—

29: Dunston Checks In

Hindsight lent the scheme more infallibility than merited. Prior to its success, the Handmaiden had calculated a seventy-five percent chance of failure. It relied on suppositions: One, that Flossmoor would walk into the direct center of the rotunda; two, that Flossmoor possessed no magic to avoid Midlothian's lightning bolt; three, that Midlothian would perform her task as necessitated; and four, that the lightning had enough power to incapacitate Flossmoor.

Of those suppositions, the first was simultaneously most doubtful and most assured. What skilled adversary would walk so straightly into so obvious a trap? Flossmoor understood to some extent the Handmaiden's power. Lacked she any notion of guile? How had Cicero and Cook combined fail to contain her?

Perhaps it was that exact brute idiocy that undid them. They expected a rational opponent and received a hurricane. Plus, the battle preparation had been too bogged in who should fight, rather than how they should fight. In retrospect, that may have been the Incubator's aim in distracting them with Sayaka Miki. No, assuredly it was. He chafed Cicero's austerity against Cook's blitheness; the two could never truly cooperate. They came from separate schools.

Not to mention the tools for Flossmoor's ultimate defeat had not yet been assembled. Only once the Handmaiden, observing the battle from afar, recognized the downturn in the Imperial army's fortunes, did she scramble for an alternative plan. Midlothian was one of the three soldiers the Empress sent to Sidwell to assist the Handmaiden when she masqueraded as the Washington Magi. When they recalled the Handmaiden, she decided to disguise one of the three attendants in her stead, and chose Midlothian because she seemed the least useful in battle. Only later did the Handmaiden remember the specific nature of Midlothian's power and consider how it might be used in conjunction with her own to devastating effect.

Regardless—

Although Flossmoor was defeated and her Soul Gem safely under guard of Administrator Hegewisch, the Handmaiden by no means considered it a victory. Had Flossmoor only been a feint, as previously theorized, she worked far better than the Incubator could have possibly anticipated. Worse yet, Sergeant Skokie, whose tripwires would alert them to any magical presences entering the city, was one of the soldiers currently incapacitated after Flossmoor's rampage.

At least they had been wise enough to withhold Aurora's platoon, for had Aurora joined the fight she would have been trounced same as the others. She called Aurora's soldiers to the rotunda, leaving only Aurora herself in the Senate chamber to defend Joliet.

"Haste is essential," she said as they filed in. "The Incubator will take advantage of our disarray. Locate and revive the following soldiers in the following order: Sergeant Skokie, Centurion Cicero, Centurion Cook. Then, locate and revive our healers: Round Lake, Wilmette, Crestwood..."

Simple, efficient, effective. With no other figures of authority, the Handmaiden's word became absolute. While the others ran, Midlothian indicated Flossmoor's body. "Um, Lady Handmaiden? What about..."

"Ancillary priority. Reestablishment of our forces must come first."

She should have spoken over Cicero and Cook when she had the chance. Propriety and the uncertainty of her rank disbarred her. But why? Dr. Cho had designed her for logic. Although she was only a pale shadow of the Incubator, she far exceeded the more human members of the Empire. She might have prevented this calamity. Had she only given herself the space to think.

But the Empress disliked that. When she demanded a Handmaiden of Dr. Cho, she did so because she believed the imperfect golems Cho created to be more malleable, pliable, obedient—trustworthy. At some point the Empress had become paranoid of the powerful figures with which she surrounded herself, a paranoia inexplicable given the nature of her magic. Or, like a wealthy man who desires ever more millions, was her immortality exactly what made her so afraid of death? Regardless. Another of these golems had appeared.

"All soldiers, halt!" she said. They had only made it halfway to the door. "Prepare for combat. Our enemy is above."

"So you saw me," said "Sayaka Miki," blended into an alcove among a statue of an ancient dignitary. The Handmaiden, being only a few years old, had never taken a history class, so she could not identify which dignitary in particular. "Look I already told you, I'm not your enemy. You really wanna waste magic on someone who's not gonna fight you?"

"Hold fire," said the Handmaiden. She disliked this. Even if Miki did not attack, she was delaying their efforts in reviving Skokie and the Centurions. She weighed the risks of sending the soldiers away and dealing with Miki solo. Too dangerous... or was the exact sort of risk she needed to take in this situation? The kind the Incubator would not anticipate a logical being like the Handmaiden to take? He would know that, Cicero and Cook in absentia, the duties of command fell to her. He would plan accordingly. "As you were. Resume your original tasks, revive our soldiers."

"Chief Handmaiden," said Aurora's lieutenant, Elgin, "is that wise?"

"Do it."

"No, don't." Miki stepped from her shadowed nook. Her face had changed. Teeth gritted, eyes sharpened. She looked unwell. "There's no time left. I don't know how things actually got worse than before, but they did. Charlie did way more damage than she was supposed to, but—but that's fine. That's fine. You still have me. I'm on your side, I'll fight it with you."

She stepped off her perch and landed on the ground floor. Sayaka Miki was almost assuredly a creation of Dr. Cho. Why else would the Incubator have lured the doctor away from the Empire? With her help, he architected a golem and provided it the appearance of someone who betokened some significance to the Empress. Nothing could be more transparent. The Handmaiden had churned this idea in her head since Miki's first manifestation, had stared at her walls and wondered, felt the same chill she felt whenever she looked upon one of those albino fleshbags that followed the doctor like ducklings, for in some sense they were all her sisters, and beyond the mere genealogical definition of that word, they were the only ones in this world capable of sharing her experience.

Or had someone similar to Joliet altered this Miki's memories so that she did not even remember her origins? The Incubator had made similar alterations to previous golems he requested; only the Handmaiden, a golem requested by the Empress, was allowed the sanctity of her own memory. Despite everything, these were the thoughts the Handmaiden thought. She understood they made little sense. The situation was too dire to consider these vestigial matters of connection between humans.

