast floating column of feathered neck that extended from a wrinkle in the world rather than something plantlike and organic.
From similar wrinkles sprouted the archon's countless roots. A vast array of perforations dotted the vacuous landscape. There were even more roots now, the endless coil clotting and blocking view of the archon proper, although not the painful expressionist garbage that surrounded them. Or perhaps the world itself had grown smaller—and the archon, in changing the colors of the wall, had altered them in a way Regina-Saskatoon said was within its power.
"Ooh, what an interesting development!" said Regina-Saskatoon herself as she melded out of the background and encased the three of them in a protective bubble. "It must be truly desperate. It's trying to alter the miasma despite our counteractive presence. A dire gambit indeed!"
"It's working," said Winnipeg. No trace remained of the previous den; all was now color.
"Where did you come from," said Fargo to Regina-Saskatoon. This bubble was much smaller than the last. They nearly pressed together in the tight confines.
Regina-Saskatoon donned a wan smile. She did not look good. In addition to the numerous half-healed wounds that coated her body, her uniform had gone to tatters and her hair, normally quite brown, had developed several strands of gray. Dark bags underlined her eyes.
And yet the Soul Gem on her shoulder remained flawless.
"Funny story, that," she said. "I remember being dragged by a root having all sorts of delusions—and then presto! I was free, something had severed the root. I regained my senses just in time to observe your attack on the archon's mask. Bravo, by the way, truly stunning teamwork and coordination!"
Roots pounded against the bubble. It bulged with wet squishes. Blood drizzled from the weakening walls onto their heads.
"No time for idle prattle," said Winnipeg. Regina-Saskatoon seemed like she might literally break into pieces at any moment.
"Winnipeg's right." Fargo's tall, lanky body contorted to fit inside the bubble. Her neck craned at an awkward angle. "If the archon can fuck up spacetime we're dicked."
"We have exposed its true face. Now is time to behead the snake." Winnipeg jabbed a finger against Regina-Saskatoon's chest to get her attention and she lolled her head toward Winnipeg in response. "I need you to shield me long enough I can charge my finisher."
"Your finisher can cut through all these roots AND the archon?" said Fargo.
Winnipeg's first impulse was to give a resounding and unwavering yes. That single affirmative word, with no explanation or qualification: the absolute confidence and understanding of one's ability that defined everything admirable and impressive to human beings. The kind of response she would have given a thousand times in a thousand different contexts because it was so easy to simulate confidence simply by acting without thinking. As though all she had to do was say something fast enough and it meant she knew what she was doing.
"I cannot be certain." She closed her eyes and exhaled. The archon was no longer visible behind the thick knot of roots. "I—"
A root struck the bubble and sheared it open. In a wash of blood they toppled into formless subspace, beset on all sides by roots.
Regina-Saskatoon laughed and swung her staff wildly at nothing.
Winnipeg, said Fargo as she forced the roots back with the blare of her gun. Use your finisher to take out the roots. I can kill the archon.
When I use my finisher I'm out of the fight, said Winnipeg. I will be unable to do anything until I have cubes.
Fargo grabbed Winnipeg's arm. Trust me. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's blowing shit up.
A whole host of thoughts crowded into Winnipeg's mind at once, each processed in the span of a millisecond. Calculations, projections, assumptions, assessments. Damage outputs versus defensive ramifications, potential unknowns and known unknowns. And somehow a lingering distaste at the thought of anyone but her performing the coup de grace upon the archon, a disgust at her own relegation to a support role that her rational side quickly squashed. Fargo excelled at unloading high offensive damage onto immobile and undefended enemies, either single target or against mobbish clumps. And Winnipeg excelled at, what had Regina-Saskatoon called it, A-O-E attacks, slaughtering numerous enemies at once either through her wind magic or her finisher, ON TOP of her strong single-target offense. Both could deal the damage necessary to kill the archon, but of the two only Winnipeg could clear a path to it in the first place. The strategy was inarguable. She would stand aside and give Fargo the opportunity to end.
She wheeled on Regina-Saskatoon and slapped her in the face. "Wake up and quit giggling, you condemnable minx. I need a barrier around me for five seconds, do you think you can manage even that?"
The roots closed in tight. Regina-Saskatoon attempted a serious face and saluted. "Alright! Here goes!"
The world around Winnipeg became red, muting the motley outside. On the other side of the barrier, Regina-Saskatoon held aloft her staff, the arm visibly palpitating.
A root lashed out and gored Regina-Saskatoon through the back. Winnipeg stopped wasting time and raised her katana to channel the energy for her finisher. Fargo slammed against the outside of the bubble, propping her back against it as she warded off encroaching roots. As Regina-Saskatoon was dragged away, she extended her other hand and surrounded Fargo in a similar barrier.
