Chapter 8

Treading Water

Kyoko spun around, searching the bottom of the lake. Crystal clear, but dim, she could barely make out what seemed to be a bed of seaweed dancing slowly in the current, far below her. Her Soul Gem was sensing the Grief Seed somewhere down along the bottom.

Moving.

Something wasn't right. This whole place didn't fit with what she understood about Witches. Or thought I understood, she admitted bitterly. Why hadn't the barrier collapsed on itself, as every other labyrinth had done after the Witch had been destoyed? She should have emerged, along with Sayaka, somewhere relatively close to where they'd entered, Grief Seed lying nearby.

Instead they'd been attacked by more familiars. There were so many of them, and so many different kinds. How had they survived the Witch's death? That had never happened before in her experience, either.

Sensing the dark energy radiating off the Grief Seed getting further away, Kyoko powered through the lake, relying upon her magic to squirt her through the water. Descending, she noted a row of stones or shells, or perhaps a white coral, edging the vast bed of lake weeds. As the hair-fine tendrils of the weed slowly swayed in the water, Kyoko saw how thick they grew and wasn't happy about the added expenditure of magic that would be necessary to cut through them.

Gliding several meters above the rippling mass, she noted a variety of colors even in the dim light: dark browns and reds, pale yellows, blues and greens. But mostly, black. Details noted and deemed irrelevant, Kyoko dismissed the observation from her thoughts, honing her senses to find the location of-

There! She jetted through the water, towards a spot deeper in the lake where the dense weeds appeared to writhe violently. Stopping herself, she tried to figure out what was going on-the Grief Seed was right there! She slowly lowered herself to peer through the swaying vegetation-

Something grabbed Kyoko's leg, pulling. Even before she brought her eyes back, an instinctive slash from her spear cut her free, and she darted backwards. The seaweed...

The gentle, rippling motions of the surrounding mass of vegetation, if that's what it was, had ceased. The patch where she had felt the Witch egg had gone motionless. All of it, everywhere she could see, had begun to straighten, as if reaching, directly toward her.

Torn between recovering the seed for her friend and getting away from lake bed for her own safety, Kyoko felt writhing, twisted bundles of the fibers wrap around her legs. They had reached much further than she had anticipated, and as she brought her spear down in sharp, economical slashes, she couldn't help but feeling something oddly familiar about their touch.

Using her magic to rise above the increasingly threatening, not to mention creepy, forest of ropy tentacles, the red-head caught something flashing out from the lake bottom. Here we go-

Something the size of a horse burst out of the clinging weeds, like a squid swimming backwards, tentacles first-until she noticed that the tentacles were actually long, thin necks terminating in monstrous, dinosaur-like heads bristling with thin, sharp teeth. Another familiar.

Kyoko's combat senses noted the mercurial quality of the creature's body, seeming to flow and reshape as it drew closer. The fangs looked solid enough; six of the seven heads came at her, mouths open to bite. The seventh remained closed, pulled back. It was fast, but not as fast as she was.

Holding her spear ready, the veteran noted the increasing power of the Grief Seed, confirming her suspicions that this thing somehow was holding it. Whoever heard of a familiar taking a seed before? she wondered. Doesn't matter.

Adjusting her grip, thankful for the magic that sustained her without breath in this twilight abyss, Kyoko struck as the multi-headed horror approached. A blurring trail of crimson seemed to form an immense glyph as the blade slashed through the water. The cuts severed three necks, and she'd hacked one of the heads right down the middle. She tried to dart aside, but the creature seemed to anticipate her escape. Two long, rippling necks cut her off, repulsive maws striking like snakes.

Typically, Kyoko didn't get hit. But if she did, her Puella Magi outfit helped absorb some of the damage, while her natural pain suppression overcame most of the physical shock. Her dress had already been in tatters, and she foolishly hadn't thought to repair it in her haste to retrieve what Sayaka so desperately needed.

You hoped that was all Sayaka needed, a dark thought amended.

Kyoko ignored the blood clouding the water, holding her spear awkwardly in her left hand, her right drawn close to her body. Almost took it clean off, she thought wonderingly, feeling the ends of her fractured forearm grating together. No stranger to injury, the veteran was still surprised by the extent of the injury.

The creature circled below her once, two of the severed necks reforming as it collected its sinking heads. The head that had been split down the middle appeared to be out of the fight, floating limply alongside its body as the beast turned to come at her from below.

Dipping further into her dwindling store of magic, Kyoko began the process of healing her arm, but knew she didn't have the required several seconds of time it would take to complete. She attempted to snap a barrier of energy around the thing, to buy herself a moment or two, but the creature burst out of the net of scarlet diamond-shaped chains with apparent ease.

More Mami's kinda thing, Kyoko thought sarcastically as the needle-fanged jaws began to envelop her.

Four rippling, eel-like necks darted forward, coming from above and below and both sides. She spun her spear around, allowing it to come apart in double-ended spiral of spiked chains and glowing blade. The incoming neck's were wrapped in the chains and bars, and before the liquid skin of the creature could flow around the entanglement she yanked the chain, hard.