It was the Incubator exploiting her weaknesses. She had been too liberal with him in peacetime. Bah. Regardless. If she understood the way the Incubator sought to exploit her, she could counter. Miki's demand that the soldiers stay only proved the Incubator did not want them to revive the others. Skokie had fallen only minutes ago, it would take most Magical Girls more time than that to span the five-mile distance from her tripwire to the Capitol.

"My orders stand," she said. "Ignore this woman. I will deal with her singly."

The soldiers nodded and exited the rotunda.

Miki held her forehead on her fingertips. "You're making a mistake, you've been making mistakes since the start, mistakes mistakes mistakes, please will you just listen to me for once?"

The Handmaiden changed the appearance of the air around herself to conceal the scissors she manifested in her hand. If the Incubator believed he could exploit the shred of sentimentality the Handmaiden held for her sisters, then she would simply have to quash that sentimentality with all due prejudice. Unlike before, Miki appeared to them transformed. Her Soul Gem gleamed bright and obvious on her stomach. "I am willing to hear what you would tell me about this supposed second archon," she said, before stepping forward. Her magic made it seem as though she stood in the same spot while in actuality she proceeded toward Miki. She had learned to stifle the sound of her footsteps, and Miki's obliging loquaciousness aided the task:

"At least you're freaking asking. Alright, first, I've been trying to not say this part because I know none of you would ever believe me, but—okay, lemme put it like this. This archon, let's say it can, it can take the appearance of... people. Alright? So it might show up looking like someone you know. That's uh, let's say that's a trick, or it doesn't matter, but it's something you need to know about so you don't get, let's say, distracted. Okay? By the way, you got a name other than 'Handmaiden'? If we're gonna fight together I mean, I'd like to call you something more, uh, natural?"

She stood directly in front of Miki, although Miki stared past her at the spot she appeared to inhabit. Miki's eyes were sunken, dark and round. Hair mussed, breathing heavy. Good. It concealed the Handmaiden, who had no other name, all the better. One swift strike, scissors into gem. Nothing more necessitated.

Nothing more necessitated.

Nothing. More. Necessitated.

One swift strike.

Nothing more.

One swift strike.

Kill her.

Kill her dead.

Nothing more necessitated.

He's winning. The Incubator was winning. She wanted to throw her head back and howl. He got inside her, he knew everything about her, he knew what she could and could not do, and had it been any other! Any other bitch she would have cut down and felt good about it. Any other.

Ha. No matter how much you stripped a person down, eliminated their sense of self, something would always remain. No matter how shallow a husk you created, something still existed inside. Souls only truly died with the body. They could eliminate her appearance, eliminate her name, create her for a singular purpose of serving this Empire, and still, and still something remained that could turn her from that purpose, some touch of weakness, some soft spot. Her sisters. Her "sisters." He knew. He knew how much she thought about them. He knew how sad she got whenever he told her one of them died, he had sounded her thoroughly, he—

ANY BRAIN COULD BE SHUT OFF.

She plunged the scissors. Full force in her limbs, nothing held back, any ghost in the machine could be exorcised.

Miki whirled aside. The scissors snipped a tiny sliver of cape. How? Did she hear? Did the Incubator tell her? No. Miki had turned to face the southern entrance to the rotunda. She had drawn several swords. Her movement had been entirely incidental; the Handmaiden simply hesitated too long. No matter. Miki watched only the southern entrance, unmindful to the corner her cape had lost. Upon quiet reorientation a second opportunity would arise—

As the Handmaiden moved she saw what Miki saw. What caused her to turn with such rapidity. The doors to the southern wing of the Capitol had bulged inward. From under them spread a pool of liquid blackness—ink.

"It's here," said Miki, grave as death. "Make sure—don't let the miasma touch you. That's the most important thing."

The doorknob rattled. The same black liquid ran from the spaces between the doors, from the sides of the doors, from the top of the doors: the doors became black themselves, no dimension to them save the outward bulge, a bubble ready to burst. The Handmaiden stepped back toward the illusion of herself she had left behind to deceive Miki.

The Handmaiden had never fought a wraith. She woke up one day on an operating table, made a wish based on the suggestion of the only being she knew, Dr. Cho, and after a period of training served at the side of the Empress. She had restored her soul with extra grief cubes collected by the soldiers. While she knew from the reports the soldiers filed what a miasma looked, smelled, seemed like, how the wraiths moved, in what numbers they congregated, what patterns they used to attack—never had she witnessed it firsthand. She reminded herself she might still be deceived. This bubbling door might be a trick of magic, something to confound—but the coldness that swept the rotunda betokened otherwise. She stumbled on something, it was the corpse of Flossmoor. She backed toward the north entrance, the way that led to the Senate chamber. Backup. She must request backup. Aurora's soldiers had only been gone a minute. Would the Centurions be revived by then?

The doorknob of the south entrance turned. Click. The doors opened. They did not fling open, they did not loose a deluge of black ink. They opened like ordinary doors and an ordinary figure stood behind them.

The advantage of the Handmaiden's power was that nobody could see when she wavered. She resumed a stolid stance as she reviewed this relatively benign figure, its head lowered, no attempt by it to enter the rotunda. Obviously no unknown agent ought to evade suspicion. Obviously this figure possessed some sort of non-terrestrial power. But this moment of calm allowed her to repossess her faculties and consider the matter from all logical angles. Miki said not to touch the miasma—the miasma most likely meaning the circle of black ink seeping along the floor in no great hurry. Should Miki be trusted? Regardless, the Handmaiden had no intention to touch such a dubious substance. The advice, which she would have followed regardless, might have been a ploy to win her confidence. If Miki seemed to fight side-by-side against this new foe, it by no means proved an alliance.

Should she recall the soldiers? That question she considered over and over. The longer she stalled, the stronger her side became. The dark figure's hesitation in the doorway only advantaged her. Unless the Incubator used the time to marshal his own forces? At the very least, Skokie ought to be revived by now. Of course, if his forces had already crossed her line, that little mattered. Regardless. Regardless!

"Identify yourself," she said. Any conversation, were this being capable of it—

"Don't let her talk!" Miki swayed, drew back, danced forward, clicked her swords together, flicked her cape about herself, but did not commit to a full attack. "We need to, we need to—now!"

