1857
Today was looking to be ideal.
Koakuma slid the book out from between its neighbours, pretending to peruse the shelf for a minute longer as she shot a furtive glance down the aisle. Only when she was sure did she slip the valuable tome into the paper bag in her other hand. The bonds in her contract were worn through and loosened by the passage of time. Through a technical loophole, she was free to escape. And now, with the Wallachians apparently gaining on them, and with Flandre on the cusp of acting out... If she left now, she could sell the books and go her own way whilst the others were distracted.
"Why're you frowning?" Patchouli asked.
Koakuma's brows arched as she turned towards her mistress. The smile came a second later. "I don't know." She said truthfully.
Patchouli's mouth downturned as her purple eyes searched Koakuma's. "It's about teatime, isn't it?"
Koakuma's lips opened, knowing the answer. Yes it was. "My, is it now?" She asked.
Patchouli nodded weakly. "Yeah."
"You know what I'm going to ask, then!" Koakuma declared.
Patchouli didn't break eye-contact. "Yeah." She murmured.
Koakuma furrowed her brow. "Is everything alright, Patch- miss Patchouli?" She asked, knowing things may not be alright in a few hours time.
Patchouli didn't answer her. She simply stared at her.
"...Maybe you'll feel better after a pastry or two! Ahh? Whaddaya say? We landed not far from a town. I can go out and get some, to supplement your tea?" Koakuma asked.
"Our tea." Patchouli said weakly.
"'Course. That's what I meant." Koakuma forced the words out, already rounding the shelves and making her way down the central aisle. She raised her hand without looking back, closing the double doors behind her, sagging as soon as they thudded shut.
"Going somewhere?"
Koakuma nearly jumped out of her skin, turning to meet the half-lidded stare of the vampire.
"Nothing! Nowhere- that is, miss Patchouli would like some confections goods to go with her tea! Would you like me to get you anything, miss Scarlet?" She asked, bowing deeply.
The red-eyed gaze of Remilia Scarlet had so often withered Koakuma, but today the vampire seemed more curious than wrothful. "Mmm, no."
"Alright!" Koakuma beamed, turning to the doors.
"Although," Remilia's words halted her, "If you're going for a pastry, Patchouli's developed a taste for cinnamon rolls. I get the feeling she'd love it if you surprised her with one."
Koakuma lofted a brow, unable to resist correcting Remilia, "Are you sure? Miss Patchouli is very particular about what she has on her Fridays-"
"Oh? Shall we go check?" Remilia asked, her eyelids lifting.
Koakuma flung her hands up, a shiver in her voice, "N-no, no! No, quite alright. You're her best friend, after all-"
Remilia stared her down, a grudging smile softening her haughty expression. "One of her best friends, I should think," She corrected, her face hardening. "Cinnamon roll. Go."
Koakuma could scarcely remember where the time had gone. She'd set out to escape from Patchouli's servitude, having sold a tome or two to secure the collection of tools and trinkets that would allow her to travel from this plane to that. All she had to do was find a secluded spot to draw her circle and perform the ritual.
It was scary, leaving the mansion. It was exciting, duping the idiot by 'going out for pastries'. It left her queasy, thinking such things. She tried to focus on the little thigns in the moment. The long walk, the gentle, grassy incline, that had really worked her muscles.
That's why her heart was beating as fast as it was, she was sure. There was no other reason she could entertain that explained why she was feeling so out of sorts.
She hadn't had much to eat. That was a possibility. She was a demon, but she needed sustenance. It was a shame she hadn't thought to swing by the bakery, just in-She heard a crisp crunch in her satchel. As she reached the top of the knoll, she paused, swinging the satchel around to look inside, seeing the candles, the chalk, the book of banishments, but it was the crushed paper bag beneath the witch's tools that gave her pause. Her fingers went in, splaying it open.
She saw the glazed cinnamon rolls, laced with icing and marked with sugar dusting from the bag's other occupants.
Koakuma stared down at the rolls for a long time.
"No." She managed to say, the pain in her chest worsening, her body turning, her eyes lifting to glimpse the tiled peaks of the distant, forest-masked Scarlet Devil Mansion, and the dark clouds that approached it from the east.
She began to run.
London, 7th Night
Koakuma collapsed into the easy chair as it manifested beneath her, her cheek livid with pain. She forced out a chuckle beneath her deerstalker hat, her opposite number familiarised himself within the gas-lit living room she had decided on.
"I welcome you once again, mighty djinn, to the Daedalus portal," She purred, rolling her jaw in her palm, "Killer left hook, by the way."
The apparition of smoke and ash looked about himself as he idly shook out his left hand. His muscular form was barely contained by the tweed suit, tie and handlebar moustache Koakuma had inflicted on him.
"Baker street... my, you are adorable." Alhajin rumbled, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
It was an effort for Koakuma to smile. "Thought it'd be thematic, seeing as you're here now, probably burning with questions about how I, the genius of the Scarlet Devil Mansion, managed to root out the truth about your heritage!" She declared.
"No." The djinn said simply.
Koakuma frowned, forcing her smile to resurface, despite the pain flaring through her cheek. "No interest in your history? A shame, but understandable. Would you rather ask about how I became aware of your transition, from Hindu legend to Arabic myth?"
The lights in the living room dimmed, the dip in activity sending Koakuma's gaze darting from fixture to fixture, her heart fluttering as the only lights in the room seemed to be the djinn's burning eyes. More words sallied out from between her teeth. "Then let us skip your debrief, and let us talk about what we both want-"
She gasped out as the shadowy fingers crushed on her neck.
"Perhaps a night or two ago," The djinn hissed, "I might have been curious to know how you found out about me. I had thought myself meticulous in covering my own tracks, and you did pique my interest. Until the two of you revealed me to my great enemy. You forced me to give my very identity over to them, for the sake of survival.
I am irked, I'll confess."
"The jann. The first. They told me...!" Koakuma croaked, trying to stall.
"The jann have slumbered for generations now, you are lying, child. Just as you lied about our still being engaged within the Daedalus portal." Alhajin snarled.
Koakuma's eyes widened, her mouth opening as she felt the springs in her chair pricking through the fabric to press against her back, push, pierce-
She arched off of the chair, shots of pain coiling up into her body.
Alhajinn went on.
"My vessel was destroyed, and you trapped me here in this device. Within my 'lamp', you will call me master." He told her.
"...Help you..." Koakuma wheezed as she writhed, the springs spiking into her.
He snorted derisively, holding her aloft, a heartbeat away from driving her down. "How on earth can you possibly help me, imp?"
"Escape." Koakuma whispered the word.
It was enough for him. The hooks halted. "You wish to talk of escape? You think this looking glass a private place to discuss your co-operation, your treachery of your mistress?" He asked, curious.
"Privacy seals... can speak freely..." Koakuma lied, spasms travelling up her metaphysical form as it registered the wounds, "I want out. Wanted out for years. Your master wants Patchouli dead. Common cause."
There was a pause as Alhajin waited for her to continue. She tried to smile as she reached for the armrest, tried to support her punctured body, but it was hard. She needed a change of scene. To slip out of his grip. She had to play for time whilst she thought up an escape.
