The second intruder stopped suppressing her presence as she closed, seeing the matriarch's claw loom above the distracted little miss. She launched herself from a table, her leg straightening as rainbow light travelled down it.
Meiling's seven-coloured kick pounded the werewolf's maw sideways-on, the impact turning the beast's head.
"Flan, break the roof!" Meiling barked.
Flandre didn't even ask how or when Meiling had arrived. She obeyed the startling command and raised her hands, the roof exploding as her fingers closed. Smoke billowed up as slate shards and wooden splinters bounced off the walls and splashed into the ankle-high blood pool. As Flandre worked, Meiling turned into the kick, another burst of chi coiling down her leg as she prepared to spring off of the werewolf's neck.
Meiling felt a massive paw close around her calf.
In a blur, the gore-soaked werewolf swung Meiling by that leg, around and down into a shorn section of table.
The gatekeeper gasped as her back seized. Meiling's bright eyes were wet with tears, her mouth left agape as spasms raced down her spine and broke up her breathing. She felt fractures in her leg. Tissue damage in her shoulder. Nothing permanent. Nothing her youkai physiology couldn't heal.
But she couldn't heal from this right away, she was no vampire. She struggled to steady her breathing. To stand. The slightest movement threatened her with pain that would push her into unconsciousness. It would take whole minutes for her to recover.
The red wolf loomed above her, its lips curling back in a smile when she recognised who it was that she had broken. It was the gatekeeper that had thought to challenge her the other day. The one who had angered her Edwin, her Jack.
"YOU. FIRST. REMILIA. NEXT," she promised, feeling an immense pleasure at how Meiling recoiled at the words, not knowing Meiling did so in full view of Flandre's bright eyes. Meiling, the one person in this world who braved Flandre's destructive tantrums with good cheer, who not only understood, but empathised. The one person who knew what it was to be Flandre.
And Jill threatened to take that away from her.
Jill's preternatural senses warned her, a sense of dread coaxing the werewolf into abandoning the strike and turning in time to face what was going to kill her.
Morgen's feet were ripped from the carpet as her helmet's cheekguard warped beneath the monstrous impact. Remilia's right fist drove her down into the floor with enough force to bounce her head off of the carpet. The next step was to impale her with the spear and end it.
But the Gungnir remained unsummoned. Instead, Remilia straddled the shocked water spirit, baring her teeth as Morgen's cheekguard buckled beneath her fist. She worked quickly as she felt her blood-dark rage straining at its collar, hook after hook warping the metal until the helmet had been battered into crude blinders that denied Morgen sight lines to her paintings and her avenues of escape.
All Morgen could see was her.
Fiery pupils set into jet-black eyes glared back down at her, the closed fist of the undead princess a white smudge of motion, coming close, coming fast. Morgen opened her mouth to say something.
She bit her own tongue as Remilia's left snapped her face sideways, the sheer spite behind the blow scaring Morgen into action. Her silvered sword gone, her hands rushed up for Remilia's neck.
Remilia didn't even register the strangulation as her right cannoned into the side of Morgen's head. She had held back in the past plenty of times, knowing her choler could get the better of her, make her do things she wouldn't ever want to see happen.
But you chose to hurt me for hurt's own sake.
Her left came around like a comet, hard and fast, the impact eliciting a cry from the water spirit.
You used Sakuya to get to me and rubbed it in my face.
Remilia felt her hand flare with rawness as her returning right left Morgen's ears ringing.
You don't get to die easy.
Morgen squeezed hard on Remilia's throat in a knuckle-whitening grip, stunned apprehension turning to horror as Remilia roared in her face. Despite the throttling hold - or perhaps because of it - Remilia shrieked down at her. It didn't matter that Morgen should be cutting off her air, it didn't concern the vampire to defend herself. She wouldn't allow herself to be stopped.