Sayaka, what are you doing! The voice cut shrill. The Handmaiden recognized it. Miki's companion, the one with the white hair.

Nagisa, I've got to fight this thing. Otherwise, it'll—

You're gonna get yourself killed!

Then so be it! I promised Madoka I'd fix this mess.

And Madoka told me not to let you die!

The figure in the doorway began to laugh. A cold creep tickled the Handmaiden's skin, because—but it was just a laugh—but did she recognize this laugh, too? Miki said it could assume the likeness of—

Just stay out of it, Nagisa. I'm doing this!

Not if I can help it.

One of the windows high up the rotunda shattered. The Handmaiden looked toward the sound but maintained the appearance of watching the figure in the doorway. A cartoon squeezed its way through the aperture. A literal cartoon. Compared to the quite real surroundings of the rotunda, this creature could only be described as a literal cartoon, drawn with thick black lines and zany colors. A sharptoothed grin and vibrant hallucinogen eyes, attached to the end of a eely polka dot body, launched at Miki. Miki swerved to evade but the broad grin opened and the teeth seized her, carried her off the ground even as she yelped and thrashed. The eel body whipped past the Handmaiden, knocked her onto her side, and shot out another window on the opposite side of the rotunda. The glass had not landed before the last of the whipping tail squeezed through.

That glass clattered in a silent space, Miki's shouts of protest subsiding far quicker. The Handmaiden stood alone in the rotunda to face the figure in the doorway.

The figure continued to laugh. But despite its laugh the space remained silent. The Handmaiden felt the laugh rather than heard it. And it was not her imagination, or a magical trick. The ground vibrated to the mirthful shakes that rocked the figure's body.

Hhhhhhhhhand...

Maiden.

The voice was unmistakable, but the Handmaiden refused to let it shake her. An illusion, a form taken. If this were an archon, and if it had been birthed in the way it apparently had, taking that form made a modicum of sense. (If it were an archon she lacked the strength to fight it. But Cicero, Cook—) Regardless. Were it an archon then it could not read telepathy.

What is the status out there?

Apologies, Lady Handmaiden. Ladies Cook and Cicero are buried under a large amount of ice. Lieutenant Berwyn and the others are trying to dig them out. We have revived Sergeant Skokie...

The instant the Centurions are freed, send them to the rotunda.

The figure slopped forward. No motion in its legs, or what appeared its legs. It moved but it moved like liquid. It did not move fast. An ooze. Its ink spread. It reached the soulless body of Flossmoor. The Handmaiden watched for the ink to do something, dissolve the flesh, but it had no effect, it lacked even enough force to budge the slight frame. The ink passed the projected image of the Handmaiden and likewise did nothing.

The figure did not ooze toward the image of the Handmaiden, but the Handmaiden's true location.

It saw her although she were invisible.

...Maiden.

How long does it take to drill through ice?

Our apologies, Lady Handmaiden...

Very well. As she drew toward the opposite end of the rotunda, she resigned herself to combat. On one side of the rotunda appeared a toolbar. Along the rotunda's top appeared a ribbon with several menu options. She chose the Eraser tool and prepared to apply a Lens Flare filter.

"Do you have a name," she said.

The figure dripped. ...Have you forgotten me... already?

Only a small circle of the rotunda remained clear of the ink. A circle centered around the north entrance, which led to the Senate chamber. Flossmoor's body in its torn tuxedo remained the only spot of nonblack.

The northern doors opened and Administrator Hegewisch's head craned in. "Is everything alright? They sent me to—" She noticed the ink and the figure and immediately drew back her head and shut the door.

The Handmaiden activated the Lens Flare filter. A bright light stapled itself to the inkwell and blotted the figure. One sweep of the Eraser at maximum width drew a path for her through the mire. She ran diagonal, careful to avoid the ink with even the barest scrap of herself, and jumped onto the next level of the rotunda, where a bannister proved a useful foothold.

Her body already exhibited symptoms of great physical duress. Despite her commitment to clarity, she could not control fear. Fear, of course, did not stand counter to rationality, the shutdown of nonessential systems to provide more power to systems useful for either fight or flight served an obvious purpose and she could not denigrate the pound-pound-pound in her chest. Regardless. Regardless.

Regardless what?

Handmaiden... Hey. Hey, Handmaiden. Hey.

The Handmaiden failed to consider that the only thing that allowed her to perceive the pure black figure from the pure black floor was the relief against the not-yet-black walls; from an elevated vantage, the figure vanished entirely. Which rendered her movement a terrible miscalculation. Furthermore, although she balanced on a banister that thronged the upper-story balcony, she could not retreat anywhere further, for the entire upper story had somehow become submerged in the same thin layer of ink, although its source had hitherto appeared to be the figure itself. She lashed her Eraser but could do no more than beat back the ink from her immediate location. Elsewhere it built and seeped down the walls, the entire rotunda began to blacken, and if she lingered in this room much longer she would lack spaces for retreat.

She ought to have left through the north doors when her back was to them, but her thought had been to lead this malevolent entity away from the Empress. Despite its capacity for speech she could not yet attribute to it more than brute intelligence. Regardless—regardless, she needed to move.

The entire first floor no longer existed save black. However, the upper ring of windows, through which that cartoon snake had entered and exited, remained. As the ink crept up the poles of the bannister she braced her legs and leapt. Performing such acrobatic maneuvers with so little room for error was ill-advised, given her lack of experience. But she landed on the alcove of a window with no difficulty and erased the pane with one wave.

Your Munificence. I must apologize, but I have encountered a serious threat in the rotunda. You must be wary—I recommend flight until Centurions Cook and Cicero are restored.

She had avoided hailing the Empress directly all this time because she was surely occupied speaking before the Senate. However, the situation had become clear. To combat this figure by herself posed too great a risk, and once its ink consumed the entire rotunda she lost the ability to delay. A regretful failure.

She took one last look at the rotunda. The figure had vanished entirely. The ink ran from the walls—from the dome's interior apex. It ran from the portraits and frescoes, which seemed to melt into oily ribbons that then darkened as though burnt.