"The freedoms Barnes gave you are gone. You don't know how to unlock the seals on your new home. I do. Let's make a deal." Koakuma said slowly, a crude and incendiary escape emerging in her mind.
Alhajin's expression relaxed for a moment. Only a moment, before the rictus of hate returned, his eyes like burning pyres as he raised his fist. Whether he saw through the lie or decided it was more expedient to bash her metaphorical skull in and extract the secrets, she would never know.
"C-can't blame a girl-" Koakuma managed to say before she willed a store of gunpowder into being next door, the wall detonating as both she and the djinn were swallowed up by the gunsmoke.
The bullet dropped the Russian. Meiling watched him fall, stunned. She had thought the shot had been meant for her. Her brow knitted as she turned to regard mister Barnes and the smoking pistol he held.
"Why?" She asked.
Edwin shrugged, the motion tilting the muzzle of the pistol. "I didn't like the way he looked at me. How he asked so many questions... without the noonwitch holding his leash, I suspected he'd find his answers and find them problematic."
Meiling's chest heaved before she got her breathing back under control. "Answers that fly in the face of your way of doing things? Contrary to your tyranny?"
Edwin ignored the question, his dagger filled smile forcing its way across his face. "A knighthood for the man who brings me the princess. And my purse," He waved the spent pistol at Meiling, "for this one's head."
At his words, the pale blue street shone as silver rasped free, the great rolling hiss reminiscent of an enraged serpent. It would be too charitable to call the weapons Edwin's thugs wielded 'swords'; they were crude, jagged lengths of metal, no two being the same, the only commonality between them all being their functionality in murdering myths and magical beings.
The crowd of hired killers raced forward towards the lone gatekeeper.
"Mistress Yukari, may I beg your indulgence?"
Yukari stirred, her golden eyes dragging from the koi pond she sat before to look to her servant. Ran Yakumo knelt facing her, her arms shrouded in the folds of her clothing, her face almost as impassive as stone. But her chin had lifted, her yellow eyes staring intently at Yukari.
"Certainly. I'm sure Yuyuko doesn't mind. Do you, Yuyu?" She asked, catching a glimpse of Yuyuko modestly waving off such concerns. Yukari looked back to Ran. "So beg."
Ran's mouth moved as soon as Yukari's stopped. "Please, allow me to mobilise our assets. As stated, the oni are on site and ready to move. Chen is-"
"Chen," Yukari cut her off, "Forewarned their gatekeeper, even though I told you to have her keep her position."
Ran's ears flattened beneath her hat, her mouth a thin line. "I am sorry. I will be sure to put stricter parameters on Chen's behaviours," She began to bow her head, abandoning the gesture at the last moment, "But the fact remains, Remilia Scarlet is cut off from her allies, and they are sorely pressed. If we do not take to the field, they could lose personnel."
Yukari smiled sympathetically. "If we assist them directly, they'll know of your shikigami that you smuggled into their looking glass. That we kept tabs on them with Zenki and Goki. That we watched them struggle and scrape from place to place and did nothing to help them. You understand the position that would leave me in, when we meet them again?"
"There will be no second meeting if they are all dead." Ran blurted out.
Yukari's eyebrows shot up in response. Ran looked aghast, her head lowering to the deck. "My apologies, mistress!" She whispered, cursing herself. She had spoken tartly, in front of her mistress' guest and friend. She feared it was too much. She feared her speaking permissions would be revoked, and the point would be lost, and all their efforts would be for naught.
"You feel very strongly about this." Yukari replied. Ran blinked, daring to lift her chin to look up at Yukari as her mistress turned her gaze aside, following it. "Did you put her up to this?"
"Huh?" Came the muffled reply as Yuyuko - with the crown of an apple still locked between her teeth - seemed to stare witlessly back at her before sounding, "Oh. Uh-uh."
The impropriety of the netherworld princess' response left Yukari laughing hard enough to miss the wink Yuyuko shot to Ran.
Ran swallowed. "The crystal ball has been repurposed to serve as the djinn's new home, its prison, one that Koakuma has entered to keep him occupied long enough for Patchouli to recover and utilise the annihilation runes she's prepared."
"Annihilation runes... Nordic in nature." Yuyuko murmured.
"Yes, used to destroy items influenced by the supernatural. With them installed, Patchouli can do away with the djinn, and Koakuma along with it." Ran explained, her eyes returning to Yukari as she continued, "It is almost certain that Koakuma has encountered my surveillance shikigami, and knows what we have done. In one sense, it would benefit us if she was banished, that she can't communicate this find to miss Patchouli. But I feel Patchouli will engage with the djinn, rather than sacrifice her. If she were to die as well... Remilia would come without a powerful magician who might aid us, and may even struggle to reach us."
"It has been so long since..." Yukari frowned as she returned to the moment. "So if we wait, perhaps the djinn will declaw our darling vampire for us."
Ran bit her bottom lip. "And if Remilia were to ever discover we stood by and did nothing as her friend was slain... her heart rules her head, mistress Yukari."
Yukari's frown lightened. "She's not the only one to suffer such an affliction, is she, Ran?"
Ran held her mistress' gaze, her words betraying the emotionless mask she wore. "Say the word, mistress Yukari, and I will go myself and see your bidding done."
"No. No, I don't think your presence will be necessary." Yukari said airily, looking to the koi pond, watching dispassionately as Koakuma was driven deeper into a corner.
Koakuma burst through the streams of gun smoke in the guise of a harpy, fearfully checking for her pursuer. She almost missed the flash of claws curling in for her, forcing her to roll and dive.
"This can end quickly." The white feathered griffon promised, its eyes a familiar blazing yellow as it followed her down.
She felt one of her wings seize reflexively as the torn flesh throbbed. She shifted into the form of a falcon, smaller and faster on the fall, but he was already assuming the shape of an eagle, already diving for her. She made herself smaller still as she wove a thicket of thorns ahead of her, turning into a small and fragile fairy that hopped between the brambles. Alhajin collided with the vines, unable to follow, the scratches of the thorns goading him to let his feathers flare into roaring flames. They raced across the vines, consuming the thicket and turning Koakuma's obstacle course into a burning prison, one that she did not extinguish. Instead, she tore the ground open, digging into the desolate wasteland with burrowing claws. She would fare poorly if she directly opposed him; he'd had the best of her on her own turf, and now it was his lamp. Her only saving grace was his unfamiliarity with his newfound domain. If she was a rodent to his cat, she knew which roads to take and which paths were still secret to him. He would be clumsy, unrefined.
But he was still powerful, she realised, as a blade of light chopped down through the ground, barely missing her nose. The earth shifted. It crumbled, her tunnel beginning to cave-in before her world was pulled upwards into his hurricane. Once more, she took a form of feathers to break out of the current.
"You ruined my life by revealing my secrets, little devil."
Koakuma's eyes went wide as she felt something punch through her ear, her foot, her cheek. More bulleting impacts left her black feathers marbled red. Her eyes scrunched shut as he blinded her with sand and shredded her wings with metal, the hurricane firming into a churning sandstorm at his behest.
"If you do not surrender yours to me, I will take them." Alhajin whispered in her ear as he abruptly dropped her towards the earth.