And so the screaming didn't stop. It went on, deepening as more punches rained down. She seemed to breathe by howling, this child of snow-white skin now a raging thing of fists and fangs and inconsolable fury. The onslaught grew wilder, the back-and-forth of Remilia's fists powered by every perceived slight she had suffered over the centuries, all of it magnified by Morgen's villainy. Every blow rocked her victim's vision, the water spirit's hair matting against her skull with water, blood and sweat. A primal scream sallying out from between split lips and broken teeth, though it was lost in the hurricane that had her.
It would have been so much quicker, so much easier to summon up the Gungnir and punch through Morgen's exposed chest.
No, Remilia thought, You deserve this.
That was the very last coherent thought Remilia had before it all went red.
Jill could hear her lesser, human aspect gasping through the beast's rasping breaths as she narrowly escaped the multi-coloured firestorm.
The pace her opponent set was as invigorating as it was terrifying. Jill returned to her full height, turning in time to dodge the flame-wreathed claws. Out of instinct, Jill ducked as Flandre closed her claws, the flesh behind Jill's ear disappearing in a puff of bloody fur. She had to get closer.
Jill swept in, her slashing claws matching the now silent Flandre blow for blow.
The vampire was speeding up. Jill grunted as she felt the little girl's fingernails race down her skin, graze her on the next pass, felt them dig through her flesh on the swipe after that. She barely pulled away in time as Flandre grasped for her arm.
Jill stepped back, her lungs working hard, realising her mistake too late. She had retreated from Flandre, eased the pressure.
She saw Flandre's livid and befanged face disappear, her ability annihilating her own appearance. Jill's hackles rose as she watched the little girl fade away, tensing again and again as she sensed something moving across the lake of gore, here, over there, all around. She strained to listen, hearing the sound of Mary Janes touching down on the table cloth behind her. Her muscles strained in preparation for the uppercut, hearing those doll shoes skating across the pool of blood to her left. The footsteps and the wingbeats were reaching her ears faster now. Impossibly fast. She swore she heard cutlery jump to her left and a chair's strut crack under a stomping foot on her right in the same breath. Jill heard an uncontrolled human whine escape her own throat, her claws digging into her palms as she desperately tried to track her target, finding it impossible. She was fast, so much faster, so much stronger than Remilia...
How was this freak so strong?!
All of a sudden, it calmed. Just ahead, she heard the sharpness of breath. Felt fire's heat. She saw the blood kicked up in waves as the invisible force skated towards her.
Jill's pupils dilated as she dialled in on her target's attack vector. She tuned out the feeble heartbeats of Meiling and Olivia and ignored the rumble of Remilia's pulse beyond, every sense focusing on the hateful little girl who had hurt her. On she came, closing the gap blindingly fast.
The waves of blood suddenly stopped, ruby spots clearing the pool, lifting off, telegraphing her flight path. Jill was already lifting her snout, the cluster of claws sailing up to puncture, to impale-
Flandre's scream was drowned out by blood, her expression in agony as it blinked into existence. Her lower half limply swung beneath the claws that had run her through, her hands weakly going to the spear-like nails.
Jill felt her blood sing, her right paw going to join her impaling left, the claws there pushing through skin to join the other, smiling in relief as she prepared to pull the girl in two.
Then she saw the look on Flandre's face. Through the tears, through the blood foam that flecked her lips, she was smiling.
In that moment, Jill feared a hex, a point blank spell, or for Flandre's hands to seize her 'eye' and crush it in front of her.
She began to pull the girl apart, feeling fear vice her heart as the phantasm she was killing came apart in a shower of crimson light. That fear compounded when a trio of heartbeats assailed her from all sides.
There had been three heartbeats before; the sedated pulse of the noble's daughter, the erratic beat of the gatekeeper's pain-ridden state, and far beyond, she could hear Remilia's heart thundering away at full speed. There were three heartbeats surrounding now, their blood-roar almost perfectly imitating Remilia, as though they were four of a kind.
The enemy hadn't increased in speed, they'd increased in number.
She'd been careless, to tunnel vision like she had.
One clone's arms wrapped around Jill's left thigh, the hideous pressure cutting clean through. The matriarch staggered onto her remaining leg, her off-hand swipe dispatching her attacker's grinning face in another glimpse of red light. The third stomped onto - and through - Jill's remaining knee, her doll's shoe grinding into the mangled leg before Jill desperately seized her, rolled with her into the blood, drowning and rending her in the red froth until she too disappeared in a shining blaze.
