Chapter 6.2

“So uh… how are we supposed to get up there?”

Mamoru stood on the roof of commission headquarters. Storm clouds brewed over Sapporo again, only this time, the clouds twisted and plumed upwards from the shadow of Castle Gramarye like the stalk of a mushroom, rising until it umbrellaed the city beneath its cap.

“I’m not sure I quite like that look,” Mamoru muttered. “Captain?”

“It’s just clouds, Mamoru,” Reiko shrugged. “They can’t hurt you.”

“Okay, but what about inside the clouds?” Mamoru rolled his eyes. “There are six Egregore up there, no? And only three of us?”

“We’re only after one of them, and you don’t have to come along, you know.”

“I have to,” Mamoru muttered. “I have to give that witch a piece of my mind.”

“Good, then we all agree, so quit your bitching, Mamoru, and get ready.”

“Ready? Get ready for what?”

Reiko raised a finger. A flame sparked at the tip like a freshly struck lighter.

“For ten years, this body has burned without rest,” Reiko murmured. “Was it all for this moment? I don’t know. I suppose now we’ll find out how much your planning was worth, Natsuko. Incantation!”

Mamoru heard a subtle buzz, like the sizzle when raw meat hit the grill pan or when that cute maid in Akihabara brought over okonomiyaki atop a bubbling hot plate.

Next to Reiko, a separate flame curled open a slit in space. It widened, like scorched paper curling outwards in a trembling circle. Mamoru gazed into an infernal abyss, where beyond the folds of space lay wasted dry basins, rivers of plasma, molten pockets of incandescent gas.

Then another opening appeared, behind Reiko this time, close enough that its light cast her shadow aside, followed by another, and then another until the roof and sky were drowned with them. More appeared on the floors below the roof. The mirrored windows of the headquarters building glistened with scarlet.

“I’ve got no time for fancy poetry today,” Reiko snarled. “Burn this castle to the ground.”

A legion of weapons, cauterized spears and arrows, even bits of rubble dripping with molten lava, catapulted out of the gates of hell and awakened Sapporo with the spectacle of a medieval siege.

The assault burned through the stormfront. Explosions rattled the interior and colored the city skies an evening tan. The clouds, along with the imaginarium, scattered before the flames. A hail of arrows pierced the long stalk billowing towards the stratosphere. It unwound and fell away, disintegrating into muted particles.

The visage of Castle Gramarye appeared behind the retreating fog. Rubble tumbled through abandoned houses and cratered into the outer walls, igniting the luscious ivy that lived there. Wooden watchtowers and half-built ramparts crackled. Trails of smoke rose from beyond the walls, and even the Eye of Castle Gramarye suffered a scratch along its stone seal.

“Mamoru, Fujiko,” Reiko barked. “We’re going in.”

Reiko jettisoned off the roof, while weapons wreathed in flame continued to bombard the castle. Mamoru and Fujiko followed, blinking the relatively short distance to the nearest edge of the castle platform. From there, a pair of tall outcrops formed a lower path leading deeper into the grounds.

“Eyes sharp,” Reiko said. “Mamoru, get up there and get me a visual.”

“Right,” Mamoru nodded. “Incantation. Dragunov.”

Mamoru swung up on the outcrop on the left with a marksman rifle hanging over his back. At the top, he unslung the gun, pressed the stock to his shoulder, and balanced the handguard on his arm as he peered into the scope.

“Well,” Mamoru’s voice echoed down the hill. “You sure did a number on the walls, captain.”

“Any sign of Lisa Everest?”

“None, and I don’t see anyone else either,” he replied. “She’s gotta be hiding deeper in the castle. How are we going to find her?”

“We’ll flush her out,” Reiko answered.

“There’s a cathedral at the top of a hill beyond the first set of walls,” Fujiko said. “It leads deep into the castle and below the clock tower. I would start there.”

“Right, I remember it,” Reiko replied. “Let’s go.”

They entered a light jog through the narrow pass. Mamoru hopped along the jagged crags and kept his eyes scoped on the outer wall. When Reiko and Fujiko reached the end of the path, and a familiar arrangement of cobblestone steps led towards the castle, half of the first wall had been buried by an unrelenting storm of steel, fire, and stone.

