Beneath the shadow of the Phoenix Hill, which blotted out the sun, Mai could barely tell what time it was when she and Ayumi finally finished their descent. They had not eaten at all since they left Last Light, so Mai found that her stomach was hurting. They were not far away now, once they returned to the road, and Mai just wanted to return to the village as soon as she could. It was a hot afternoon, with the coming of spring, though they were still in the last weeks of winter. It didn't feel that way, though, that was the strangest thing. It was a curious thought, one that Mai couldn't justify, but it appeared to her that, as soon as Reika left, westbound, the snows stopped, never to come back, and the days grew warmer. Mai had no complaints about it, she quite enjoyed spring, but the sudden end of winter was quite odd.
There were footprints on the road, left upon the road, left muddy by the recent rains. Most were their own, from earlier, when they travelled to the Phoenix Tower, but others were headed the other direction, towards Last Light. They were Megumi's, Mai thought at first, but there were others right next to those. Someone else had made their way to Last Light, and when Mai looked back, she saw no footprints on the road past where it led to the Phoenix Hill's steps. Her first thought was that they were Namakelder's but even so that did not explain their numbers. It was someone else who had left the Phoenix Tower, headed to the village, but who could it be? No one else had come to Last Light but Namakelder.
"Mai," Ayumi called her attention. "Let's get going. That's probably nothing. Following footsteps won't take us to a meal, and I am so hungry right now. I've walked too much for one day. Last time I had to walk this much was when I left home, and followed my family as we sought the Precure. I swear that by the time we got here my feet were numb for a week."
Egret nodded. It probably wasn't anything important, Ayumi was right. She looked at the footprints again, and on the wet soil their shapes were uncertain, so who was to say that they were even human, really? They migth as well belong to some wild animal. And, just as Ayumi said, she was starving. She should think of nothing but Seika's cooking.
I should have been helping her, Mai remembered. She had promised to take Yuko and Kanade's place, as best as she could, but she was not nearly as competent as they were. She had asked Seika to take her place for today, so that she might go to the Phoenix Tower and have her questions answered. She sighed. She wouldn't even have good answers, when she returned. Mika would question her sharply, of course, try to leech all the information from her, but at the end of the day, Honoka had told Mai very little, and even that had been of little use, given her little satisfaction. It had been almost entirely a waste of time. All that Egret and Echo had gained was bitter disappointment. Which was still better than what Megumi was dealt, of course. Mai hoped that she was fine, humiliated as she had been.
The road was thick with fallen leaves, all of them still wet, and Mai noticed some bugs, here and there, anthills along the sides of the roads, and centipedes scuttling by her feet. She stepped around them with care. Ayumi looked disgusted, but Mai was just glad that life was slowly being restored. The Thornwood would soon need a new name. Now that it had been cleansed and greenery returned to it, it looked like quite the ordinary forest, save for the thorn patches. The trees were no longer only skeletons, but had become quite healthy, and moss grew on their trunks. It had color again, and the sounds coming from the woods bore proof of the life within. It made Mai feel proud of her own work, and she hoped Ayumi felt similarly.
Soon they returned to where the road forked before, where Mai had seen signs of life before, though Megumi had told her to disregard it, just as Ayumi did just now. That was where the footprints led, she realized. They went deep into the woods, until they disappeared in the darkness. Again, Mai stopped to look. Someone was there. She knew it, someone who had likely come from the Tower. Phantom, she thought, but no, it could not be him. Cure Lovely had already explained how unlikely he was to strike so close to Last Light, and, besides, why would his footsteps be coming from the Phoenix Hill?
"Mai?" Ayumi had continued to walk ahead, and looked back at Egret. "Come on, we gotta-"
"Someone is there," she said. "I'm sure of it," she pointed at the trails. They were quite recent, too, else they would not remain there. Already foliage was beginning to cover them, and the wind had spread crushed, torn petals all over, and bits of grass as well. Mai continued to look, and she could swear that she saw something move in the distance.
"It might be just an animal," said Ayumi.
"Might be," Mai admitted, "but I don't think so. The tracks are coming from the hill. I want to see."
"It could be dangerous."
"It's okay," she smiled at Ayumi. "I'm safe with you."
Sighing, Ayumi returned to her. Mai meant her every word, of course. With Ayumi by her side, she felt like she could not be in any sort of danger. And, besides…
She took her hand to her chest, felt her own quickened heartbeat. She didn't mind the risk, if it ever existed. The last time her life in peril, she had reached Saki's heart. She wondered if that might happen again. It was a bit dishonest of her, she had to admit, to involve Ayumi in that, on the uncertain possibility that she might get to test her theory. It was best if whatever waited them in the Thornwood brought them no harm, of course, but Mai felt a hint of desire, thrilled at the prospect of being Cure Egret again, should danger come. Mirage had been of no help to her in deciphering the nature of her connection to Saki, and though she had tried to reach Bloom again, she only rarely managed to, and only fleetingly. It was not enough.
She followed Ayumi's lead, and when the forest grew dark, Echo just had to wave her hand and called forth a dozen wisps of light that spread over the forest. They moved in tandem, each of them equally distant from the other, and they followed the light that shone on the palm of Ayumi's hand. It was as if they were mirrored. She must have learned this magic from Mirage, though once she became Cure Echo, Mirage did not continue to take part of her education.
Only the central light, the one that Ayumi held, was real, Mai noticed. The others illuminated their surroundings, revealing the way ahead of Egret and Echo, but nothing around them cast a noticeable shadow at all. Mai was never fond of this sort of magic, the kind that did not manipulate nature's forces but instead defied its laws, and twisted truth and sense. Perhaps it was just old-fashioned of Mai's part, and for this she had heard plenty of sneering in Verone, but she felt uneasy. She was a guardian of the Heart Tree, and a protector of the Land of Fountains, so perhaps it was only expected for her to prefer magic that had ties to nature.
She looked down, tried to find more footprints on the soft soil, but found that she lost the trail. She looked around, seeking a sign of life, and she heard the rustling of leaves, saw a branch sway somewhere. By her feet, the ground was stirring faintly, and roots began to rise. She warned Ayumi of it, and felt something wrap around her ankle, gently. Whatever was happening, it was not harming her at all, only trying to make her stand still. With her eyes, Mai indicated to Cure Echo where she thought the movement came from.
When Ayumi's light shone on that direction, they revealed Cure Felice, her hand firmly placed upon a tree's bark, her fingers aglow, green lights coming from it and bleeding into the tree, flowing over it, onto the ground, like veins of green.
"It's you…" Felice said, and let go of the tree. It stopped shining, and the roots receded, letting Mai free. "I'm sorry. I was expecting someone else, but was not sure who it was who had entered the woods, so I just watched from afar, trying to tell who it was…"
"Well," Mai was quite confused, "now you know. I certainly didn't expect you to be here either, though I should have noticed that you weren't in the Phoenix Tower."
When she said that, Kotoha opened her mouth wide, in evident surprise. When she came closer to the two, Mai realized how tired she looked, how her clothes were dirty, her skin full of spots that were brown with mud.
"You came from the Tower?" Kotoha asked, her tired eyes firmly fixated on the Precure before her. She sounded worried. "Were you called there, did you have business there?"
"We went of our own volition," said Ayumi.
"We wanted to hear the truth of what had happened," Mai said. Kotoha's eyes widened with realization, but confusion still gripped at her. "We only heard about it after it had happened, and we hadn't been asked."
"What are you talking about?" Kotoha asked. Now it was Mai who had gotten confused. Were they thinking about entirely different things, when Kotoha talked about business in the Tower?
"Namakelder only gave us the news in the morning, about how Mirage had been crowned Rose Queen with Honoka's support," Mai explained. From the way Kotoha's mouth fell open and she began to blink rapidly, that was not what she had in mind in the first place. "You didn't know either, is that right?"
"Not at all, when I ran away, things were not quite so…" She shivered. "How is Riko?"
"She seems fine," said Ayumi.
"No," Kotoha came close to them, pleading, "I want a real answer, please. How is Riko? How were her eyes? Were they still lively? Did she appear to be unhurt?"
"We didn't speak," Mai explained, "but she seemed to be just the same as the last I've seen of her. Why do you ask?"
"I just told you I ran," she said, and Mai and Ayumi nodded. "I ran from Mirage. Honoka and Nagisa stayed behind to fight, but commanded me to escape, to seek help, but when I tried to reach Last Light, under the cover of darkness, I saw Choairks guarding the gates."
"Calm down," Mai held her quivering hand. Kotoha struggled to breathe, so Mai urged her to take her time. "You ran from Mirage, you said, while Black and White stayed behind… But why did you run?"
Kotoha reached into her bag, heavy with books, and gave one to Mai. Somehow Egret was not surprised. Honoka was always speaking about how she wanted to have access to the Phoenix Tower's libraries, the ones hidden beneath the earth. She didn't expect that Honoka and Nagisa would involve anyone else, though. The leather cover felt rough on her hands. It was ancient, and there was no title to reveal the tome's contents.
"You stole this?"
"Mirage mustn't know," said Kotoha. She looked like she wanted to cry, she wanted someone to comfort her and tell her what to do. The poor girl was completely lost. "I'm trusting you."
"I'm not on Mirage's side," said Mai, "not when she's crowning herself like this, a decision she made on her own, just after sending away almost everyone who would question her. But… Honoka seemed to support her. I spoke to her."
"Are you sure you spoke to Honoka?" Kotoha asked. "Look, I don't know what happened in the library after I left. I didn't see it. But after what we found there, I know that neither Black or White would even consider working with Cure Mirage, much less crowning her. They were making plans to leave, to resist."
"So… Who is it that we saw there?" Ayumi asked, but Kotoha had no answer for that. It was like she dreaded to even say it. "Do I dare ask what exactly you found there that concerned you so much? You haven't told us that."
"The book," Ayumi pointed at the one on Mai's hands. "She told us about it before. A manual of the Blue Rose, from long ago. A list of forbidden names, of idols and traitors. We thought she was hiding it because it revealed that Empress, Magician and Priestess were once of the Blue Rose, and betrayed it. But no, that was not it. She had another reason to hide it. You must see it for yourselves, or you will not believe it. I've been looking at it again and again the past hours, since I escaped. Even now I don't want to accept it. See, then," she guided Mai's fingers to a page, to a list of traitors.
Mai's finger ran down the page, feeling its weathered parchment. She had never touched such an old book, and though it looked quite worn, it was not nearly as frail as she had expected it to be. There were so many names, Mai didn't know what Kotoha wanted her to see, what had put her life into danger, and the lives of Black and White. Most names meant nothing. Old names, lost to time, names she could not pronounce, names she never heard of. Ayumi said some of them aloud, but Mai read them in silence.
The traitor, Cure Krähe, Ayumi said, but botched the pronunciation. Mai had never heard of her. Like all others in the list, her name had been erased from the world. The traitor, Cure Krone, Ayumi said. Mai sighed. She wished Kotoha would have just told them. The traitor, Cure Lance. Mai said that none of these names meant anything. She didn't understand what was so important here that Kotoha said they needed to see.
But Felice insisted that she continue, though Mai didn't see the point in it… Until the name appeared, one of the many underneath Cure Magician and Cure Egret understood at once Kotoha's terror, undeniable, overwhelming, because she felt the same.
The traitor, Cure Mirage.
"That's not right," Mai said the only thing she could say. "This is- This is wrong, a coincidence, it's an old book, why would it matter?"
"We thought the same thing," Kotoha said. "We too hoped that it did not mean what we knew it meant. We wanted to have an excuse not to believe in it. But Mirage came for us, and something happened to Black and White. It's true, all of this, all we've found. And now you say that Mirage is queen. She will seek me. She knows I was there and she knows I escaped. Please," she looked like she was on the verge of dropping to her knees. "I'll need you to help me. I can't go to Last Light, it would bring danger to the village, but…"
"We'll help you," said Ayumi. She didn't even wait for Mai to speak, but already knew what she'd decide, and for that Egret was glad. "We don't know what to do. This is… This is too much. Too much to understand."