She screamed out loud, the harrowing agony of her wounds overshadowing the familiar pain of her limbs regenerating. Bones reknitted and hardened. Tissue regrew and lashed her reforming musculature back together. Within seconds she would be able to move.
She heard the squelch of soaked doll's shoes step closer.
"No-one gets to hurt Meiling," The child's voice was sullen, sharp, raw.
Vainly, Jill sprang forward, a limb uppercutting upwards-
And instantly forgot what she was doing as Flandre's ability banged through her head.
Something broke.
She crashed forward into the blood. Most of her snout came away, some internal mechanism in her mind grazed by that annihilating crush. She was suddenly sober, the drunken bitterness and battle rage that had dulled her mind disappearing along with her eyes. She saw without seeing a vision of the scared once-man in her arms, both of them red with the blood of the villagers. She felt the comforting earnestness of his hands gripping her. She had said those three little words to him, feeling her heart pang at the pause before he reciprocated. She had told herself then that he had meant them, that he was merely frightened.
Her eyes regrew enough for blurring vision to return.
The quartet loomed over her in their gore-soaked dresses, their hands rising together.
'London will be harrowed by the knights of the nightless castle, and you will plead for clemency even as the angels of hell tear you asunder.'
"Jack." Jill heard herself sob.
Flandre opened fire, her battery of clones following suit.
It took five volleys to put an end to the werewolf matriarch. It managed to reform three times despite the frequency and the volume of the annihilating blasts, each time calling for her Jack before she was finally punched apart by Flandre's power. Days after the incident, Meiling would suggest it was the spirit that resigned and allowed the body to die, not the other way around.
The moment after the kill, in that banquet hall of blood and oblivion-grazed furniture, Meiling at last heaved herself to her feet, gritting her teeth as pain threatened to lock her limbs and drive her down. She ignored it, moving haltingly towards her charge.
"Little miss..."
Flandre rounded on her with furled wings, eyes bright with confused and fearful tears.
"It's okay," Meiling laughed shakily, the words filtering through Flandre's shock, "It's okay. It's okay. You were protecting me."
Rivulets blinked down Flandre's cheeks. "Meiling!" She shrieked the word as she lashed her arms around her, almost knocking the gatekeeper down into the muck.
"Yeah, it's me. I'm here. I'm here." Meiling soothed as she embraced her, her tired eyes already sweeping towards the closed double doors as her chi-reading rippled ahead-
She felt herself straighten as waves of rage buffeted her, the howling reaching her ears not long after that.
"Flan, Remilia's beyond those doors." She murmured.
"Is she in trouble?" Flandre asked, wetted eyes looking up Meiling's front. There was a pause.
"Someone certainly is." Meiling managed.
The deluge Morgen had invoked couldn't reach her. The water that had already pooled around them rippled backwards, recoiling at every earthshaking impact.
The ninth punch killed Morgen's miserable wail. By the tenth, she was no longer resisting, her fingers slipping from Remilia's neck. The eleventh punch expended what was left of the helmet's protective strength. The thirteenth produced a gurgle.
By the sixteenth impact, it was apparent that the helmet - now ruined and crushed - was the only thing holding Morgen's head together.
After the twentieth, Remilia felt a spasm of throbbing pain in her hand. It had been an inconsequential break in the skin or the bone, but it had been enough to make her stop. She stopped screaming, breath after shuddering breath billowing out of her as she looked on in shock at what she had done.
Morgen was still captivating, though by dint of sheer horror now than the beauty she had once enjoyed. Her blood-matted hair was stuck to her face, concealing the blinded, tender mass that remained beneath.
As the maimed water spirit twitched and rasped beneath her, Remilia's gaze drifted to the wavering red thread that led to the sanctum. The strand of the maid's fate. Her eyes widened at how faint it was, how thin it stretched. Was the servant girl running from this fate after all? Or was she running from her?