An idea came to her, although she felt dubious of its efficacy due to her unfamiliarity with the filter in question. She opened her menu and chose the Invert Colors filter.

The rotunda became white. The body of Flossmoor became black. Shadows, invisible before, spanned its space; regardless, she failed to perceive the figure.

It had been worth the effort. She retreated through the window onto the outside of the Capitol dome.

Upon leaving, she placed her hand on the Capitol's inverted surface and felt something cold.

Something wet.

She pulled her hand away. The cold, wet, black thing stuck to it. But how? Due to her color inversion, the normally-white dome had become black, and the ink had become white. She had placed her hand on the black surface only, she had been especially careful. How...?

Hey. Hey. Handmaiden. Hey. Hey.

The figure. It rose—

out of the black spot—

on her hand. She blinked, her thoughts became tangled, although not so much that she could not think with bitter rationality that her thoughts were tangled. It was more as though she had become removed from her own body and commented on her experiences as though she watched them in a film. The black dome—its colors weren't inverted. The Capitol dome was covered in ink. Her filter had only inverted the colors inside the dome...

Hey. Hey. The figure grew upon her hand, grew inside her mind. Hey Handmaiden. Guess what. Hey, guess what.

The shaft of sorrow struck her as real, physical as any javelin thrown. It transfixed her through the heart, straddling the divide between the internal and external dome.

Her sisters.

Her sisters, they were so... they were...

Disappointed.

"Oh," she said, "oh."

Her body shivered.

Guess what guess what guess what guess what guess what—

"Oh, no. Oh... no."

Guess what guess what guess what guess what guess what—

Regardless. Regardless. Regardless. Regardless.

Tears flowed down her face. She could not move. She could not sob, the cold water ran, her eyeballs flicked and she saw her tears were black—ink. Oil.

Liquid despair.

"I'm sorry" came out her mouth though she had no control and still watched disembodied but she said it and after she said it the words she thought them as though she had always meant to say them except she said them before she thought them "I'm sorry I know I'm not worthy I know I'm not worth anything I know I've sold my whole life away to be the lapdog of neo-Napoleon I'm sorry I'm sorry please forgive me I only lived my life the way they would let me I'm sorry I'm sorry please forgive me please forgive me please

forgive me and my sisters my sisters please forgive me I'm sorry my sisters you never even knew me but you were all I knew I loved you all even if I couldn't love even if I wasn't designed for that but I did love I did I sobbed when you died and had to hide it I cried even though my face was stoic I am so sorry I am

sorry Miss Vizcarra I'm sorry to you when you came through those doors and said you wanted me I'm sorry I couldn't live up to your expectations it thrilled me to be important to you an importance I could not comprehend but I'm sorry I failed to even be what you wanted me to be and I'm

so sorry guess what I am worthless I am guess what so sorry guess what I am regardless guess what regard me less guess what I'm regardless guess what I'm

I'm AWAKE, Handmaiden. I'm finally fucking AWAKE."

[53/57]

—

Time to skip. Clownmuffle, Clownmuffle wouldn't kill her. She could sit pretty when it was Clownmuffle. That black thing in the rotunda, though—and the Empire shot to pieces. Time to admit the whole enterprise had reached its end.

Rounding a corner of this labyrinth, swinging her attaché case as a counterweight, Hegewisch grinned. Nothing like sheer terror to spark some life in a husk otherwise grown complacent. That thing though, she didn't need to know much. One look and the instinctual knowledge of her wish informed her: Archon.

Not again. Not doing this shit again. Where the fuck were all the exits? There had to be plenty, this Capitol was huge, where? She wheeled through the halls, lurched at perpendicular angles. The doors led to offices. What about fires, if a fire started? Where did these Senators run when the alarms blared?

The alarms were blaring. Ever since Clownmuffle entered. Her head was so fucked up right now. Due to the magic of a member of Aurora's squad, they had prevented any external noise from reaching the Senate chamber—to prevent them from hearing the rage of war. They probably didn't hear the alarms either. But that same intense shriek had wound and unwound its way so deep in her mind it made her mad. She tilted hallway to hallway trying every door.

Until she stumbled round a corner and the hallway ended, cut away by broad incisions to stare into a black void. She paused, watched this abyss, a yawning starless space, and only after five seconds realized it was the same black ink she glimpsed in the rotunda creeping toward her. She whirled away, she knew somehow if even a dot touched her kkkkkccccchhhh, gone, and a kind of death miserable enough for her to prefer even this life. She snagged her foot on either a lip in the carpet or literally nothing and fell like a clichéd damsel in a horror movie, she floundered upright and skittered the other direction until that direction ended in another black abyss inching her way. Oh fuck. Fuck. Alright, she considered her options, she had several doors in the dissolving hallway left to her, a stairwell up and down. In clichéd horror movies the damsel runs upstairs, but for a Magical Girl that doesn't matter, a Magical Girl can jump out a second or third or fourth-story window no problem.

She groped the banister and dragged more with her arms than her legs. Her attaché case clanged against the railing. The base of the stairs eroded black at her heels although they moved no faster and she for all her klutziness outpaced their momentum. A laugh mingled in the alarms, a voice:

Hey. I forgot your name. But I never forget a face.

The—the fuck? That voice was, it was... She tripped on the final step, clawed away from the encroaching blackness, folded up her feet to keep it from seeping onto her shoes.

Junior... Administrator. That's right. Our little Junior Administrator, on such an important mission from Our Munificent Empress.

"I didn't have anything to do with what happened there," she said. "I didn't want to be there either." What was she doing? Reasoning with this thing? It wasn't the person it seemed to be. It couldn't be. Maybe it mimicked her voice, wraiths existed that could imitate the loved ones of those who encountered them, a trick...