She blinked furiously as she focused on Patchouli's teachings on the life giving element, the yield of the earth itself. She prayed that her belief in both science and magic could find purchase in this place ruled by Alhajin's will.
The water seeped up from the cracks in the fast approaching earth, then gushed, then geysered until the ground was awash with water, a great dark silhouette growing beneath the waves. She twisted and presented a colourful gesture to her pursuer before the whale launched up and swallowed her whole, its bulk and mass crashing back into the water. Her relative safety would not last as a ship with shadowy sails was already cresting the waves after her. Hate fuelled the perfect cast, the harpoons burying deep, the whale spasming as Koakuma was bathed in saltwater and blood. As the beast died and dissipated, she clawed upwards, fighting for the surface.
She thrashed out of the pond, the blood - her blood - a pink froth in the water. She coughed and spluttered as she struggled onto wet, prickling pines. She paused, looking about herself through the rain that slashed at her face.
The german forest.
He was trapping her, the transformation chase corralling her into the blind alley of her memories.
Behind her, she heard baying hounds. She wheezed, taking off at a run through the trees. She had to keep running. Maybe hide, but fighting was out of the question. He would beat her and break into her head. Once he had learnt from her how to manipulate this place entirely, once his curiosity was satisfied, he would snuff her out. All she could do was give Patchouli the time she needed to purge the crystal ball.
A smudge of darkness swept in at eye height. Koakuma slid on her knees beneath the swing, the pines digging and stabbing into her legs. She took off at a run again as she heard claws scraping wood. She dared to glance back. In that single glance, she saw horns, hooves, teeth, more than enough to make her run like hell until she was leaving the forest edge, through the plashy grass, over the dead, bare ground that stretched between her and the Scarlet Devil Mansion.
She wasn't going to make it. She had to fight. As she fought for breath, she thought of the most dangerous thing she knew. Her hair turned sky-blue, her black and white uniform lengthening into a crimson tabard, her body encased now in burgundy plate, the pronged fork in her hand uniting into a single scarlet spear.
"The aspect of your mistress... That is just sad." the breath on the back of her neck told her.
Koakuma rounded on him in her borrowed regalia, the Gungnir in her hands as she struck for his breast.
His palm split the shaft of the counterfeit weapon before his hairy knuckles smashed into her face, sending her reeling as his breath fogged from his bestial snout. "Pathetic. On the threshold of your home, and this is your best?"
Koakuma grimaced beneath her bloody nose, her eyes still focused on him as she swung for him. His head stopped her blow and broke her hand. "Have you no strength of your own?!" He mocked as her other hand sliced up, her talons cutting nothing but air as he pounded her chest. She staggered back, not far enough. He turned, lifted a hoof-
The side thrust kick struck her squarely and sent her tumbling across the ground, her armour shedding from her, deserting her in the face of his contemptuous assault. She struggled to breath as his many hooves clomped closer.
"Tell me how to leave this place." He demanded as he squatted low, his hand lifting her by the collar. forcing her to look into the horned, dog-faced flesh he wore.
"Click your heelsh together three timesh." Koakuma smiled, barely able to make coherent sound for the busted nose and the sliced open cheek.
He wiped her grin from her face with a backhanded slap. As her eyes rolled beneath her mussed hair, she saw that the grassy slopes of the hill were turning yellow-grey, the sky behind the mansion darkening with storm clouds, just as it had all those years ago.
"Tell me how to command this place," Alhajin repeated, "Or I will submit you to unending torment. I am a devil of the old gods, you know I can deliver. I will hurt you until you break. Then I will turn my attentions on the librarian."
For a time, Koakuma's strained breathing and the rumbling clouds above were the only sounds that were heard.
"You don't have the heart to survive what I can show you, imp." He insisted, his copper eyes sparking.
Koakuma blinked, recalling the fleeting horror he had shared with her at their first meeting inside of the portal. Now, they were in the 'lamp', he could make it happen. She could avoid it. All she had to do was tell him what he wanted to know. Her eyes wearily drifted to him, her bottom lip wobbling as her tongue wavered on the words.
There was a flash of indignation before she rasped out her answer. "No heart? Not me, shir. I jusht lack courage."
Her laughter was a weak, sibilant sound that faded away when Alhajinn joined in, his fingers locking on her skull.
"Mmm... Do not doubt yourself, little demon. Let's put that courage to the test."
Gensokyo, 7th Night
"She's gone in after her." Ran Yakumo stated quietly.
Yukari did not stir, her golden eyes watching the koi pond.
Ran's hands splayed on the floorboards. "Please..." She heard herself say, lowering her chin as shame overtook her. Yukari lifted her own, making it clear she was listening.
Ran took in a shallow breath, "The magician cannot vanquish a demon in its own lair, not without comprehensive knowledge of the thing they face. Send me there, miss Yukari. Let me do your bidding and rectify her error in judgement."
"I won't," Yukari's words threw a shiver across Ran's shoulders, "You are far too direct a response, especially in your emotional state."
Ran looked up, her eyes wide, searching her mistress'. Yuyuko came to the rescue, speaking up. "What will your response be, then?"
Yukari smiled as she stared into the koi pond. "To save them, I will have to involve myself. Their discovering our hand in this matter is inevitable. So let us at least make it interesting."
Ran blinked, nonplussed. "What will you do?"
"I will do what I will always do, Ran. I will meddle," Yukari murmured, her golden eyes watching on Koakuma's desperate battle with interest, "And her perception of things will serve as a fine foundation."
London, 7th Night
She had prepared herself for more pain, more practiced, precise ways for Alhajin to break her, if not merely hurt her. She'd expected to hear her own bones break, for her flesh to tear or be cut apart. Instead, she heard the gentle knock of knuckles rapping on panels. She heard door knobs being turned, walls being probed, scales of her mental armour being lifted and tested and brushed over for a seam, a hole, resistance that rang hollow.
She jumped when she heard the dull, tearing thud of an axe hacking and twisting free from a door. The sound was joined by another, her ears flattening when she recognised the double doors distorting beneath the axe blows to be that of the Scarlet Devil Library.
"No." Koakuma sounded quietly as she raised a hand. No spell answered her, nor her fork. She started when she realised she was hemmed in by things that were neither men nor beasts, forced to follow them as they stalked down the library's central carpet towards the supine girl in her purple dress.
Koakuma jolted when she felt a finger follow her eyebrow to her ear, delicately guiding tangled hairs behind it.
"It will be slower this way, I recognise that," Alhajinn conceded, "But after the trouble you gave me? I'm willing to take my time with you. Look, now," He directed her chin, forcing her to see the knives the wolves produced, "They're starting. As you stubbornly oppose me, Edwin Barnes and all his men are here now."
Koakuma knew she was looking at what would happen if she gave in. That this display should backfire and give her all the more reason to resist. But she felt her resolve fray all the same when she watched Patchouli stir, fear plain in her purple eyes.
The little devil's breathing became an ugly, desperate growl in her throat as she tried to wade forward, the air like treacle as Patchouli was pushed back down, as steel hovered above her face, as she murmured Koakuma's name, as her murmurings rose into screams and her feet kicked out and her body spasmed. Koakuma screamed for it to stop as a hand collared her and pulled her back.
