Chapter 24: The Throne of Shadows

Right now, it reflects only hell.

We crash through the final maintenance hatch, gasping for air. The wind outside was a physical battering ram, but inside, the air is dead still. It is silent. Vacuum silent.

The circular observation deck has been transformed. The geometric mirrors lining the walls and ceiling are shattered, their shards floating in mid-air, orbiting the center of the room like a jagged planetary ring. The floor is covered in glowing purple runes that pulse in time with the giant, throbbing hole in the sky directly above us.

And in the center, sitting on a throne made of solidified shadow, is Kuro.

He looks different. The sleek suit is gone, replaced by ceremonial robes that seem to be woven from the night sky itself. His long silver hair is floating around his head, defying gravity. He is holding a staff made of twisted black metal, topped with a crystal that shines with a light so dark it hurts to look at.

"You are late", Kuro says.

He does not shout. He does not turn around. He just speaks, and his voice vibrates in the fillings of my teeth.

"We ran into traffic", Muji says, stepping forward. He is battered, his tank top torn, covered in soot and scratches from the climb. But his eyes are burning orange. "And by traffic, I mean your army of possessed tourists. They were very rude".

"They served their purpose", Kuro stands up. The shadow throne evaporates into smoke. He turns to face us. His eyes are no longer human. They are vertical slits of violet fire. "They bought me time. The alignment is complete. The Eclipse is permanent".

"Nothing is permanent", Kenuji says, sliding his laptop out of his bag and setting it on a floating shard of mirror. He starts typing furiously, hacking into the spiritual frequency of the room. "Entropy dictates that all systems degrade. Especially systems built on stolen souls".

"Science", Kuro sneers. "You cats and your obsession with human logic. Look outside, Psychic. Logic has left the building".

He slams his staff on the ground.

DOOOOOM.

The tower shakes. The purple light outside intensifies, flooding the room. The floating mirror shards turn toward us, turning into thousands of reflective blades.

"Die", Kuro whispers.

The mirrors fire.

"Shields!" I scream.

I throw my hands up. "Divine Light: Prism Wall!"

A triangular barrier of golden light erupts in front of us. The mirror shards slam into it like machine gun fire. Clink-clink-clink-clink. The sound is deafening. My barrier cracks.

"It is too heavy!" I yell, feeling the impact in my bones. "He is using the tower's mass against us!"

"I got this!" Inoe shouts. She steps out from behind my shield. Her eyes are glowing so bright they look like headlights.

"Telekinesis: Rejection!"

She screams, throwing her arms wide. A wave of pink psychic force explodes outward. It catches the incoming shards and stops them dead in the air.

"Return to sender!" Inoe grunts, shoving her hands forward.

The shards fly back at Kuro.

Kuro does not flinch. He spins his staff. A vortex of shadow forms in front of him, swallowing the glass shards. They vanish into the void.

"Is that the best you can do?" Kuro laughs. "I am a god in this space!"

"He is arrogant", Muji growls. "I hate arrogant people. Cover me!"

Muji drops to all fours. He doesn't fully transform, but his body shifts. His muscles swell. His teeth lengthen. He becomes a hybrid-a human bullet with the soul of a tiger.

He launches himself.

He moves so fast he leaves a sonic boom in his wake. He closes the distance to Kuro in a blink.

"Silver Claw: Decapitation!"

Muji slashes at Kuro's neck.

Kuro catches Muji's wrist.

He catches it with one hand. He stops the momentum of a supernatural tiger spirit with a single, pale hand.

"Predictable", Kuro says.

He twists Muji's arm. Snap.

Muji howls. Kuro kicks him in the chest. Muji flies backward, crashing through a display case of historical photos.

"Muji!" I cry.

"I am okay!" Muji yells, rolling to his feet. His arm is bent at a wrong angle, but he snaps it back into place with a sickening crunch. "Regeneration is handy! But that guy hits like a truck!"

"We need to coordinate!" Kenuji yells from his computer. "I am analyzing his shield pattern! It rotates! There is a gap every 4.5 seconds! Haruka, you need to blind him! Inoe, hold his feet! Muji, strike on my mark!"

"Roger!" we shout in unison.

"Now!" Kenuji commands.

I gather every photon of light in the room. I pull the purple light of the Eclipse and purify it, turning it white.