The whole upper story, save a tiny strip, was black. No dimension, no up or down, only black. And a narrow walkway to a door, the door to the Senate chamber. The last place Hegewisch wanted to go, the place she knew would only end badly, but she had no choice. This thing, archon, ghost, whatever, it clearly wanted to corral her with the others, oh fuck oh fuck, oh God, oh God—

God must be laughing at her. Hegewisch scorned her, ignored her warnings, walked headfirst into this, now she wanted out, how could God not laugh?

God of course was not laughing at her. Too pure for petty spite. Where was a Satan when you needed celestial indulgence in your self-loathing?

She teetered along the walkway and pushed through the door into the Senate chamber gallery.

The room had not changed. No sign of blackness. A single seated figure in the gallery, Aurora, and a glut of dignitaries below. Engrossed as they were in the Empress's continued explanation of magic and Magical Girls, nobody looked her way despite her less-than-silent entrance. She searched for other exits, several below, several above, somehow she doubted any would open onto anything but black, yet heedless she scrambled over the seats for the next door over.

"What," said Aurora, not as though she wanted to, but from a tired obligation, "are you doing."

The Empress's voice droned. "...these 'wraith' entities have manifested in numerous forms..." How many Senators had she convinced by now? Who cared. Enough to have kept them rapt all this time. While Cook and Cicero engaged Clownmuffle, she had presented for them numerous magical displays, most using Joliet. Good for her, good for her. Hegewisch opened the other exit and sure enough only black watched back.

She had cut them off. This room alone floating in space—not she, it. It had cut them off.

Your Munificence, said a voice, the Handmaiden. I must apologize, but I have encountered a threat of great danger in the rotunda. You must be wary—I recommend flight until Centurions Cook and Cicero are restored.

The Empress paused mid-sentence and colorless Joliet became translucent. Aurora, who had tracked Hegewisch's progress to the other door and saw what waited beyond, had a better comprehension of the danger. She stood, transformed, and leapt over the railing into the pit to rush to the side of the Empress and Joliet. The Senators were not happy about this and the President pro tempore pounded the gavel and demanded Aurora's removal from the chamber. Hegewisch, meanwhile, knew there was only one place left in this tiny world with any modicum of safety, and that place was cleaved to Aurora's hip. She slammed shut her open door and bounded onto the floor of the Senate too.

"Spectators in the galleries are not allowed to disrupt the proceedings!" said the President pro tempore.

"Ah—yes, Senator Luce," said Senator Reid, "while the content of your—speech—is very engaging—we can't have this kind of—disruption—"

Black flooded from every crevice dividing the Senate chamber from the outside world. It was literal blackness, like that paint those scientists engineered that ate ninety-nine percent of light that struck it, it ran down the walls and over the seats. Both Hegewisch and Joliet clung to Aurora as her little yellow ball appeared and began to revolve. The desks nearby disappeared and Aurora probably would have made any nearby Senators disappear had they not already backed away the moment she flung herself headlong among them. None of the Senators, however, noticed the black paint. Odd, because Joliet's magic should have made them cognizant, but not odd enough for Hegewisch to truly care. The living humans were the only things in the room not doused in black, they stood within it as though they floated in nothingness.

They shut off. Each of them, the Senators and aides, officials and security, they did not fall or stagger but they stood stock still in their suits and ties, hands at their sides, straight as their scoliosis spines allowed, and each looked toward the golden circle of safety at their center.

Joliet had already transformed as part of the Empress's demonstration, Hegewisch transformed too. She had no plan. Her heart-shaped staff, no matter how hard she evoked that God, could not harm this miasma. A despair so dense it had congealed into liquid form. Maximum misery compounded into a cubic millimeter. The anguish of an entire nation sloshing within its Capitol.

A spark of magic flashed across their bodies and Hegewisch only failed to flinch because Joliet flinched first. But it wasn't an attack. It was their uniforms. Aurora, Joliet, Hegewisch—the gold flecked away, its particles spiraled beyond the boundaries of the circle into the black. The armor, the monkish robes. They stood in their original clothes.

Hegewisch suppressed a manic laugh. Joliet's costume—she was a cat. She had cat ears and a cat tail. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Purrfect. Kill her. Kill them all. But hey, at least it meant nobody would comment on her own pink Madoka-esque abomination, ha ha right? Ha ha ha ha ha.

She needed not to lose it. Aurora's ball swirled in a solid blur against the ground. The black paint could not cross, so if Aurora simply walked to the exit, or even through the damn wall, and they stuck by her, they were safe. But Hegewisch remembered the fight on the bridge, the fight in St. Louis. Denver—Denver God bless you Denver she was so sorry—had mangled Aurora somehow, the barrier could be bypassed. The paint flowed too slowly now, but Hegewisch had the distinct impression this archon was toying with them. Waiting to crush. Ha, but that gave them a chance? Like in the movies, Bond villain waiting to kill Bond, fuck the movies, fuck the movies and fuck everything, she laughed as wild as she liked at catgirl Joliet.

"Still thy wretched self, Administrator."

The Empress stood at the circle's furthest edge. Her regal costume had vanished too. But none of her regality had faded. Rather than the effete profusion of dainty fabrics, she wore a stern, simple set of plate armor. Steel instead of gold, but otherwise like the armor the soldiers had donned... more medieval. A sanded, unreflective surface of interlaced metal plates. Her hands, thick gauntlets without a scrap of skin shone, balanced atop the pommel of a bright broadsword, upon which were inscribed runic letters past comprehension, Celtic in character. Fur trim and a short cape added the only hint of civility to the otherwise iron suit.

She wore no helm. Her uncovered head was that of a fourteen-year-old. The resemblance to Joliet became even more striking, but even then Joliet was uglier.

No hint of discomposure hid on the Empress's face.

"So."

She stepped over Aurora's swirling ball. Aurora raised a hand to stop her, but she proceeded past the line into the black. The paint rippled against her clanking metal shoes.

"Thou hast destroyed my Handmaiden? Hm."

"Your Munificence," said Aurora, like Willy Wonka telling a kid not to jump into the chocolate fountain.

"Ah, we know this feeling." Her hands tightened around her hilt. The tip of her sword, which remained straight down, pressed against the black. "Despair. So much, too. We anticipated some such weapon levied by our perfectly-rational foe. He knows our death can only occur at our own hands, after all. To infect us which such emotion must, to him, appear the only path to our destruction...