"But we don't need to understand things fully to make a choice," said Mai. More than ever, that felt clear to her. "We'll help you, Kotoha. We can get out of Last Light freely. We'll bring you food, whatever you need. We'd have liked to have brought some now, but, well…"
"I appreciate it," Kotoha said, wrapping her arms around Mai and Ayumi so suddenly that she let go of her bag, and the book on Egret's hands fell on a thin patch of grass. "We will need to warn the others, when they return. Mirage will try to trick them, as she tried to fool you with Honoka."
"We'll tell them what you told us," said Mai. "And then…" She didn't know what came then. Somehow she didn't care. Whatever happened would happen, and she would deal with it. She felt like she could. She felt like she had a purpose now, even if she was too shaken for that purpose to be at all clear. But for now, it was alright not to know. She would figure it out. "And then we'll make things right again," she promised. That was all that the Precure could ever promise, all they could ever do. Mai meant every word of it.
The Precure waited in front of the Desert Rose, all of them elegant and proper, though it was Nozomi that caught Reika's eye. She was absolutely striking, and, which was a plasant surprise to Reika, she moved quite elegantly. Though her dress appeared to have many layers, when Reika could look at it closer, she saw that each of them was quite thin, beautifully dyed silk. Nozomi, though, looked more than a little apprehensive, her cheeks burning, even after Reika complimented her. She gave only curt answers, and tried to look away.
Komachi was right: she was troubled. By what, though, Reika had no way of telling, and Nozomi certainly wasn't going to bring it up. And now would be a terrible time to insist on it, just before they left for the meeting. Reika did only what she could do, little as it may be: she took Nozomi's side, along with Iona. She didn't know what else she had to offer Nozomi but her love.
Though everyone looked good - even Setsuna, who swore she didn't know how to pick, and was saying she'd need Kanade's help - Makoto and Hime were the only ones that looked like they were used to this formality. Though Reika had plenty of contact with Märchenland's royalty, she had always been able to present herself casually when she was with Candy. Makoto, though, had plenty of practice in courtly manners from her years with Marie Ange. To tell the truth, to Reika she looked even more regal than Cure Princess herself. Hime did not exactly exude great confidence, while Cure Sword carried herself with pride.
Soon four cars came to take them to the Palace of Bronze, all of them driven by Nightmare employees. The last of them, though, was not a real vehicle but a Kowaina, its insides black and squishy. Reika had not expected good things from Nightmare, but this was too dubious. On the front seats of the three regular cars she saw Cobraja, Sasorina and Kumojacky. That was some reassurance, though not much. On the last, though, the Kowaina, there was no Apostle inside to guarantee their safety.
Hime and Makoto travelled on the first car, with Cobraja. As the princess and leader of this expedition, it was only right for Hime to be at the front, with Cure Sword to guard her. On the second car, Nile, Kanade and Setsuna shared cramped space on the backseat, with Sasorina grumbling as they entered. And in the third car were Komachi and Yuko, though as she entered, Cure Honey tried to take a look at the first car, to make sure Hime was fine. Kumojacky told her not to worry and just get in.
Only the Kowaina was left. Though it looked much like a regular car, its hood was a huge smiling mask, and its seats seemed to pulsate with life. Quite the repulsive sight. Reika would have suggested Nozomi and Iona enter the two first cars instead, cramped as they might be, while she alone risked herself inside this thing, but Dream and Fortune were having none of it.
"If that thing tries to eat you," Iona said, "then it'll have to eat us too. We might die, but if we ever do, then we gotta die together. It's more romantic that way, wouldn't you think?"
She meant it as a joke, so that she'd not have to outright say her feelings, that she wanted the three of them to be together. Reika found it endearing, though she'd prefer it if Iona chose to be honest instead. That'd make things easier. Besides, the feeling was mutual. Iona and Nozomi meant more to Reika than she could put into words. Sometimes she remembered Iona's mistrust, and her own doubts about Dream's skill and Fortune's ability to work together. But those were all in the past, now. If Reika ever doubted that things could get better, she needed only to think of her dearest friends. They had come so far, she could never forget that, even though sometimes, amidst all the misfortune and suffering, it was easy to lose track of what truly mattered.
She chose the passenger seat, and sitting on the Kowaina's insides was just as vile as she thought it'd be. She found it to look, from the outside, vaguely inklike, so she was expecting it to not be entirely solid, but that was not quite how it felt. She sank in her seat, its shape deforming as she shifted, resembling misshapen muscles. By her side, the driver looked like he really wanted to be elsewhere. He was a huge man, and he wore an ugly cap, but uglier still were his sneering eyes. And when Nozomi walked in, he shuddered.
"Gamao," Nozomi said. "Funny to find you here. Looks like you couldn't avoid work forever, after all."
"Yeah, yeah, throw it in my face that I gotta make a living… Spoiled little brat."
"That would imply you ever worked. If I remember right, you were always leaving your duties to Girinma. Is he still alive?"
"Promoted into management," he grumbled, and put his hands on the steering wheel. As he moved it, the Kowaina let out unpleasant noises, and began to move. The beast was faster than Reika expected, and with the streets empty they made their way across the city briskly.
Miwar had not lost its grandeur at all with the Death of the Stars, though, admittedly, Reika had only heard about it, but never seen it with her own eyes until now. Morgenluft had been well-preserved, thanks to the combined effort of fairies, humans and the fairytale denizens (it felt bitter to call them monsters now, so Reika avoided it) but it had been razed before, and suffered under Pierrot. No such thing happened with Miwar. Reika could look up and see its tall buildings still standing unblemished, its roads still carefully maintained even though few cars still worked.
Reika then realized why. Miwar hadn't been conquered, like Frosting, like Morgenluft. It had always belonged to the Apostles. So of course it hadn't been attacked, it had been spared the worst of the Death of the Stars. Though at first Reika felt some bitterness over the fate of her own home, as the car sped by the people of Miwar, who minded their own business, she actually felt thankful. They did not have to suffer nearly as much as others. The city remained prosperous, and, most of all, safe. That they did not have to witness horror was a blessing.
The crowds grew sparser the closer they got to the Palace of Bronze, as few were allowed into these higher districts of Miwar without express permission. The only exceptions, Reika had heard, were when new leaders were chosen by the Apostles, or during special celebrations.
Or a negotiation, as the case would be now. Even the Precure didn't have free access into the Palace of Bronze, back when the Red Rose held sway over the Desert Lands. When she accompanied Nagisa, Honoka and Yuri's team to battle dune, she heard Cure Moonlight remark that, when the Precure and the Apostles were still at peace, before even she was a Cure, the Desert Apostles loved to keep the Precure waiting before receiving them. She said that to Cure Blossom, so fearful and anxious, a perfect shrinking violet. The Apostles understand the power in making you feel like this, Yuri had told her, and Reika happened to hear the advice. Moonlight was completely right. It was not only battle that was a struggle, but what came before as well. The worry, the waiting.
Nightmare appeared to be in a hurry, though, because the comitive reached the Palace of Bronze rather quickly, taking the shortest route. Reika wasn't sure what to make of that, or if it even meant anything. It was natural for her to overthink things in such stressful times. But maybe it meant Nightmare was hasty, that they might actually want the alliance, or to at least hear what the Precure had to say. That was not even as far-fetched as it might appear at first. Nightmare had other enemies to deal with, Labyrinth and the Selfish Kingdom, and whatever evil lurked in Majorland, away from the world, isolated and mysterious. Maybe they understood those dangers would destroy them. Nightmare was greedy and it craved to subjugate everyone, to own everything, but Labyrinth was so hellish that the tales of what happened there kept Reika up at night. But even that was better than Dark Fall's sadism and hatred. Maybe Despariah was wiser than she seemed, and maybe Nightmare needed help.
Or maybe Nightmare tried to get the Precure to lower their guard so that it could slit their throats. That was far more likely. Unfortunately for Nightmare and its cronies, Reika would never let her guard down around the likes of them.
"I see you don't have your friends with you anymore," Gamao said with an ugly smirk. Through the mirror he stared at Nozomi. "Just the green one. You must be lonely."
"My friends are right here with me," Nozomi said. "You'd be wise to hold your tongue and silence your mockery. Instead you should be thankful that I don't have Rin with me. She's unlikely to forget what you've done the last time we met, and even more unlikely to forgive someone who laid a hand on her siblings."
"I don't forget it either," he showed the Precure his right hand, burned and scarred. "If only she was here we could both try and earn our revenge. Me for the hand she burned, and Rin for the little brats I slapped."
"I could take her place," Nozomi said, and when she whispered she sounded to Reika like an entirely different person. She sounded as harsh as she did when she meant to kill Arachnea, so long ago. "I don't think Nightmare would miss you at all. Or anyone else, for that matter."
Gamao didn't take his eyes off the road after that. Reika didn't know how much of that she had meant, but it bothered her all the same. She didn't know this Rin that Nozomi cared about so much, but what Dream just said reminded Reika of Nao and her siblings, and the time Majorina almost killed them all. That, indeed, was not something easily forgettable, or ever forgivable.
The Palace of Bronze appeared before them, but little of it was bronze, only sandstone and bricks. But it, like the city around it, was imposing, terrifyingly huge. It was a place where one could get lost in, and Reika had seen several villages that were smaller than the Palace of Bronze. It was certainly bigger than Last Light, and though it was obviously not nearly as tall, it might very well take up the same space that the Phoenix Tower did, though of course the Tower had the advantage of its numerous floors and underground levels. Still, if even Reika, who was used to the Phoenix Tower and Fabelpfalz, was awestruck by the magnificence of the Palace of Bronze, she could only imagine the wonder that other people felt. The city itself was so huge that it made Morgenluft look small, and though Trump might have similar dimensions, this at least was a city that worked, not a complete anachronism that survived by chance. Only the capital of Majorland could boast being an even greater city, and only its palace was more splendid. But, then again, nothing could truly match Luminosa, the wealthiest city in the world. Miwar certainly gave it some competition, though.
Reika stepped out of the car, with Iona and Nozomi following closely behind. Gamao swiftly moved away from the Precure and towards a woman who Nozomi said was Hadenya, who awaited atop the stone stairs leading to the entrance, with two men by her side. She greeted Princess Himelda, before the rest of the Precure even had a chance to approach. Reika was fine with that. It was probably for the best if Nozomi did not have to deal with Hadenya, after all. She had barely managed to restrain herself with Gamao. That, in fact, was exactly what Reika wanted to talk about with her.
"You should have been respectful," Reika said. "He provoked you on purpose, to get a reaction from you."
"I'm not the sort of person who can just not react," Nozomi justified herself. "If he had insulted me, then perhaps I would have been able to stay silent, but he spoke against my friends, against Rin. How could I ignore that?"
"Because even when dealing with people we hate, sometimes we can't just say everything we want to."
"I asked how, not why," said Nozomi. "Sorry. I should have just taken it, I know, it's not like it matters in the grand scheme of things, but I'm…" She hesitated. It seemed as if she was going to admit something bothered her, for a moment, but then she didn't. She just made up an excuse. "I'm like this, is what I mean. I'm not like you. You told me of Majorina, right? What she did to your friend… I don't understand how you were able to even talk to her."
"I don't understand it either," said Reika, "and I certainly don't like it. Maybe she didn't deserve that courtesy, just as Gamao doesn't, but it's not a matter of deserving. The world might be better off without people like them, but we can't right all wrongs in the world, especially not at the edge of the blade. It's not satisfying, it's not even good, but sometimes that's just how it is. We can't make the world perfect, and I have my doubts that a perfect world would involve the Precure getting to decide, without explanation, who lives or dies."
"Just because you believe we can't make the world perfect doesn't mean we shouldn't try," Nozomi retorted. By now Iona was looking like she really didn't want to take anyone's side, and, in fact, didn't want this conversation to be happening in the first place.