She felt herself be pulled backwards, upwards.
Sound rushed in as water stung her eyes. Koakuma's sharp inhale gurgled into a hacking cough as she broke the water's surface, her limbs flailing to get up, get away. When had she been underwater? Had the djinn conjured-
"It's alright." The voice above her said. She turned, her hands moving to fight the wrist-
It was Patchouli. Small, stony-faced.
And glowing.
"I'm sorry," Koakuma's eyes brimmed with tears, "I'm sorry Pa- miss Patchouli."
Patchouli's frown deepened at that. "He used me to hurt you?" She asked, her voice under the mildest strain.
Gods, Koakuma realised, unable to tell and yet knowing, this is her. Not an apparition. She came. "Y-yeah." Koakuma blinked her tears away, knowing it was too late to tell Patchouli she was in mortal danger, knowing it would be redundant. She knew. Of course she knew.
Patchouli pursed her lips for a moment before she gave Koakuma the awkward, uneven smile that only Patchouli's face could make. "He's finished hurting you, I should think."
She speaks too soon, Koakuma heard Alhajin's whisper in her head.
Her eyes widened and her mouth opened to scream a warning as the column of earth swept in from behind for Patchouli's head. Patchouli stepped away, leaving her stony expression behind. The sand crashed into the stone replica's face, the haughty expression sandblasted in a shower of stone chips. As Patchouli backed, the drilling pillar of earth began to sing as serrated metal emerged from the sand and sawed through her planted doppleganger. At her own command, a halberd unearthed itself behind her mutilated effigy, stabbing with the curve of the axe and jamming the screeching sawblade against the stone as she prepared a counterspell. Alhajinn did not disappoint, his fires melting stone and igniting Patchouli's halberd in a rising cloud of vapour, one that Patchouli magnified and rolled out across the battlefield in a great blanket that concealed them both.
Alhajinn parted the fog with a wave of his weapon, now a longsword clutched by a claw cased in European plate. More of his form altered form as the grass broke down into lifeless stone beneath his tread and shrouded castle walls rose behind him; his muscular body began to clink as it was covered in gleaming white plate and his handsome, chiselled features were replaced with a betentacled, twitching lamprey face dominated by a circle of fangs.
The mists retreated and revealed his opponent, the imp missing from the sorcerer's side. The lone girl facing him sported a flowery armour jacket over a cuirass, her head topped with a wizard hat that seemed to be made out of purple lamellar plate, her flanks guarded by a pair of floating, oversized katanas. Behind her, the library loomed, the crimson carpet bristling as it met the flagstones.
"You will pay for ruining me." Alhajinn growled, muscles tensing. Patchouli stared grimly back, her arms lifting as though preparing to conduct an orchestra, the swords lifting with them. In this contested reality where sorcerers were samurai and demons were knights, the two adversaries measured the other, the ground beneath them shifting uneasily as they both imposed their wills on this reality. The wind picked up, scattering Alhajinn's fleshy fronds and blowing Patchouli's hair all about. Carpet caught fire and stone shattered as the djinn was challenged in his own home, the flagstones of his cloud covered fortress trying to suffocate Patchouli's sanctum and crush its floorboards, the very foundations of the great library groaning.
But the great library stood resolute. A mere magician evidently stood against the djinn.
"Impossible. This is my domain. You have power outside of this place, but within... what have you done?" Alhajinn's befanged face hissed out.
Patchouli's tight-lipped scowl was the only answer he received as the landscape was stamped securely into place, her eyes watching as the demon charged her. The katanas clanged to meet his blade in a cross guard. He forced his armoured body against the fence of steel, his eyeless face watching the sorceress.
"Loose." Alhajinn said the word with relish, a wave of darkness surfing overhead, down towards the witch. She lifted her chin, a cutting gust of wind answering her and sweeping the arrows down, around, back at him.
Alhajinn gave a great roar, fire leaping from his toothy mouth, the flames whitening her swords and snuffing out the hail of projectiles. He followed the heat softened katanas as they retreated, the point of his sword flicking out and catching in the stave of Patchouli's counter summon.
The creature's limbs were long and translucent, her skin tinged green and dotted with plant life. Her blonde head was decorated with a crown of branches, her black, alien eyes regarding Alhajinn with disinterest even as her spear shaft crackled and regrew around Alhajinn's lodged blade. With a thought, he tried to banish it.
The sylph levered the spear up into his torso with enough force to send the armoured demon and his sword into the air. He righted himself quickly, seeing the green giant raise a bone warhorn to her lips as roots bulged and broke through the landscape. As silver birches reached up around Patchouli, he heard her mind broadcast a pair of words.
"Sylphy Horn."
At the stentorian note, the boughs shook at a fresh gale, the leaves sharpening as they were snatched from the trees and swept up at Alhajinn.
"Useless." He whispered, the back of his cavernous mouth alight. He opened his mouth, breathing out a stream of flame that broadened into a wall of fire that swallowed the leaves and engulfed the sylph, the slender creature wailing as she burned away. Again, he heard the words drift to him as though said aloud.
"Reversal at Red Cliffs."
The leaves - still ablaze - held their shape long enough to rattle off of the djinn's plate and graze his face, the ferocious gale folding the fire back over him before it was consumed. The blaze did not harm his metaphysical body much; he was once a demon of fire and now a djinn of the earth, but to have his strength thrown back at him, rather than be opposed... no, that was to be expected. The sorceress was a girl of earth and water, withstanding, redirecting, wilting, cowering. He could sense her distress.
So why did she not turn to her principle elements? Why did she choose to lose against him?
And why was she losing so slowly? She could summon up elementals, so why not water? Did she think she could match him over his mastery of the earth?
He smirked at the thought, though his mind turned over the question. He was mighty, she had to recognise that. His control over magic was inherent, his power immeasurable. Surely she had not come into this without some sort of-
"Your power is measurable, oh high and mighty djinn, and rest assured, it has been found lacking.
Elemental Harvester."
As Patchouli's words grazed his mind and interrupted his thinking, his fires receded and revealed the great circular blades that Patchouli launched up at him. He huffed out a sigh as he turned his body, the spinning blades melting in midair as they passed him. She was still relying on combustibles. She saw him as lesser, her words establishing as such. So encouraged, he indulged his instinctive tendencies and summoned up the fires of hell, casting it all down towards the glowering magician in a rolling firestorm. It consumed the birch trees in front of her, the carpet she stood on vanishing in flame as he displaced the sands beneath her.
"Yggdrasill, Thresh!"
At Patchouli's command, roots and repurposed flooring curled above the sinking sands, rushing up and lacing together in time to catch her leading foot as she wove a shield of sand for her front. She stepped back onto the wooden walkway as the djinn's fires burned away the questing vines and broke over the sand shield, turning grains to glass and earth to ash. He poured more fire on her as he eroded the earth further beneath her until she stood on the burning branch of a lonely tree, the sand at the roots roiling, spinning, its coarse grains sawing at the wood.
It was the rumbling that diverted his attention, hearing, then seeing the plumes of sand puffing into the air behind him, all around them both.