Her red eyes slid down to the meat-wound that was Morgen's face before going back to her bloody hands, feeling an emptiness in her core, as though she had failed some test. The pull was strong then. To ingest. To drink. To surrender.
The sound of torn wood behind her made her look back. She saw great mouthfuls of the door disappear into nothingness, ripped apart by her little sister's power. Flandre had succeeded. She would be here soon.
She would become a target.
At the countess' distraction, Morgen flailed onto her front as she turned and crawled out from under her. The blunt trauma she had suffered had changed her. She could no longer think of the point-scoring between herself and Jill, nor about her position on the wheel of fortune. The replacement of the servants, the names of all their patrons, the day-to-day running she had dreamt of seizing from the werewolf's clutches, all of it paled before the primal need to survive and to kill her enemy. She would kill Remilia for this. She could feel water beneath her fingers as they gripped the carpet, her mangled and toothless mouth managing a sucking sigh of relief; her paintings were close. Sanctuary was close. Vengeance was close. She would devastate the vampire for breaking her face, for making her feel this pain, for making her feel like prey.
She froze as she felt a burning cold grip her arms. She tried to travel through the water, gasping as the unquiet spirits grasped at her and howled down at her. She knew they were her victims, though she cared not for their names - why would she? - and would have banished them herself without issue, as she had done last time.
But she was eyeless and foundering, and her panicky breaths could have alerted the monster behind her. But she could get away. Even if the carpet drank in the moisture of the water, that would be enough. A patch of damp matting would be enough to ban the vampire from reaching her, she knew, she hoped, she prayed. She tried to crawl through the shallow pool. She tried to ignore the ghosts that dragged at her and forced her down. She tried not to let her desperate anger overwhelm her even as a wild growl burred out from her throat.
The boom of thunder behind her chilled Morgen. She told herself to crawl towards the dwindling waterfalls of her paintings, to struggle on, to live, to revive, to revenge herself.
"Gungnir." Remilia stated hollowly.
Morgen could feel the blistering intensity of Remilia's weapon radiate down on her. The dampness of the carpet was suddenly dry. Death was coming. All strategies and ambitions were replaced with buzzing static as terror forced what was left in her stomach up her throat, her thoughts numb but for one; I don't want to die. Like an animal clinging to life, she fought her way forward, stealing inches from the unquiet dead that slowed her, that thwarted her life as she had stolen theirs. I don't want to die. Her senses strained to the breaking point, imagining Remilia all about her, menacing her, savaging her.
"I don't want to die!"
She screamed those words, the sounds distorted by her destroyed face.
"I bid you adieu, miss Morgen." Remilia finished dispassionately as she cast the spear.
The weapon - now accented and overflowing with red magic - struck Morgen between her shoulders, ending her suffering and scheming in a blaze of fiery light that burnt her body away. The spectres let Morgen burn where she had fallen, turning briefly to Remilia. Failing to recognise her as anything more than the killer of their tormentor, they took flight for the doors, a hope clear on their gaunt faces as they sought out their long-awaited afterlife.
Remilia stared down at the ashes of her adversary, the unnatural scarlet fire consuming what was left.
What have I done?
Remilia shuddered, not knowing what to do. She told herself she should not chastise herself for losing her temper; she had killed her enemy. But the loss of her head had lost her the blood spent to reknit the bones in her hands, the time to move forward and reach Edwin and save Sakuya, something else, something vital.
"Remi!" Flandre cried out.
"Flan," Remilia said as she turned from her thoughts and the scarlet-fired corpse, "You're safe."
Flandre grinned. "Yeah, and so's your friend!" She rushed out, her face flushed with triumph as Meiling approached them, Olivia de Vere's unconscious form held close to her chest. Remilia realised Meiling was favouring one of her legs, her mouth opening to ask before Meiling answered her with a smiling yelp, "I-it's fine, it's fine! I've got her!"
Remilia sighed, her red eyes resting on Olivia. Her expression was serene, her exhausted slumber affording her refuge from the nightmare all about her. Remilia's gaze slid up Meiling, seeing and knowing the appraising look in her eye.