"But he could never understand. That to us, after so many long years, this feeling is alike as softest love. Indeed, it's a feeling like this that spurs us onward. Hopelessness is the very thing that gives us hope. Why shouldn't it be so?

"For was it not our very God, Madoka Kaname, who in the depths of hopelessness—

"SHUT UP SKANK," said Senator John Sidney McCain III (R-AZ).

Everyone conscious looked at Senator McCain.

"I DIDN'T COME BACK FROM THE DEAD TO LISTEN TO A FRIGGING SPEECH," said Senator Alan Stuart Franken (D-MN).

"So thou possess the power of speech... a quaint trick for an abomination. Or art thou merely a Puella Magi of remarkable ability?"

"Migraines can't kill me anymore," said Senator Dianne Goldman Berman Feinstein (D-CA). "Your magical power to induce headaches is WORTHLESS, Millie Mildew."

Millie Mildew. Sure. Great insult. Sharp-as-a-tack wit you got there, chthonic entity of pure evil.

Aurora lurched. By now, it was probably not fair to call her Aurora anymore. Joliet and the Empress, for better or worse, still exemplified themselves. Aurora had become a different person, the person known as Tania Romero. She had become something bare, veiled in wispy translucent sheets of fabric, a fragile djinn, tattoos less like arabesques and more like fissures up and down her waist. Bracers on her wrists and ankles jangled thin chains that bound her together, chains from her earrings and piercings, the chains the only gold remaining. Because of them her limbs folded inward or else she assumed that posture voluntarily, for she suddenly set to shaking as she stooped and stared at the ground.

"It's her..."

Hegewisch realized the problem. The yellow circle kept spinning—for now. She grabbed Aurora's shoulders and said quickly: "It's not, no, it's a fake, deception, it's only a monster and you can't let it get in your head."

"Only a monster." Senator Orrin Grant Hatch (R-UT). "I'll cop to it. But that doesn't mean I'm not the same monster you all knew and loved."

"What did I do," said Aurora, "I know I did something but I can't remember. I've tried so hard to remember but I can't. What did I do to you, tell me, I need to know."

"It's NOT HER," said Hegewisch. "It can't be, she's dead, she's dead and gone—"

"KKKKKCCCCCHHHH." Charles Ellis Schumer (D-NY). "I thought it'd be fun to talk through all these old futzes, but if you plan to deny me..."

A mound rose in the black, despite its lack of edges or shadow they could perceive it. It rose smooth and swift, lacking great aplomb, and as it lengthened into the shape of a person the black fluid split and ran down the sides of the woman beneath, a withered unshapely thing totally nude and gray-skinned.

The spitting image.

DuPage.

"It's fake, it's fake." Hegewisch wrapped her arms around Aurora.

"What did I do, what did I do to you..." She knocked Hegewisch off, wheeled on Joliet. "What did you make me forget? What did you take from me?" She seized the frills of Joliet's catty lolita dress and shook her whole body.

"Ah, ah, hhh, kkkkkhhhh—she's losing it!" Joliet's eyes turned to, not her mother, but Hegewisch for help.

Because the mother lunged at the form of DuPage with her broadsword, cleaved it clean, dropped the upper half of the body into the black, where it promptly dissolved. The legs and sex remained, it was somehow more hideous than the full DuPage, the appearance of her body nauseated and Hegewisch through a mixture of factors felt her head flare and the urge to vomit rise.

Joliet had her head slammed against the ground. "Hh, help, help!"

Finding her useless, or else roving her brain in her skull, Aurora cast Joliet aside, almost into the arc of her ball. She fell in supplication at the circle's edge, prostrated herself and clasped her hands in prayer. "I know I did something, I know I did something terrible to you. What was it, tell me, don't spare me anything, destroy me with it, crush me, I need you, I need you—milady...!"

The legs of DuPage sprouted a new shriveled torso. DuPage's broad grin beamed down at her. You lying little floozy, you let them knife me in the back, you cheap bit of trash.

"Centurion Aurora, we compel you—ignore this demon." The Empress levied stroke after stroke into the defenseless body, but no matter what she hacked, it grew back.

Joliet crawled to Hegewisch. "Kkhhh, help, you gotta, do, something...!"

"What am I supposed to do?"

"She's losing it, any moment she'll, hhhukk, she'll drop her defenses—let that black stuff in..."

"I can't stop her." Even incapacitation, not that Hegewisch had that kind of power, would fail to save them, for it would stop the spinning yellow ball too. Hegewisch's own head failed to rattle with answers, she stared at DuPage's body, magnetized to it as the Empress vivisected it with her sword, peeled at the layers of this thing DuPage, exposed innards and organs but no blood, not even black blood.

"What happens if, it, touches us," said Joliet. "What happens if that black stuff—hhhhhngh, hhhhhck!"

"Pure despair—pure despair. Misery beyond compare. Misery enough to kill."

"I don't even know why I did it," said Aurora, "why I betrayed you. I can't even remember. But it's like a whole half of me has been missing ever since you died—I need you, I need you so much, milady. Milady. I needed to be there for you, to care for you, to let you hurt me in return, I needed to be your garbage. I needed you to insult me, berate me, belittle me, hit me with bottles, stab me, open me, rape me...!"

Only in your fantasies. The upper half of DuPage's head fell off but her sneer remained.

"She's c, crazy," said Joliet. "She's out of her mind!"

Tania Romero. Hegewisch knew her file. Knew her wish. 'To be safe.' The file lacked context, Hegewisch had assumed Kyubey did what he often did and exploited a girl in mortal peril—"Make a wish to save yourself, quick!"—Hegewisch had not really thought about it. Who cared about Aurora, she had thought to herself. Who had ever cared? A perfectly generic individual, the kind of lifeless minister left standing at the end of a tragedy, only spared because someone needs to read the final line. She had blended into the thousand faces of the Empire, the same lines of statistics—fucking no, this was turning into the Lake Michigan archon all over. Hazel Crest. Calumet. What self had the Empire buried within these girls? What personality, as everything unraveled, only now bubbled to the fore? 'To be safe.' A djinn enchained, a perfectly safe djinn.

