—

30: Sophia

A girl drove her pickaxe into the edifice. A sheer sheet of ice split off and crashed into shards. Cicero's arm came free and one punch eliminated the rest that enveloped her. Hands extended from above, faces gathered around a hole carved straight down. She regarded them, regarded Cook the string-cut marionette at her feet. Darien's blade had vanished, but Cicero still held her axe.

One blow. The ice blasted apart. What didn't shatter cracked and gave beneath the weight heaped atop it. A chain reaction occurred. Half the glacier crumbled. The ice, broken into tiny pieces, jangled as it ran in rivers. Jutting fragments destabilized and collapsed.

Those who had cut the hole to fish her out leapt to safety. They took with them Berwyn, curled and nearly nude and shivering. Berwyn had tried to claw her way through the ice and made it most of the way before the aftereffects of her overdose shrank her into a pale wreck. Too many syringes.

"Lady Cicero, the Handmaiden requests you in the rotunda—"

"I heard her." Cicero stretched her arms to disperse residual frost. She considered Aurora's leaderless platoon. They were likely competent enough to oversee the resuscitation of the remaining soldiers. Once they revived Cook, the ice would no longer pose a problem. But—

Cook had not detransformed. Whatever injury Flossmoor inflicted on her remained unseen. Most Magical Girls would fail to maintain their magic once incapacitated. But Cook, 21 years old, wielded mastery over body and soul. Falling unconscious, she kept her transformed state active as a final tortoise attempt to defend her body via the Empress's Blessing. Intelligent, when she had no idea whether Flossmoor intended to pursue combat to a mortal conclusion. Unfortunate, when it prevented her own soldiers from healing her wounds. Cook's uniform had openings at the hands to manufacture water should no alternative source be present, but the rest was airtight, bolted shut. It could not be easily removed like Cicero's helmet or Joliet's hood.

The entire revitalization of their army rested on Cook. Flossmoor had not even touched most of their soldiers, Cook's monstrous attacks did the trick.

"Lady Cicero, the Handmaiden was particularly insistent..."

Fine. Cicero manifested a cube that she dropped onto the ground. It unfolded into her horse. "Very well. Attempt to communicate with Cook telepathically. It may be difficult if her brain is destroyed, but it'll be faster than trying to remove her helmet to heal her." And Berwyn had similarly rendered herself difficult to revive. No Imperial soldier had magic to counteract Berwyn's powerful concoctions. The effects of her overdose would last for hours before her body naturally purified. What happened to Cook's lieutenant, Kenosha? Darien?

She found Darien the moment she thought about her, ruined on the ground but at least free of ice. "Someone heal her. The rest continue as the Handmaiden ordered. I will ride to the rotunda."

"Milady, please take these grief cubes first. You should replenish your magic before you continue."

She almost said, "That will take too long." She held her tongue and snatched the proffered cubes from the soldier's hands. Although she felt confident about her remaining magical stores even if she entered another battle, no reason not to hold onto a few in case.

Her horse launched at a gallop. It took only two bounds for her to scale the next glacier, at which point she skidded to a halt. She blinked. She rubbed her helmet's visor to brush away some remaining frost. What she saw remained the same.

The Capitol dome had turned black. Pitch black. The blackness flowed down it and streaked the structure's sides.

Sayaka Miki's words cut into her head: Second archon.

The humiliation of defeat had been bad enough. Her, Cook, all their soldiers losing to a single idiot savant. Several minutes spent trapped in ice as her enemy proceeded undaunted. The near-subordination of Berwyn. Cicero had often wondered, at night, alone, how she would cope with failure. It scared her. But it did not scare her as much as it would have scared the Laquesha who ran Cincinnati. She had DuPage to thank for that. DuPage who punished, berated, abused her for every tiny infraction. Cicero hated everything DuPage did to her, but it also disentangled the concept of "failure" from Cicero's self worth. DuPage called Cicero a failure even when Cicero was not a failure. It reduced the meaning of failure. It made it easy to blame not herself, but the society that determined what constituted failure and what constituted success. Cicero had remained selfish like that, had she not? For all her efforts to molecularize herself and bind those particles called "Cicero" to the mass called "the Empire," significant elements of her selfhood remained. The punishment for a defective particle ought to be excision, death. Any particle a detriment to the whole ought to be shaved. But Cicero still considered her particle self of equivalent value to that of the whole. How about that for your philosophy, Empress? How about that for your cunning hypocrisy? How much faith should Cicero place in your definition of "failure" when you yourself sink to your own moral decrepitude? Cicero believed the only true failure was death. Anything that failed to kill her only made her want to rise up and bash its face in. Like DuPage.

