The Desire to Restart

“Your pockets. What do you have with you?” Airi asked.

Marianne pulled handfuls of parchment from her pockets.

“Parchment pigeons?” Airi said. “What else?”

A half-melted sugarplum. Little Bo Peep.

The crystalwing beat its flaming wings, and a wave of heat rolled towards them. Airi grabbed Marianne, and they leaped down to another root. The walls shook, stone crumbling down. Airi shoved Marianne down, shielding their heads with her crystal arms. All this falling stone...

“Follow me.” She ran, feet slipping on the root, and the crystalwing flew after them. As its wings grazed the root, fire spread along the wood, licking hungrily at their heels. “Jump!”

Even more rubble rained down this time, as the absence of the roots loosened the soil. “Just one more!”

They landed on the next root. The monster was very close now, barely slowed by the chunks of stone from above. When that root was incinerated, too, there was a deep rumbling from above.

Airi threw her hands over her head. “Marianne! Where—”

Marianne smiled and cast Little Match Girl, creating a dome of fire around herself, silhouetting her in a dazzling halo. As the ceiling caved in, chunks of rock and falling roots glowed red-hot and melted around her. Airi grunted as the falling rock struck her, bracing her lower body for the impact.

Katabasis wasn’t so lucky. It avoided the first few boulders, but one eventually struck it and knocked it to a root below. More piled on top. As the cavern ceiling fell away, sunlight poured in, along with a rain of flower buds from the meadow above.

When the boulder rolled away to fall to the cavern ground, far below, Airi saw that the monster’s wings had vanished, extinguished by a pile of rubble.

Its front leg twitched, and it managed to roll over, though half of its legs were crushed. It hung from the root and formed another chrysalis. When the crystalwing emerged, Airi wasn’t surprised to see that, this time, its wings were made from stone. Despite that, it was still able to fly. How was that fair?

The Mother of Plenty’s cracked face, with only her lips remaining, came to mind—Airi had punched through stone before. Fist clenching, she jumped down headfirst and smashed a hole through its right wing. A cobweb of cracks appeared, and it shattered at her second punch, billowing stone dust that made her cough.

Punch. Punch. Airi tried to remember how Kazuko had done it. Left, right, left? She’d always averted her eyes. The left wing dissolved into stone dust under her fists.

“Marianne! Down here!”

“It’s going to come back,” Marianne said, landing next to Airi. “Should I—”

“Wait.”

They held their breaths as Katabasis crawled out of its chrysalis. This time, its wings gleamed crystalline blue. When it flapped its wings, it sheared off part of the cavern wall, sending them both tumbling. Airi could see the ground below now. Curiosity buds lay in thick piles.

A little curiosity never hurts, she’d written to Mildred.

“Its wings are made of lithic mana? That’s unbreakable!” Marianne said. “I don’t even think I can melt them now.”

“No,” Airi said. “But I have another idea. Can you cast Tale of Flight on the Curiosity flowers down there? And levitate them so that they cover its wings. I’ll keep it occupied.”

She dashed away from Marianne, waving. “Hey, over here!” Whether it understood or not, the crystalwing followed her, perhaps attracted by her crystal hand. Now, Marianne! she thought.

A flower bud flew past her face, then another. They plastered themselves onto the monster’s wings, blooming one by one until the blue crystal was covered by yellow flowers. Had it worked? If it was real lithic mana, Curiosity flowers wouldn’t have any effect.

But that’s not lithic mana. That’s lithic mana that used to be human flesh.

“Did it work?” Marianne asked. Her face was pale; she must be close to her limit.

“Yeah.”

Its wings now resembled a pair of human hands. Like how the flower had turned the small crystalwing in the meadow back into a caterpillar, these flowers had transformed Katabasis’s wings from crystal back into flesh.

“Almost there,” Airi urged.

Katabasis beat its wings to dislodge the Curiosity flowers, but only one or two flowers fell loose. Marianne barely blinked.

“Just a little longer!” Airi said.

The wings were changing, shrinking from a teenager’s hands to a child’s hands to an infant’s, before vanishing altogether. The crystalwing grabbed hold of a root and formed another chrysalis, while Marianne sank to her knees.

“I’m out of mana,” she said. “You’re on your own.”

Katabasis wriggled out of the chrysalis. Its wings were giant Curiosity buds, the petals furled shut. It beat its wings furiously, but in the absence of living touch, the buds remained shut, and the monster crashed to the floor below, where it flopped around desperately.

“It’s still not dead,” Marianne said.

“But it can’t come back to life. It’s reached the end.”

Airi aimed her star shard at Katabasis and hurled it as hard as she could. The crystal picked up speed like a bright blue bullet, piercing the monster with a poof of dust. A dazzling pink flash lit the cavern.