Remilia turned from her, remembering her newest servant had fought her fight in the sanctum beyond this hallway.
"Flan, those doors bar our path to Sakuya."
A second later, the doors were shredded and shoved to either side. The three girls were greeted with the grim sight of the mansion's grey-haired butler and his pet monster. Both man and beast had been pierced in a hundred places by knives stamped with the mark of the Scarlet Devil armoury, but of the servant girl that had borrowed them, there was no sign.
Just an open window at the back of the room.
"Meiling?" Remilia asked.
There was silence.
"Meiling! Tell me you sense her! That you know where either of them are!" Remilia snapped.
"I don't! I don't…" Meiling's voice softened.
Remilia bared her teeth, frustration gripping her.
"What do we do now?" Flandre asked, and it was all Remilia could do to not shout.
It would be folly to pursue Edwin. They were too few, and they were tiring. By now, Edwin could be ferrying Sakuya to the next bolthole, delaying them long enough for Ruxandra to arrive. They didn't have the strength to fight her too, not after this. Was it the responsible thing, to quit the field here and accept Sakuya as a loss? Or was it better to risk Flandre - her own sibling - for the sake of some fledgeling friendship? Did she even have the strength to finish this fight? Was there even time?
"Countess, what would you have us do?" Meiling asked gently.
Remilia calmed, knowing that Meiling knew. That she sought to remind Remilia that she was in command. It shook the uncertainty off of her. "I have work for the both of you, whilst I go after Sakuya."
Remilia turned to regard Meiling. "You will collect the body in the dungeons, the," Remilia swallowed the pain and anger at the memory of his end, "the gentleman who came to the mansion. Preserve him on the grounds, and protect Olivia with your life."
Meiling's mouth grew thin, for a second looking as though she would argue. She inclined her head. "It will be done, mistress."
"I need this mansion burnt to the ground, along with its paintings and its corrupted works," Remilia glanced around the room, "Will you do this for me, Flan?"
"Yeah, so long as..." Flandre padded forward, her arms lifting, "So long as you don't go alone after her."
Remilia saw what was offered and smiled wearily. "Meiling. Tell me of the foe I move to vanquish."
Inside the Great Library, Koakuma awoke to the sound of shouting, her eyes fluttering shut when the light hit them.
"Every screed of wild magick, I beseech and bring thee!" Patchouli roared.
Koakuma forced her eyes to open as she hoisted herself up to a sitting position, raising a hand to shade her eyes. It had been a pointless gesture - the light was everywhere. The drawn, djinn-scorched magic circles had been renewed in some places with fresh chalk and erased and redrawn to interlink with each other, creating a fresh array out of the old, one that glowed with a light that hurt the eye. The script surrounding was no longer one of protection but an inscription of peals, squalls, high winds and weather magic. Above and all about her, clouds of arcane energy - tinged in every colour and brilliantly bright - drifted towards the centre of the library, where the philosopher's stone stood resolute against the coalescing sea of magic. Looming above it all, Patchouli's hands and lips moved, coaxing, commanding, shaping the gathering forces, relying on the stone to bear and contain the air that heaved with this power.
"Is this wise, miss Patchouli?! What of our escape?!" Koakuma shouted out.
Hours from now, Patchouli would go to the pain of explaining how the djinn's death and the events at the chateau had let all of the wild magic out, like fish escaping a holed net. She would explain to Koakuma that their preparations were complete, that there was enough magic to fuel their getaway and a surplus she could spend now to let Remilia know they were okay, to help her one last time. In that moment, Koakuma would only receive the why.
"Remi means to save the maid, and I will further that ambition!" Patchouli turned on Koakuma, smiling fiercely as the air around her hands crackled with the stuff of magic, "Now bring me alder, saffron, all that we have!"
As the dawn broke that morning, the wheels of a stage coach rattled and bounced across the cobbles, a heartfelt sigh escaping the once-man within.
"Never thought I'd be so glad to see the sun." Edwin Barnes whispered half to himself. The servant girl who he shared the coach with seemed to numbly watch the buildings fly by as they were carried further into the city.