The pillars - shady and indistinct - rose all around them, the sand - his sand - shifting around the colossal objects and into the gaps left behind. The struts of white rock rumbled higher until they threatened to pierce the cloud-covered sky, the emergence of these imposing pillars turning this place familiar and yet alien, the feeling of obligation to know this place throwing a shiver down Alhajinn's back despite the fire and the fight.
"This is Irem, the city of dreams and djinn." Patchouli's words returned all of his attentions to her. He bared his teeth.
"You fling my adopted culture in my face?" He challenged, raising a claw that sent churning earth up into the flames that blew over Patchouli, the mixture melting and running down the earthen shield.
"Or do you think to demonstrate my destination, should I fail to bend the knee?" He asked as he charged forward, his vambraced arm punching through the slopping magma, piercing Patchouli's collapsing shield and reaching for her as she whispered a word of prayer to mother Gaia. He felt his fingers close on her neck. He squeezed with bone snapping force as the skin darkened and became etched with grooves, the wooden statuette creaking to a halt as the real Patchouli stepped back from the afterimage he grappled with. Her katanas swung down, chopping into the wood and taking his fingers.
Bellowing in rage, he caught alight, his fires turning her swords into molten rivulets and the effigy into crumbling scorched remnants. The entire tree began to smoulder, the structure shuddering as the sandblasted trunk tottered. Patchouli stepped back from him, back along the branch and towards the tree as she cast low-cost, rapid fire spells. She threw out Autumn Edge - a hand's sum of metal daggers - only to see them evaporate in the air from Alhajinn's fiery aura, his sword slicing for her head. She cast Spring Wind, the sudden gale taking his sword edge past her face and sending him off balance, following that spell by blasting Summer Red into his flank, the fireball flickering weakly as it was flung out.
She'd never mastered the knack for them.
His blade caught it, splitting her fragile fireball in half and sending her crashing backwards in a shower of broken lamellar plating.
"Ha. Ha, hahahahaha..." Alhajinn's lamprey mouth opened and closed around his mocking laughter as he followed her along the branch. Below them he could hear the tree crackle and the saw sing, and above, he could hear the skies rumble overhead. He bade the stormclouds gather closer and grow darker before he sent flames running through his sword edge with a stab of will. Patchouli scrabbled back along the branch, her stern expression unmoving even as he followed her, his cloak of flames feeding on the tree.
"For all the injury you have done me, I am willing to forgive you."
"How gracious." Patchouli fired back, her voice tight with emotion.
Alhajinn turned his sword and flicked it after the retreating Patchouli, nicking the bottom of her dress as bark snapped and hissed. "Do not misunderstand. My mercy has its price - that is, your strength. You will give it to me. Restitution for how you stripped me of my power." He let the sword-point nip and jump after the magician as she scrambled for breathing room, enjoying the sight of her so humbled.
"You wish to know who gave me this strength?" She asked him, her back slumping against the trunk of the tree.
His advance halted, the tip of his blade hovering in her face. "Tell me their name, this master of yours."
"I don't know it," Patchouli admitted, "Nor are they a master of mine. Though I can make an educated guess as to who they are, they that have made it possible for me to face a djinn in his own realm..."
Alhajinn's lamprey face tilted, uncertain then. She spoke in riddles, and not of an apprentice's master, but the power she had demonstrated had a draw all it's own. "Give me their name, where I might find them, and I will spare you." He lied.
The heavens rumbled above them both. The feeling in the air had changed, and Patchouli's expression could not even hide her contempt for him then. "I might hazard a guess," She hissed, her hands suddenly luminescent, "But my speculation is worth nothing to a corpse."
The lamprey knight felt a dreadful chill travel down his spine. His sword wheeled down in a deadly arc as her shining hands flew up.
Sunshine Reflector!
There was a sparking flash. The air shattered like glass as Alhajinn's sword struck the first barrier, the second layer crashing beneath it, the third shrieking as the sword lodged deep within, the fourth holding firm. He almost screwed his eyes shut as the honeycomb of hardlight glared in his face, managing to see her beneath the barrier. She was still alive. His sword had forced a terrible breach but it held firm, embedding both hilt and hand within the pages of cold light.
"I was hoping to take you alive." His hideous mouth sighed, the malign intelligence behind it gratified to see fear in Patchouli's eyes as the back of his throat glowed with a heated hellish light. He leant in to breathe fire through the rent shield and immolate her. "'Suffer not a witch-'"
Three stabbing pains shot through his leg as something collided with his back. He was driven to one knee, screaming as fire gusted down the shield front, his mewling contesting with a shouting in his ear. He turned to see Koakuma - ragged and enraged - leaning into her fork's thrust, her hands shaking as she tried to drive it all the way through his leg.
"Where the hell did you come from?!" His question wailed through his head.
"'She was always beneath your notice', wasn't she?" Patchouli growled out the words.
With a roar of frustration and pain he turned, his off hand swinging around and catching Koakuma in the face, sending her staggering over the edge. He turned back. Patchouli was gone, but the array of metal and moonlight was still locking around his sword hand. He tried to shapeshift, to disperse himself, to force it open, to bring the churning earth beneath the tree up to protect him, something, anything as the clouds lit up beyond the boughs above.
Patchouli caught up with her familiar in freefall, reaching for her lapel as they plummeted downwards. She caught her collar as her free hand created the seals, her mouth creating the shapes and sounds for her spell, the spell that would serve as the catalyst for her gambit, a spell of wood and fire. It was that last element that scared her, her lack of attunement to it making failure to cast a possibility. If that had happened, they would be consigned to a battle with the djinn that would last until Remilia had won or lost, she was certain.
That was why she had made such exhaustive preparations. She had proposed the sands of Irem for the battlefield, assuaging her opponent's suspicions. She could not have used water, knowing he would have seen it - instead, she had employed the elements that were consumed by fire, encouraging the djinn to conjure his flames, again and again, whilst she quietly conserved her strength and relied on the environs. The world tree burned beneath a blanket of clouds born of firestorms. She had the raw materials that were both versatile and in abundance. She had held herself back, let him tire. Now she prayed she understood the element well enough to invoke it, not knowing that she had the key to its understanding by the scruff.
"Raijin, Crash!"
For a moment, there was nothing, and she feared she had failed. That she wasn't angry enough, feeling enough, ready enough to pull it off.
Then the silence was broken by a far-off rumble that grew and rolled into a sound like a thousand distant drumbeats. Patchouli turned and focused on their plunge towards the fast approaching sinkhole, knowing she was out of time as she launched her next spell, the sand and earth beneath them blowing away as she demanded its bounty. She spoke the words as the world lit up, the thunder cutting her off as the lightning struck the burning tree.
Burning bark blasted from the top and rolled down in a wave of crackling shrapnel as the electricity raced to reach them before they made it to safety.
She gripped Koakuma tightly as her summoned sanctum rushed to meet them.
1857
Koakuma slowed her breathing as she stared up at the doors of Voile, the library of the Scarlet Devil Mansion. In through the nose, out through the mouth, one, two, three.
She pushed the door open. "Yoohoo!" She called out, managing a smile as her wings took her above the carpet and the aisles of bookcases.
Patchouli was sitting at one of the tables with her back to the doors. There was no book in front of her.
"I said, 'yoohoo'!" Koakuma repeated, careful not to go too quickly to her, not too slowly.
