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.”

“It felt so awkward,” Mamoru shivered once outside, “like they were seconds away from tearing each other apart. I can’t believe you took that Egregore’s tea, Miyuki.”

“It smelled good,” Miyuki pouted.

“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!”

“You heard her voice, didn’t you?” Fujiko said when Miyuki and Mamoru were out of sight. “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,” Reiko replied. “Head home, Kazama.”

Once Fujiko left, Reiko reentered the Red Brick Government Office. Most Egregore had returned to Castle Gramarye, but 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 leveled it at 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 glass.

Reiko noticed it was getting faster too, as if it had figured out which paths of its prison 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 into mist. The phantasm’s hands grasped the edges of its dissolving prison, and from its empty mask, it loosed a scream into The Now.

Is that Natsuko screaming, Reiko shuddered.

She couldn’t be sure.

“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 fell open, and a mahogany fountain pen embraced by two golden dragons bled into her hand.

Lisa twirled the pen and signed the open air. Fluid, poppy red ink spelled out her name the way an author pens 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 entirely 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 form. It hurled itself again at Lisa, who swerved in and out of its haphazard slashes. Between each dodge, her eyes calculated the trajectory of every blow, the added length of the phantasm’s transparent fingernails gleaming like precision knives.

A shockwave, a blurry afterimage of whirling blades, followed behind 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. “Step in–”

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 hissed. “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 ceramic fragments. With another twist, the phantasm’s arms folded like dog-eared pages until it tripped back, unbalanced 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 fountain 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 into its ear, then asked. “Who are you?”

The phantasm stopped its sickly quivering and turned its head upwards. A disembodied voice, an echoed chorus that Reiko did not recognize as Natsuko’s or anyone else’s, 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 Lady Baba Yaga.

“The answer,” it said.

The Egregore shared among themselves a communal glance.

“That was rather quick,” Gentiane muttered.

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

Baba Yaga remained silent. Unlike the other Egregore, Baba Yaga noted the phantasm’s answers with casual disinterest, almost as if she had not heard it speak.

“We’re not finished, ladies,” 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 hurled 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 torn paper flakes.

A third appendage burst 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 Reiko’s body could not incinerate.

Reiko’s eyes darted in every direction.

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

None of the Egregore moved.

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

Instead, nothing happened.

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.