Stab me, open me, rape me. Was that what Aurora really wanted or did she think by saying it, by reducing herself so, she might mitigate even a little the ire of her master?

"Do something, do, something," said Joliet.

Aurora dug her fingers into her sides, scooped open her skin and let her blood run. She thrashed her forehead against the floor and grew insensible to any words the Empress spoke to her. DuPage smiled and seemed, at least for now, content to watch this groveling.

"Anything," said Joliet. "If, if it's despair—if you're really God's acolyte—call on God—to save us!"

Oh, this poor kid. She didn't yet understand that God's salvation was death, that God saw the problems of this world and had one chance to fix them and decided to just kill everyone a little more nicely at the same end of their nasty, brutish, short lives. Joliet didn't want God, if Joliet saw God and knew God's plan she would flee from God the way she fled from the archon in Lake Michigan.

"Aurora, thou shalt be ruled!" The Empress hacked, slashed. "Thou shalt not remove thy barrier!" Centurions Cook, Cicero, immediate assistance is required in the Senate chamber!

So she was calling them in? Did she not know doing that was simply sending them to their deaths? Hegewisch had no mind to worry about the Empress right now. The thoughts of God had given her an idea, or at least they made her consider her own power. She remembered St. Louis, a broom closet, her magic sopped on a door as a barrier—

She seized her Soul Gem. With a simple enchantment she surrounded it with a thick layer of pink film. The black sea was a far more powerful miasma than the one DuPage created in St. Louis, but if it were the same DuPage... or maybe the better way to consider it was that Hegewisch's powers, although weak in combat, might be strong when fighting a miasma itself... Fuck she didn't know but the logic was tenuous enough to grasp. Joliet had already shoved her own Soul Gem in Hegewisch's face and Hegewisch protected it the same way, and only after a few seconds did Hegewisch remember she had the Soul Gem of Clownmuffle in her attaché case. She enchanted it too. It was her own type of Blessing—and if the Empress, immortal, could stave off the destruction of the body, perhaps Hegewisch, heavenbound, could stave off the destruction of the soul.

Perhaps. Maybe. Fuck. She didn't want to die.

Aurora seemed like she might, though. Her ball had not stopped spinning but it slowed, enough for the paint to seep through a little.

"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. I know you'll never accept an apology. What we did to you—what I did to you—I can't remember. But I can imagine, I have imagined, and all this time—You know, all this time I knew. You'd be back. I dreamed about you. I knew you would come back and do to me what I deserved. I deserve it. I do. I'm horrible. I'm the worst person. The worst person in the whole world. You gave me everything and I betrayed you. That's the worst sin. I deserve to die. Kill me. Kill me, Lady DuPage."

DuPage at present was a headless body lacking also a shoulder and one arm. But as the Empress's sword swung again the remaining hand shot out and pinched the tip of the blade between two fingers, which stopped the swing instantly despite the quivering exertion of the Empress and the harsh, unimperial grunts she loosed. DuPage flicked her fingers and the Empress hurled back into the darkness, bowled over ten geriatric Senators, and struck an unseen wall.

Oh you little goonie. You little goonie Aurora, you can't do that, YOU CAN'T DO THAT.

"Milady, anything, do anything you want—"

YOU LIAR. YOU LIAR. YOU'RE AFRAID. YOU DON'T WANT ME TO HURT YOU. YOU SAW WHAT I DID TO CICERO WHEN SHE WAS MY LIEUTENANT AND YOU KNEW YOU DIDN'T WANT THAT, NOOOO. EVEN IF IT DIDN'T HURT, NOOOO. THE IDEA OF BEING STRUCK, KICKED, KNOCKED OVER... Ha. Hear that? I'm waking up. I'm awake. The thousand-year prophesy is fulfilled, the great evil stirs from its eternal slumber. Hear that? Hear it? A thousand years ago the Once-and-Future-King Arthur tried to strike me down, but he could only seal me away. I slept. I slumbered. I drank booze, I slapped around a subordinate every so often, but I was asleep. You woke me up, Aurora. You, Cook, and our lovely Empress. You pricked me with your little pins and woke me up mother FUCKER SO NO WEASELING NOW.

The black paint shot past the arc of the yellow ball faster than it could move to erase it. It stuck to Aurora's face and front and Aurora screamed.

YOU WORM. You feared me as much as you wanted to be me, as much as you loved me. You wormy-worm-wormed your way into my graces, you hoped to be the last one I swallowed, you hoped I would hate everyone but you, but when the opportunity arose to eliminate me and take my place—no hesitation, no hesitation, no hesitation, NO HESITATION, NO HESITATION, NO HESITATION—

"EEEJJJJJKKKKIIIIIIIIII," said Aurora. Her ball swept through the strands attached to her but could not sever them all, her face became a black mass she clutched in futility. Hegewisch and Joliet scrambled as far away as possible.

DuPage screamed too, a leviathan echo in her throat, tinny and metal under a black ocean. She strode forward, she did not care when the ball erased her, she reemerged out the black congealed on Aurora's face, half her body twisting and emerging as though she sprung from Aurora's mouth. She seized Aurora's hair and ripped it out along with clumps of bloody scalp, she clawed at the skull with sharp nails.

FEEL IT? FEEL IT? WAS IT LIKE THIS BACK HOME? DID HE EVER DO THIS TO YOU, TANIA? AU ROR A?

Tania, Au ror a fell back as DuPage scooped out her brains in chunks and shoveled them into her mouth. Gore dribbled down her throat and naked chest as she dug deeper, the blood splattered over Hegewisch and Joliet, she burrowed into the shattered skull so her body bent like a loop from Aurora's mouth to her exposed esophagus, unmaking Aurora's bone, blood, body, her veins and muscles, down past her throat, into her torso, the stomach split on two sides and the innards spewed out, now Joliet had started to scream. Hegewisch had started to scream.