"Go away." Patchouli said quietly, the words grounding Koakuma in every way. She landed deftly, her brow knitted.
"I... got you those cinnamon rolls that Remilia told me you like?" Koakuma asked, lifting the paper bag.
Patchouli did not turn to regard her.
Koakuma dared to approach. "What's wrong, Patchy?" She asked, her hand going for Patchouli's shoulder. It was shrugged off.
"You don't get to call me that anymore." Patchouli's voice cracked.
Koakuma stood there, caught between crowding Patchouli and just standing there. Her fingers furled unwillingly.
"My parents sent me away." Patchouli said.
Koakuma quietly listened.
"They didn't listen to me. Didn't want to." Patchouli went on, taking long stints of silence between sentences. "I didn't have any friends growing up. L-learned too late there's more to school life than being the smartest person in the room. I didn't have any friends, not until Remi, and that was cuz she needed me."
"Nonsense. She wanted you as her friend." Koakuma dared to say.
"And I thought," Patchouli buried her tears in her sleeve, "I thought I could make one friend, just one friend, and I thought- I thought you'd be-"
Koakuma took her shoulder again, the contact making Patchouli shudder.
"I thought you wouldn't leave me...!" Patchouli sobbed, for all of a second fighting as Koakuma wrapped her arms around her, "A-and even then I had to hire y-you-"
"Let's discuss a new contract, then," Koakuma swallowed thickly, "I'm not leaving you. Ever, ever again. Not 'til you get bored of me. How's that sound?" She asked, trying to put her old bravado into her words.
Patchouli's little hands pressed on Koakuma's torso, shaking, torn between pushing her away and pulling her in. "Not ever?"
"Not ever," Koakuma said hoarsely as she cleared her throat, "Never, never."
She felt Patchouli grip her tightly as the magician cried her heart out.
Threshold of Dreams & Reality, London, 7th Night
With a crackling fizz, the dead tree began to split, its trunk opened as though by a great axe. Embers glowed inside of the blackened bark, the heartwood still burning from the lightning strike.
Alhajinn's flesh sizzled as he swung his scimitar through a branch, the blade impotently biting before the darkened limb snapped off. The lightning bolt had destroyed the abomination he had worn and the left over damage had left him affected. It was an effort to move his smoke-woven body, and his co-ordination was off. Pain was a constant companion. He had spent great stores of will surviving the spell of the witch he now hunted. His leading foot stomped through a fire-hollowed vine, lurching forward over the knot of roots to find the sinkhole.
Atop it stood standing stones the colour of jade that jutted halfway out of the impoverished earth, the pillars capped by a roof of the same non-conductive emerald.
"Impossible." He blurted out, tensing when the wall facing him slowly toppled forward. He saw the silhouettes, the little devil on her knees at the witch's side. The witch herself... She was different then. The shadowy interior of the megalith receding before the ferocious glow that emanated from her body, her purple eyes bright and burning intensely as they locked with Alhajinn's, her purple hair suddenly blown forward by a hard snort that gusted past her shoulders.
Behind her, a pair of enormous ruby eyes set into a growling, elongated skull stared him down.
Out of some forgotten impulse he didn't care for, he acted quickly. The sands roared up at his command, assembling the bones of long-dead monsters into a single, many-limbed nightmare that bore down on the girls.
The unearthed metal dragon thundered past its summoner and careened into its deceased and misshapen cousin, driving it back with bone splintering force. At Alhajinn's command the sand mass within the dead lizard reacted viciously, flinging the boney jaws around the silver dragon's neck, raking metal scales from its flanks as tendrils of soil and ash rushed to fill out his summon's shape. The two opponents stared one another down as the two great beasts wrestled and raked at each other. Initially, Alhajinn's macabre monstrosity had the worst of it, forced to back down, drooling spent sand from its yellowing ribs as it went.
But with every second that passed, the amorphous cloud motivating the lizard drank in more dirt and ash from the landscape, its impacts driving the dragon back. This was his battle to win, Alhajinn told himself; the thunderbolt had dazed him and left him unsteady on his feet, but the remains of the tree and this city of sand and souls would feed his assault. He could sustain this.
That was until he saw the rising tide. He looked about himself, seeing the closing wall of water on every horizon, the heavens heaving rain down onto the great barrier. He looked back to Patchouli, saw how her hands moved. She was conjuring this, and - as he felt rain start to whip at his face - she was closing the net on him.
With a flash of fear-fuelled anger, he summoned up the shade of an old and terrible colleague, the cored trunk of the tree behind him cracking as elegant white fingers pulled it open. The shrouded, fire-licked likeness of a demoness stepped through the charred portal.
"Kill her!" He commanded her, and the shade of Holika obediently shot forward. The bone construct obediently dragged the silver dragon down as the demoness ran along its back, her flashing footfalls melting its spine as she closed the gap. Patchouli saw the coming danger, devoting a hand to raising a thing of fins, fangs, a trident, but she couldn't invoke the floods and command an effective defence at the same time. Alhajinn saw it too, seeing how lethargy plagued Patchouli's summon as Holika closed for the kill, his eyes widening and his smile flashing.
He was curious to see Patchouli suddenly rush forward, abandoning her battlefield incantation. Stranger still to see her raise a closed fist, and strangest of all, she smiled.
It wasn't one of self-assurance, nor was it a smile of awkward admission.
It was a familiar, unrestrained malice.
Knowing her deception was at an end, Koakuma staggered forward as the glamour ran off of her form in purple rivulets. She let out a wordless, joyous shriek as she thrusted up for her opponent. It was a pitiful lunge made by the wounded imp that never even reached the shadow of Holika, the witch's familiar stumbling and falling.
But her command was followed. Undine obeyed gladly, surging forward in a flash of fangs, squealing like a siren to her meat as her trident's points took Holika beneath the breast.
In that crucial second, Alhajin's assault foundered. He cried an ugly sound, his choler rising as he heard Koakuma's scornful laughter.
"You bitch! You impudent, impotent bitch!" Alhajinn screamed.
As though to underline his failure, he heard the figure kneeling behind Koakuma speak up, the one he had mistaken for the imp. Her voice was thick with vented emotion as she shouted the words.
"Deluge of Forty Days!"
He saw and felt the flash of light as she completed her spell, the very earth shaking as tides of Noachian proportions surged down on them. Koakuma offered him a laughing, mocking salute as both she and her mistress disappeared beneath the spraying surf. He had seconds now before he was taken. He turned to the fused-together body of the silver dragon. His fingers pulled a scale from its still body.
He got no further as his sight, his hearing, his very sense of being, all of it was drowned and carried away in the roaring flood and Patchouli's grand offensive.
For what felt like hours, he was pummelled relentlessly by the movements of the water. He was dashed and bounced off of the underwater terrain. He felt rocks cut him. Felt branches scratch at his flesh.
He was close to the tree now.
As he was carried over the sinkhole, he fought to escape the current, the water thundering down into the cavernous tunnels after him, reluctant to let him go.
"I yield!" He cried out, his sudden apprehension giving weight to the lie as he frenziedly threw up a wall of earth, the sodden recesses of the tunnels crunching apart to surrender the sand and soil he demanded.