The katana gleamed a fluorescent neon as energies buzzed around the tip. The power coursed through Winnipeg's veins as she poured her everything into the attack, Fargo stripped away, Regina-Saskatoon stripped away, the roots and the petals and the world stripped away until everything became a white-hot blear in her mind.
"BOURRASQUE..."
The roots perhaps sensed her power and battered the barrier to strike at her, to disrupt her concentration, and perhaps that accounted for the dull rhythmic thump in the back of her skull. But they could not stop her. As the final word formed, nothing could stop her.
"DENOUEMENT!"
The barrier burst and she unleashed her finisher. Winnipeg burst into a hundred whispery copies of herself, each composed of wind but taking her form, with sinew, muscle, structure, pulse. A squall of ferocious gale shredded through the roots as the one hundred Winnipeg clones fanned out in a circular pattern, each dragging her katana through plant matter and virulent ooze. Each Winnipeg sliced, shredded, cut with her same finesse and technique, her same skill and prowess, each imbued with a dollop of her soul and the howl of zephyr.
Roots peeled back and dropped in every direction as the blades whipped through them. They spouted viscous white pus into the lurid landscape and squealed as they thrashed and gnashed their worthless thorny limbs and dropped into orange oblivion below. Winnipeg and her facsimiles of self spread between them toward the ends of the arena, each leaving a swath of destruction in her wake until they butted against an unseen wall and bounced back in dissipating puffs of smoke and wind.
As fast as the attack had taken to charge, it ended. The clones ran out the end of their microcosmic souls, extinguished the little life with which Winnipeg had nourished them. Their sparks fizzled one by one until the wind died completely and the real Winnipeg drifted backward among the gaudy backdrop.
All energy had left her. The muscles in her fingers could not even muster the strength to retain her katana, and the blade drifted from her hand as she fell. She had no breath left; her eyes threatened to close completely. She could not even feel her own heartbeat, even as all sound and sense folded in on itself and left only herself to feel.
The debris and dead roots, some still twitching, drifted alongside her. Like the wreckage of some phantasmic god in an alternate reality—no, not like; it was. Not a single root had been spared. Only the archon itself remained, a monolithic obelisk of pinions and avian elements that presided over the wasted land.
A small blip on the other side of the world sped toward the archon: Fargo. Her jacket billowed behind her as she soared through the asteroid belt of pruned roots, the barrel of her gun awhirl and burning with light energy. Winnipeg tried to move her arm, failed. Her body sailed as if in zero gravity, although she harbored the distinct impression of downward descent. It was all up to Fargo now.
Winnipeg bumped into something, changed direction. She revolved in midair, unable to see the archon or Fargo anymore, unable to control her flight. Her turn was slow and lateral. She saw what she had bumped into: Regina-Saskatoon, a bloodied mess interspersed with flecks of white, either skin or bone. Her eyes were empty, her mouth slightly open. One arm missing entirely.
The gem fastened to the brooch on her shoulder had shattered.
Winnipeg's uncontrolled revolution continued until again she faced the archon and Fargo. The timing was impeccable, as at that moment Fargo unleashed her attack.
Winnipeg had turned too late to see if Fargo had charged her gun again or if she had used some other technique. Fargo did not strike her as the kind of Puella Magi who employed very many techniques. Her one technique was usually effective enough.
The archon reared back as gallon after gallon of pure light bombarded it. The light flared out and repainted the walls, drowning the orange and green and other violent colors with all-purifying white. The fabric of the bizarro dimension began to shatter before the archon did, or not so much shatter as fade; through the walls osmosed images of earthen rock, of a real world somewhere that may on some plane of existence overlap with theirs. The archon itself lit up along its thin tubular body with the effulgent cannonballs force-fed it by Fargo as her gun whirred with unstoppable force. Its tricks stripped away, its roots, its limbs, its everything, the archon was not so strong. Winnipeg clenched her fist, felt blood vessels return to her veins. She perhaps could still stand to fight herself.
But allow Fargo that glory.
She revolved again. Regina-Saskatoon had retreated to a small motionless dot in the distance. Winnipeg did not see the archon finally die, did not see what spectacular explosion or implosion or conflagration destroyed its body. She did not see much of anything as the light from Fargo's gun swallowed the world, until not a strip of orange or green remained. She did, however, hear the beast roar with a final, tragic scream, a scream that seemed to carry a physical corporeality in its absolute sorrow and despair, a scream surprisingly knowing, devoid of animalism, a scream that seemed to lament the end of life rather than a primal instinct of survival.
Then the scream ended. And the light ended. And Winnipeg hit the ground in a small dark cave.
The dregs of the miasma wafted away with the last reverberations of the scream. Winnipeg rolled onto her back, but everything had gone dark. She flung out an arm and felt gravel through her fingers. Real gravel. Real earth.
The roof collapsed and buried her in dirt.