Only when he checked his watch did her eyes recover their hardness.
On the other side of the channel, a team of horses stamped and nickered impatiently as their masters stood upon the river bank. The men and women were armoured, their black plate seeming to drink in rather than reflect the rays of the waking sun. The more junior among their number were at work, their hands reaching out to the water, imploring the Channel itself to yield to them its bounty. The older members of the court stayed back, standing as still as statues, the tension amongst their number palpable. All of them feared the sun, but they feared her more, more than enough to risk this passage over the water...
She seemed to read their thoughts. Her helmet lifted, its visor stylised into that of a grinning dragon. "It is just a sliver of water. Have no fear. It cannot cut you, it cannot reach you," Ruxandra soothed, "It cannot follow you home to Wallachia and stick you and your kin on its new fence as a reminder to other oathbreakers."
She could sense how the words rankled with them. She didn't care. Her quarry could be seized today, and if she failed because one of her knights renounced their oaths...
No, she could not fail now. She would not fail.
A cry from one of the younger knights went up, turning her dragon helm. Her smile flashed behind the iron teeth as she saw the cogs break the water, their black timber mottled with barnacles and dressed with seaweed. We could have Remilia today. The thought of the girl's throat collapsing between her jaws put a shiver down her spine. Her hand touched the sheath of Bloodthirster, the heirloom weapon at her waist that had served Mihnea before her, and the Impaler before him.
"Bring the horses!" She snarled.
Around the glowing koi pond in the land of fantasy, the girl that moved within the gaps sat with her guests as they regained a shuddering, stuttering picture - their window into events - of the countess flying across the city and towards the rising sun.
Remilia felt the white heat of daylight flash across her face, biting her lip as she flew on, ducking and weaving between the chimneys for shelter. The sun continued to rise over the course of the chase, forcing her to fly lower, fly faster, diving between the rooftops.
She bellowed a curse as she was forced to go to ground on wings of fire. She hurried down the street she had landed in front of, shattering the front of a coffee shop and stealing inside. Her mind whirred as she rallied, seeing shelves of glass-bottled coffee beans and empty tables and chairs, a counter, small baskets where confectionery was displayed.
Nothing she could use. She had to do something.
She could withstand the stench of the sewers, but the thread wore thin, and she didn't know the way through the labyrinthine network or its access points. She could run if she could find some kind of cover, but Barnes and the servant girl were moving fast away from her, untrammelled by a vampire's weakness. She could use her magic to give orders to Patchouli and the others, but she was tired, so were they, she couldn't justify risking them for...
Her bottom lip trembled, realising she might not be able to keep her promise after all. She was going to fail.
She was going to fail them all.
She let loose a short, sharp roar as she turned and delivered an uppercut to the counter, the wood shattering upwards. She shuddered as she forced herself to calm, her splinter-marked fingers going to her hair. She heard wagons trundling to a halt down the road. Men dismounting. The click of machine weaponry being readied. Barnes' human helpers would be on her soon.
And that is how the story would end. She would fight her way clear, return to the mansion with difficulty, and leave. That would be that. Edwin Barnes would get away with this, and Sakuya...
Remilia's knees touched down on the floorboards of the coffee shop as a sigh rolled out of her, her mind grasping for some solution, any aid she could rely on.
She barked out a laugh at a truly desperate thought, her smile slowly slipping as she tried and failed to find anything else.
Her hands shook before her fingers clasped together in front of her. Her jaw clenched as she wrestled with pride, hypocrisy, heartache, fatigue and fear before she forced herself to speak.
"It's been a long time."
She shook her head once, twice, knowing it was unlikely. It was impossible. No-one would be listening. Not to her, not to what she was.
"I-I can't imagine I've made the best impression with you. I'll concede, my own perceptions of you may well be coloured by my… experiences with your alleged servants," She started off, thinking of the dogmatic crusaders with their fire and of the deranged Mihnea and his ritualised butchery.
