Chapter 3.4

“How'd you get here?”

“How else? I followed you.”

Reiko glanced at Baba Yaga. The witch acknowledged Reiko’s unstated question and shook her head in advance.

“We came here separately,” Baba Yaga explained. “I've been granted Permission to retrieve Lisa’s killer. We tracked it here, to this so-called Glasshouse.”

“Kanna, where’s Kazuo?” Reiko asked. “Where’s the rest of my team?”

“Chief Shinomiya’s the first one we got out,” Kanna replied. “I’ve been authorized to take Section Eight protective custody, and I got a tip from someone you know. A bartender who goes by Elio.”

“He’s an old friend,” Reiko breathed a sigh of relief. “And the others?”

“Mamoru Fujimoto is inside this prefectural building. Sachiko and I were on our way, but we got separated when headquarters transformed into this Glasshouse with you inside. That’s when I was fortunate enough to run into Miss Baba Yaga here. It would have been unpleasant finding my way out alone.”

There was a joke somewhere about Kanna’s reliance on mages, but Reiko had no time for it now.

“And Miyuki Kobayashi? Fujiko Kazama?” Reiko asked with more urgency. “Do you know where they are?”

“I’m sorry, captain,” Kanna shook her head. “We tried to keep an eye on them, but they’ve vanished. Do you know what’s going on?”

She did, but Baba Yaga stood in the room with them. Reiko did not know how much she could be trusted.

“We should focus on getting out of here first,” she answered. “Then we can talk.”

“This Glasshouse will be troublesome to escape,” Baba Yaga said. “I know this design. It’s one of mine.”

“You were the one who helped the Commission build this?” Reiko asked.

“That is not what I said,” Baba Yaga snapped. “I said the design is mine.”

“No wonder Arataki was so confident then,” Reiko eyed the director frozen in the corner. “Crafting an incantation from the Egregore of Seals likely cost them a pretty penny.”

Baba Yaga groaned at the title.

“People think because Russians throw some authors in jail, then Russian Egregore must also be master of prisons,” she sighed. “Unfortunately, they are right.”

“And how do we get out?” Reiko said.

“This Glasshouse anchors itself to a host like a parasite,” Baba Yaga explained, “then replicates enclosures to pass off the illusion of an infinite maze. It’s an early prototype of mine, a failure in the name of large numbers, but it will hold lesser mages and things.”

“I think she just called you a lesser mage,” Kanna whispered.

“To her, I might as well be as powerful as you,” Reiko shrugged. “Let me guess. I’m the anchor. It would explain why I can’t seem to get anywhere in here.”

“Yes,” Baba Yaga nodded. “Normally, I would simply eliminate the host to dispel the illusion, but the mark on your back prevents me from killing you.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“Displacing you into a separate imaginarium space would move the Taboo as well, defeating the purpose of coming here.”

“And where is it?” Reiko raised an eyebrow. “Every room looks the same. Are you saying it’s one of the… thirteen trillion other rooms inside the Glasshouse?”

“Natalia?” Baba Yaga asked.

The Egregore’s secretary pushed up her glasses.

“Incantation. Search,” after a brief pause, Natalia’s brows furrowed. “It’s not here.”

“You said it was here, Natalia.”

“It was! Someone must have…”

The idle Director Arataki blinked to life again.

“Looks like the Egregore Baba Yaga is not without her oversights,” Arataki chuckled. “Now why are you here?”

“You moved it?” Baba Yaga turned around. “Where have you hidden it?”

“You didn’t answer my question, witch. Why–”

“Prityani.”

Arataki’s mouth snapped shut mid-sentence. His eyes bulged as if hot air had filled them. His hands clawed at his neck. His mouth fell agape, oozing with white foam.

“If you are going to talk, old man,” Baba Yaga said, “then please do me the courtesy of not speaking to me through a doll.”

“What just happened?” Kanna muttered.

“Looks like she’s called the real Tanaka Arataki here,” Reiko murmured, “and sealed him inside his own puppet.”

“...Gross.”

“Why,” Arataki moaned. “Why have you come? Why are you getting in our way? You shouldn’t be allowed here.”

“I’ve only done as I was asked. I was given Permission to retrieve–”

“You think I can’t sense your intent?” Arataki cackled through the pain. “Clever move, witch, trying to circumvent one Permission with another. But one wrong move, Baba Yaga, and you’ll relinquish your seat as Egregore.”

Baba Yaga jerked Arataki off the ground and brought him before her.

“All that matters is my Question, old man,” Baba Yaga said, “begone.”

The witch tapped Arataki’s forehead. The director’s eyes rolled back into his sockets. A strained gasp escaped his lips. The body crumbled to the floor and did not awake again.

