The silhouette of Remilia Scarlet's accursed sibling drew ever closer, step by dreadful step, the crystals hanging from her back shaking and twirling slowly about the branch-like protrusions from which they dangled, her bloody stare never once wavering as she bore down upon us. I gulped audibly, my heart pounding loudly in my ears, and though the other two did not appear anywhere near as nervous as I, I could tell by their uneasy squints and the white-knuckle grip on their respective weapons – if one could call Marisa's broom a weapon – that they knew the fight ahead would not be an easy one, an unusual notion given the more than considerable level of power that each of them wielded.
Yet as Flandre Scarlet set foot into the radiance of Marisa's lantern, the shadows that had cast her form into such horrifying focus vanished, the blanket of dark shrouding her dispelled by the safe, warm glow of the fire. What emerged from the illusion was a diminutive, almost unassuming figure, dressed in a simple white and red gown reminiscent of that which a certain shrine maiden wore every day, a puffy white hat sat atop a mess of flaxen tresses, shielding a pair of small, inquisitive eyes which, though still doused in vermillion, appeared like those of a small animal than of one of the most enigmatic yet fearsome beings in the realm.
"What are you doing here?" she asked. Her voice was the striking image – or sound, rather – of Remilia's own, but it did not carry that same undercurrent of iron, of blackness. "You're a long way from the surface. You didn't come down the well, did you?"
"…In a fashion." Miko slowly lowered her blade. "And what about yourself? Why linger in this forgotten corner of the Mansion, especially with all the upheaval aboveground?"
"Me? I've always been here." Flandre shrugged. "That person keeps telling me it's not safe out, even though it bores the hell out of me to stay here. I wanna go out and do something. I'm so bored." She blew out an irritated breath, and the gems on her back flickered briefly. "I could hear something going on upstairs, though, so maybe that person will let me out for a bit. She only wants me around when she needs me. Not that I really care – I just want someone to play with. You guys wanna do something with me?"
Putting aside the perhaps easily solved mystery of who "that person" might happen to be, it surprised me to no end that a being of such ill repute and renown would turn out to be so… child-like. Immature, even. Another subversion of expectations to add to a long, long list of them since I had arrived.
An even greater surprise, however, was to await me, in the form of what Marisa would say next.
"Sure," replied the witch. "Wanna come with us? I'll tell your sister we're gonna go play."
Miko tilted her head and frowned, her already narrow squint narrowing further still as she peered at Marisa, who seemed totally at ease with what she had just proposed. Maybe it was the right call in the circumstances, for Flandre's eyes instantly lit up, and she nodded her head vigorously.
"Yes!" she exclaimed. "Let's go. What should we do?"
"Anything you want. We gotta get out of here first, though." Marisa looked around. "You wouldn't happen to know where the exit is, do you?"
Flandre shrugged again. "Not really. It's a big place. Sometimes I end up finding it by accident, but then the maid usually just drags me back down here when she brings me my food." She bit her lip and frowned. "I don't like her."
"That is a sentiment we all share," Miko noted with a chuckle. "Well, accident or not, we will need to leave this place eventually, and the sooner the better. Push comes to shove, I could take us to Senkai, although I trust Kanako Yasaka will be watching the bridge between worlds very closely. I believe that would not be an appropriate risk to take."
"Why don't we go exploring, then?" Flandre suggested. "Haven't done that in a while. There's only so many spirits and fairies you can blow up without getting bored, anyway, so I've had enough of that." Without another word, she turned and sauntered back down the corridor from which she had emerged. "Come on!" she called as she vanished into the darkness.
We looked at each other and shrugged.
"No time like the present," Miko noted dryly. "Let's make haste."
Marisa readily concurred, as did I, and so we followed the bobbing white figure into the shadow of the maze. That abrupt and entirely unexpected moment of catharsis upon discovering how docile – at first blush, anyway – the feared Flandre Scarlet seemed to be had just about made me forget the severity of the situation we were stranded in. Yet, selfish as it was to say, it was far safer and far less stressful to be down here than up there, whatever was going on. Far better to count whatever few blessings we could muster, even in the midst of such tribulation and uncertainty.
"This way!" Flandre would exclaim once in a while, darting down one hallway or another without so much as a flicker of hesitation. All we could do was trust in her judgment, however fickle it might appear – she was the one who'd lived here for however long she'd lived here for, and judging by the tendency of those who resided in Gensokyo to have lifespans far beyond what might be humanly imaginable, one suspected that was a very long time indeed.
