Chapter 1.7

“What did we used to say, Natsuko? Do you remember? Do I?”

Imaginarium fell all around her. Reiko observed the moment it grazed her hand. She noted how her fingertips grew transparent, dislodged from The Now until her heat within melted what had wormed its way inside. Her fingers became opaque once more.

“Kazama, are you there? Kazama? Forget it…”

Even without Miyuki’s voice sputtering from a second radio, Reiko had sensed Fujiko following her. Reiko had thought of several ways to reprimand or dissuade her from coming, but right now, Sapporo took priority.

“You can come out,” Reiko said. “Hiding beneath the stairs isn’t going to fool an Egregore anyway.”

“You think hiding me underground would have done any better?” Fujiko emerged from the stairwell below the bulkhead. “I won’t apologize for disobeying a stupid order.”

“And I suppose you think what you’re doing now is smart?” Reiko scowled. “What do you think you’re going to do when they show up? What do you think you’ll be able to do, with what power you have now?”

“So you do know something about me.”

“I do,” Reiko nodded. “I know you’re impulsive, more so than Fujimoto, which is why I didn’t send you with him and Kobayashi. I couldn’t risk you ditching them again like you did with the Brideskiller. I wanted you to stay back, watch what it means to work in a team, but you couldn’t manage even that. You’re a problem, Kazama, a problem that Chief Shinomiya put on my lap because if you weren’t here in Section Eight, you would be in imminent danger anywhere else. Now if you’re done, stand back. I have a city to save.”

Reiko turned away from Fujiko, who bristled at her words yet nevertheless stayed silent and withdrew. Reiko resumed her attention on the clouds spilling imaginarium over Sapporo. The windows below her flickered; swaths of glass covering headquarters dilated between The Now and an unknown oblivion.

“Incantation,” Reiko closed her eyes and began.

Reiko stopped. The full chant possessed a few remaining words, but Reiko chose to omit them. Whatever power those words would have imbued her, she would make up for it by burning just a little longer.

“I remember, Natsuko,” she whispered, “the ending words of that prayer, our prayer that changed everything.”

Reiko’s heart ignited, and she became everything and everywhere. Her body served as a crucible from which molten hot stems rose from the flower painted on her back. Each thread carved a path through the imaginarium falling around them and painted them rose pink.

As they did, the flickering transparency of peoples and things receded. The windows of the prefectural headquarters regained its glossy finish, while the wintry trees and roads below no longer glistened with the dangerous exuberance of being partially cast away from the present.

But Reiko’s hold on the imaginarium couldn’t last. As the sky drew close, her body, like a structural finial overwhelmed with too much lightning, began to release steam. The imaginarium at the edge of the city began to fray out of her control, and the Hidaka Mountains south of Sapporo blinked like digital artifacts.

“If you’re interested at all in learning how to work as a team, Kazama,” Reiko blinked back sweat falling into her eyes, “my body’s about to overheat. It doesn’t hurt it just… makes the even distribution of the imaginarium more difficult. Anything you can do to cool it would help.”

“Even if I helped, you can’t do this for long,” Fujiko replied. “Your body might survive, but at this rate, this imaginarium will consume your Existence Formula.”

“I’m not expecting to do this alone,” Reiko said. “Your team. Section Eight. Kobayashi and Fujimoto are down there. By now, Kobayashi’s likely figured out what she has to do. Even Fujimoto will find the will to help. And you. What will you do, Kazama?”

“Cold,” came Fujiko’s reply. “Freeze her.”

A glacier crept up Reiko’s body and snaked towards her chest. The sweat on her brow formed icy stalactites. The infernal engine grinding her heart for fuel began to cool.

A blur of motion raced past the two of them. Reiko managed to catch the sight of red shoes and twirling ribbons sailing through the air.

“Let me help, captain. I’m borrowing that imaginarium of yours,” she heard.

Miyuki soared through the skies above the city until she was face to face with the clouds bearing Castle Gramarye. A prismatic light exploded from her gloves and resonated with the imaginarium that Reiko had held suspended, lifting a starfield of Miyuki’s favorite pink towards her and unveiling angel wings reaching for the heavens.

