Eirin Yagokoro's dark eyes fixed onto me.
"I remember you, traveler." She smiled. "Do you still have the peony I gave you?"
"It is… in my room." I did not recognize her at first, but her statement immediately brought a rush of forgotten memories surging forth. The trek up the Mountain. Meeting her in the peony fields. And, of course, everything that came after. "I keep it in a jar on the windowsill."
"You have come far since we last met," Eirin continued. "Another window has been opened into the true extent of your capabilities. You have accessed a different dimension, a different perspective."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"The fiber of your magic feels different. Its nature is changed. Though it feels as if you have not learned how to harness it at will, so I cannot say what lies in wait for you. Nevertheless, it would be fascinating to see-"
"Enough," Miko cut in. "The traveler is not your concern. He is ours to protect."
"He is not yours in any way, just as he is not mine." Eirin's tone of voice took on an undercurrent of iciness. "For an accomplished hermit such as yourself, you seem to have an unusual level of attachment to the world around you. Perhaps your immortality is not as significant an achievement as I thought it to be."
"Perhaps we should put that to the test." A ring of bright yellow appeared around Miko's sword, which was now incandescent to the point of being blinding. "Words mean little in the face of deeds."
"Cease thy bickering," Kaguya barked. "Eirin, deal with our guests."
"With pleasure." Eirin spread her arms.
At once, a flurry of petals exploded from the ground surrounding her, spinning wildly around the room, filling the black void with a blanket of vivid pink. It felt as if we were stood beneath a cherry blossom tree, and a strong wind had blown the flowers clean off the branches, sending the petals into a frenzy around us. Miko threw up a dome of light, a translucent barrier against which the petals thrashed tirelessly.
"I can't hold this for much longer." Miko groaned and gritted her teeth, holding her sword aloft and willing its light to feed the barrier. "Keine, can you do something?"
"I am trying, but Kaguya has cast her magic upon the petals." Keine's brow was furrowed, her eyes alight with her own efforts at freeing us from the prison of sheer color in which we found ourselves. "She has made them eternal, and thus immune to my abilities. I can do no more."
A crack appeared in the bulwark, spreading rapidly across the surface of the dome.
"Brace yourselves!" Miko called. I closed my eyes, awaiting the full force of the attack.
But there was to be no impact.
A streak of lightning pierced through the cloud of petals, burning them to a crisp. Hot on its tail was a storm of spell cards which converged on Eirin, forcing her to erect a shield of her own to withstand the barrage.
The remains of the petals scattered onto the ground. At the doorway behind us stood our saviors, two bruised and battered maidens with frays on their clothes and patches of dirt on their cheeks.
"Reimu! Marisa!" exclaimed Miko. "Right on time, as always."
"Apologies for the wait," panted Reimu. "The rabbits were unexpectedly stiff obstacles to overcome." She glared at Eirin as the last of the spell cards were repelled. "Eirin, end this madness now."
"Only if my mistress commands it. Until then," the lunar goddess opened her palms, revealing two glowing gray orbs, "we must perform our respective duties."
"Have it your way." Marisa thumped the floor with the shaft of her broomstick, and from it erupted a thunderous, cacophonic crackling, accompanied by further spears of electricity that arced across the walls. The orbs in Eirin's hands simmered with energy, and as the lightning reached her, the orbs sucked the magical light into themselves, absorbing it with unerring efficiency.
As Marisa occupied Eirin, Reimu rushed over to our side.
"Where is Kagerou?" asked Keine.
"She was defeated," Reimu replied bluntly. "We must leave now."
Keine shook her head. "The spells lurking in this place have no doubt been reinforced. We will find ourselves trapped in the labyrinth if we attempt to go back the way we came."
"What do you mean?" Reimu said bemusedly. "There were staircases that led us to this floor."
"The magic that shrouded those were undone by Toyosatomimi no Miko, but only for a short while. I suspect they will no longer be accessible, and the hallways will be our enemy once again. Our only option is to cut the head of the snake, and curb the effects of the spell at its root."
Reimu shook her head. "Princess Kaguya is immortal. How will we ever leave?"
The last vestiges of Marisa's spell were snuffed out, and without missing a step, the orbs unleashed a wave of silver and gray, no doubt fueled by Marisa's last assault. Reimu flung out her sleeves, and more spell cards poured forth, this time forming a wall in front of us to intercept Eirin's magic. But the force of Marisa's recycled energy was much too great, and all of us were forced back, scurrying behind Reimu's quickly diminishing aegis.
Then, the magic disappeared, as if somehow consumed by the air around it. The room fell back into its dimly-lit state. There stood Keine before the wall, her fingers locked, her eyes narrowing as she focused.
"I knew that history-eater would come in handy," Miko breathed. "Marisa, reinforce my sword. Reimu, back me up."