So losing to Flossmoor, pathetic as it was, she could abide.

The fact that Cook had been right to believe Sayaka Miki drove her mad.

Cook had no right to be right. None. It was stupid. Nobody ever should have listened to a single word Miki said let alone craft tactical decisions based on what she said. Cook had acted with all possible idiocy just like she had when she forced herself into the fight only to bury half their army in ice. Ohhhh, but she acted so chill and easygoing, didn't that make her so knowing? Compared to this angry and irrational Cicero, wasn't Cook the one cleverly witching the truth? No! Cicero had known Cook was talking from her rear since the start. Since the start. And even now, even seeing what could only be the work of an archon, she still knew it. She still knew Cook had been wrong. Cook had acted stupidly. Her correctness was incidental, it was stupid, a stupid decision, stupid!

Control. Control! Headlessness helped nothing. Fine, Cook won, Cook made the better tactical decision (even if her actual strategies in combat had been the largest instrument of their failure). Cicero acted rashly. Another failure. Certainly. But where was Cook now? And DuPage? Nowhere. One dead, the other alive only by technicality. Cicero remained standing. Cicero had her axe and her soul and her magic. She had destroyed one archon, she would destroy another, and then who had truly failed?

Not her.

Her horse rushed forward. It leapt over the reflective pool and onto the Capitol patio. Some soldiers worked to heal those who had fallen. None noticed the encroaching blackness.

"Ah—Lady Cicero, ah..." said Skokie. Palatine, who wielded a lantern, and Des Plaines, a healer, stood nearby. They all shifted and turned down their eyes. None were members of her platoon.

"Soldiers, the situation is officially a crisis, maintain your wits and discipline. Look there!" She indicated the black Capitol dome. "We have a major threat in proximity to the Empress. We must—"

Your Munificence, said the Handmaiden's telepathic voice, strangely distorted. 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.

Cicero did not need the affirmation, in fact it annoyed her. She noticed Lombard, the only soldier in her platoon still in fighting form. "Lombard, get off the ground. We're entering the Capitol now. Our mission is to rescue the Empress and Lady Joliet."

Lombard twisted. She looked like junk. Less sobbing and more like her face had transformed into liquid. Her fingers hooked in arches and she gesticulated in jerky, tin soldier automation.

From the Capitol doors behind her seeped a black surface like that which coated the dome. It spread in a semicircle, not rapidly, but Lombard did nothing to move away from the mess. Cicero clopped forward, seized Lombard by the nape of the neck, and hoisted her away from the puddle.

"Soldier. Wake up soldier. What are you, out of your mind?"

"I killed her," said Lombard.

The black puddle flowed over the gory mess in which Lombard had been mired. It caused a pair of disembodied legs to roll.

"Your other sergeant," said a meek voice. Cicero looked down. It was Palatine, the soldier with the lantern. "I saw it. She..." Palatine also looked near tears.

Cicero pieced the puzzle together and clicked her tongue to suppress a hiss. Dammit, Elmhurst. She had told them not to engage... Dammit. Dammit. FUCK.

As her fist clenched against the back of Lombard's neck a burst of magic enveloped her. Enveloped Lombard too, and Palatine, and the other girls. Before Cicero had a chance to react the magic was gone. And so were their uniforms.

Instead of identical golden soldiers a cluster of dainty, erratically-themed maidens stared up at her. Cicero's own uniform had reverted to its original form: an equestrian outfit like a genteel white girl might wear, starched white britches or whatever tucked into tall black boots. Her recompense for such a jank wish, she supposed.