Nothing spoke to her. She could hear the human foot soldiers moving closer as well as the heavy wing-beats of Edwin's airborne servants got closer.
"I've no designs on your worshippers. I do not covet this land, these people, their blood or their faith. I just want to… be there, for my friend. She will free herself of the man without me, but the demon…I fear it will take her," She explained, "But I would help her. Let me do so, and I will do what I can. What say you?"
Still, nothing but the closing footsteps, the cobble-breaking descent of gargoyles, the squeal of a heavy gun being swept to cover her shelter. She would have to turn and defend herself and forget this entreaty. She would have to accept that Sakuya would die, or perhaps suffer a worse fate. She bit her lip.
"Hold back the dawn for me. Just a little longer. Hold back the dawn, and let me keep my promise." She could hear them crunching over the broken glass. They were in the room with her.
"Please?" She asked, a crack running through her voice.
"It won't work." Ran Yakumo said numbly.
Besides that toneless, flavourless announcement, the Yakumo household listened in silence as the vampire's heartfelt words filtered through their restored connection. Yuyuko delicately raised one of her sleeves to her eyes. Yukari smiled wistfully, her fingers running along the ribboned hem of an opening gap.
Patchouli smiled wildly as she spoke the words, infected by a daring that could have only come from her oldest friend as the magic roared around her. The circles on the floor were alight and burning away, barely able to hold the storm. Lightning arced all about, touching off fires across the library's carpet, shelves and desks, barely held in check by Patchouli's words and wards. The pace had to be carefully measured - if she was too slow, she may be too late to help Remilia and Flandre, but if she mangled the incantation or misspoke a word of power around all this fuel, the resulting backlash could blow away half the city, and certainly take out the library.
Koakuma mutely organised the fairies and fought the fires around her, daring not to break her concentration. She didn't bother to talk Patchouli down to dispelling the storm. She knew they courted disaster, but she knew Patchy wouldn't entertain the idea of standing by and letting Remilia lose.
A shuddering gale broke over Koakuma, turning her back from the bucket chain of fairies. She saw then that the storm of energy was expanding. She could see fire and lightning licked at Patchouli's clothes.
Stop, Koakuma willed. She held in her breath as she moved closer, towards the blinding light, towards the sound of Patchy's voice as it spat and growled words so alien that scratched Koakuma's skin with static. Koakuma raised her hand-
What few windows remained in the library exploded outwards. Window frames, the casings, panels of wall, entire shelving units were sent spinning into the city along with the outpouring of wild magic. Patchouli, Koakuma and the attending fairies were scattered by the shockwave, some staggering to stay standing as others were bowled over. They didn't recover in time to see the magic in transit; the only witnesses to that would be the humans across the city that clung to curtains and lurked fearfully in the shadows of their own homes, and their accounts of what happened next - which would later become forgotten folklore - all involved the sun and the eclipse that claimed it.
The vagrants, the transient, the lost and the beaten thought that they had seen a crimson arrow sailing towards the sun, the magic missile and the red chain following it nearly lost in its brilliant light. Ministers and the god-fearing citizenry had seen five black pillars appear, casting long, oppressive shadows as they closed together around it. Lastly, the brilliant and the mad - watching from their barred windows - crowed at how they had not seen the sun disappear; rather, it had opened, vanishing behind shadowy lids, a single red eye blazing between them. It had watched the city, regarding it all with a curious hunger before it jolted at a command, twitched - and averted its gaze, closing itself away.
Whether it was the blinding tip of a scarlet spear, the intervention of a local deity or a usurping influence beyond the boundary of human comprehension, the sun was blinded. The people could no longer feel the its warm touch, nor did they feel the need to turn their sights from its glare. The sun hung there in the sky, its centre smudged grey, the same grey you might find in a blinded eye as red ribbons curled through its clouded iris.
Patchouli had intended to cast this spell for a special occasion. Some touching event for her mistress, after it had been honed and crafted for her convenience, her expression and her enjoyment. But needs had forced her hand, and the time frame prevented her from perfecting what would later become the Scarlet Mist.