As the heads began to fall to the bottom of the lake, Kyoko took time to slash at each one with her spear, sundering each in turn, before turning back to the large, finned and now one-headed familiar that swam down into the writhing mass of weeds, still straining upwards, tracking her movements above.

Of course it would be in the last head, she thought fatalistically.

Her right arm mostly healed, she swept her chain-linked spear down into the bed of weeds, cutting deeply. She continued, gouging deep furrows into the deep bed of weeds, finally connecting with the familiar. Metallic droplets were scattered as she lay into the thing, flailing the chain again and again, spraying waves of the mercurial liquid along the lake bed.

It disappeared, the Grief Seed immediately drifting down to the bottom.

Kyoko drifted down, reaching to pick it up-

Snatching her hand back, clasping the prize she'd desperately sought out, she hurtled upwards in near-panic, her eyes wide with what they'd seen. But what she'd seen was faster.

Hundreds of the bristly, knotted tendrils surrounded her, crawling over her skin with the unmistakable feel of wet hair, like her own ponytail after a shower...

The stones she'd noticed along the bottom of the lake were not, of course, stones. Kyoko had looked right into the empty sockets of a partially decomposed human head as she retrieved the Grief Seed. From that pale and bloated face, the sockets had seemed to stare right through her... and sprouting from the top of the skull, from the dozens, hundreds of skulls that surrounded her, was a thick, tangled rope of human hair, slowly stretching toward her.

Wrenching against the tugging, entangling mass of hair, the veteran Magical Girl felt a moment of panic as she failed to break free. She tried bringing her spear about, energizing it with the heat of her simmering anger-but the severed heads had begun floating off the lake bottom, hovering across the abyss with sinister intentions and skeletal grins. By the time she cut through a grasping hair-tentacle, two more had latched on. Looking around desperately for an avenue of escape, the red-head felt a wave of anguish wash over her as what little light from above was blocked out, the bottom of the lake nearly desolate as the rotting heads began to rise up throughout the lake... each reaching out toward her...

A desperate attempt to pull away-

And then it was dark as the cords began to wrap around her face, around her chest. She continued to struggle, but to no avail, the wet hair twining over her, cocooning her inside an unbreakable shell. She felt something tug against her chest, and stomped down a wave of horror as her Soul Gem was ripped away.

She clasped the Grief Seed tightly in her hand, feeling the spike dig into her palm. Perhaps even this wasn't enough, she thought tiredly. Nothing else seems to go my way...

Morbidly, she acknowledged that she probably didn't have long. Once her Soul Gem was far enough away-how far had Kyubey said? It wouldn't matter. The thought of her body, a mindless zombie cocooned at the bottom of this Witch's pit was deeply abhorrent to her, while her Soul Gem... what? What would happen? What would become of her?

Something inside her was at peace. The desperate need to save her friend, the emotional roller coaster of this whole barrier, the wave after wave of enemies, the worry, the unbridled hope followed by wave of anguish... it was only worth it... if Sayaka survived.

The irony hit her hard; that she would assign such importance to another person, of such significance that they alone could determine happiness or despair. She remember railing against those feelings of Sayaka's after the Kyosuke incident. This is different, she rationalized. This was real-is real...

Is it? a dark voice asked. Is anything worth this?

An image of what life would have been like flashed through her mind as her body continued to struggle against the entangling web of hair. Retreating from the Witch's lair, alone and empty-handed. Continuing her previous existence, a self-made exile, wandering, friendless, in search of the next seed. Nothing to live for, nothing to lose.

Also, no one to hold you back, no one to tell you what not to do. No one whose respect you crave, no one who's attention you've become obsessed with. No one who can twist your heart up, disappoint you, abandon you, betray you... and worst of all die on you. Die because of you.

If you didn't care, you couldn't hurt. It was a powerful half-truth, so long as you believed it.

But she didn't quite believe her mantra anymore. The blunette she couldn't get out of her head had somehow flipped a switch deep inside her, hidden even from herself. She had felt... comforted. No longer alone-like she had someone to share things with. Someone who's eyes told her she mattered.

Could she change so completely over the course of a few hours, despite the intensity of what she was feeling? It was ridiculous. She was who she was, but... she felt ready to change, even eager to, for the first time she could remember. A little bit, at least. She'd already begun watching her language...

Well #%* that, Kyoko thought venomously, struggling against her bonds with renewed fury. Bound so tightly, there wasn't much she could do. Focusing, she drew energy from her Soul Gem... at least it was still close enough-

Steely determination descended over her thoughts. She focused only upon survival. No more complicated questions, because she'd realized the answer. She would break free and save Sayaka and they would continue down the road they'd begun together. There was no alternative, because there could be no alternative in which she could live.

Pale rose light shone dimly from the tangled sphere of ropy hair, and Kyoko continued her struggle against the net, even using her impressive canines to fray the twisted mass covering her face.

She continued trying to break free until the Soul Gem was no longer close enough to exert its control over her body, and her lifeless, vegetative body hung limply, entwined at the bottom of the emerald lake.

At peace.