Through the rubble, swords and spears smoldered beneath debris and in the ground. A continuous stream of meteorites the size of small vans hurled themselves at the next outer wall. One smashed through a lone watchtower, leveling its lower buttresses and showering the earth with splintered wood and glass.

With a swipe of her hand, Reiko commanded the next volley to concentrate on the clock tower beyond the walls. But before a battery of flaming spears could gore through its stone foundation, they glanced off a new azure boundary that wrapped itself around the tower.

Once more, metal hellspawn descended upon Castle Gramarye, only to fall and detonate in the waiting arms of fresh wards deployed across the skyline.

“I don’t remember Castle Gramarye inviting such unwarranted hostilities.”

Lisa Everest appeared over the ramparts of the furthest outer wall, her sardonic voice carried by an unnatural wind. She stamped her staff on the battlements and blinked to the next ringed fortification. With every tap, she traveled further along the walls until she stood atop the outermost wall, where several massive craters bored into the stone directly beneath her.

“Let’s dispense the pleasantries,” she said. “We all know why you’ve come.”

“Where are the other Egregore?” Reiko asked.

“Preoccupied. Indisposed. Unavailable. Not here,” Lisa grinned. “It’s just us, Reiko Nakamura, and your motley crew of talents.”

“I’ve got her in my sights,” Reiko heard Mamoru whisper over the radio.

“I wouldn’t try that, Mr. Fujimoto,” Lisa chuckled. “We wouldn’t want Miss Kobayashi to one day wake up and see you dead, do we?”

“Wake up?” Mamoru breathed.

“If there’s one thing you should have learned from all this,” Lisa said, “it’s that we Egregore are stubbornly difficult to kill, Miss Kobayashi included, of course.”

“If you tell us how to wake her,” Reiko said, “maybe we don’t have to fight.”

“Oh no, we definitely have to fight,” Lisa grinned. “There’s no avoiding it, Captain Nakamura. Action is everything in this Story. You could say it’s a requirement, even.”

“You could call off the imaginarium, tell us about Miyuki, and promise to leave the country forever,” Reiko said. “Everyone goes home and has a Merry Christmas.”

“Are you trying to negotiate with me?” Lisa laughed. “Nevermind that you have very little to bargain with, captain, but judging by the death glares of your two juniors, I would guess that neither of them agree to peaceful negotiations.”

“She’s right,” Fujiko hissed. “Let’s tear her apart, captain.”

“There’s no going back, captain,” Lisa declared. “Fang Fang was right. I crossed a line when I changed this country’s future. I caused the death of this country’s best witch hunter, who gave her life to prevent this castle’s arrival ten years ago. The consequences from that day are apparent in the fires blazing throughout the castle, your fires, captain.”

Reiko kept quiet.

“I’m surprised,” Lisa said. “By all accounts, you have the most right to despise me, captain. The death of a dearest friend and a curse that forbids you from dying. I even used that person’s visage when I committed Taboo and confronted you.”

“I don’t hate you, Miss Everest,” Reiko replied. “If anything, I pity you. I pity that you’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to resist fate is to force this city, this country to relive an all too familiar one. The hypocrisy is so astounding, I could laugh.”

“My statement was rhetorical. Let’s not pretend you have a real argument,” Lisa sighed. “The fate of all humanity outweighs the lives of any meager city. In a different life, I would have just as readily wiped Seattle and Chicago off the map for all our sakes.”

“Yeah, right.”

“This conversation is over,” Lisa finished. “Prepare yourself.”

The Egregore unsheathed her pen. With its golden nib, she carved the name Lisa Everest into The Now. The ink trailed off like blood, dripping off the battlements and onto the charred field below.

“Don’t worry,” the witch whispered. “Once you are all dead, I shall immediately complete my self-coronation and mend humanity’s destiny in your names.”

“Reiko. It’s my turn to speak.”

“Fujiko?”

When Reiko turned around, Fujiko had already opened both her eyes. As if to compete with the blood spilt over the walls of Castle Gramarye, a river of shining indigo pooled beneath Fujiko’s feet. A pair of eyes fixed on Lisa Everest.

Fujiko spoke just one word. It was said with certainty, like the pronouncement of the coroner before the sheet is drawn over the body.