"I don't care!" He felt her words rip across his mind as a curved blade as tall as ten of him sliced down through the ceiling and slapped him into the ground. It drove him down through the earth without parting him, biting into his muscle and sinew even as it cleaved through the clay and the soil and the rock beneath him.
"Please! I acknowledge your ability!" Alhajinn shouted above the grinding din. Fire coughed and then spewed from his mouth, melting through the axe blade as it took him deeper into the earth. "Accept my surrender! I might serve you better!" He tried to maintain his composure, fire gouting from his mouth to ruin the axe as it carried out its cross section of the earth with him on its edge, his efforts leaving traces of molten metal streaming down the shorn face of the earth like jam seamed into cake.
"I don't have need for a subordinate so arrogant, so stupid, so mean as to forfeit victory for the sake of spite!" He heard her words as he melted the axe down to the haft as it carried him deeper, only then realising the crack in her voice was something less - or something more - than mortal terror of him.
"You hurt her!" The witch snarled from inside his head, the remains of the world-and-heaven splitting ax twisting, the turn in his shoulder wound excruciating, the jarring motion disorientating.
"You used me to hurt her!" Patchouli was shouting now as the mutilated ax of Pangu blasted upwards, his ragged defense finally reducing the ax to ashes.
He freed himself just in time for him to see that the fissure he had been driven into was closing, and above him, in the gap, he could see her waiting beneath the burning sun, suddenly so small, so tearful and so terrible in her wrath.
"She's my person and you hurt her!" Patchouli shouted, her voice piercing his skull, the very earth roaring as it rushed to close on him, to crush him and grind him into nothing.
He could not disperse himself; he could not risk failing to regather, or to be vulnerable against the witch. He could not fly out of here; she would catch him. He knew in the base of the ravine there was still an element he could rely on, one she would not expect him to use.
The runoff from the flood exploded upwards, rushing through the ravine as the vessel of his will to survive thrashed beneath the waters. The closing jaws of the world ground to a halt as the rising water held it open. Alhajinn enjoyed the flicker of uncertainty he saw on Patchouli's face as the wyrm slipped to the surface, its sidelong eyes focused on the witch as it closed.
She had miscalculated. She had expected him to turn to the element of wood to burrow through the earth, to nourish himself, survive, thrive. She'd prepared for that eventuality, not water. But she was still prepared. She would trust in it.
She cast the spell as behind her, behind the sun, a red giant loomed into view. Alhajinn recognised him, the sight of him stopping his heart.
The wyrm snapped off the water. The sun god cast his thunderbolt. The vessels of fire and water - one brimming with maternal rage, the other overflowing with a murderous determination - crashed together in the gap of the collapsing battlefield.
The wyrm was vaporised, its fangs, scales and fins flaking away. The muddy water burst into steam as Alhajinn was knocked flat by the heatwave. So addled by the shock her attack had dealt, he still thought he was in the fight, still thinking he could deflect, redirect, overwhelm. She was not that strong. He had beaten her offensives back before.
But those had been economical in their cost or intentioned mistakes to draw him in. With her enemy well and truly stunned, Patchouli unleashed her powers in full. As the fires of the sun god waned, she blew the ashes and the aftermath into a rockslide. Before he could fight through the crushing pain, the fresh minerals unearthed by the tumbling boulders lacerated him, beads of water already settling on the slivers of metal, sluicing together into a slicing water cannon that took off his fingers. There was no disjointed staccato in Patchouli's offensive, no wild flurries. It was a merging confluence of magic that built and grew until it had become an arcane storm of elemental fury that ripped and crushed and pummelled and burnt and drowned the object of her ire. Alhajinn could do little else but endure, unable to think of a counterattack, let alone get in front of Patchouli's assault.
"You know what I am capable of!" Alhajinn shouted through the searing storm, "You know what I am, mighty Patchouli! Think what these powers might do for you!"
It took him seconds to realise he had been left on the ground in a broken heap, the elements abating. As he struggled to his feet, he could see the witch - still shining with that inner light - staring him down, one hand at the kneeling imp's shoulder. It was clear to him that his proposal had stalled her anger, if briefly. He hated to feign supplication, but for his own survival, he would heave the words out as he discreetly rolled his empty hand behind his hip, the open palm now holding the silver scale he had taken. "You have shown your ability to me, a sorceress that can best a djinn at his own game! I shiver to think what such a woman might achieve with my magic at her beck and call. Let me join you, that you might Imagine it. Dominion over gods, angels, myths and devils."
He ran a finger down the scale, honing its edge with hatred alone as she watched Patchouli's gaze turn contemplative, the faintest smile pulling at her mouth as she just imagined the outrage that would be present on one particular devil's face at such news.
"I don't think she'd like that." She admitted.
Alhajinn did not bother to ask who she referred to as he struck her mind with everything he had. He shared with her his perceptions, visages of a purple-haired girl sitting alone in a dorm room, of cold and demanding parents, of distant, sneering peers, of her as an island in a room full of people. She saw through his eyes a witch regarded by her now friends as a bore. A spoilsport.
An annoyance.
Patchouli knew what it was. It was a clumsy last-resort to shock and suppress her.
It worked, if only for a second.
She stamped the ground, her teary eyes widening as the djinn slipped through the closing fence of spiking stalagmites as grains of sand on a foul wind. He was already behind her. The spite-sharpened shard was already spinning end over end for Patchouli's back.
"Hk."
The scale punched through the blur of Koakuma's hand before it bulleted into the imp's chest. He looked on, mouth agape, hoping he saw the same pain-shock on the witch's face.
There was pain on Patchouli's face, but it was forlorn, confused regard for her imp that was rapidly replaced by a Vesuvian glower pointed at him. He saw Koakuma's knees buckle, saw that slack-jawed smile of hers on the way down.
He saw red. He screeched and howled as he rushed for the girls. He didn't register the thick, aged roots lashing over his limbs. He was pointedly trying to reach Koakuma, to scratch, gouge and bite her to death. His muscles bulged as they fought the roots, pulling his own arm out of his socket in his need to reach and ruin her, his teeth gnashing for her flesh as obscenities escaped his lips.
He stopped swearing when he saw the red giant return from behind the sun. It loomed large in its gold armour, an aloof and terrible wrath marring its divine features as it raised the coruscating bolt in its hand.
Out of sheer panic, Alhajin pulled at the roots that bound him, all of his demands for reality to warp and shift him away failing, the sky itself catching fire.
"Agni," Patchouli grated out, "Shine."
Alhajinn's last conscious thought was not of family or friends - he had none, his pursuit of power demanding such sacrifices along the way - nor did he think of Edwin Barnes, nor his gang of sycophants. He did not think of the magician who had trapped him nor the terrifying god-ghost that was about to dispense judgement down on him.
He was thinking of that accursed little devil and the serene, triumphant smile that was plastered on her unconscious face.
He went screaming into an incandescent, white-hot world, cursing the name 'Koakuma' until he - and his agonising new reality - ceased to be.
Koakuma was awoken by pain.
She felt a sharp agony bloom in her chest before her body recognised it was a false pain, the discomfort rippling out through her extremities. Her eye still believed it was swollen shut, her lips still felt cracked, and her cheek wore the warmth of hot tears.
