Chapter 2.5

The Egregore Seven entered recess for the remainder of the day. The witches would reconvene the following night to allow Lisa time to prepare her so-called “Story.”

“That was so awkward,” Mamoru shivered once outside, “like they were seconds away from tearing each other apart. I can’t believe you took the tea, Miyuki.”

“It smelled good,” Miyuki pouted. “Anyway, I can’t believe I get to see one of Lisa Everest’s Stories up close.”

“Yeah, what’s that all about?” Mamoru asked. “What’s a Story?”

“Lisa Everest is known as the Storyteller,” Miyuki explained. “The Stories that she tells find a way to become true in The Now. They say Lisa is at the heart of every historic peace deal brokered between major powers in the last decade. They only exist because Lisa wrote them into being."

“How does that even work?”

“I’m not sure,” Miyuki shook her head. “Maybe once I see it up close, I’ll know.”

“I know it looks like we didn’t do much,” Reiko sighed. “But good job everyone for holding your nerves. Get some rest. Unless there’s an emergency, we’ll meet again tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll see everyone then,” Miyuki waved.

“I’m headed this way as well,” Mamoru said.

“Right,” Reiko smirked.

“How many times do I have to tell you it’s not what it looks like!”

Fujiko approached when Miyuki and Mamoru were out of sight.

“You heard her voice, didn’t you?” she said. “Natsuko’s voice.”

“The Egregore didn’t seem to notice,” Reiko shrugged. “It could be an illusion.”

“An illusion where we both hear her calling to you?” Fujiko asked.

“Nothing is ever as it appears. Head home, Kazama.”

Once Fujiko left, Reiko reentered the Red Brick Government Office. While the others had returned to Castle Gramarye, one Egregore had remained to study the phantasm that Baba Yaga left on display in the conference room.

“Can I convince you to reconsider?” Reiko asked. “You’re making my job tougher by putting yourself at risk.”

“To live as an Egregore is to take risks,” Lisa Everest smiled. “Let me guess. You’ve been told the American is your highest priority.”

“That easy to tell?”

“When you tell stories for a living, you develop an eye for the boring ones.”

“Boring makes my job easier, Miss Everest.”

“You sound like my ex-husband,” Lisa groaned. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, captain, but you heard it right? Its voice.”

“Nothing clearly,” Reiko lied.

“Same, but I love a good mystery!” Lisa laughed. “I’ll let you in on a secret, captain.”

Lisa turned her gaze away from the phantasm and focused on Reiko.

“A good mystery shoves its truth in your face and forces you to look away.”

The following night, the Egregore assembled in the forecourt outside the government office. Baba Yaga floated the conference table into the middle of an empty brick-edged flowerbed.

The Egregore’s mirrored cage showed wear and tear. While the prismatic structure kept the phantasm trapped beneath a web of shattered glass, it continued to tear new paths out of the maze.

Reiko noticed it was getting faster too, like it had figured out which paths were dead ends and what convoluted roads led to possible exits.

The Egregore aside from Lisa Everest stood in a semicircle around the flowerbed, each wearing different levels of interest. Baba Yaga positioned herself closest to the table, her hands touching the glass to stabilize the structure.

Reiko had deployed Section Eight accordingly. Mamoru was stationed on the second floor overlooking the lawn, while both Fujiko and Miyuki flanked the imprisoned phantasm from both east and west.

“Let it out,” Lisa Everest instructed. “I’m ready.”

“All eyes on the anomaly,” Reiko muttered into the radio. “Miss Everest is not to be harmed.”

Baba Yaga tapped the glass, and the prison disintegrated. The phantasm’s hands grasped the edges of its dissolving prison, and from its empty mask, it cried a painful scream.

Is that Natsuko screaming, Reiko shuddered.

“Doesn’t sound like an Egregore,” Khali murmured.

“Maybe she needs a little reminding,” Lisa grinned. “Incant. Inspiration.”

The witch’s glittered fingernails cut a wound in The Now. The world opened, and a mahogany fountain pen embraced by two golden dragons fell into her hand.

Lisa twirled the pen and signed the air. Fluid, poppy red ink spelled out her name the way an author penned their signature upon a novel.

The phantasm lunged forward, but as it fled its first cage, it found itself barreling into another. Its body flattened until Miyuki and Fujiko, who were eyeing its side profile, vanished from view. For the second time, the phantasm’s body was doubled over by an Egregore with a seemingly passing interest in origami.

