Marvalyn

"We will all die," Lalika stated, her voice now sharp and clear in the normal flow of seconds. "But if we must, it will be to trap it here with us!"

The world had become a wound. The chamber was an open crater of such impossible scale that we were but insects at the bottom of a great, porcelain bowl, waiting for the boiling water to come. Far above, through the ragged mouth of the shattered lake, I could see the familiar, bruised orange of the sky. By my estimates, it was as though the my old world’s Moon had crashed into the mirrors, releasing such an incredible explosion I could not begin to fathom.

Still, there was no sign of Yoko, nor of Ami or Remi. It was all for naught. I felt the familiar sting of tears, a phantom of my mortal life, but I would not let them fall.

A stirring from a heap of ruin behind us. Marissa reassembled herself, staggering to her feet, a dark trickle of blood at the corner of her lips. Her body trembled, her breaths shallow rents in the silence. Her cloak was an incinerated memory, leaving her in a tattered blouse and breeches. I could have sworn she wore a skirt before… but perhaps I was mistaken.

"Unscathed," she rasped, the word a marvel. "A miracle of the mundane. You are lucky to be alive. This explosion was an inevitability, but had I the time to brace—"

Her words were cut short. A gust of wind, cold and foul, swept through the crater. The mist swirled. Mirror fragments, like a shower of falling knives, cascaded to our left. We looked in union, our gaze drawn to a shadow that was not a shadow. It was a blot of mobile poison, a thing of viscous, dark purple goop that roiled like supercritical fluid, its texture a foamy, shifting geometry of flux. It began to coalesce into a vague, humanoid shape as static electricity frayed the air around it. The mirrored shards it touched did not shatter; they dissolved, adding their mass to its own.

Marissa snarled and threw a punch, but the instant her hand met the creature, it was not a burn, but an unmaking. The moisture, the flesh, all of it was stripped away in a silent, terrible instant. She pulled back with a shriek, leaving only the loosely hung bones of her hand, which she cradled to her chest, whimpering.

My pistol was in my hand. Bang. Bang. Bang. The reports echoed, and where the bullets passed through the creature's indifferent mass, blossoms of energy erupted behind it. Ruru’s arrows met the same fate.

Lalika stood glaring. "It is invulnerable to our attacks. We can only contain it… yet it grows."

As she spoke, a familiar face precipitated from the air nearby. Ami. A ghost, of course, would survive such a thing. "Strange," she whispered. "Something pulled me through the wall… put me in a trance… I felt my energy drain, and then—what is that?"

The creature, Marvalyn, fell in on itself before towering over us. A voice issued forth, not from a mouth, but from the resonant vibration of its very skin. "That apparition's essence was a delicacy," it thrummed. "A pity I could not absorb all ere my vessel reached its capacity."

I gritted my teeth. "You were the one making them disappear?"

Marvalyn paused, then twitched, looming over me, its form shifting in a hideous, globular mockery of my own. "Through the dimensions, I could not yet absorb as I can now. Now I wish to taste the apparition to my flesh. Thou, small vampire, may serve as seasoning, art thou willing."

We had to stall. A smirk I did not feel touched my lips. "I heard you were beaten quite badly by the Empress."

"Empress?" it chided, the vibration rising in pitch. "That foolish oni, Cleodiana? Empress!?" It swelled, its form spreading, devouring more of the mirrored floor. "After I absorb this realm in its totality, I shall possess power enough to crush that gilded fraud."

I folded my arms. "Surely after billions of years, the outcome would be the same."

Lalika caught on at once. "Indeed. The Empress is a being of profound and terrible power."

"No one," Xiao Ru added, her voice steady, "beats the Empress."

Marvalyn’s form flickered, a frantic, furious kaleidoscope of all our faces at once. "The lot of thee try my patience!"

It was then that Ami, an expert in strings and vibrations, noticed something. A resonant frequency in the creature's very position. She began to play her violin, a phrenetic, screaming melody that moved faster and faster, her spectral ki igniting in blue flames around her. Marvalyn was taken aback, its fluid form forced into a single, humanoid shape, its spread slowing. The music climbed, so high, so fast, that after a moment there was a boom… and then, I could hear nothing at all.

Then, a greater explosion from above. The end was near. I looked to Xiao Ru, and in her eyes, I saw a terrible and beautiful sadness that mirrored my own, and I could not help but grab her hand, grabbing its back. Lalika watched us, her expression one of deep interest.

Marissa, clutching her skeletal hand, would not give up. As Ami faded back, exhausted, Marvalyn lunged, but Marissa was there, her bony fist wreathed in dark lightning, an electromagnetic barrier that slammed the creature back. It splashed like a wave of water in the sky, and the two traded blows, patches of Marissa’s clothes dissolving. For each punch she sent, a claw or a rake of fluid was sent forth—sonic booms echoing as they tore through the sky that were hard to differentiate between the natural collapse of the mirror world.

My heart became a frenzied bird beating against the cage of my ribs as I stood trembling, for Marissa’s blow had struck Marvalyn with a force that seemed to un-write the creature’s last moment of existence, its form sputtering and recoiling backwards through its own timeline. Was this merely the nature of a thing born of pure uncertainty, a physical paradox that shuddered when struck with true conviction, or was it a speed so absolute it cast a temporal mirage? A low whisper escaped my own lips, a desperate prayer to the surrounding chaos, "If only there were a way to occupy a moment so completely…"

Xiao Ru’s voice was a soft anchor in the storm, remarking that the creature’s wavering form was like the Harlequin of Unseen Frequencies and its strange dance through the deeper currents of the world, which caused a delicate arch in Lalika’s brow. “The Digital Clown, yes,” she confirmed, her tone reminiscent of a light bulb turning on. “The thing which proves that time itself is not invincible. It operates on a principle we call resonant quantum warmth, its form only truly gaining purchase in our world when its chosen vector of motion intersects with another’s… otherwise, it is merely a potential, a warmth without a flame from another’s point of view.” My confusion must have been plain, and she continued, “Time is not a singular, relentless river. The temporal landscape possesses its own unseen tides and eddies at the tiniest of scales, and in that place, there is but one dimension of space, and three for time. There, adrift as a confused quantum object, one could finally perceive the true, unwavering shape of a thing like Marvalyn.”

I began to see the faint outlines of the idea, but the path remained shrouded. “Yes, but indeed,” Lalika affirmed, a faint, sorrowful smile touching her lips.

"There is no way for one of us to move so… fast?" I offered, the word tasting crude and simple on my tongue.

"No," she corrected gently. “Marissa is swift, but that is not her gift. She moves through a folded world, inverting the very firmament of spacetime.” My gaze fell upon my little Ru, and a terribly splendid idea began to bloom in my mind, a beautiful and invasive flower.

"Ruru," I began, my voice low, “"what if I were to take your blood… and with it, the ki you unlocked from Lady Kageyama?"

Xiao Ru’s answering smile was a sunrise, "A resplendent idea, Lingling," and with a quiet grace that made my body vibrate… some areas more than others, she lowered the collar of her kosode, her blush a silent testament to her trust as Lalika watched, a sudden, sharp intake of breath the only sign of her startled realization that her sister had… given herself to me.