Some of the others somehow had even tackier costumes, despite the situation some shrilled involuntarily and shirked behind one another to conceal themselves. The Empire had forced them to mature from the people they were when they made their wishes; what they considered elegant or cool back then now reeked of infantile fantasy.

Cicero might have shared their shame had she not immediately understood why their clothes had reverted. The Handmaiden had died. Whatever she encountered in the rotunda overcame her. It roused her from whatever emotional wrinkles she may have experienced at the death of one of her soldiers, a situation she was certain would have otherwise decimated her and one she knew that, should she exit this play intact, would plague her for many restless nights. The Handmaiden, however, lacked true humanity, but served a useful purpose. Her destruction betokened much ill in a pragmatic sense.

She dropped Lombard onto one of the healers and tossed the grief cubes she had taken previously. "Her mental state must be in shambles, keep her together. I am entering the Capitol."

"Lady Cicero, that black ooze looks dangerous," said Des Plaines. "Perhaps we should find an alternative point of entry?"

Wise. But Cicero suspected, given the state of the dome, they would find similar impediments everywhere. She had another idea.

"Palatine." Her hand unfolded to point and the indicated soldier lurched so that her lantern clanged against her brass belt buckle. "Your lantern is effective at dispelling miasmas, correct?"

"Yes, Lady Cicero."

Okay. Cicero had thought so. She did not know the members of Cook's platoon the way she knew her own. They had assigned Palatine to train her lantern on Flossmoor to maintain line of sight. Cook, being Cook, had only described Palatine as "being useless at everything else? In this situation?" but Cicero had a working awareness of the kinds of abilities available to the Empire.

"Shine your light on that black matter."

Palatine saluted and the others stood aside. She raised her lantern and the same ghastly green light spewed forth. It struck the black matter at an oblique angle and ate away at it like water from a hose. The areas of darkness it did not strike continued to ooze outward unimpeded, but soon a straight path led from the safety at the end of the patio to the doors of the Capitol.

"Des Plaines," said Cicero as she aligned her horse to proceed down the new route, "you're a healer, so remain here. Assist St. Charles in restoring Centurion Cook. That will be more efficient than digging through her ice to pull out each of our soldiers individually." She glanced over her soldiers; a crowd had gathered. It was mostly Aurora's squad, with a few others scattered among them—Cicero recognized Midlothian, her newest. It was clear from their expressions they intended to follow Cicero. Once they saw the dome blacken, their uniforms return to their original form, they realized the stakes. They understood their purpose. None fled.

Cicero held back a sigh. So despite the individual sparks that remained within them, exemplified by their unique and colorful costumes, they still felt that magnetic attraction toward the whole. The reason, rectitude, and justice imbued within them did not flicker at the first sign of failure. Why? Cicero, a soldier herself, wondered how soldiers could do what they did. Not soldiers like her, whose power and durability exceeded that of mortal man, but those who swarmed in waves upon beaches, singular souls extinguished in droves by sprays of a Gatling gun. How did those people find their courage? What made them fight when all animal instincts ought to have spurred them to flee?

In Chicago, against the Lake Michigan archon, she had given a speech. That speech had no purpose. She said it because, at the time, based on the Empress's teachings, she felt weighty moments necessitated some sort of rhetorical display. She had used the Empress's words and the Empress's appeals to muster the courage of an army of overdogs against an enemy they could not fail to defeat. Narcissism.

If Sayaka Miki was right about a second archon... she might be right about other things she said. If so, Cicero had far less faith in an outcome without casualties.

She shouldn't be allowing this pessimism to creep in. But as she grappled for words for a speech, even something short, something to reassure them—

They didn't need it. They knew what they were fighting for. The Empire was more than an ideal to them, it was their home, their sisterhood, everything they knew, their way of life. The Empire had assured it would become that to them, so when the Empire was sliced these tiny antibodies would flock to stem the infection. Here they came, the antibodies. The particles. Simultaneously unique and blank slate. Empty and full.