“Baba Yaga was right. She is rather resilient,” Lisa observed. “You can’t completely dimensionalize her.”

The phantasm used its paper hands to pry its body back into its original shape. It threw itself at Lisa, who swerved in and out of haphazard slashes. Between every dodge, her eyes calculated the trajectory of every blow, the added length of the phantasm’s transparent fingernails gleaming like precision knives.

With their bodies locked in combat, Reiko noted how similar in size and stature Lisa and the phantasm were, which made it even more unlikely that this was Natsuko. Natsuko was taller, and unlike Lisa, Natsuko didn’t have delicate porcelain hands.

A shockwave, a blurry afterimage of whirling blades, followed each of the creature’s strikes. Lisa sidestepped them, and they marked the trees and stone buttresses beyond her with deep gashes.

“Miyuki. Fujiko,” Reiko ordered. “Prepare–”

A powerful tug froze Reiko and the others in place like marionettes snapped to a puppeteer’s paddle. Lisa had not moved, not spoken a word, not lifted a finger, but glared at them with stricken, bloodshot eyes.

“Don’t. Interrupt. Me,” she glowered. “You’re not a part of this Story yet.”

The phantasm rose above the witch with hands clasped together and brought them down to crush her skull. Lisa caught those porcelain hands with her pen, and just like china they shattered into fragments. With another twist, the phantasm’s arms folded like dog-eared pages until it tripped backwards with no upper limbs.

“She’s intelligent,” Lisa mused, “thinks to attack me when she believes I’m distracted.”

“Many phantasmagoria possess some semblance of intelligible thought,” Khali shrugged. “This proves very little.”

“Then let’s force her to talk then,” Lisa said. “Incant. Storytelling.”

Lisa Everest approached the reeling, armless phantasm. With another flick of her pen, the phantasm fell to its knees. Its hazy hood lurched from side to side and groaned as if its invisible mouth had been stuffed with wet rags.

“Dialogue,” Lisa whispered. “Who are you?”

The phantasm stopped its sickly quivering and turned its head upwards. A disembodied voice, an echoey chorus that Reiko did not recognize, grumbled from within the mask.

“Who are we?” the phantasm responded. “You and I.”

“What are you?” Lisa asked.

The witch watched, perplexed, as the phantasm’s right arm regrew at the sound of her question. The phantasm’s porcelain hand unfurled and extended an index finger at Baba Yaga.

“The Answer,” it said.

The Egregore shared a glance among themselves.

“That was rather quick,” Gentiane muttered.

“As expected of Lisa’s Stories,” Fang Fang sighed. “I wanted to stay here a little longer.”

Unlike the other Egregore, however, Baba Yaga noted the phantasm’s words with casual disinterest, almost as if she had not heard it speak at all.

“We’re not finished,” Lisa growled. “Fine. Answer me this. What is imaginarium?”

The phantasm tilted its head, puzzled by the question.

“Imaginarium? Cannot say,” it shook its head. “Something is still needed.”

“What is something?” Lisa narrowed her eyes.

The phantasm cracked its head forward. Its second arm crawled out from its shoulderblade and threw itself at the witch.

“A sacrifice!”

Lisa snapped her head to the side. Sharp fingers screamed past her and slashed open her cheek. The witch twirled her pen and the regrown limb burst into paper flakes.

A third appendage ruptured from the phantasm’s chest. It seized Lisa’s neck and lifted her off the ground. Reiko tried to bellow out an order, but her body and lips struggled against invisible strings that even her body could not incinerate.

Reiko’s eyes darted in every direction.

Fujiko, Miyuki, and even Mamoru stood frozen at their posts.

None of the Egregore moved.

Lisa Everest gripped her pen and pierced the unnatural arm with its golden nib. But unlike every other time, the arm did not turn into paper metaphors.

The witch gasped and looked behind her. To her horror, the red ink of her vintage signature that she had scrawled into The Now lay smeared around the phantasm’s shredded arm. She tried penning her name in the air again, but the phantasm’s first arm snatched her wrist and twisted it in a full circle.

Lisa shrieked louder than the monster she had unleashed.

What happened next was simple and therefore impossible to react to.

All it required was a violent motion, a motion that worked for every human being.

Even an Egregore, it seemed.

The phantasm snapped Lisa Everest’s neck, threw her limp body into the prismatic abyss from whence it came, and crashed through the nearby gate to flee into the night.