"You're right, and we are trying. We try until we reach our limits. And we swallow our pride if we must."
"It's not easy," Nozomi said. "I could do it in Märchenland, when I was not the one who had to deal with people who hurt me. I don't know how you did it, because now that it's Nightmare that we must deal with, I just feel… Hopeless. Because I completely agree with you, and everything you say. I agree that for the sake of keeping Miwar safe, we need to speak to Nightmare, instead of punching Gamao in the face like I'd love to. I know all those things, I know it's all for the best. And that's why it feels bad."
"What feels bad?" Iona asked. She must have recognized, just as Reika did, that Nozomi was trying to open up, though she struggled. "Tell us."
"That this is for the best. That this is the best we can get. That we have to choose between justice and safety. I've never been much of a pragmatist. In fact, the first time Karen even said the word pragmatism, I had no clue what it meant. She had to hammer it into my thick skull. I can't stand it. That we can't achieve anything better than this. It feels…" She grew quiet after that. Reika didn't pry, she let her speak only as she felt comfortable, but that was as far as Nozomi's comfort went. "Let's go. I'm just wasting time here."
She left Reika and Iona alone, together, as she joined all the other Precure, walking towards the Palace. Reika took slow steps, unsure of what to say. Iona was just as worried as Beauty, but neither knew what to do now. She didn't understand why, exactly, Nozomi was so unhappy. Was it just because things were not as easy as she had hoped? No, that was not Nozomi, she'd not be brought down by struggle. It wasn't just that things were hard and unsatisfying that bothered her, nothing so shallow. So what was it, then? Reika couldn't come up with an answer herself.
So, instead, she focused on the current task. She walked up the long stone steps to the palace entrance, its huge doors of bronze and ebony left open. Hadenya spoke directly to Cure Princess, welcoming everyone inside, and her fake smile was so perfectly feigned that the only reason Reika could even tell it was fake in the first place was because what reason did she have to be glad to have Precure in her palace?
Her palace. Yes, that's right. Hadenya was the one who greeted them, not Salamander. He was nowhere to be found. Cobraja had warned the Precure that it was Nightmare that was in control of Miwar, but Reika had no idea that they would be quite so blatant. Each passing minute made the whole venture appear a little bit more misguided.
The Precure gathered around Hadenya, who gestured for them to follow her. Reika did so, but she always looked behind, and to her sides. There were Kowaina all around, surrounding the Palace of Bronze. No Desertrians, though. Beauty wondered if that meant something. There were few traces of Apostle leadership around, as even Cobraja, Kumojacky and Sasorina kept their distance while Nightmare's representative opened the great doors and welcome the Precure inside.
"Everything you've heard about the Palace of Bronze is true," she said, "and not only true, but greater still. We've made some alterations," she said, pointing to the chandeliers that ran along the ceiling, and the freshly-painted murals on the walls, "because time had dilapidated the environment, but the foundation was always great."
To Reika, Hadenya was sounding more like a tacky tour guide than a diplomat, but maybe that was exactly what she as. Nightmare was no realm, only a business, so perhaps its executives saw diplomacy as just a different form of negotiating business deals, with all the empty pleasantries of that. As she followed Hadenya and heard her babble on, Reika took a closer look at the murals, and saw that though at first glance they looked like the avant-garde art that was quite popular in the northern continent, all that had been painted were shapes, colors that clashed with one another for no purpose, all devoid of meaning. Just hollow imitations of the real thing.
There was little life in the Palace of Bronze. Here and there Reika saw agents of Nightmare, but they were few and they kept their distance, only ever watching. Otherwise, Reika saw empty rooms, spacious hallways left deserted. A palace this massive was not made to be vacant, and Reika had heard tales of just how many people lived there, hundreds of Apostles who made it their home and who organized their operations from there, and ruled Miwar and the lands around it. But now there was nothing. They were gone, the Palace of Bronze a husk inhabited by Nightmare. They had, quite blatantly, taken over.
Reika kept herself wary and ready to fight, should anything happen. Her eyes scanned her surroundings for threats. Nightmare's agents had sheathed daggers by their waists, but knives would not catch the Precure by surprise. Reika tried to catch sight of crossbows instead, but saw none. Hadenya herself was quite unguarded too, so if Nightmare plotted anything, she'd be in great risk, with Precure all around her. She had only Gamao with her, and two bodyguards, silent men who walked in tandem, one them tall and slender and the other short and plump. They didn't seem like particularly fearsome warriors, but sometimes that discreteness was exactly what a bodyguard needed.
Once they got past the murals, and the first of the palace's many courtyards, the Precure found where the palace got its name from: wide and winding stairs with bronze railings led to the great waiting hall before the throne room. Bronze were the masks that hung upon the walls, and bronze the statues of warriors, of philosophers and poets that ran along the hall, with seats between them, for the many petitioners that would come to ask favors of the Apostles, back when the rule of Miwar was still in their hands. The hall alone could house hundreds, and it did in the past. The populace of the Desert Lands would come and ask the Apostles for support, should they ever need it. As Reika walked towards the throne room, she looked up, towards that ceiling beyond reach, and she saw the wide emptiness, only imagining what it might have looked like once.
It made her think of the Phoenix Tower. Only the Precure and those closest to them were allowed to stay inside, and only those who were already of the Red Rose had access to the Rosehearted and other Precure of importance. The troubles of the common folk only reached the Precure with some delay. This was one of the many failings of the Red Rose, Reika reflected. Now more than ever it was clear to her that the Rose was often too distant from the troubles and tragedies of the commons. It was kingdoms it offered help to, it was queens it listened to. Now that Reika had seen in person just how much the Desert Apostles used to do for their people, the Red Rose seemed woefully inadequate in comparison. She turned to her side, and she was Iona looking around as well, awe-struck.
"It's hard to believe, isn't it?" Reika asked of her. "That the Apostles used to receive so many supplicants in need of help. I couldn't help but think of how even when our Tower was crowded, it was only Precure who walked its halls, only Precure underneath the shadow of Empress, Magician and Priestess."
"I never even knew that," Iona said. "I only knew the Red Rose after the Death of the Stars, after all, and all else I heard came from my sister's letters, and, well… She made things seem much better than they really were. Much easier, happier. Only later did I learn that the perfection I was promised was never there. I… I want to change it," Iona said, suddenly determined. "The Desert Apostles had the right idea all along, I think, of what it means to fight for the world."
"You're right," Reika smiled. She was glad that the idea came so naturally to Iona, but not surprised. She hadn't known the Red Rose before this, so she never had the chance to get used to it. It was hard to try and change things once you accepted that it was just the way they were, that they had always been like this, and would always be. And it was easy to think that of the Red Rose. Easy, but not right. Reika saw it now.
The huge doors opened ahead, pulled by Kowaina that guarded Baron Salamander's throne. The Precure walked inside. Yuko's eyes never left her princess, worried and protective, but Hime maintained a steely disposition and a stern face. Hadenya constantly asked her questions, though Reika was too distant to hear the words. Hime answered them all curtly and plainly. She did not look at all like the scared girl she usually was.
Though the throne room was immense, and, like the one before it, large enough to host hundreds, perhaps a thousand, Salamander's throne itself was small and distant, a tiny unassuming thing. It was almost disappointing, as everything else in the grandeur of the Palace of Bronze made it clear that the Desert Apostles were not opposed to ostentatious displays of their power. It was very unfitting, and the other Precure didn't fail to notice: Hime and Makoto, used to the trappings of royalty, looked at the seat with some confusion, while Iona whispered something to Nozomi.
When they walked up to the overlord of the Desert Apostles, though, he looked small even in his meager throne. There was nothing imposing about him. In fact, there was little life in him. He sat like a porcelain doll, his head leaning to the side, face obscured by a white mask that Reika recognized at once. She had seen the same mask worn by King Donuts and by his enslaved court in Frosting. She felt her heart begin to pound, and she had to look for Nozomi to confirm her dread. Dream's fists were clenched, so Reika had to stay close to her so that she'd be able to keep her cool, though she, too, struggled. Iona was uneasy as well, but did not feel the visceral disgust that Beauty and Dream did. And how could she, when she had never seen the true cruelty of that mask?
"You stand before Baron Salamander," said Hadenya, in front of him, her companions practically blocking Salamander from the sight of the Precure, "unifier of the Apostles, born of fire and with the birthmark of crimson, bringer of the tempest, and lord of the Desert Lands," she said, whilst Salamander remained unmoving. It sounded like mockery.
"I am princess Himelda Window Cure Queen of the Blue Sky," she said, and the only people in the room not to choke on their laughter were Reika, Hadenya's guards, and, of course, Baron Salamander. With his eyes obscured by the mask, it didn't look like he was even looking at Hime in the first place, or at anything at all, for that matter. "We've come to talk of friendship and of peace terms, to reach a favorable agreement."
"I have already informed him of your intentions," said Hadenya, "and he has agreed to allow me to mediate this meeting and to speak on his behalf, to defend his interests. His resurrection has left him severely weakened, even now, and even speaking is too great a struggle for Salamander in the moment. I'm sure you'll understand that death is rather debilitating. So, princess Himelda… What do you have to offer us?"
"The same deal that the Red Rose has offered the Bad End Kingdom," she said. "Amnesty, first of all. A promise that the Desert Apostles will not be punished for their role in the Death of the Stars to the full severity of the Red Rose's law."
"Does that offer extend to Nightmare?" Hadenya asked, sly.
"Not at the moment," Cure Princess answered. "When we set out from the Neutral Lands, we did not know, then, that Nightmare collaborated with the Desert Apostles. The offer of forgiveness was only to them. However, as an emissary of Nightmare in service to the interests of the Apostles, we extend our courtesy of peace to you while you remain in the Desert Lands."
"How very generous. Might I ask what the punishment would be for crimes committed to snuff out your stars?"
"An attack against the Precure is answered only by execution," said Hime, "and the nature of your crimes means your punishment would be to burn at the stake, consumed by Starfire."
Hadenya didn't seem even slightly afraid of that fate.
"I suppose it would be best for our well-being to shake hands with the Precure, then?"
"I would certainly advise that you do. I understand that Nightmare is a business, that your lady Despariah expects results. I assure you that a conflict with the Precure would be highly unprofitable. For both of us. My authority is tied to our Rosehearted, Cure Mirage, so right now I cannot make any offers to Nightmare… But I assure you that I will take note of your cooperation when I report back to the Red Rose."
A neutral enough assertion. It was not a promise of friendship, because Reika doubted there could ever be one. Even if Nightmare was willing to make peace with the Precure - and clearly they would consider that - there was no chance that the Red Rose could actually forgive them for what they've done. It was already a hard thing to ask of the Precure, to overlook the crimes of the Bad End Kingdom and the Desert Apostles, who were only pawns to the masterminds behind the Death of the Stars, but they could only go so far. Reika herself would never accept anything but destruction for Nightmare, for Dark Fall and Labyrinth. She was sure that the rest of the Precure agreed with her. After all, if the Red Rose simply forgave those that cast the world into ruin, how could anyone ever say that the Precure were protectors of anything?
Hadenya took a while to answer, but not once did she even look back at Baron Salamander. He looked like a ragdoll, sprawled on his own throne, his arms skinny and frail, his body weak and lifeless. Reika understood why Cobraja, Sasorina and Kumojacky were all so certain that diplomacy would not be viable. She just assumed that Salamander was not being quite so literally controlled. It was all wrong, these were a mockery of peace talks, but Hime remained courteous. Not all Precure hid their disgust at what had been done to Salamander, though. Nozomi, Iona, Nile, Setsuna… Setsuna most of all. She stared at him with a rage in her eyes that Reika never once imagined could dwell there. Cure Passion always appeared quiet, the portrait of restraint, her feelings always obscured, so wrath was an unexpected look for her.