"Sacred Art: Flashbang Nova!"

The room turns white. It is brighter than the sun. Kuro hisses, covering his eyes with his sleeve.

"Inoe!"

"Shadow Bind!" Inoe yells. She doesn't bind his body; she binds his shadow. She pins his shadow to the floor with her mind. Kuro tries to step back, but his feet are glued to the ground.

"What?" Kuro gasps.

"Muji! Go!"

Muji is already moving. He is not attacking from the front this time. He runs up the wall, using the centrifugal force to gain speed. He pushes off the ceiling. He comes down like a meteor.

"Silver Claw: Meteor Crash!"

He slams his heels into Kuro's shoulders.

CRASH.

Kuro hits the floor. The impact shatters the runes beneath him. The purple light flickers.

"We got him!" Inoe cheers.

But the smoke clears.

Kuro is on one knee. He is bleeding from his forehead. His robes are torn. But he is smiling.

"Pain", Kuro whispers, licking the blood from his lip. "I had forgotten what it felt like. It is... stimulating".

The shadows around him begin to boil. They rise up, forming shapes. Not golems. Not monsters.

They form copies of us.

A shadow-Muji. A shadow-Yoshi. A shadow-Inoe. A shadow-Kenuji. A shadow-Haruka.

"Fight yourselves", Kuro commands. "Let's see who is stronger. The original, or the perfection".

The Shadow Siblings attack.

Shadow-Muji charges real Muji. They collide in a flurry of claws and roaring.

Shadow-Inoe attacks Inoe with mental blasts. They stand ten feet apart, staring at each other, bleeding from the nose as they battle on the astral plane.

Shadow-Kenuji throws psychic knives at real Kenuji. Kenuji has to abandon his laptop and dodge, pulling out paper talismans to deflect the attacks.

And Shadow-Haruka comes for me.

She looks exactly like me, but her dress is black, and her eyes are empty voids. She holds a ball of dark light in her hand.

"You are weak", Shadow-Haruka whispers. "You are just a pet. You want to curl up and sleep".

"Shut up", I say, summoning a whip of holy light. "I am a Guardian".

I lash out. The whip cracks against her dark shield.

We are deadlocked. Every move I make, she counters. Every move Muji makes, his shadow counters.

"We cannot win this!" Kenuji yells, ducking under a spectral dagger. "They know our moves because they are us!"

"We have to switch!" I realize. "Muji! Fight Inoe's shadow! Inoe! Fight mine!"

"What?" Muji grunts, holding back his shadow's claws.

"Switch dance!" I scream. "Do the chaotic shuffle!"

We break formation.

I run toward Shadow-Muji. He expects a physical attack, but I hit him with a blast of light.

"Purify!"

The Shadow-Muji screams as the light burns his dark essence. He was built to fight physical strength, not holiness. He dissolves.

Muji tackles Shadow-Kenuji. He shreds the psychic construct before it can calculate a defense.

"Too slow, nerd!" Muji laughs.

Inoe mind-blasts Shadow-Haruka. The shadow has no mental defenses because I don't use mental attacks. She pops like a soap bubble.

Kenuji slaps a paralysis talisman on Shadow-Inoe's forehead. She freezes and fades away.

Within seconds, the shadows are gone.

Kuro stands alone again. He looks annoyed.

"Clever", he spits. "But irrelevant".

He raises his staff. The crystal at the top begins to scream.

"The Eclipse is absolute", Kuro roars. "I will bring the moon down if I have to!"

The ceiling above us begins to crack. The metal beams groan. The giant hole in the sky is descending. A massive beam of gravity presses us into the floor.

I fall to my knees. I cannot stand. The pressure is crushing.

"It is too heavy", Inoe gasps, pressed flat against the floor.

"He is using gravity magic", Kenuji wheezes. "He is crushing us with the weight of the atmosphere".

Muji tries to stand. His bones creak. "I... won't... yield..."

Kuro walks toward us. He walks easily, unaffected by the gravity. He stops in front of me.

"You are the problem, Priestess", Kuro says, aiming his staff at my head. "Your light is annoying. I will snuff you out first".

I look up at him. I can't move my arms. I can't summon my light.

"Goodbye, kitty", Kuro smiles.

CRUNCH.

A sound echoes through the room.