"A speech would waste time. I've wasted enough already. Follow my lead."

Into the Capitol they charged. Cicero instructed nobody to touch the miasma, which forced the gaggle—thirteen all told—to press tight together. Palatine waved her lantern's light on the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Strip by strip she uncovered the entryway, its metal detectors, passages. Palatine, it became clear, would be essential for navigation throughout this dark labyrinth, so Cicero had her ride on the horse. The miasma that the lantern cleared dispersed totally, but the edges she could not reach leaked back into the clean world created. Even when an entire room was diligently divested of the material, it seeped through vents and cracks. Already their exit ebbed shut behind them.

They entered the rotunda. Two bodies drifted in the blackness. Cicero recognized them, one was Flossmoor, the other the Handmaiden. Both dead. The Handmaiden had apparently defeated Flossmoor via some stratagem—Good for her. A final triumph before cessation.

"It'll cost too much magic to clear this entire room," said Cicero. Aurora's soldiers carried grief cubes, but best not to waste them frivolously. Palatine already needed some. She fanned her neck and apologized for her weakness. Cicero kept them moving, on a direct route to the Senate chamber. She hailed the Empress multiple times via telepathy, but received no response. She would have assumed that meant everyone in the Senate chamber had already died, but the Empress could not die. Incapacitation was another option, or possibly this miasma distorted telepathic thought the way normal miasmas distorted ordinary speech. The Handmaiden's final telepathic message had sounded funny.

Her initial instinct had been for hurry, but she amended it to cautious, meticulous forward motion. Everyone constantly watched for something to creep out of the depths. If they got separated someone would die. The Empress, however, could wait as long as they needed to take.

Palatine waved her lantern over the doors to the north wing. Or where the doors should have been. Instead, they saw only rounded, unbroken wall. Palatine, hand of cubes to her gem, erased more and more of the surroundings. There was no door. There was no door behind them. She pointed her lantern to the southern end. No door there. No doors. Cylindrical wall only.

"A trap," said Cicero. "Even if the doors are truly gone, I can smash through—"

"There!"

One of the women, Algonquin, pointed in the general direction of the Handmaiden's corpse. She staggered back against two of her fellows, who caught her before she lurched toward a stray stripe of miasma. Everyone looked, but nobody saw anything except the dead girls and the empty rotunda walls, and soon even Algonquin lowered her arm, trembled a moment, shook herself, and muttered a quiet apology.

"What," said Cicero, "did you see."

"I apologize, milady, I'm simply nervous is all, I didn't mean to disrupt—"

"What did you see."

"It—I thought—"

Before she could answer a shriveling giggle cut the rotunda. Not an audible giggle. It was—they could see it. Not as words, or sound waves, but nonetheless something wrinkled in the blackness and the thought that entered Cicero's head was that of a hideous, dead giggle.

Something started to rise from the ink. The giggle and whatever Algonquin saw were likely illusions, but these figures rising must be wraiths. If they got mired in a fight here, they would likely get encircled and overwhelmed—if not Cicero herself, than at least her soldiers. She made an immediate decision and swung her halberd against the wall where the northern doors ought to have been. The wall blasted away—Actually, it did not, what blasted away was a giant screen that ripped inward and behind it stood the ordinary doors on the ordinary wall.

Cicero didn't bother to ponder how the miasma had created an illusion even where Palatine had dispelled it, it made no sense but she had broken through the façade and she rammed down the doors and demanded her soldiers move before whatever wanted to attack attacked. In an ordinary war, charging past the enemy lines and leaving your enemy behind you only led to encirclement and destruction, but this wasn't a normal war nor a normal army. Cicero already envisioned their eventual route, into the Senate chamber, the Empress seized, and out through any nearby wall, whichever she could blast through quickest with her halberd.

"Move, move," she said. The stragglers toddled. One tripped against the doors and Cicero shot an arm out to catch her before she fell, it was Midlothian cradling her glass jar of cloud. She thanked Cicero and ran along the route Palatine carved while Cicero took one last look at the rotunda.