The curling red ribbons emerged from the sun before they came undone, unfurling, splitting, their vibrant colour bleeding into the air, forming shapes of impenetrable cloud that began to circulate and grumble and bark.
At the first snarl of thunder, the civilian populace abandoned their work. They rushed home as the sun was locked away and their day gave way to an endless and unnatural night. Men and women held themselves and each other a little tighter and barred the doors, watching the red tempest gather above their homes and their city, wondering if their God was displeased, if some cataclysm would soon take place, if the end was near. None of the humans - other than the maid - spared a thought to Edwin Barnes or his borrowed legend.
Glass grated between the ground and her shoes as she left the coffee shop front with what was left of her would-be assassins. Edwin's men stared at her over listing gun barrels, transfixed as they confronted a vampire in her own red world. She pointed her otherworldly, ghostly expression at them and lifted what was in her hand. It was one of their own, ripped bloody and held up by her fist between his jaws.
"Do not get in my way." Remilia cautioned.
The girl's features turned feral in lightning's flash. Some enforcers ran in the face of it. One man - the Maxim gunner on the wagon - stupidly opened fire-
And almost lost his footing as the bleeding body in Remilia's hand struck the wagon's side like a rocket. She'd thrown a grown man at him, like it was nothing. His rate of fire stuttered as his sights were rocked upwards, firing still, desperate to track her even as she passed him, taking his face with her.
The gargoyles dove down as the gunfire and panicked shouts of the humans started up.
Her hands clove through rifle stocks and bone as though they were rice paper. She wove through flashing silver before breaking the offenders. All the gargoyles achieved was to force her to close her fists, their stone bodies blasting apart beneath her hammer blows. She did not even wait for the last to fall as she summoned the thread of the servant girl, her breath stilling when she failed to see it for a second.
There. It was a shade of its potency, but she could see it. It led her east.
The flagstones exploded as she took to the air, her face as thunderous as the storm around her. More gargoyles flew to meet her. They went down like ice in a hailstorm, the cobbles cracking and blowing open as Remilia cast their bodies down. The enforcers and their stone guardians tried to anticipate her passage.
Few managed to see what killed them, and those who did felt their courage fail at the crucial moment. Men were crushed into the road by the flung and inert corpses of their stone guardians. Rooftop sentries were pitched from their perches and sent screaming to the hard ground below. The Gungnir howled with its mistress as Remilia passed the frightened foe, her claws meticulously gifting them with the faintest caress that left them bleeding out on London's roads. She flew on through roadblock after roadblock, wings beating hard, closing the gap between herself and her quarry. She saw the black coach now, inert and standing outside of a cathedral. She landed nimbly before the steps, checking the coach. Neither Edwin nor Sakuya were inside - just the maid's thigh holsters. They must have entered the cathedral, gone to ground in the face of this storm.
She expelled a sigh as she approached the hallowed steps. She was almost afraid to climb them, to rely on the compassion of a God that had every reason to hate her. She was anxious for what waited at the top of them; she would be tested again, by the vicious man who had set his hounds on her friends, who had thought to sell her and her sister back to the scions of the Impaler. She had been lucky with Morgen, her failure to keep her temper costing her much. She couldn't let it slip again, not in this coming battle for Sakuya.
Sakuya. The girl who had dared to help her. The girl who had indulged her whims and kept her company. The girl who had hurt her, and cared for her, and laughed and smiled and lived with her, despite every danger, impulse and pain warding her away.
Remilia's jaw clenched as she took her first step. There was no fire, no heavenly light. No ban or heavenly sanction that froze her limbs or stung her. Her eyes lifted towards the crimson sky.
"As expected of Patchy," She said, smiling grimly. Something popped and flashed above her, a white light that glowed in that sea of scarlet.
Then she saw the white turn pink, a bright, hostile red drifting down from the maroon clouds.
Manmade light from one of the Barnes' flareguns. It was a call for reinforcements.
Her ears pricked up as a burst of feeling - of hope guttering out - touched her through the conduit between servant and master.
"You will not!" Remilia growled to herself as she she stormed the sanctuary's steps.