"You offer forgiveness for the Apostles and an alliance," said Hadenya, "but we would appreciate something more concrete. You brought a cartload of gifts, I am told, and while Salamander appreciates your kindness, there is one thing he desires to ensure a temporary peace. The message needs to be relayed to Despariah, after all, as she is an ally of the Apostles as well and would like to hear. In the meantime, you are free to remain in the city, of course. The Desert Rose is yours by right… As well as what's hidden inside."
Just as expected, thought Reika. She was interested in the secrets inside, whatever they were. As far as Reika was concerned, the most likely thing was there were no serious secrets behind the door of rubies, just old documents and treasures that might have mattered centuries ago, when they were first sealed away, but now Reika doubted they had any worth. It was just common greed that led Hadenya to think otherwise.
"And is that your demand?" Hime asked. Even from afar, Hadenya's eyes practically lit up from interest. Not a very subdued negotiator, this one.
"Access to what is past the door of rubies," said Hadenya. "We have acquired the key, but only a Precure can open the door. We have need of one another if we'd like to discover what lies behind the starsteel and rubies."
"Is there anything else we can offer instead?" Hime asked. "We have no prior knowledge of anything valuable inside the Desert Rose, and did not anticipate this…"
"There is nothing if you'd like to remain there," said Hadenya. "Your stay in Miwar is still up to us. Cobraja may have the authority to bring you into the city without my leave, but we remain enemies, and would like you to display your good faith by assisting us in this matter."
Hime paused. As she weighed in the matter, Yuko whispered something in her ear, and Reika wondered if she might need some advice as well. Before she could step up to her, though, princess Himelda had already made her decision.
"You may only walk past the door of rubies accompanied by us," she said. "And you are not to leave with anything. You are free to come to the Desert Rose if you warn us of your intentions in advance."
"You ask much of me, Cure Princess," said Hadenya, "Salamander has great interest in whatever is hidden away in the Desert Rose, as Miwar is his city…"
"I understand perfectly," said Hime, "but whatever is there belongs to the Red Rose. It has always belonged to us, and we cannot easily part with it. Not before we can judge its worth. Let us both have patience. We will accept simply residing in the Desert Rose for the time being, until we can plan the terms of our alliance, and you can take a look at whatever there interests you, and in time we may share what we can part with."
"That's fair enough," said Hadenya. "You're right. We shall be patient. We have time, after all, and the longer we can think and plan, the better."
"Then we are in accord," Hime said, and she shook Hadenya's hand. Not Salamander's. There was no point in doing that. "Will you accompany us now, as we head back?"
"I think I will," said Hadenya. She ordered Gamao to arrange her car, then turned to her bodyguards. "Isohgin, Yadokhan. You are to bring twenty Kowaina with us," she commanded, and they nodded and left to make the preparations. Then, she faced the Precure once more. "You'll forgive the indecorum, but I must take precautions. We have not made peace yet, after all, and for me to walk alone into a dark place with only Precure at my side would be foolish."
Reika just watched as she walked past the Precure, not even looking at them, and wondered if Hadenya was just being facetious, or if she feared from the Red Rose the same that the Precure dreaded of Nightmare. Ill thoughts come from vile minds, Reika had heard once. She didn't believe it. As far as she was concerned, ill thoughts came naturally to those who knew enough about the world. Still, this only furthered her suspicions, already plentiful.
Trusting her or not, the Precure still had to follow Hadenya outside. At the steps of the Palace of Bronze they found the Kowaina that Hadenya had mentioned… Too quickly prepared, as if this was expected from the start. When she stepped outside, Reika froze. It was a perfect place for them to be attacked at, all of them coming out of the same door. She felt her blood freeze, and frost on the tip of her fingers. If the Kowaina made the slightest movement towards the Precure, if they showed the smallest sign of threatening them, then she'd take Hadenya down immediately, so that it'd be no victory for her. She had her back turned, too, it'd be the easiest thing for Reika to skewer her through… But the Kowaina did nothing, and Hadenya just walked down the stairs. And Reika stared at her own hand, and saw her veins, blacker than before…
Has the thought of killing always come this easily to me? No, of course it hadn't. She shuddered. Just a while ago she was speaking against it. The blood was not supposed to change her, not unless she wanted it to… Had it changed her, though? The scariest thing was the fear that it might have done no such thing, that this was her, and those were her thoughts. But no, they could not be. This was not her.
She shook those feelings off, and focused on her current duty. That was far more important than any aimless quandaries about morality. She looked up to the clear blue sky, and saw a plane cutting through it, close to Miwar, landing. More emissaries from Nightmare. This peace would not last, she had no doubt of that. Neither did Nozomi, her eyes so vacant and hurt. Reika wished she knew what troubled her, and she wished she knew what to do. For all her wits, though, Reika found herself as lost as everyone else.
Sculpting stone, even with magic, was exhausting, Riko learned. Marble was stubborn, did not bend to her will, so she had to struggle, and the weight of the staff hurt her arms. She could not command it fully, nor the stone, but Riko was thorough, and worked with care, so that she did not leave upon the statues any crude marks of her engraving, and bit by bit she removed the imperfections, shaped the edges until they were smooth. All the while, Queen Mirage instructed, and told her what a great job she was doing. Riko knew it already, of course, but the praise did wonders to keep her going.
Magician was easy enough, as Queen Mirage only needed smaller changes on her, and though the throne on Priestess' hands had been a challenge, the hardest was working on Cure Empress. Even after Megumi, Ayumi and Mai had left, Riko still toiled and still worked her spells. The staff made them mightier than they would usually be, and allowed her to break the stone and make it almost like clay, free for her to mold. Occasionally she turned back to ask her queen for instructions, but for most of the day she worked in silence, saying no words of her own, just listening to Queen Mirage speak.
Mostly she spoke of things she had seen in her long life, though she did not explain why she was so ancient, and Riko was far too smart to ask. There had been plenty of immortals in the world, but she knew of few methods that were clean, pure. Blood bathing, spells to crystallize the soul into phylacteries, despair magic that allowed one to feed from the agony of others… She'd rather not ask, and she was sure that Mirage would rather not tell. So Cure Magical just listened.
"I've seen the end of the Precure Dominion," Mirage said. "I witnessed its last days, a helpless observer. The last of the Rose Queens, Cure Shield, that poor woman, her family lost in the Axia Crisis… She left no heir, you know. Her three daughters dead, the traitor, the fool, the hero. The traitor was Cure Violet, who chose to join the Blue Rose, and got herself killed for it. The fool was Cure Amaranth, who tried to work a truce between the Roses, Red and Blue, when war seemed inevitable, but she was killed by her own Precure guards, loyal to the Red Rose, to its ideals, not to its queens. They wanted a war to end the Blue Rose, and killed the princess who thought she could sow peace on the fields of thorn, scorched and scarred by millennia of the Roses' hatred. And the hero, Cure Waltz, died at the great battle set at the foot of the Phoenix Hill, like countless others. The princess died just as any pauper in the war. That the Blue Rose would return is a crime on their part, because it makes war inevitable, and the horrors that come with it. There," she pointed at Cure Magician. "Wielder of the Glaive, our great warrior. Yet our Rose has always wisely chosen to praise Priestess and Empress above Magician."
"There was no war in which the Red Rose did not bleed," Riko recalled her lessons. "So we know its cost, and that Magician and her ilk are sad necessities, but not the ones we must praise."
"Right," Mirage said. "Cure Ange wrote that, I see you've read her writings, as you even use her wording. She herself was a warrior, though. And she was always sad. She told me once that war makes monsters of us all, but even then I disagreed with her. The monstrosity is always there, but war makes pigs out of people. Arbitrarily slaughtered. That's what happened to Cure Waltz. She was a hero, but some other nameless Precure struck her with an arrow, then another, and then that was the end of her. Her ancestral line ended by chance, thousands of years put to and end by an arrow."
She was finishing the coldness in Magician's eyes. She didn't know what it meant when she began shifting the great statue's expression, but somehow she began to understand it as Mirage spoke. Mirage seemed quite satisfied with the result.
"Magician, too, died a sad, meaningless death for someone of her renown. She survived the Blue Rose when she, Empress and Priestess betrayed it, and she survived the horrors of the starless world, she survived the subjugation of the world to the Red Rose, but in Harmonia she died of a wound that infected."
"And Cure Shield…?"
"Ah, yes. With her daughters lost, she felt that there was little left for her. She could choose to live the rest of her days and watch the Dominion fade, but instead she chose to fight the First Selfish and his army. Cure Twinkle, who was the Rosehearted then, allowed her to do so, but because she understood the queen's intentions, she commanded the rest of the Red Rose not to accompany her. And Shield died. All her life she had been a warrior… But a warrior is a curious thing to be. It means your life can only know one fate. And they must see things to the end. Perhaps that was why Cure Ange was so melancholic. The fighting cost her more than she was willing to show the world. She lived a life whose fate was writ, and she knew it, just as she knew that, once, she had the chance to turn back, but didn't take it. As did Magician."
Riko stared at the statue, and saw that her eyes were sad, though she had not meant for them to be that way. They just turned out like that. It made her sad as well. She had never thought that the Legendary Precure were once flesh and blood, though when she realized that it felt absurd that she ever thought otherwise. Legend could not breathe life into someone. They had lived, so long ago, and Queen Mirage seemed to know more about them than most, so she begged her to explain more, while she worked. She was happy to do as was asked, so while Riko was sculpting the throne, shifting Priestess' fingers and making her Golden Crown, Mirage spoke, just behind her.
"Only one word is fit to describe Cure Priestess, first of our Rose Queens: wise. That's all we hear of her, is it not? But how do you imagine she was? She did not always bear a crown, after all. Queens are not born, but made. And we assume she had the same stony demeanor as this huge statue, that she was cold, distant, that she always had something of great meaning to share to anyone who spoke to her… But smiles came easily to her. And frowns. Like any human, she knew joy and wrath, as she knew love, hate, and like all of us she said her share of idiocies. She hurt others for no reason, at times, and her indecorum caused diplomatic incidents. Queens are not made," she repeated, "but written. The Red Rose needed its perfect queen, though Priestess was never perfect, because she was not a statue."
"But even so," Riko said, feeling the weight of the staff, its tip aglow, shooting off sparks, "you say she's wise."
"The tale of the three Legendary Precure is not one with a happy ending, I fear. They were not friends forever. After they made their Rose, they parted ways. Magician went to war. Empress went to get herself killed. But Priestess was wise and stayed. She understood that the friends she loved were making bad choices, that they were going down a road that would not end well for them. She wanted to follow. She wanted to abandon the Red Rose to be with the ones she loved. But she didn't. She watched them leave. She wept. Then she worked."
Riko felt the staff quiver in her hands. Even now this talk of choices only made her heart ill at ease. It made her think of Kotoha. Kotoha chose to leave, while Riko chose to stay… But what would Magical have chosen if it was Mirai instead? She didn't think she was strong enough to make the right choice then, nor was she wise. But that didn't make it easier. She lifted the staff again, and considered sculpting a smile on Priestess' face, but decided against it.
Those girls from Last Light had interrupted Mirage just as she had started to speak about Cure Empress. After what she said to Megumi, the queen seemed quite bothered, so Riko felt it unwise to prod her with further questions, but, after Ayumi and Mai left, satisfied with their meeting with Honoka, Mirage rose from her throne and approached Cure Magical, and her fingers touched Riko's, helped her guide the staff, kept it balanced. Far below them, Cure White was coming, slowly making her way to Priestess' statue.
"Empress ran away," said Queen Mirage. "She fled from the life of war that Magician chose, and she fled from Priestess' duty. She chose nothing. She chose to run. She realized that the Red Rose brought her no joy, that their triumph, stolen from the Blue Rose, did not make the world a perfect place. Magician fought the rest of her life. Priestess ruled the rest of her life. But Empress saw no point in either of those things. No matter what she did, the scars remained on the face of the world. They would not heal. It drove her to despair, to think that the victory of the Precure meant so little. She sought something that would make her believe again. She sought a reason to fight again. She spent her days looking at her Crystal Mirror, begging it to show her a vision of a happy future, a future without strife, where people knew only joy, where all injustice was gone. A vision that would make her believe that her strife had some purpose."