It is not the sound of a staff hitting a skull.

It is the sound of a cookie being bitten.

Kuro freezes. He blinks.

The sound came from Muji.

Muji is lying on the floor, pinned by gravity. But his hand is in his cargo pocket. He has pulled out the bag of 'Tower Cookies' he stole from the gift shop.

He is eating one.

Crunch, crunch, gulp.

"What..." Kuro lowers his staff slightly, confused. "What are you doing?"

Muji swallows. He looks up at Kuro.

"I needed sugar", Muji says. "Low blood sugar makes me cranky".

"You are dying", Kuro says, his voice trembling with indignation. "I am crushing you with the weight of the heavens, and you are eating a chocolate chip cookie?"

"It is double chocolate", Muji corrects him. He holds up the bag. It is crumpled. "Want one? You look stressed. You have a vein popping out right there".

Muji points a clawed finger at Kuro's forehead.

Kuro stares. The sheer audacity seems to short-circuit his brain for a second.

"You insolent pest!" Kuro screams. "I am a God!"

"You are a guy in a dress with a glow-stick", Muji says.

Muji throws the half-eaten cookie at Kuro.

It is a pathetic throw. The gravity pulls the cookie down. It hits Kuro's shoe with a tiny tap.

Kuro looks at the cookie on his shoe.

He looks at Muji.

He explodes with rage. "ENOUGH!"

He raises his staff to disintegrate Muji.

But he broke his concentration.

For one second, his focus shifted from the gravity spell to the cookie.

And one second is all we need.

"Now!" Kenuji screams.

The gravity lifts slightly. Just enough.

"Yoshi!" I scream, praying he can hear me, praying he is still alive at the bottom of the tower. "NOW!"

The floor shakes.

Far below, at the base of the tower, Yoshi slams his hands into the earth. He sends a pulse of geomantic energy up the steel spine of the tower. It travels up the metal legs, through the observation decks, straight to the top.

The floor under Kuro erupts.

A spike of steel and concrete shoots up from the ground. It catches Kuro in the chest, launching him into the air.

He drops the staff.

"Muji! The staff!" I yell.

Muji is already moving. The sugar rush kicked in. He leaps. He grabs the black staff out of the air.

"This looks expensive", Muji grins.

He snaps it over his knee.

SHATTER.

The crystal breaks. The purple light in the room dies instantly. The gravity spell vanishes. The hole in the sky freezes.

Kuro crashes into the wall. He slides down, coughing blood. He looks at his broken staff. He looks at Muji, who is dusting cookie crumbs off his chest.

"You..." Kuro wheezes. "You beat me... with a cookie?"

"It was a really good cookie", Muji shrugs.

I stand up. My light returns, brighter than ever. The oppression is gone.

"It is over, Kuro", I say, walking toward him. "The ritual is broken".

Kuro laughs. It is a wet, gurgling sound. "Broken? No. Stalled. You think this is the end? The Eclipse is not just a spell. It is a door. And I just rang the doorbell".

He reaches into his robe. He pulls out a small, black sphere.

"If I cannot rule this city", Kuro whispers, his eyes mad. "I will break it".

He crushes the sphere.

A siren begins to wail. Not a police siren. A mechanical siren from the tower itself.

"Self-destruct sequence initiated", the tower's PA system announces pleasantly. "Three minutes to structural collapse".

"He rigged the tower!" Kenuji screams, looking at his laptop. "Explosives! On every support pillar!"

Kuro falls back, laughing maniacally. "Fly, kitties! Fly or fall!"

"We have to go!" Inoe grabs Muji. "Leave him!"

"But the tower!" I yell. "If it falls, it will kill thousands!"

"We cannot stop it!" Kenuji says, grabbing my hand. "We have to get out!"

We run. We dive for the window.

Muji smashes the glass with his shoulder.

We jump.

We freefall 250 meters into the Tokyo night.

Behind us, the top of the Tokyo Tower explodes in a ball of fire.

As we fall, wind rushing past our ears, Muji reaches into his pocket.

"Hey", he yells over the wind. "I saved the cookies!"

"I hate you!" Inoe screams, but she grabs his hand.

We plummet toward the city, leaving the burning spire behind us. The battle is over, but the war for survival has just begun.

And seriously, Muji is never allowed to pick the snacks again.