“If that thing is not here, then there’s no reason to stay,” Baba Yaga nodded to her escorts. “We’re leaving.”

Lady Baba Yaga turned her expressionless eyes to Reiko.

Reiko’s body stiffened. Her arms snapped to her waist as if bound by rope. She heard a crack like breaking glass, and a fracture in spacetime emerged behind her. Reiko hovered towards an iridescent realm beyond the fracture.

Kanna threw herself between Reiko and the Egregore.

“Hey,” she said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re leaving the Glasshouse,” Baba Yaga answered. “The safest way is to remove this one from The Now.”

“What’ll happen to Reiko?”

“She can’t be killed,” Baba Yaga shrugged. “I’ll return her to reality once the Glasshouse deconstructs.”

“Do you really mean that?” Reiko glared. “Or do you mean you’ll let me go after the ascension ritual is over?”

“What?” Kanna looked back at her. “What are you talking about?”

“Kobayashi and Kazama have been taken somewhere,” Reiko replied, “Arataki plans to create Japan’s first Egregore, and given how much both of you have been looking for it, I’m certain now that the Taboo that was imprisoned here is your catalyst.”

“I’m not involved with the old man.”

“Then maybe we can help each other,” Reiko suggested. “If you need that thing to answer your Question, I’m guessing Arataki using it in a ritual isn’t exactly ideal, and I won’t allow my juniors to experience a forced ascension.”

Reiko felt the binds around her loosen. Baba Yaga was considering her proposal. The witch surveyed her escorts, Reiko, and at least, her eyes landed on Kanna.

“This woman who protects you,” Baba Yaga said. “She is a businesswoman. She has resources. She knows this city well?”

Reiko and Kanna shared a confused glance.

“Pretty well yeah,” Kanna said.

“Very well actually,” Reiko corrected.

“You will marshal this city and help me find what I’m looking for,” Baba Yaga demanded. “Maria. Natalia. Dmitry. Poydyom za mnoy.”

Reiko dropped to the floor. The binds relinquished the hold on her body, and the prismatic void behind her sealed shut.

“You were right, though not for the reason you think,” Baba Yaga admitted. “The seal on your back. The construction is more beautiful than anything I’ve made. I intended to strand you inside one of my seals for study, but there’s no time left. We will take the quickest way out of the Glasshouse. Follow closely if you don’t want to be left behind.”

“Quickest?” Kanna asked. “But I thought–”

“Incantation. Proschay.”

A quake rattled the interrogation chamber. The walls shuddered. The roof peeled apart like torn pages while the floor below disassembled into glimmering particles.

A honeyed light absorbed Baba Yaga and her three escorts and burst beyond the crumbling roof, soaring through the shattering Glasshouse like a shooting star.

“What’s going on?” Kanna yelled.

Reiko didn’t have time to explain. She scooped Kanna into her arms and lit two flames beneath her feet. She cast wards to cover her from glass and debris, then jettisoned through the roof after Baba Yaga.

Everywhere they looked, the Glasshouse groaned. Interrogation chambers collapsed on each other. Cement returned to dust. Only darkness awaited in the world outside the imaginarium, and a countless stream of mannequins, Director Tanaka Arataki and his two puppet mages, swirled into the abyssal pool that the disintegrating Glasshouse spiraled towards.

Reiko kept pace with the light hurdling towards an unknown exit. She fell behind at times, weaving through tumbling tables and slabs of concrete and broken drainage. But every time she strained to add more fuel to the fire and arced alongside Baba Yaga and her ilk, as if to say “did you think you could lose me so easily?”

Reiko’s only concern was time. Baba Yaga had mentioned this was the quickest way out, and while they traversed at breakneck speeds, the size of the Glasshouse was an unfathomable thirteen trillion layers. How many years would it take at their current pace? Hundreds? No, thousands.

But Baba Yaga had the answer.

Space twisted around the Egregore’s light stream. The contours of the Glasshouse here collapsed fastest. The height of every room thinned until it was no thinner than the space between two fingers smushed together. Reiko crossed thirteen trillion rooms in the blink of an eye.

They burst out of the Glasshouse and onto the roof of the prefectural police headquarters. Baba Yaga and her bodyguards stood waiting for them.

Kanna lay still. She had squeezed her eyes shut, wrapped her arms around Reiko’s neck, and buried her face in her chest. When the cool winter winds of Sapporo returned and the roars of those infernal rockets quieted, Kanna finally looked up and stared into Reiko’s amused eyes.

“For someone who hates magic, you sure rely on mages often, my dear princess.”