"That's a sad way of seeing things," Riko said. As Queen Mirage instructed her, she destroyed the stone mirror that she held, but was careful enough not to damage her hands. She did not understand what was the purpose in this, but she continued to do it, because her queen commanded her. "To stop fighting because things were not perfect…"
"It's sad," Mirage agreed, "but I agree with her, that we are not truly victorious unless things are perfect. This is why I must not die. This is why I fight on. Because I believe in Empress' ideals, even though she was a coward. I will only stop being a Precure when my Rose- No, my world no longer needs me."
"How will you be able to tell?" Riko asked, and hoped it was not too insolent a question.
"I often wrestle with that question myself. And my answers have not satisfied me. Someday, I hope, they will."
Riko could only nod. She preferred not to ask more than Queen Mirage was willing to reveal, but she needed to know. She wanted to understand what she was. But perhaps she didn't need to. Mirage had always been kind to her. Maybe that was all that mattered, all she needed to know. It was a comforting thought.
"My queen," Riko said once Mirage had grown silent, when she was nearly done sculpting Empress. "May I ask you a question?"
"What is it, my sweet?"
"Did you… Did you know the Legendary Precure? You speak of them with such familiarity…"
"I did not," she said, "but I've known some who did. I'm hardly the first Precure to live long, after all, and surely I had to learn this sort of magic with someone, no?" That made enough sense to Riko, disappointing as it was. "This familiarity is not mine. I know of our Rose's founders only what I've been told, but obviously I could never share it with anyone until now. Because I trust you more than I have ever trusted anyone else," she said, getting up, walking up to Riko. Magical concealed her blushing cheeks by avoiding Mirage's gaze, and simply continuing to work. She was nearly done now. "It's unfortunate that the world and the Precure have forgotten so much about those three. It is hardly proper. But if I revealed it, then what sorts of questions would people ask of me? They would not understand. But you do, right?"
"I do," Riko said. "You are loyal to the Red Rose, more than anyone else. And you've spent so long fighting for it…"
"It is my duty. That our Rose has endured so long is in part thanks to my guidance. And after-"
She stopped talking when the sound of footsteps came up before her. Riko turned back as well, and saw Cure White. She stood before Magical and Mirage, wordless. Her eyes were not like the last time Riko had seen her. There was a shine in them now, actual life behind them. When Riko approached to take a better look, she saw that those eyes were mirrors, and Riko saw herself perfectly in them, unnaturally so. But soon the reflection changed to reveal Sorcielle instead, causing Riko to take a dangerous step back in shock. Honoka's shadow, too, was shifting, splitting, until she had two. One was hers, but the other was shorter, smaller. Riko had seen it cast before.
Sorcielle stepped out of Cure White's body, and for an instant Honoka's features were gone, her body aqueous and argent, like molten silver. The shadow shifted to return to Sorcielle, and White reverted to her normal state, but with dull and lifeless eyes, as when she had walked out of the library.
Riko knew it was wrong of her, but her first thought was that it was impressive magic, and the first thing she felt was envy towards Sorcielle. Only then did she even dare think that this was, for lack of a better word, messed up. Magic was often defiance of nature, but this was mockery of it.
"They believed all I told them," said Sorcielle. Honoka just stood by her side, a mindless thing, unnervingly still, not even breathing. "They didn't seem to like it."
"The point was not for them to agree," said Mirage, "but to ease their worries about Black and White. Hosshiwa spoke to me through her mirror and warned me that Cure Egret doubted that Honoka chose to support me. She seemed to fear that I had killed her and her lover. An absurd notion, that I'd go so far, but the truth was not particularly presentable either. If they were convinced that you were Honoka, that's all I need."
"What did you tell them?" Riko asked, but Sorcielle did not answer, so she turned to Mirage instead.
"That Honoka had a change of mind," said Mirage. "That she saw the sense in what I always told her, and that her ambitions drove her to accept my offer. If she simply changed her opinions, they'd never believe her, of course, they'd immediately figure something was wrong, though they'd not be able to imagine what. But if they hear that their valorous Cure White is as rotten and corruptible as anyone else? That is something Cure Egret can believe. It's always been easy for us to believe and accept the ugly side of others. We expect no one to be pefect, everyone to be broken, so while there is a bit of shock at first, it's brief. No wonder they were convinced. A dark secret or a tale of decadence and betrayal always rings more real than the grandest of heroics."
"You appear to have given it quite a bit of thought," Riko said. Mirage just giggled.
"In my many years guarding my Rose from all who would undermine it, I've always preferred to use words rather than blades. So I need to understand how people work. And people, over the centuries, have remained more or less the same."
That was as satisfying an answer as Riko was likely to get. By then her work was done, and she returned the staff to Queen Mirage. She didn't know how to feel about all this, but did it even matter how she felt, now? She would not turn back, and she knew that despite her methods, Mirage was the finest hope for the Red Rose, and thus for the world. She dedicated her life to the Precure, and she knew more than anyone else living. Who else was so fit to lead the Precure in this time of danger?
And who else would help Riko reach Mirai again, who else would teach her the power to protect her? Mirage had taught Sorcielle great magic already, and though Riko was not nearly as gifted, her time would come as well. With those gifts, she'd save Mirai, she'd save her family, she'd no longer be the shame of the family. She remembered what she saw in the Crystal Mirror, and wished she could see it again. Even thinking of it brought her comfort, imagining herself and the power she would have someday. She'd appear before her family, be their brightly burning salvation, and they'd be proud of her.
"Now," Mirage took her hand, and awkwardly held Sorcielle's as well, with the same hand she carried her staff. She made them face the great statue of Cure Empress, her enigmatic face bearing down on the three. "Let me show you why I had you work so diligently all day."
She walked away from the two, back to her throne. The Crystal Mirror rested on the throne's arm, veiled silver on its severe stone. Mirage held it carefully, lifted the veil and looked at her own reflection. There was satisfaction there, the satisfaction of someone who had been working for a long time. For Mirage, a long time was particularly long, Riko figured.
Then, she let go of the Crystal Mirror, and it hung in the air, floating before Queen Mirage. When she moved her staff, the Mirror moved with it, swiftly hovering towards the statue of Cure Empress. It stopped in the middle of the empty space between her stony hands, a minuscule thing, impossible to see from afar. Then the tip of Mirage's staff turned scarlet, and a red light illuminated the other side of the great hall, where the Crystal Mirror stood. Crimson lightning swirled around it, turning into a dark fire. And as the flames grew, so did the Crystal Mirror. Its polished silver surface expanded to the sides, turning truly massive, huge enough to fit between Cure Empress' hands. When the fires died down, Riko saw herself in the mirror, far away, just a dot in its reflection. Its surface rippled in shades of red. Riko shivered, while Sorcielle seemed entirely enchanted by such magic. Mirage, though, smiled only faintly, when she turned back to face her retainers.
"You've both done such a marvellous job today," she said. "You deserve some rest. I know that the demands I made of the two of you were rather sudden, but you've stepped up to it. Now the Precure Dominion is reborn as it should be. Now we can begin our great work."
Hadenya stared at the door and its rubies with eyes half-mad with greed, and Setsuna found it increasingly difficult to remain amiable. Thankfully, the Precure left the words to Hime, who showed an admirable ability to remain calm even as the Desert Rose was defiled by the presence of Nightmare. Setsuna found it strange that she got so furious at seeing Hadenya and Gamao inside the Desert Rose, yet the wrath came naturally to her, like it was instinct. Something that remained of when she was a Precure, perhaps. No, I still am a Precure. She reminded herself of that, she reminded herself that she had a name. Cure Passion. With a name like that, it was no wonder that she felt so strongly, even if she didn't understand what brought her to such fervor.
She first felt that the instant they arrived back at the manor and Hadenya insisted on being the first to enter, with her retainer Gamao by her side. She did not think, she only felt. She felt a fire, something telling her that this was wrong, that the likes of them should not even be allowed into a place that belonged to the Precure. Especially not after what they had done to Salamander. Kumojacky had the right of it, from the beginning. Nightmare had meddled with his mind, turned him into a hollow hell, and there was no forgiving such a deed, no overlooking it. Setsuna could not overlook what Labyrinth had done, either. It was just as Nightmare did with Salamander. She could think of little that was viler than twisting someone's mind like this, robbing them of their will. Setsuna knew - or recalled - little about Nightmare, only the few things she read in Labyrinth, but just this was enough for her to rule them an evil beyond forgiveness. And when she had to see Hadenya enter the Desert Rose, so disdainful, carelessly rubbing her fingers over the walls and paintings, it took all her strength of will to conceal her anger. By her side, Makoto was similarly seething, her fingers coiling around the handle of a blade that wasn't there. It didn't even seem to matter that, around the Desert Rose, stood dozens of Kowaina alongside Isohgin and Yadokhan, such was Hadenya's disrespect, and for a while it looked unlikely that this would end peacefully.
But Hime's patience kept everything under control, and it wasn't long before they stood before the door, sturdy starsteel and rubies agleam. Hadenya played with the key in her hands, a small golden thing, its bow in the shape of a rose. The keyhole was hidden, difficult to find, but Hadenya knew where it was, as this was clearly not the first time she had been here. Setsuna could not help but imagine the woman coming to the Desert Rose day after day, key in hands, in hopes that the lock would malfunction, that she would not need a Precure after all. A most curious mental image, and it didn't seem that implausible. Hadenya certainly had that desperate greed in her eyes.
"How about you open it?" She asked of Cure Mint. For an instant Komachi looked terrified, which made Hadenya smile. Setsuna didn't understand either of their reactions in the slightest. "You just need to put your hand on the rubies. You can do that, right?"
"Why me?" Cure Mint asked, suspicious. "Why do you care so much that I'm the one to open it?"
"It's because you're close, that's all," she replied, innocently. There was sweat on Cure Mint's brow. Was there something about Hadenya that scared her…?
Her discomfort made Setsuna feel ill at ease, so she just touched the rose, and felt the rubies warm up against the palm of her hand, tingly. And the door slid open, scraping against the stone floor as it moved. It was dark inside, but once Cure Dream walked past the door, Starfire lit a flight of stairs leading down. There was nowhere to go but to follow the steps, so the Precure made a line and followed Nozomi in her descent. Behind, Hadenya and Gamao began to sweat from the heat of the Starfire, so close to them, and they walked with great care. Sasorina, Cobraja and Kumojacky were quite uncomfortable as well, but they at least tried not to show it.
It brought back to her those dreadful memories of those girls in Labyrinth, nearly consumed by the Starfire. She felt a hint of pity for Gamao and Hadenya, just as she had pitied Mucardia when he burned. She didn't believe that anyone deserved such a fate, even ones as rotten as Nightmare's footsoldiers. Even Labyrinth had kinder executions than Starfire.
The stairs went down, down, down, and twisted around themselves, coiling in spirals. Setsuna guessed they had to be at least fifty meters deep into the earth when the steps finally came to an end. A hallway stood before them, old and dusty, its stone bricks worn out and mossy. It was small, and when all the Precure stood there together, with Hadenya, Gamao, and the three Apostles, the hall was extremely cramped and uncomfortable. Setsuna could feel the thick dampness of the sweat around her.
Three doors were left closed in the hallway. Princess Himelda declared that they'd split up to look. Anything to put some space between the dozen people in such small room was quite welcome. Setsuna opened the door closest to her, and almost instantly dust flew into her face. She coughed, wiped her eyes so she could see, and had to conjure a small light to reveal the darkness. She was the first to enter, and saw a long but narrow library, with only some space to walk between the bookcases by the walls. It was completely impractical for more than a single person to use.
