Chapter 6.4

“Now, with all of you as my witnesses, I shall self-coronate.”

Fujiko and Mamoru were completely immobilized, frozen like statuettes. Only Reiko and her body, bound by invisible rope and heavy like lead, managed to strain against a body no longer listening to her.

“I can sense you moving, captain,” Lisa said. “It’s hopeless. We’ve reached the part of the Story where I’m in full control. The imaginarium descends now. The Eye of Castle Gramarye shall open again and allow me passage beyond where an Egregore has walked before.”

“Self-coronate?” Reiko asked through clenched teeth. “What is it?”

“Even I don’t know,” Lisa shrugged. “No Egregore has ever tried it before, because no Egregore has conceived of a higher tier ascension until now. I can tell you what theoretically will happen.”

Lisa watched Reiko, as if expecting her to say something, but Reiko instead used what strength remained to edge forward. She tugged her body to the edge and plummeted off the walls to the steps of the cathedral below.

Reiko heard half her bones break. Lisa looked away.

“The resulting imaginarium explosion will wash Sapporo out of The Now,” she explained. “The city will become a dead zone, like a massive poltergeist, completely disconnected from reality. Oh some people will be able to sense something, maybe, where Sapporo used to be, but the rest will hardly remember that a city stood here at all, that people lived here.”

“What will happen to the people here, you’re probably wondering?” Lisa continued. “Well, they won’t die, not in a literal sense, at least. They’ll be reduced to the elements, raw magic, scattered along the flow of imaginarium that runs across all moments in time, Then, There, Now. Quite a beautiful narrative, don’t you think, captain?”

Reiko’s joints snapped back in place. Shattered bone fragments pieced themselves together. Her jawbones clicked. Reiko could hear the keen twist of her legs as they were wrenched into a normal pose. Warm blood drew back into her chest.

Again, Reiko’s hands resisted their restraints. Her nails screeched against the marble steps. Blood painted over the sinuous veins crossing the stone. Reiko heaved and managed to drag her head over the top of the steps.

“Why are you still struggling, captain?” Lisa asked. “Why do this to yourself? What can someone moving at the pace of a snail do to me now? Oh, forget it.”

Lisa returned her attention to the imaginarium gathered above the castle. With both hands outstretched, she drew the imaginarium into a raging swirl over the Eye of Castle Gramarye. As magic entered the stone oculus, the clock tower shuddered, shaking off gunk as if awakening from a nap.

“I offer you this,” Lisa said. “A decades worth of imaginarium. Allow me the right of self-coronation, to command all imaginarium in times There, Now and Then…”

Lisa trailed off and frowned. The words didn't sound right.

“I offer you this,” she tried again. “Imaginarium. Allow me command…”

Again, a hesitancy stopped Lisa in her tracks. The stone eyelids moved. Lisa opened her mouth, but this time she didn’t even start her chant before sealing her slips. Her eyes switched back to Reiko.

“Actually, no,” she said. “I want an answer. Why? Why do this, captain? What’s deluded you? What’s the point of fighting when you can’t beat me?”

“For such an accomplished storyteller, you’ve entirely lost the plot, Miss Everest,” Reiko groaned. “If you truly were who you said you were, you’d know why I’m still doing this.”

“If I wanted,” Lisa replied, "just one drop of ink is enough to erase you forever. You’re held back by inevitability, captain, by the chains and pages of a Story of which you hold no control. None. What advantage do you have? What could you possibly still be fighting for?”

Reiko laughed.

“Admit it, Miss Everest,” she answered. “You’re powerless like the rest of us, except you’ve been indoctrinated and think of yourself as a god. You fight because you have delusions of grandeur, of power beyond your wildest dreams. I fight for the people I love. No one, certainly not an Egregore pretending to be invincible can force me otherwise.”

“You, however,” Reiko finished, “are afraid. You’re scared that you’re like me, a character in a story. You’ve forgotten that the power to resist destiny is a gift that’s granted to every living person, and you have no right to take that away from me.”

Lisa’s eyes fumed with fury.

“Futile,” she hissed. “If we’re in the same position, captain, then surely I would not be able to erase you as I will now.”

Reiko collapsed. She tumbled down the steps until her back landed on gravel. She ignored the imaginarium Lisa sent spiraling her way. Her eyes instead froze over her view of the sky.

Evening had come and gone. Reiko gazed past parting clouds and at the brilliant crescent beyond it.

“The moon is beautiful tonight, Natsuko,” she whispered.