The other maidens nodded. Marisa drew a line of vermillion energy in the space before her and, grabbing the light with both hands, forced the magic into Miko's blade. The steel promptly burst into flame, its fire flickering menacingly as the metal roared into life.
Miko closed her eyes, and with a single, immeasurably rapid lunge, she was immediately upon Eirin, bringing her sword crashing down upon the goddess. Yet as Eirin attempted to parry the blow, Reimu, who had traced a small pentagram on the floor, slammed a paper seal into the middle of the star-shaped spell. A much larger white star expanded around Eirin, and from it a series of glowing chains shot forth, coiling all the way up Eirin's sleeves.
"We got her!" Marisa cheered.
But just as those words left her lips, the chains immediately retracted from their grip around Eirin's wrists and slunk back into the white star.
"Do not forget that there are two of us here," said Princess Kaguya, who had retreated behind her scion, but nonetheless remained very much part of the proceedings.
Reimu clicked her fingers, and her familiar yin-yang orbs rose from the ground. "It appears we are at something of an impasse," she commented.
"We have one who controls history, and one who controls eternity," Keine said as she cast a protective spell on herself. "What happens when the endless meets the infinite?"
The princess smiled. "We shalt find out. Eirin, do not hold back."
"I never do." Eirin pressed her palms together and took a deep breath. "Come forth, light of the moon."
From the deep void of the room's aetheric walls ascended a large circle of pure beige. Though it looked perfectly round at first glance, I noticed that the same sliver as the moon outside the mansion was missing from this moon as well. There was now no doubt that Eirin herself was behind the illusion that occupied the night sky.
"Just our luck that we had to fight her on the full moon," Marisa muttered. She stretched her arms out and, as her fingers started to sparkle, yelled, "Reimu!"
Reimu flung her arms out, and the yin-yang orbs rocketed forwards. Upon reaching Eirin, they burst into an enormous fan of small blue dots, which rotated frenziedly with the orbs as their axes. The dots ate holes in whatever they touched, no matter whether it was a floorboard, the table, or even parts of Eirin's robe sleeves as she hurriedly cast yet another barrier around herself. The lightning that emanated from Marisa's fingertips bounced around the dots, further empowering their destructive rampage.
However, the image of the moon Eirin had summoned was clearly not for show. The "moonlight", which oozed and dripped from the circle in a sickly manner, eroded Reimu's dots upon contact, and before long the yin-yang orbs themselves were subsumed.
Miko uttered something under her breath. "O Principals, I call upon you," I heard her whisper as she drew three circles in the air. "Take the eleven moons from those who would defile them."
I looked up at the moon. Parts of it were beginning to tear away, as if the moon itself were being recalled to the place whence it had spawned. What Miko had just said reminded me of a text I had read during one of our sessions – the Taoist deities, it seemed, had come to reclaim what had been taken from them.
Yet whatever was happening, was evidently not happening fast enough.
"A good idea, hermit," called Princess Kaguya. "But a futile one, as long as the moon's fate is in my hands. Eirin, end this now."
The same orbs that had absorbed Marisa's magic were summoned once again, though this time they drank the ichor that leaked from the false moon. As the last of the moonlight was sucked dry, my eyes widened.
I knew what was coming. And, judging by the sudden, hasty chanting of the others, they knew too.
The orbs exploded. Flimsy shields were thrown up, but they were no match for the power of the moon. The five of us were flung bodily against the walls.
Reimu, who had stood in front of us and took the brunt of the blast, fell limp onto the floor, her head slumping onto her shoulders.
"Reimu!" Marisa ran to Reimu's collapsed form, nursing the shrine maiden's head in her arms. "Reimu! Wake up!"
Then, Marisa pulled her hand away in shock. Her fingers, which she held up into view, were covered in crimson.
The red liquid dripped onto the floor. The room fell silent.
I expected Marisa to fly into a rage, to let loose her shackles and exact every vengeance available upon the lunar goddess. Instead, the blonde witch cradled Reimu's body, and pressed her forehead onto Reimu's.
For a moment that seemed to stretch on for hours, all of us were mute. Keine was downcast; Miko puckered her lips and frowned. Even Eirin and Kaguya found it in themselves to look apologetic, though their hardened stares did not easily give way.
The sudden lull in proceedings, though abrupt, did not surprise me. The inhabitants of Gensokyo disagreed often, and disagreed violently, but they did not kill. That was a universal, binding principle to which all the magic users of this realm subscribed – there were few enough people residing here as is, so each individual life was considered much more valuable than it might otherwise be in the outside world. It was telling that this was the first time I had seen blood since my arrival – witnessing it leaking from one of my closest friends only made the scene all the more shocking.
Marisa looked up at us. The dam that held her tears back looked on the verge of bursting.
"Are we done here?" she asked quietly.