"When we tell Honoka about this," Yuko told her, "she'll be so jealous. Goodness, she'd have loved to be here…"
"Do you think we'll take these back to the Phoenix Tower?" Setsuna asked. It didn't feel right to leave these so far from the center of Precure power, so distant. Cure Honey shrugged. When Setsuna looked behind, she didn't see Gamao or Hadenya anywhere. Apparently some old books didn't count as treasures to them. Which was probably for the best.
"Looks like archives of some sort," said Sasorina. "There's already a regular library in the Desert Rose, so a second one? I don't expect you'll find much fiction here," she took a book close to her, held in place by a chain. "It's a religious textbook of some sort. Gorgeous illustrations… But it's not very easy to understand. It's an unusual art style, very old. I'm not even sure these are meant to be literal portrayals," she showed an illustration of a red dragon above a city, its head crowned, fire bursting from it. It didn't appear to be to scale: the buildings were only a little bit larger than the people depicted looking up at the dragon. "Could this perhaps refer to Salamander? Born with dragon blood and hair of fire… Curious that this was hidden and not destroyed."
"Is it curious?" Yuko asked. "It's an important document, after all, maybe the Red Rose was unwilling to destroy something like this, especially if it held meaning to the Apostles."
"It's curious because Salamander was never worshipped," said Sasorian. "Not to my knowledge, at least. It appears my knowledge was incomplete. Because this is definitely a sacred figure, a deity. Cure Ange might have understood it was safer for the Precure to deny Salamander's ascended nature. Safer if he's just a normal man, a great leader, but not a god."
Setsuna didn't know enough to argue, so for the time being she accepted Sasorina's hypothesis. Whatever was in this library might have been important, once, but right now it was difficult to judge what was of value at a glance. Setsuna couldn't even understand most of the words that were written. Maybe Cure White would have been able to. She should have been here with them.
However, she was not, so Setsuna just sighed and left, awkwardly waiting for Sasorina and Yuko to walk past the door first, so that she could actually move. There was such little space that it was extremely uncomfortable to even turn to the other side. It was just too inconvenient.
Once outside and back on the hallway, they were called by Princess to come see something, past the door directly in front of the stairs. There they found a chamber far more spacious than the library, one where Setsuna could actually move her arms, and walk without bumping against someone. This seemed like a storeroom of some sort, a massive one: Setsuna looked on ahead and she could not see an end to the room. Barrels had been chained together, but the iron had turned brittle and seemed very frail. They went on along the extension of the chamber, hundreds of them, at least, each large enough to reach Setsuna's chest. Their metal lids were quite heavy, too. Nozomi and Reika, ahead of everyone, had to work together to pull it open, and in her shock of whatever she saw inside, Nozomi dropped the lid, and it echoed as it collapsed, an ominous sound.
"What is it?" Setsuna asked them, but they remained silent.
In the darkness, she could just barely see what was ahead of her, and realized that though the room was spacious, most of it was occupied. Even the walls had openings to hold more such barrels. Kumojacky tried to open a barrel on his own, and was almost doing it, but Reika told him to stop and wait. By then everyone was gathered around Reika and Nozomi, save for the ones who were in the last room. Iona and Hime were not here, and neither was Cobraja.
When Setsuna could nearly catch a glimpse of what was inside, she was shoved to the side by Hadenya. She took some steps back, terrified, and nearly knocked Nile to the floor. When Setsuna could finally approach, she saw that the barrel was full of the white powder that was Starfire before it was ignited.
"That…" Nile began, her legs shaking (though whether it was from the sight before her or Hadenya's blow, Setsuna couldn't know. "Are all of these filled with Starfire too?"
"Seems that way," said Sasorina. Makoto helped her open another, and then the one by its side, and they were all filled to the brim with white. "Well. This is bloody horrifying. Was this hidden here all these centuries?"
"I-It could have blown up anytime, all these years?" Kumojacky asked. He tried to look calm, but to Setsuna it looked like he was just about to piss himself.
"Well, no," said Reika. "Starfire is very stable. It does not ignite for no reason, as it does not deteriorate. It can only burn if a Precure wants it to. And, besides, it would not blow up, it's not a bomb. That's absurd."
"Oh, that's a relief," said Sasorina. "You know what it means, don't you? It means that when your Rose first settled here, it thought it'd be just fine to store enough Starfire to turn Miwar into sparkly ashes."
"I didn't say it's not concerning," Reika clarified. "Just that the concern is not that it can catch fire, and more about why exactly it's here. Starfire is made for ceremonial reasons, mostly, and to light the Starlight Flames. But for there to be so much of it… It's definitely intended as a weapon."
"There was a library there," Setsuna pointed back whence she came. "We should look further there. Maybe there's answers of some sort… If we can decipher that gibberish, that is."
She wondered what good those answers would even do them, learning why exactly the Red Rose saw fit to hide tens of tons of extremely dangerous material in the heart of Miwar. Setsuna had her own guesses, all of them horrifying. She walked away from the Starfire. This was the real thing, unlike what Klein had made, and it was stable, not a threat, but even so when she looked at it she felt only dread. She couldn't help but remember the day she revealed her nature as a Precure, in Labyrinth… She had saved the girls' lives, but never thought to ask what had happened to them afterwards. Had Westar and Soular bothered to save them as well, or were they left to be punished for their mistakes? It was a dreadful thought, that she may have rescued them from the fire, but that even so that might have meant nothing. She didn't understand why exactly that made her feel so shaken. If she hadn't done it, they'd have died, too, so what did it matter?
She was glad to hear Hime's voice coming from afar, because it let her stop thinking about Labyrinth. She followed Hime's call, and from her tone it didn't seem like she'd have good news to share. Most of the others stayed behind to discuss how to get rid of all that Starfire, but Kanade went with her, showed her a tiny encouraging smile. Rhythm was also unwell. No wonder, after learning what the Precure had been hiding here. Setsuna held her hand, felt its coldness.
Behind the last door, they found Hime, Iona, and Cobraja. Cure Fortune looked as if she had just seen a ghost, and she very well might have. This was a much smaller chamber than the one with the Starfire, and circular. Around the walls had been placed tall black mirrors, each slightly larger than an average person, but they did not reflect what was behind them. Instead when Setsuna gazed upon them she saw girls, their eyes closed and their faces heavy with the pain of mourning, red ribbons wrapped around their arms, constraining them against their bodies. It made them appear small and frail, wounded and pitiful. But when Setsuna looked closer, she saw that they wore the colorful uniforms of Precure, their pinks and blues and all their colors enduring faintly even though the mirror cast their bodies in darkness. Kanade covered her mouth with her hand.
"What the hell is this?" Setsuna asked. No one seemed to understand, or, at least, no one was willing to answer. Setsuna approached one of the mirrors, and she felt a terrible aura coming from it, its mere presence tearing at her heart and making her feel tired, afraid, wrong. She had to step away. "Are these… Precure? They are, right?" She faced the others, and saw Iona fraily nod, shaken.
"Yuko and I saw a girl like this," said Cure Princess, "near Last Light. She looked… She looked like she was sleeping. As these girls do. We didn't know what to make of it then. We had seen those mirrors before, in the Blue Sky Kingdom…"
"It's all that's even left of the Blue Sky Kingdom," Iona struggled to speak. "When I walked away from home, I left my family like that… I hid on my sister's command, and waited, but she never came back. When I gave up on waiting, there was no one. Everywhere was empty, but for these mirrors…"
"But why are they here?" Setsuna asked. "No one has been here in ages, certainly it has nothing to do with the Death of the Stars, or what happened in the Blue Sky Kingdom…"
"Are they even alive?" Cobraja asked.
"After all this time, it's probably better if they aren't," said Kanade. "Because the alternative is that they have been trapped like this for hundreds of years. I don't understand… Is this…" She didn't dare finish her sentence, but something came to Setsuna as well, likely the same thought.
"A prison?" She said, but then she understood how little sense it made. "No, it can't be, not if something like this happened in the Blue Sky Kingdom. If Iona saw these mirrors there as well… That would mean that the Precure are connected to that. But there's something we're misunderstanding."
"If the Precure that built the Desert Rose dabbled in dark magic in the past, that would hardly be the first time the Precure messed with those sorts of powers," said Cobraja. "That they would end up being used against the Precure centuries later, though… What a twisted sort of justice."
The fear was gone from Iona's eyes, and what replaced it terrified Hime so much she had to look away. Fortune grit her teeth, breathed loudly, and walked up to Cobraja. Though he was far taller than Iona, her anger made him look frail.
"Don't even use the word justice when talking about what happened," said Iona. "It is not an ironic fate to laugh at, nor retribution. You may think it is. You're free to think that, and I know the Apostles and the Red Rose were enemies, and I'm sure you think your part in the Death of the Stars was justified, but you can keep those thoughts to yourself. I saw the mirrors before my eyes, in my home. I will not bear this sort of talk, when I know what that loss means."
"F-Forgive me," he mumbled. "I did not mean-"
"I don't care what you meant," Iona said, walking towards one of the mirrors. Inside was a girl so tiny she looked even smaller than Hime. They all looked smaller than they really were, in these sad states. They shrunk in the dark emptiness that surrounded them, the cold embrace behind the glass. Iona put her palm on the surface of the mirror, and shivered. Was it her sister that she thought of…?
Setsuna and Hime stood by her; Passion gripped at her shoulder, and Princess lent her shoulder to Fortune. Surprisingly, she accepted it. She made a sound that was not quite crying. They were short pained sighs, long breaths that ended in brief shudders. Behind them, Setsuna heard Cobraja's footsteps, leaving the room. Let him deliver the news to the rest of the Precure. Let him explain it. It was better than forcing Iona to do so. Fortune continued to look at the mirror, weeping softly, tears spilling on the stone floor. When Setsuna tried to look as well, she saw only the darkness, and the girl trapped inside, but the glass held no sign of her own reflection. Were it not so thin, Setsuna would have called it just a prison of glass, but when she tried to move it, feeling its stinging cold on her fingertips, she saw that it was truly as delicate as a mirror. She didn't dare break it, to see if perhaps that might free the girl inside. She feared that doing so would only keep her trapped in there forever.
"Did Mirage know about this?" Hime asked. "Was this one of the many secrets of the Red Rose that she fought to hide?"
"I have no idea," said Iona. "I don't know if she'll answer if we ask her. If she knew, then she might also know why these girls were trapped as they were. What crime did they commit? Or… Or did they know something they should not?"
Setsuna let go of her. She looked all over, and counted nearly twenty mirrors. Twenty lost Precure, twenty poor souls locked away in the darkness. This could not be anything but appalling, that much was clear from the ghastly expressions frozen on their faces. Setsuna's head felt like it was being poked with sharp needles. She grimaced, and it was hatred she felt again. She hated the cruelty of this, and more than all else she hated that she could not think of an explanation for this that exonerated the Precure. The Desert Rose was theirs, and only a Cure could open the door of rubies. There was no denying it. The Red Rose did this. She just didn't know why.
She left the basement alongside the others who had to see the horror in the mirrors. Princess and Fortune went on ahead, eager to leave. Setsuna had only heard of their troubled relationship, but in all she had seen of them, they seemed to get along. And now they did more than just that. They were both of the Blue Sky Kingdom, they both knew the same pain. They supported one another. Setsuna wondered if they felt about each other the same way she felt with Kanade. Being by her side now as they made their way up the stairs helped her free herself of the pain she had just felt.
They waited just outside the door of rubies, as the others likely received the news and saw what they just had to look at. She sighed. It was not an easy thing to gaze upon, and even harder was how they would have to come to the same realizations that Setsuna did. All of them. It would have been better if they had just left the door closed. It would have been better to never know.
The faces that Setsuna saw walking out through the door and back into the Desert Rose were all sullen, lost. The eyes of the Precure seemed unfocused, drifting aimlessly, looking at nothing. The Apostles were torn as well, and even Hadenya and Gamao seemed shaken, and certainly disappointed not to have stumbled upon the great treasures they might have hoped. That brought Setsuna no satisfaction at all. She wanted only for them to leave as soon as possible, so that the Precure could discuss this among themselves.