Which then begged the question of how she had spent all this time, locked away in a place where every decrepit stone wall was a mirror of the others, and still managed to summon the innocent curiosity and youthful drive she now displayed. If I had been in her shoes, heaven knew I'd have been driven mad long ago – though I could hardly compare the perspective of one who treated a century as a moment and one who treated a century as a lifetime. Besides, madness was very much par for the course in this little slice of cross-dimensional wonderland.
Either way, the more I pondered, the more the differences between her and her more illustrious sister became apparent. When it came down to it, though, from what I knew about each sibling so far, I knew which of them I would vastly prefer the company of.
Even so, one could only take so much running about seemingly mindlessly in the murky, musty confines of an underground labyrinth, no matter how pleasant one's company might be. Indeed, after about half an hour of chasing the little vampire's red-and-white tail around sharp corners and through yet more hallways, her instructions growing less and less certain by the moment, it soon became apparent that she was just as lost as we were. The sound of her pattering ground to a gradual halt, and we soon found her standing silently in the dark, staring back at us, a look of desolate haplessness wilting her features.
"I'm lost," she whined.
"I figured as much," Marisa replied with a sigh. "What now? I guess we could keep on going until we hit something interesting, which will hopefully happen before we inevitably pass on into the afterlife. I'm not looking forward to what Eiki Shiki would have to say about me."
"Speak for yourself," Miko said, though she, too, did not appear overly enthused by the prospect of spending the rest of her life, however long that might turn out to be, down in the sewers of the Mansion. "It appears to me as though we have been running in one grand circle for the past ten minutes. Perhaps there is some more coherent strategy we could follow rather than just taking the left turn every time we encounter a fork."
Flandre's eyes widened in surprise, as though not expecting Miko to figure out the "tactic" she'd been employing. I, for my part, had long since figured out what she was doing by this point, though I had not felt it right to disturb Flandre's fun when she could very well turn her enthusiasm towards something a touch too dangerous for my liking.
In any case, hearing Miko speak about loops, I was struck by a sudden burst of déjà vu, a sense that I had seen this scene play out before in some long, distant past. It had not been two weeks since we'd embarked on our journey to Eientei, where all this turmoil traced its roots, but then again, this had not exactly been the easiest fortnight of my time in Gensokyo so far. When one waited for things to get better, one could wait a very long time indeed.
"Could it be that there's some kind of spell cast upon these corridors to make it seem like we are going in circles?" I suggested. "Perhaps akin to the magic we encountered in Eientei."
Miko thumped her palms together in realization. "You could very well be right. In fact, I have noticed that the dimensions and layouts of the corridors have tended to repeat themselves, though it is admittedly difficult to pinpoint where the spell commences or concludes. We will have to keep a keen eye or two out as we venture forward."
We started on our way again, this time with, if not a renewed sense of purpose, at least some notion that continuing on might be the most optimal course of action in the circumstances. And sure enough, before too long, Miko's keen nose for irregularity sniffed out an aberration in the latest of the endless web of monochrome corridors we were passing through. She bade us stop, knelt down beside an unassuming tile on the floor, and pressed her fingers down upon it. With an uttered word of enchantment, the wall beside her came to life, disassembling and retreating into the stone around it, revealing a hitherto undiscovered passage that led into a different sort of blackness, one that was formed by soil and dirt instead of rock and marble.
"This seems promising," I noted.
"Never one to enunciate the obvious, are you," Miko replied sarcastically. "But yes – as compared to aimlessly wandering about this accursed maze, this does show some promise."
We followed her into the new pathway, the click of our footsteps on the stone softening into padded thuds on the loose soil as we left the corridors behind, the odor of the damp dew on the rock walls sharpening into the dirt's earthen sourness. Yet even that change in scenery would itself prove to be transient – soon, the glow of Marisa's lantern abruptly caught the lowest edge of an upwards flight of stairs. With a little less hesitation than our as yet precarious situation may have warranted, we marched swiftly up the stairs – at this point, our minds perhaps burdened by the numbing repetition of the underground maze, we were simply glad to partake in whatever opportunity for progress might present itself.
Even if, whether my traveling companions and I knew it or not, that modicum of light at the end of the literal and metaphorical tunnel would turn out to be the final step in a journey whose destination had long since been determined.