YOU DESERVED EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU. YOU DESERVED EVERYTHING. The voice had become disgustingly muffled as DuPage choked on the parts of Aurora she attempted to swallow. YOU DESERVED WORSE. YOU DESERVE WORSE THAN WHAT I CAN GIVE YOU. I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY SO WHEN I DIE I CAN JOIN YOU AND MAKE YOU SUFFER MORE THAN ALL THE DEVILS EVER COULD. KKKKKKKKCHC HACK-COUGH-HACK, KKKKCHHHHHHHH.

She snapped off Aurora's legs, split open her pelvic bone, nestled her body between the broken ribs and scarfed down the lungs, liver, spleen, intestines, looked up like a jackal over her kill except the twitching body beneath her had not died, her eyes lighted on the Soul Gem and like all the other organs she funneled it into her mouth.

Mouth stuff, dripping, running, a string of intestine hanging from it, she said to the obliterated form: GOD CAN'T SAVE YOU.

She swallowed. Aurora's body twitched once more, went limp. If any of her scant costume remained to disappear upon her final death, Hegewisch could not see it beneath the gore.

[52/57]

DuPage wallowed in the filth of a body turned inside out. She spat out the strand of intestine clutched in her teeth and wiped her face. Her expression belied intense disgust, she groaned. That didn't diminish anything. She tilted her head toward the ceiling. I can still feel nothing but hate.

Her eyes turned toward Hegewisch and Joliet.

You...

She crawled from the carcass. Hands and knees snakelike. Joliet panicked, kicked, and attempted to push Hegewisch into DuPage, but wasn't strong enough. Hegewisch had nowhere to go. The yellow circle had died, the paint seeped in. She wasn't sure whether she would live long enough to learn whether her enchantment protected her from it. DuPage had consumed Aurora in a span of seconds.

DuPage's hand lashed out. It clamped around Joliet's shoe and Joliet started to sob. She now clutched Hegewisch as if Hegewisch could save her. Blood smeared up Joliet's long stockings as DuPage crawled, but the hooked claws on DuPage's fingers could not penetrate the fabric. The Empress's Blessing still held, even without the Handmaiden's clothes—Aurora's skimpy outfit had simply not provided enough protection. DuPage reached for Joliet's skirt, maybe to pry it up and move for whatever was undefended beneath, but the same expression of disgust muddled her features and instead she hurled Joliet bodily out of the way. Joliet bounced into the blackness and DuPage set her sights on Hegewisch.

You were there too.

Yes. Hegewisch was there too. St. Louis. She imagined if she professed innocence it would only transform that look of disgust into the same hatred DuPage showed before she devoured Aurora. Hegewisch remembered what she knew about DuPage and what she knew was that conventional appeals would make no difference.

She had to think of something. Something, some bizarre unexpected statement that would stir the memory of DuPage that somehow lurked within this archon. This entity of utter hate. This foul anathema to God... who so much pure despair had created... created for the purpose of settling a petty score against those who wronged her.

"You, you're the pathetic one," said Hegewisch. A spasm of nervousness seized her and she laughed. "It's true, holy shit, it's so true."

DuPage's hands fell on Hegewisch's ankles. Hegewisch had a premonition of being ripped apart like a wishbone.

Last words. Amuse me.

"You—you think you're full of hate? That's cute, DuPage." Hegewisch laughed again, tilted her head back and roared. "You're nothing. You're small time. What a fucking waste. I should have been the one to come back as an archon. I'd really lay waste to things."

Crumple, went Hegewisch's ankles. There was no numbing of the pain. None whatsoever. Immediate sweat surged down her brow as she screamed, laughed, screamed and laughed together.

"YOU FUCKING LOSER," she said, "I'VE HATED TEN THOUSAND TIMES MORE THAN YOU. I HATED GOD HERSELF."

She felt herself start to split apart down the middle. At the same time she sensed DuPage was using only the barest fraction of her strength, trying to elongate the destruction, she had gone too quickly with Aurora.

She couldn't speak more. She could only scream, the pain so intense—

Then it stopped. The pressure, the pulling apart. Hegewisch tried to lift her head but couldn't before she felt the weight of DuPage snake over her body.

I've always wondered what people would say to me if I had them at my mercy. Whether they'd beg or whatever. It's interesting, right? You have one chance to convince someone not to kill you, what do you say? How do you analyze your killer's psychology and say the exact right thing to weaken them? Aurora tried, failed. You tried... failed. But you got a little closer. God-hating. I see the logic. Not bad. Unfortunately, there are literally no words that can stop me—thinking otherwise is delusion.

DuPage's hand slid into Hegewisch's stomach. The nails pierced the flesh as though they had pierced nothing but air.

Especially since you claim you hate God but tried to use her magic to stop me.

She opened her mouth and spat an object onto Hegewisch's face. Hegewisch's Soul Gem, still shiny pink from the enchantment.

Hypocrisy. Like Aurora. Man. Sometimes it disappoints me I don't even have to try hard to hate someone.

"I can prove it," said Hegewisch. "I can bring her to you. God. I'll give you God to kill."

She was saying anything at this point, doing exactly what DuPage accused her of, looking for the exact phrase to exploit her killer's psychology and survive. But it surprised her how easy it was to say. How she did not even cringe internally at the phrase. When she thought about Madoka, about Sayaka, about their whole incompetent mess, their whole sanctimonious nonchalance, how this entire thing happened because God couldn't even stop herself from meddling with her own universe's fate...

Geez. DuPage grinned. Geez, now I'm gonna look like an idiot. Because that sounds like a pretty good offer, actually.

If it worked she would say it a million times. She would scream it straight into Sayaka Miki's stupid face. Fuck it. Fuck it! "Fuck it," she said. "Let's kill God."

Whether this statement sealed the pact or not, whether DuPage planned to honor it or whether she simply planned to pretend to for a few seconds to bestow Hegewisch a little false hope before her horrendous death, Hegewisch would not know. Because an instant later a rend appeared in the blackness and Centurion Cicero charged through.