Chapter 6.1

The door to Castle Gramarye’s audience chamber opened.

It was dark. The chandelier’s candles were spent. Fang Fang could hardly see the painting upon the ceiling.

“No need to pretend you aren’t there, Lisa,” she said.

Tiny candles laid in golden trays lit the center of the chamber and revealed the witch that sat there.

“Did you know, in Edo Japan,” Lisa Everest said, “they’d light a hundred candles and tell horror stories. After each story, they’d blow out one candle. The goal was to blow out ninety-nine candles. Can you imagine that, Fang Fang, telling almost one hundred haunted stories? And here I am, exhausted after telling barely one Story.”

“Where’s Gentiane?”

“A better question to ask is when,” Lisa smiled. “An author has that right, you know, to edit the Story as they see fit, to move events, change the plot, raise the stakes.”

Lisa drew her silver sword.

“That’s not possible,” she narrowed her eyes. “You have none of our Permissions.”

“You’re right,” Lisa nodded, “but I’ve been thinking all this time how to circumvent that. I mean, how could I ever hope to defeat you, the legendary Sword Saint, Fang Fang? Or the Russian prodigy, Baba Yaga, Gentiane, even Khali has more grit than she looks. But you know, I have both you and Baba Yaga to thank.”

“You do?”

“When you made your little side deal with her, to extract the phantasm out from under me,” Lisa grinned. “You used your own Permission to allow her to cheat the contract hierarchy. It allowed her to violate the Permission she granted me, because she answered to a more powerful Egregore.”

“So you cut another deal with one of us?”

“Wrong! I am nothing if not original,” Lisa chuckled. “I sought the Permission of something far more powerful.”

Lisa pointed to the roof. Waxless flames lit the ceiling. Four new silhouettes were etched on the ancient drawing. Imaginarium painted the heavenward stars below the dome, and loose, golden particles drifted and danced on Lisa’s outstretched finger.

“You’ve been granted Permission by the imaginarium,” Fang Fang frowned. “That was foolish, Lisa.”

“Foolish?”

“If you’re seeking a way out of the imaginarium’s vision of the future,” Fang Fang replied, “then making a pact with it hardly sounds like the way.”

“I think of it less like a pact and more like a bet,” Lisa shrugged. “The imaginarium believes that it knows the future. I believe that it can be changed. I entered an arrangement, a gamble in the house’s favor. Grant me the power to do anything I wish, and I will wrench the future from your hands.”

“It only agreed because it knows you’ll fail.”

“All great human enterprises have been underestimated!” Lisa argued. “Who could have thought that we could build great cities, conquer the elements, ascend as Egregore, and now, the imaginarium’s mistake will be that it underestimated me…”

Lisa fused the magic particles into her palm.

“This is my last resort, Fang Fang,” she said. “I’ve rewritten the Story for the final time. I’ve arranged for all imaginarium that has existed in the last ten years of this city to gather here, at this moment, in The Now. With it, I shall attempt self-coronation and ascend to something higher than an Egregore.”

Fang Fang laughed.

“What?” Lisa growled. “What’s so funny?”

“It’s just so amusing,” Fang Fang snorted. “You almost had me convinced that you haven’t completely lost it.”

“I’m completely of my own mind.”

“Listen to yourself. Self-coronation? As what? Queen of all imaginarium? Let’s say you succeed, Lisa, and grasp the reigns of the future as you believe you will. What will you do then? Toss that control away? Do you truly think of yourself that noble? Do you think anyone here could look at that power and look away?”

“I can do it, Fang Fang. Trust me.”

“And trust me when I say: turn back, Lisa. Please. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it one last time. Realize what this is. Lust for power, nothing more.”

Lisa’s expression darkened. One snap of her fingers, and Fang Fang’s silver sword split in two. One broken half disintegrated before it hit the floor.

“That’s a neat trick,” Fang Fang murmured.

An unseen force pulled Fang Fang off the chamber floor. She crashed into the roof, where her body superimposed on the woman reaching her hands towards the stars.

To struggle was a useless affair. The woman’s painted body emerged and intertwined Fang Fang’s hands and feet with her own. The witch’s body sank into viscous acrylics while Lisa floated below her; her face flickered in the dark.

“You should stand down, Fang Fang,” she said. “You don’t have the means to beat me anymore.”

“Unfortunately,” Fang Fang growled. “I’m bound by oath to defend this place.”

“Wrong answer.”

Fang Fang’s defiant answer earned her a deeper place in the oily quicksand above her. Black ooze poured over her ears and streaked down her cheeks.

“I could let Gentiane go,” Lisa offered. “All you’d have to do is help me.”

“Are you not aware of what the word ‘oath’ means?”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Lisa snapped. “At this point, you’re just another slave to the imaginarium. You should be on my side, Fang Fang, the right side, fighting for emancipation, freedom for yourself and your fellow sisters.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Fang Fang chuckled. “I won’t entertain a madwoman with why I took an oath to protect these grounds. Oh, I would have loved to relish when they come and defeat you, Lisa, but it seems I won’t have the luxury of watching that happen.”

Fang Fang took a deep breath, and Lisa plunged her into the painting.

Five Egregore were painted now beside the woman in black. Dahlia and her cat lounged by a bowl of milk. Khali watched the stars above through a golden telescope, while Fang Fang and Gentiane drank tea beneath pale sycamores.

Only Baba Yaga’s silhouette, surrounded by her three escorts, truly moved. Her eyes, a vessel with no trace of anger, counted the drops of oil within the painting, the perforations along the canvas, the places where cracks left by the movement of time allowed at most an iota of imaginarium to seep into the Now.

Baba Yaga tracked Lisa as she descended to the chamber floor. One by one, Lisa Everest blew out the hundred candles circling the center. This was a mistake, of course, because everyone knew that extinguishing the hundredth candle during A Gathering of 100 Ghost Tales would summon a spirit, or a demon, or an old witch.

Lisa gave her actions no further thought. She drove her worries into the shadows along with the rest of the audience chamber and walked to the exit.

“Witness this moment, my sisters. Witness this moment, when the many become One.”

And then, the door to Castle Gramarye’s audience chamber closed.