As Miyuki cradled the storm with borrowed magic, pale stone broke through the face of the clouds, and a drifting, shattered bedrock, like the ejecta of a lunar crater, carried Castle Gramarye into The Now.

Luscious green ivy overran Castle Gramarye’s ramparts. Three of the tallest towers, assembled from limestone, stood behind the first of two outer walls and gazed at Sapporo through its windows and an assemblage of irregular terraces and weathered ceramic roofs.

But everything within Castle Gramarye bowed in the shadow of its central tower, which rose beyond even the wings that curved over the sky. A winding staircase twirled around its bleached, rubbled masonry. At its peak lived a sealed oculus, the Eye of Castle Gramarye, a vault of stone melded in perfect, unmoving seams.

“All shall bear witness to this moment.”

A chorus of voices rang out from the castle. The wings that shielded Sapporo shattered at its sound, and Miyuki tumbled out of the sky.

“Incantation!” bellowed a voice from far below. “Catching a catfish with a gourd!”

A bright flash lit up the Red Brick Government Office. A fresh river spilled over the dome and flew towards Miyuki, catching her in a torrent of washed black ink.

“Would you look at that?” Reiko allowed herself a sigh of relief. “Kobayashi somehow taught the kid a new trick.”

From the depths of the river surfaced a man, an old bearded man, not from this age, or perhaps any age. He was dressed in faded white and gray rags. A lone catfish swam in the water below his feet. He gazed at the fish, an orange gourd resting in his hand. He shook his head, then raised his gourd at Castle Gramarye.

As the final, violent excesses of the castle’s descent fell upon Sapporo, a powerful swirl emerged from the gourd’s opening. Loose debris, dense waves of imaginarium, capricious tempests, the gourd consumed everything within its slim frame. What few gales slipped past glanced harmlessly off of new, reinforced polycarbonate scattered over the city.

The winds and imaginarium settled over all Sapporo, and the tempest carrying Castle Gramarye dispersed, revealing a day living on the edge of dusk.

The man who once tried catching catfish with a gourd now stood with a full gourd in his hands. He sank back into the fading river, the smile of a fisherman packing a bountiful haul painted on his face.

Reiko finished channeling her incantation, and Fujiko closed her eyes as well. Reiko gazed over the roof and watched Mamoru sprinting towards Miyuki on the far side of a lawn, followed by medical staff carrying the colors of Samukawa Group.

She then took a deep breath and turned her face skyward.

“Look sharp, Kazama,” Reiko muttered.

The distance between Reiko and Castle Gramarye was approximately the height of Reiko’s apartment in Nishi-ku. A clean sprint, and Reiko could reach the castle’s doorstep.

From that distance, six witches gazed down at Reiko and Fujiko.

One by one, the members of Egregore Seven spoke. The imaginarium doused over Sapporo shined anew. The Egregore chanted, and their sultry voices were heard in the minds of everyone in the imaginarium’s reach.

“In times Then, Six became Seven,” pronounced the Egregore, Fang Fang. “One of Many. Many of One. Many Ones follow the path of Mysteries.”

“In times There, we forever swore,” pronounced the Egregore, Gentiane. “To unravel all that exists in the ages eternal.”

“In times Now, let us dispel chaos and strife,” pronounced the Egregore, Khali. “Let us vanquish confusion and ascertain truth through reason.”

“Let us cast aside the lies of time and fate,” pronounced the Egregore, Dahlia. “Let us seek to obliviate the creators of half-truths and ill-begotten destiny.”

“Therefore we ask you,” pronounced the Egregore, Lisa Everest, “you, who wears the title of Egregore, grant us a Question that honors our promise to humanity and weave us a bountiful tale that may lure even ancient gods from their slumber.”

The final Egregore stepped forward. She raised her hand. The city’s imaginarium flew to her fingers and condensed into a single dazzling globe. The Egregore closed her palm, and the sphere dissolved into her body. She floated into the air, her hand flaunted towards the stars, her silver hair and crystal eyes overflowing with gold.

“I hereby ask the Mysteries this,” she said.

Lady Baba Yaga, the Seventh Egregore of Egregore Seven, pronounced her Question to the world.

“What is imaginarium?”

Descend, Oh Those Who Come Down From Heaven - END