Hair brushed against her face, a shoulder leant on her chest. For a moment, she refused to believe it.
"Miss Patchouli?" She dared to say. The magician shuddered, cradling the little devil to her.
"Y-you're to stay here. Stay, until you're recovered. Let my," Patchouli exhaled, "Let my magic do its work." She began to ease herself off of Koakuma.
"You'll be here when I wake up, right?" Koakuma asked.
Patchouli nodded without turning to her. "Mhm." She sniffled.
Koakuma shut her bleary eyes the back of her head rocked against the table's surface. She could feel the hard, cool hug of the magically imbued water blanket, the caress of sun magic above her.
"'Cuz I'm your person." She murmured to herself as she allowed herself to lose consciousness again.
Meiling checked and parried and wheeled and countered, but she couldn't be everywhere at once. She had shallow, red-hot cuts on her arms, legs, stomach, cheek. One mistake, one plunging knife strike, one thrust, that would be it.
The wolves in men's clothing closed with her, hemming her in as several broke past her towards the mansion's doors, seemingly paying no heed to the fairy gunfire. "No!" She cried, resisting the urge to bolt after them, knowing she'd expose her back.
Behind her, she heard the flutter of pages and a booming, crackling sound. Momentarily, her opponents shocked faces were lit up, unnerved by the screaming behind her. Meiling risked a turn.
She saw a pair of books spinning overhead, splaying, spraying gouts of flame and arcs of lightning across the human ranks. Some knifemen hurried on beneath the conflagration, ignoring the screams of their burning collegues and rushing towards the shadowy ruins of the Scarlet Mansion's front.
A startled shout was abruptly shut down. A rent body staggered and fell onto the moonlit paving stones as heavy, clanking footfalls echoed across the courtyard.
Fourteen empty suits of armour swayed into the moonlight, their weapons - long-reaching halberds, spears and swords of every kind - sweeping up into a languid salute.
Miss Patchouli. Meiling let a relieved sigh escape her as she turned back to her assailants.
The clanking came closer, more rapidly, the advance turning into a run, the gathering of killers looking on in stunned alarm as the charge of the Scarlet knights hit home.
In a crash of heavy metal, the collection of animated armours careened into the enforcers, the tide of murderers recoiling like a face struck with a fist. Swords and halberds swept around and reaped mighty tallies. Up above, the loaned library books disgorged catalogues of random spells, entangling men or bowling them over with cascades of water. Her flanks protected, Meiling dismantled enemy after enemy with rapid, precise blows.
It was the outlaws' turn to give ground.
Meiling could see Edwin Barnes standing back, watching the spectacle.
She worked her way through the throng towards him, leaving battered and broken bodies in her wake.
"I wish there was more play to your thread. I wish I hadn't spent my reserves fighting them. I might've been able to save you." The voice in his ear murmured.
Mister Osbourne forced a laugh, the sound a weak and flimsy thing. "Lived long enough..."
She groped for her reasoning all the same. "If I'd foreseen it, I wouldn't have had you there. I should not have let you come. I should not have- I panicked, a-and without a prophesy, fate couldn't think of another w-way out other than through you-" Remilia felt a cool, wrinkled finger press on her cold lips.
"I won't spend what's left... blaming you," He told her, his voice painfully slow, "Nor should you." He heard her sniffle, another laugh wracking his chest, "Do not start... with that."
He heard Remilia's take in breath after breath. "I was gonna knight you. Ask you to come with us." She admitted.
He smiled sadly. "I would have liked that."
"What am I gonna do without you?" She asked then.
He took a moment as he contemplated that question. "You will do as you've done before, Remilia. You will suffer hardships. You will be hurt. You will want to give up... in the face of such challenges.
And you will overcome them."
There was silence.
"Remilia?" He asked for her. She leant in, curling her arm around his neck through the bars.
"I hear footsteps," Her voice was muffled against his hair, "and growling."
His eyebrows rose a fraction. "So soon. Growling, you said?"
Remilia nodded against him. "Werewolves."
His hand went back to rest at her neck. "Do you know what you will do, Countess?" He asked.
She was quiet as she composed herself, before her emotion-tightened snarl reached his ear. "Humans have forgotten that monsters still exist. I shall endeavour to remind them."
What little light he could see was fading. "Do not turn from them all." He whispered. He felt her cold fingers grasp his hand. "Don't let... don't give up on them all."
Remilia paused, her withered heart straining as she held centuries of prejudice for humanity against the wishes of a dying old man. "Never." She promised.
"Save Olivia. Save Sakuya. Never stop." He murmured.
"I will save them. It will be done." She whispered back.
Mister Osbourne smiled, a stifled sob starting and stopping when he heard the footsteps now. God, he was scared. He didn't want things to end here. But if he clung to life, Remilia would die as well. He clenched his jaw.
"Make it quick." He said tersely.
Remilia let her hand gently cradle Mister Osbourne's chin before she exerted her strength. A short, sharp wrench.
There was a crack.
Out in the shadowy hallway, the wolves heard the sobbing. Their lips pulled back, amused at a vampire child's despairing wails as they approached the jail door. They slowed their gait when the sobbing grew sharper. Deeper. They stopped, their hackles rising when they caught the scent of spilt blood. Louder, the noise grew, heavy with grief and hate, until it was a bloodthirsty screech that reached every chamber of the estate, grazing the hearts in every beating breast.
The monstrous mercenaries and the ghastly attendants that made up the household's senior staff converged on the dungeons, determined to challenge the call.
The maskers in their darkened hall grew quiet, their hesitance cursed by the werewolf who in agitation checked her pistol.
The water spirit rushed onto her home turf and garbed herself for battle.
A nobleman's daughter stirred as hope clawed through the pain and fear.
The devil's little sister heard the howl, her jaw setting as she redoubled her efforts to break through, the barrier screaming beneath the annihilating pressure.
And in the dark heart of the estate, a nameless servant girl was reminded how close the dream was.
Back in the dungeon, the jail doors that seperated the livestock from the rest of the mansion was made of polished steel, fit to stop the most determined victims from escaping the estate, this particular gate newly decorated with a wreath of garlic and silver crosses to sap the strength of their latest occupant. The wreath was now aflame, the crosses drooling off of the door in rivulets of molten metal.
A force within struck it like a rocket, the door banging from the hinges and crashing into the opposite wall before falling to the flagstones with a final clang, allowing a light the colour of a dying star to pour into the darkened hallway. The wolves tensed as a lone figure stepped from the breach, the pulsing red light following the spear she carried.
She turned to face them, her gaze sweeping over their long faces. She bared her bloody fangs as she banished the Gungnir and plunged the corridor into darkness. The smallest of the pack caught up with the assembling pack, thoughtlessly bounding past them towards the countess. His suit's sleeves ripped to reveal hoary flesh and corded muscle, his talons reaching to perforate her pale skin.
In a heartbeat, she slipped the blow, a grimace flashing across her face as her answering fist blasted through his stomach in a shower of gore. The other members of the pack slowed as the runt haltingly registered the mortal wound. The countess took to his collapsing body, her wings unfurling as she leapt from him, into their midst.
The killing began in earnest.