The imaginarium that dived at Reiko carried traces of vanishing ink that Lisa had drawn from her pen. Would it simply erase her? Could her body survive?

Reiko didn’t know. Instead, she put her faith in Fujiko’s story, because Natsuko had promised that they would see each other again.

Ink splattered over the cathedral floor, but unlike before, it failed to banish either marble or flesh into oblivion.

Reiko saw a frost permeate up the marble stairs. Pale white crystals dotted her skin and froze the ink before it touched her. She felt lighter. The invisible bounds faded, and Reiko rose to her feet.

“I’ll have to learn how you did all this one day.”

Lady Baba Yaga's snarky voice announced itself atop cathedral steps.

“Impossible,” Lisa gasped.

“Unlikely? Improbable? All yes,” Baba Yaga grinned, “but impossible? No, my dear Lisa. I’m afraid you remain as infallible as I am.”

“If you’re free, then–”

“It took almost everything I had to crack that seal you made for us, and I needed extra help from that blast that ripped through the cathedral,” Baba Yaga sighed. “I’ll free my brothers and sisters later. After I deal with you.”

“Don’t get cocky,” Lisa snarled. “If I can seal you–”

“But you can’t,” Baba Yaga said. “You’ve committed the imaginarium to this ritual of yours. You don’t have enough to hold me anymore.”

“As long as it finishes, it won’t matter.”

“Is that so?” Baba Yaga eyed Reiko. “Captain Nakamura. I’ll take care of her. You handle the rest.”

Baba Yaga levitated into the air until she floated on parallel footing with her fellow Egregore. She stretched out her hand. Her blue green eyes bled a surgical focus.

“How dare you try to contain me,” she muttered. “Incantation.”

Lisa darted to her left as a mirrored cube closed its glass jaws after her. The empty cage turned towards Lisa. It split into smaller glass panels and dove to surround her.

Lisa threw her legs over her wooden staff. With a kick, it carried her into the sky. The loose mirrors dashed after her, iron chains erupting from beneath their clear surfaces to pull her into their reflections.

“Reiko!”

Fujiko blinked down from the cathedral walls. When she got close, Reiko seized her by the arms and drew Fujiko into a hug.

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“Reiko?” Fujiko asked. “What for?”

“Right,” Reiko pulled away. “While they’re distracted, we have to stop whatever this self-coronation shit is. Where’s Mamoru?”

“He’s catching up,” Fujiko looked at the clock tower with both eyes open. “There are powerful wards guarding the towers. It’s consuming the imaginarium at an alarming rate.”

“I don’t want to find out what happens when all that magic runs out,” Reiko raised her hand at the Eye. “I’m razing the tower.”

“No!” Fujiko yelled. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It didn’t work out for Miyuki. There’s got to be another way. We’re missing something.”

“Missing what?”

“It can’t be a coincidence that we’re both here,” Fujiko shook her head. “We’re meant to do something. I have to do something.”

She ran through everything Natsuko had taught her. All the lessons, all the jokes, especially the jokes. Natsuko loved jokes, loved double meanings, just like the time she hid the secret of how to use Fujiko’s magic behind a double entendre.

Wait. Fujiko’s attention darted to the top of the clock tower.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she whispered. “You have to open those eyes. Reiko, I know what to do!”

“What?”

Fujiko grabbed Reiko’s hand and squeezed it tight. She drew in a deep breath. Then, in one, unflinching voice, Fujiko demanded that the Eye of Castle Gramarye do as she commanded.

“Open.”

The flow of imaginarium into the tower stopped. The locking mechanisms clicked free, and the castle’s stone eyelids flashed open.

The Eye swallowed Reiko and Fujiko in a dazzling gleam and deafening ring.

Reiko blinked.

In the next second, she found herself standing on a viridescent field. Tall grass tickled her legs. In the distance, a forest of evergreens encircled a wide plains.

Reiko could tell the landscape was not real. The greenery overflowed with imaginarium, and yet it all felt strangely familiar.

“Where are we?” Reiko asked.

She felt Fujiko’s hands warm in hers, but instead of Fujiko’s reply, a familiar high pitched, overenthusiastic squeal answered her.

“I knew it! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! I knew Elio could be used as a recording device. I fucking knew it!”

Reiko swiveled at the sound of that voice but froze halfway.

Just to the side stood another ghost. She didn’t look like one. She wore a confident smile, lilacs in her hair, and an all-seeing gaze beneath a warm winter sun.

“What a strange twist of fate,” said Natsuko Ichinose, “I was so sure that one of you would find me first.”