"We will contact you again to resume our negotiations," said Hadenya. She, too, wanted to be as far from the Desert Rose as possible. "Tomorrow, perhaps?"
"The day after might be best," said Hime. "We would like to investigate what we've found, and examine the books. You can help, if you'd like," she said, and Hadenya looked positively disgusted by the idea.
"We'll leave that to you," she said. "We didn't find the treasures we wanted there, anyways. I'll have the Kowaina take your wagon to the Palace of Bronze. I'm sure Baron Salamander will be glad to see the fruits of your generosity. Despariah, too, will want to hear of your intentions, so I'll take my leave."
She did just that, and left the Desert Rose, not one moment too soon. Cure Nile was the first to breathe in relief, sighing loudly. Through the windows, Setsuna watched the Kowaina walk away; one of them took hold of the wagon full of gifts, lifting it up in its huge claw. The swords and armor and jewelry inside jingled as the wagon moved, but soon Setsuna couldn't see them anymore, when they were distant enough. She sat on a nearby couch, next to Kanade. The rest of the Precure took the other seats in the living room, but the Apostles stood by the open door, the one leading to the foyer.
"Thought she'd never leave," said Nile. "What a despicable woman. She spent every moment looking down on us, and I wouldn't be surprised if we found that some of the golden candlesticks of the manor have gone missing…"
"That's hardly important," said Reika. "She has seen what's beyond the door. She knows that the Red Rose hid not treasure there, but its dirty secrets. That's dangerous. It means she knows of the Starfire… Nightmare will take an interest in that, I have no doubt."
"Do you think so?" Komachi asked.
"I'm sure. The whole world knows Starfire to be born of the magic of the Precure, a fire that's near impossible to quench. And so much of it… It can be nothing but a weapon, and Nightmare will see it as such. It might be one that Nightmare can't control, but it's stronger than anything else they have. They'll want to use it against its enemies. Its other enemies, the ones who are not Precure, that is."
"We need to get rid of it, then," said Nozomi. "As quickly as possible. I've heard that, when it is ignited, sand can choke it out, while water is almost useless."
"Ice has some effect as well, I think," said Hime, "but it'd have to be so impossibly cold that it's not feasible. Mirage would know the way to deal with this, but-"
"Mirage's not here," said Iona, "and, besides, I can already imagine her answer. She'd not want us to get rid of it. She'd tell us to bring everything we can to the Phoenix Tower. She does not exactly have the most reliable track record when it comes to not using Starfire to burn people alive."
That was a harsh way of putting it, but fair. A fire that consumes everything was too strong a weapon for anyone to destroy. Even Labyrinth, that at first only attempted to synthesize Starfire to light its own Starlight Flames for the sake of powering Infinity, grew to understand that the white fire made for a terrifying tool of war. Its shifting colors were dreadful to behold, its grim shine so unnatural that it seemed entirely disconnected from reality, a horrible eldritch light that consumed all the shadows around it and seared so strongly that it was said that looking at it made one catch fire. That was all wild exaggeration, of course, but it didn't need to be true to strike fear.
"If Hadenya demands it…" Yuko began, but Sasorina didn't let her finish.
"It doesn't matter what she demands," the woman said.
"She's right," said Reika. "We've seen what has been done to Salamander. We are being lied to. I doubt she actually even expects us to believe her words. She's just stalling."
"Stalling?" Komachi asked. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that she is not really mediating a peace between us and the Apostles, because the Apostles have no voice here. Miwar is Nightmare's, and Salamander is merely the mask that Hadenya is using to dress up Nightmare's intentions. She wants to kill us, Komachi. That's why she's letting us stay instead of kicking us out of Miwar entirely."
"And yet you're staying," said Cobraja. "I take this to mean that you have chosen to fight by our side," Cure Princess nodded. "I knew you would, once you saw what became of Salamander. He was a proud man, once, or so the tale goes. I've never known what he truly is, because I've only seen him after he wore Nightmare's cursed mask. What they've done to him is pure evil. And they pretend to be our allies, because if they have Salamander, we can't fight back…"
"But what can we do?" Setsuna wanted to know. For all that the three of them kept talking about how hopeless their situation was, they didn't seem to try to offer any solutions. They couldn't be just expecting the Precure to do it all.
"We could not tell you until you decided to work with us," said Kumojacky. "It was, uh, a little hard to keep quiet. But we needed to know we could rely on you, and for that we needed you to see with your own eyes what had happened to Baron Salamander. And now you have. Now you can know."
"He is not gone," said Cobraja. "Some of his memories remain, and he responds to them. We learned of this boy who helped him return to life, after he had been sealed away by Cure Ange. A youth called Olivier, a lost boy with no one else to turn to. We expect that the sight of him will help Salamander regain his old self. That's the hope, at least."
"Just a hope…" Kanade scoffed. "That doesn't give us much to work with. And you don't even have the boy with you, do you? Otherwise you'd not be in this situation in the first place."
"There were Precure here before," Sasorina explained, "arrested by Nightmare for their crimes. They meant to kill Salamander and take control of Miwar, to try and contact the Phoenix Tower. Instead we told them of our plights and they decided to take our side in the conflict. We freed them so that they could set out to find Olivier."
"My agents have been hearing whispers," said Cobraja, "rumors that they were close. Right now, we are waiting. We have been waiting for quite some time."
"We don't know how long we'll have," said Reika. "They'll need to arrive soon. This is madness. You don't even know if this plan will work, and there's the matter of actually getting the boy to Salamander…"
"We'll have plenty of help in that matter," said Kumojacky. "Your help. We'll need you. My men will fight Nightmare once Salamander is free, but actually getting Olivier into the Palace of Bronze will be difficult-"
"Perhaps we should worry about that when the boy is actually here," said Setsuna. "And consider other possibilities."
"We have considered them," said Cobraja, "but came up with nothing. This is the only hope we have. That we can save Salamander, restore his heart to what it truly is."
"And if you cannot…?" Setsuna wondered if they had even thought of that possibility. Sasorina sneered at her, but Kumojacky was more sympathetic, and smiled sadly.
"If we fail, if we cannot save Salamander, then what will there be left of us? The Apostles will be liars. We'll have followed evil twice. We have always said that we fight for the Desert Lands, for its people, that justice and righteousness is our greatest concern. It's already impossible to justify how we fought under Dune's command. If the world learns that Salamander was just Despariah's puppet, and that we could not save him, that he was lost all along, what legitimacy do we have? How can we say we fought for anything that's good? There are already many who left us for our part in the Death of the Stars. Good, loyal soldiers, as well as advisors and academics. They could not continue to call themselves Desert Apostles when they learned that we allied with Nightmare, with Labyrinth, with Dark Fall, and robbed the world of stars… If we cannot save Salamander, then we are doomed."
"To you, of the Red Rose, that might appear to be for the best," said Cobraja, "but I know our works to be good. Our soldiers keep the Desert Lands safe, from Miwar to Almdyta, and this safety allows our people to thrive, in great cities like Nafwel or villages that don't even have names. Without the Apostles there would be no such peace, and without our efforts the smaller, distant cities would not withstand the droughts undamaged as they do now, by our order that the irrigated farmlands closer to the borders provide a portion of their crops to the faraway territories. You may think it's fine if the Apostles lose all their credibility and fade away, and that your Rose can take over and make things right, but you'd be wrong. It's not that easy."
From the way he spoke, it sounded to Setsuna like there was not all that much separating the Red Rose and the Desert Apostles. She envied their conviction in the righteousness of their cause, their belief. Labyrinth didn't have that. Labyrinth had no cause but Moebius. Maybe that was why, unlike the Bad End Kingdom and unlike the Desert Apostles, there was nothing there that could be saved.
"We already know it's not easy," said Hime. "And we already said we'll fight to help you. But just as we try to understand the resentment you felt that led you to ally with Nightmare, you should understand ours, for what you've done to our stars, and to our homes."
"They're our stars as well," said Kumojacky. "As your world is ours. And for that we understand your rage, and appreciate how hard it is for you to even work with us. Perhaps we cannot atone for our part in snuffing out the stars. We do regret it, you know. But we had no choice. With Dune dead, we were crumbling. We feared what would happen if we did not honor our alliance. And we believed that we would need Nightmare's support."
"We knew what would happen," said Sasorina, "and didn't want to fight for what we felt was the losing side. We understood it was wrong, but we also understood we had a duty. Your Red Rose is sworn to the stars, to your high, beautiful and unreachable ideals. We're sworn to our people. For them we chose the battle we could win, damn the consequences."
"Was that their choice?" Setsuna asked. They had no answer for that, but their shame was enough. "And, disregarding that, are you truly so sure that you had no choice in the matter?"
"We did not," said Sasorina. "None that we could see in the moment, none but-"
"None but the difficult choice?" Setsuna asked. Kanade was whispering something in her ear, but Setsuna did not hear. "I understand it's a lot to ask. I was part of Labyrinth until a while ago. Before I understood I was a Precure. I could have hidden it, stayed safe, but I revealed myself for the sake of two girls who were in danger. I saved them. But it did not feel like a choice. What else could I have done? The truth is that if you consistently avoid doing the right thing, soon you'll find yourself unable to even understand what the right thing is."
"You speak as if we did it to save ourselves," Sasorina argued. "When we've been telling you that what we did, we did for the people under our protection. In our place, would your Rose have endangered them all, so that it could claim a moral high ground?"
"I don't know what the Red Rose would do," said Setsuna. "I'm no true believer. All I know is that dooming the skies to darkness can't ever be right. There had to be another way."
"Perhaps we'll never come to an agreement on that matter," said Cobraja. "Maybe that is why our peaces never lasted."
"But our wars also never endured," Hime reminded him. "In the end we always brought them to a close with words, by meeting together. And we disagreed, we argued, as we are doing now… But we have always tried to understand each other."
"And never could," Sasorina lamented. "Do you seriously think we ever will?"
"We won't know that if we don't keep trying," said Reika.
"Let us keep trying, then," said Cobraja. "We will inform you of our next move, when the time comes," he informed them as he walked away, with his companions after him. Sasorina had nothing else to say, but Kumojacky looked like he wanted to speak his mind on something more, but held his tongue. Only at Cure Princess' insistence did he open his mouth.
"You might want to check the roof," he said, plainly, then left.
And then the Precure were finally alone again. As alone as they could be in the heart of a city where everyone was either an enemy or an uncertain ally, which wasn't much. The manor, at least, was isolated enough that it remained decently distant from the streets filled with Kowaina. Still, being more or less forced to remain in this single place was rather claustrophobic.
Kanade leaned against Setsuna, and suddenly she found it hard to feel too bad about this. For the remainder of the day, though, there was unease in the Desert Rose. Nile, Komachi and Iona had returned to the libraries to look for answers, but they didn't know what they were searching for in the first place, so when they returned they were bearing a dozen tomes each. They made slow progress on understanding what they said, and time and time again Iona whined about how Honoka should have been with them. Still, despite her complaints, she continued to work.
Setsuna accompanied Reika and Makoto as they inspected the Desert Rose and its surroundings. Concerningly, there were at least five doors that led outside, which meant there were plenty of places where Nightmare could enter, if they tried to attack. Makoto appeared convinced that they would. The bedrooms in the upper level of the palace provided adequate vision, but even so it'd need two people to watch over the location. Were it up to Reika, she said she'd have preferred that the Precure lie elsewhere, perhaps on a more remote corner of the city. Nightmare would know where they were at all times, and that concerned her greatly. But it wasn't even the greatest of her worries, she admitted to Passion and Sword. Setsuna had noticed her uncertainty, mainly from how little she could focus on Makoto's warnings, so it was no surprise when she said it.
"You remember, don't you, Makoto? In Sternquelle, we found a door just like the one here," she said, and when she noticed Setsuna's confusion, she clarified herself. "Sterquelle is a tower in Morgenluft which guards a Starlight Flame. I thought nothing of it, but now… Now I wonder. Is something horrible hidden there as well? Neither Majorina or Candy seemed to know anything about a key that opened the door there, so how could we ever know?"
"Do you think there's Starfire there as well?" Setsuna asked. "Or the mirrors?"
"I don't know, and that only makes me more afraid," she sighed. "I presume this is what people mean when they say that ignorance is bliss. I had such a hard time understanding it. But now it seems that whenever we learn something, it's horrible."
Setsuna didn't answer immediately. She had seen enough evil and horror in Labyrinth that she was not as fundamentally shaken as Reika was. She wasn't sure how to feel about all this.
"We cannot end evil until we learn about it," she said, at last. "You're right, about what you said in regards to ignorance… It might be easier not to know such dreadful things. But not everyone can afford not to. We could sleep a bit easier if we didn't know of the girls trapped in the mirrors, but that wouldn't help them, would it? Now that we know they are there, we can try to do something."
"Ah," Reika seemed ashamed. "You are absolutely right. I was… I was hasty in speaking like that. I shouldn't let my pessimism cloud my mind. It's true. Now we know where our troubles lie, and we know we are needed to fight them."
She smiled again. It was not a casual one, and struck Setsuna as rather forced, but still, it was an attempt. Reika was always awkward around her; of course, she had this natural awkwardness anyways, a coldness that always kept her a little bit too distant, but around Setsuna she was usually uncomfortable. It was because of their first meeting, of course. Reika still regret her anger then. Makoto was not nearly as concerned about it, and behaved just normally when she was with Setsuna, but Reika still couldn't. Setsuna wanted that to change.
At last they found the stairs that led to the rooftop of the manor. It took them so long to reach it, so well-hidden in a corner of an insignificant corridor, that Makoto was suspecting that Kumojacky had only joked with them. But atop the roof they had a view of the gardens surrounding the Desert Rose, its lush greens and its fake flowers. They could see very little of Miwar, though. The manor was not nearly tall enough to give them a fine view. And, on the edge of the roof, where they could look down on a courtyard and its fountain, they found a small brazier. A Starlight Flame. Dirt had covered its insides, but no soot, no trace of ashes.
"It's never been lit," Setsuna said. "And it's so small… It should be greater than this, no?"
"It should," said Makoto. "This is path-" She coughed. "This is tiny. It must have been made when the Desert Rose was built, when the Precure set their roots in Miwar. I didn't know you could make a Starlight Flame like this, but now that I see it, it makes perfect sense. No stars had been born in thousands of years, but the Precure here tried to make one…?"
"It seems so," said Reika, thoughtful. "Maybe they weren't allowed. They made their Starlight Flame, small as it is, to celebrate the Desert Lands coming into the fold. Let's get the others," she declared. "We have all that Starfire stashed down there… It would be wise to actually use it for something," she said, and then Setsuna saw, for the first time, her real smile.
The sun was setting when Miwar finally appeared in the horizon, and this time, when Itsuki asked, no one wanted to wait and rest, not when they were so near, so, tired as they were, weary and weak, they made their way to the city, and watched as the walls grew taller, and took up everything in the distance. But even though they appeared to be, at last, so close, hours passed before they actually reached Miwar's gates and found it closed. The gates were never closed before, even after dark, and instead the guards simply inspected each visitor, so finding the gates shut was a surprise, and not a welcome one. The signet won them passage, miraculous little thing that it was, but still Itsuki found herself unnerved.
"It's to keep the city safe," a guard told her. "Salamander's orders."
That meant Hadenya's orders, of course, and they could not mean anything good. Not that the guards would know anything. Itsuki didn't even bother asking any further questions. In fact, until she knew they were in a safe place where no one could hear them, it was best to not even mention any of her suspicions. It was fortunate for the Precure that, untransformed, and in unflattering robes, they didn't look distinctive at all. Miki's hair might have brought attention, once, but the sun ate at its colors so it now looked perfectly ordinary and unremarkable.
There were more Kowaina in the street than there were before they left. Here and there Itsuki caught traces of people moving, but they were few, and the presence of those monsters made it clear that no one was wanted in the streets at night. As Itsuki and her companions passed them by, their masked faces moved, keeping them in their sights. It was more than a bit unnerving, but Itsuki never looked back. She was not sure if she did it out of defiance or fear.
Finding a place to spend the night would be difficult, Itsuki realized. It wasn't that there was a lack of inns and hotels in Miwar, because there were plenty of those, but they might very well look suspicious, travellers in the night, and suspicions led to someone being called, which led to Nightmare knowing they had come. Itsuki found herself wanting to beat her own head against a wall, because for so long had she concerned herself about the journey to Almdyta and the long way back that she had ended up disregarding the fact that, once back in Miwar, there would be plenty of dangers too. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
She sighed. The streets were cold, and poorly-lit. Why would the lamps need to shine, if no one was to walk the streets at night in the first place? But it was just fine that way. It was easier to remain unseen. Olivier kept looking up at the sky, at the moon, a crescent growing larger by the night. It would be full again soon. That quite concerned the boy, but Himari promised she would be there for him, always. Itsuki hoped she'd be able to help, because she, herself, knew absolutely nothing of Olivier's condition, much less what to do. Elena, though, was far harsher. Even now, she stared at the boy with wariness. Days ago, while they were still far from the city, Elena had discreetly called Itsuki and Miki to her side, and asked them what they thought of the boy.
"He should have told us sooner," Elena said. "So we'd know what we're dealing with. He put us in danger."
"Because he was afraid," said Itsuki.
"And you were not afraid when you saw his fangs and claws?" She asked. "Yes, it's very sad that he had to struggle so much, and he has suffered a lot, but that hardly gives him enough cause to lie to us."
"When you call it a lie, you make it sound like it was malice," said Miki.
"Malice or stupidity… Both are quite damaging, one way or another. He should be tied up, and gagged, he's dangerous."
"Yes, I'm sure some rope would prove quite the deterrent to someone with wolf blood," said Miki. "He has been hurt enough by the Precure, by the world. And he is still only a child. Binding him like a common criminal? Yes, that'll get him to love us."
"We don't need him to love us," Elena insisted upon arguing. "We need to bring him to Salamander, nothing else. And then we'll be free from all this. Pray tell, have either of you considered what you'll do after that?" Neither Itsuki or Miki had an answer. "I figured."
"We'll free the Desert Lands," Itsuki said, because she had to say something. "Then we'll seek other Precure, if there are any."
"You know where they are," said Elena. "In the Phoenix Tower, where else? That's where I'm going the second I'm done with this. I will do my duty."
"Well, that's very admirable of you."
Even though Elena was just being an ass that day, Itsuki still thought about it. She hadn't really considered what came after this. That was foolish of her, she understood now, but before it seemed like something she didn't even need to think about. She'd solve the problem, and that was all that mattered. She didn't think of the after, because up until now, she never had to. She was a Precure of the Red Rose, and she always did what was bid of her, and she let her Rose decide what came after. But now there was none of that. There was no letter with the red seal giving Itsuki her next orders, nor would Moonlight relay Continental's commands. Itsuki had to decide what she would do, now. There was something thrilling about that, but it was also terrifying.
Itsuki heard footsteps right behind her, while she was crossing a deserted street. She turned back, jumpy, certain that it could be an enemy, but instead she saw only Kumojacky, alone in the darkness. He was smiling. Itsuki saw no need to explain things. It was all clear, and Kumojacky understood.
"You've come at a very fortunate time," he said. "Sasorina and Cobraja spent months thinking of how so few of us could infiltrate the Palace of Bronze and lead Olivier to Salamander, but it may have gotten easier. Precure have arrived, just earlier today."
"Precure?" Itsuki suddenly felt like all her exhaustion was gone. Only eagerness remained. "Who? Moonlight? Marine, Blossom? Do you know which Precure?"
"Calm down," said Kumojacky. "There were a bunch of them, coming from the east, sent by the Red Rose. They are in the Desert Rose right now. They've come to negotiate a peace treaty with Nightmare."
"Pft," Miki scoffed. "They'd have an easier time teaching a Desertrian to tap dance."
"They've come to that realization themselves, after seeing Salamander."
"So they'll help me too, you'll all help me?" Olivier asked. He clutched at his chest, and looked like he was about to cry, but when Himari put a hand on his shoulder, he composed himself, and tried to make himself look brave and strong. "Please, take me to him. I need to see Salamander."
"It won't be easy, child," said Kumojacky. "He is always guarded by Nightmare. You should join with the other Precure. Sasorina and Cobraja are there as well. We will need to plan our next move. But first, I expect you'll want to rest," he grinned. "You look like you got the crap beaten out of you. Follow me, please. Maybe you'll find partners of yours among the Precure there."
Impatient, Itsuki followed Kumojacky, but she found that he walked too slowly, when all she wanted to do was run and meet her fellow Cures. She was glad to hear from them again, even if she didn't know who they were. It didn't matter. They were Precure, and they were still alive. It meant that they were not alone, that they were not lost. There were nights where Itsuki was taken by her fears, and then she couldn't sleep, so certain she was that she'd never see her friends again. She'd never hold Tsubomi's hand, or hear Erika's laughter, or talk to Yuri. But now her hope had returned. Even if she didn't find them in the Desert Rose, knowing that there were more Precure out there was enough to make her feel strong again.
She had only heard of the gardens of the Desert Rose, but when she actually saw them, they were greater than she had thought. In the dark, she could not tell what the flowers looked like, but there were so many of them… She knew about the Desert Rose, but had never actually been there. Even before the Death of the Stars, during the few days she spent in Miwar before the darkness came, she was housed in a hotel, because the Desert Rose was being renovated. When the stars went out, Itsuki found herself having a hard time caring about an old manor, when she had greater concerns. But it was just as grand as she heard. Better, perhaps, especially to someone who had gotten so used to the barren emptiness of the Desert Lands. She opened the front door, and walked into the well-lit foyer, so bright that her eyes hurt. Some Precure awaited there, sitting upon luxurious white couches, though Itsuki did not recognize all of them: she knew Cure Princess, of course, and Beauty had fought with her, and was the first to greet Itsuki. Next to her was a girl clad in pink pajamas, and Cure Sword of the Trump Kingdom. The last one, who she didn't recognize, was dark of hair, and leaned against the wall.
Elena and Himari, the next to enter, didn't seem to know anyone either, but when Miki stepped inside, just after Olivier, she froze. Her eyes met the girl leaning on the corner, discreet, and the way she smiled was unlike anything Itsuki had ever seen. She let her bag fall into the floor, its contents spilling open, the last food that remained there.
"Setsuna," she said, nearly breaking down. The girl just stared at her, confused, silent. Miki ran to her, her arms wide open, and she took hold of the girl, but she did not return her embrace. She stood there, unmoving, her face unchanging, and when Miki finally let go of her, Setsuna looked at her in bewilderment.
"I'm sorry… Who are you?" She asked, but as Miki's face revealed her pain, the girl continued to stare deep into her eyes, nearing a realization, and then she held her own head, as if she was in pain, and soon she was smiling, soon she was crying, both at the same time, and she walked up to Cure Berry slowly, so overwhelmed that her steps were difficult. Miki pain was gone from her face, leaving only a befuddled smirk. "I remember… I remember now. I remember you. Miki… I've missed you, Miki."
"Yeah," Miki put her arms around her, dirty nails grasping Setsuna's soft silks. She, too, had begun to cry, barely getting a hold of herself. "I missed you too, Setsuna."
Sunburst Senshi: Yes, Cure Rose is just Milky Rose. I needed her to be a Precure, and everyone basically already considers her one anyways. I didn't need Hikari to be one, though, so she doesn't get that. I hope that clarifies it, and thank you (and everyone else, of course) for your comments. I appreciate them quite a lot.