There were no figures rising. There was no miasma. An empty, clean rotunda, exactly as she encountered it earlier in the day. Nothing amiss save the two bodies. Flossmoor and the Handmaiden—except the Handmaiden looked nothing like the Handmaiden, her skin and hair were bleached white, all color had drained from her.

And behind her body, easily missed by a casual glance—her soldiers in the next room called for her to follow—but Cicero thought she saw a little rip, a curling corner of paper in the image of the rotunda, and behind it a clutch of white giantess fingers reached out and peeled the corner back to cover the gap and complete the picture yet again...

They proceeded through more rooms empty save the miasma, no threats, no wraiths, no deceptions, unless the appearance of the ordinary was the deception. Cicero's knowledge of the Capitol's geography came from scant experiences but enough years in miasmas had taught her not to sweat the navigational aspects. She led them more by instinct than a concerted attempt to remember the route. And soon enough Palatine waved her lantern and the miasma flecked away and the doors to the Senate chamber stood before them.

"Stay behind me and follow my lead," said Cicero.

"Yes, Lady Cicero," they intoned together. Their chorus distorted because one said "Yes, milady" instead—Midlothian.

On this disharmonious note, Cicero smashed down the doors.

Palatine's lantern was not the only way to clear the miasma, although it was most efficient. When Cicero swung her axe (thankfully still an axe, despite the Handmaiden's death—its medieval barbarism chafed well enough against the asinine civility of her normal costume for her to have never minded the ensemble), the propulsive force blasted away not only aspects of the surroundings but also the black ooze. Thus she already had a bit of space to gallop forward before Palatine's lantern carved a path, so she had already built momentum by the time she digested the tableau before her.

Joliet had fallen onto her face in the guise of a cat eared girl.

And also—

"It's you."

Her horse stopped. The soldiers skidded behind her. Palatine shined her light onto DuPage's face, revealed it exactly as it was: DuPage. Unmistakable. Same sallow, sunken, flaking face. Broad brows and a nasty leer. Nude. Drenched in gore. Pinning down the Administrator with her brittle wrists.

Palatine's light melted DuPage's face, peeled back skin and eyeballs, revealed a grinning skull. The whole DuPage turned to mush that washed across Hegewisch and someone weaved between the solid standing forms of the Senators waving her arms and only after a few seconds of contextual clues Cicero realized the someone was the Empress, unaged, clanking a suit of armor and waving a broadsword.

"Cicero! She cannot hurt me. Thou must aid Joliet and the Administrator—"

Cicero! Thou must! Cicero! Thou must!

"Centurion DuPage?" said one of the soldiers.

Centurion DuPage.

THOU MUST. THOU MUST.

Ah, Centurion DuPage. Her old, old friend.

CICERO.

It seemed any brain could be shut off. Any conditioning, any training, any rote knowledge beat into a body could be overridden given proper stimuli. Well, why not? Who had beaten that knowledge into her after all? To whom did Cicero's true loyalties lie?

CEEEEECERO CEEEECERO CEEEEEEEEECERO~

Cicero's axe slammed down. A fan of black ooze shot out and splattered the gathered Senators. She swung and struck the other side of her with the butt. A smaller force dredged a trench and shattered several desks. The wind knocked the Senators into one another domino-style. These Senators were fragile but the ooze swept up to catch them. Everything crashed back so forcefully, the crinkling deluge inside her could not be abated and she thought, what is this, fantasy?

She wanted all the riffraff out of the way. She plucked Palatine off her horse and dropped her with the others. "Take the Empress and the others and escape. DuPage, why don't you show yourself already?"

What's that, Cicero? Game for a little one-on-one? Classic hero versus villain spiel, maybe on a rooftop for heightened drama? Eh? That's my Cicero. Stalwart, stoic, BORING Cicero, come on now I know you can do better, you sometimes forget I used to bounce your face against the concrete because you DESERVED it.

The ceiling detached. Like the walls and floor, it was black, and a cascading line of it plummeted toward her. Palatine wasn't watching but Cicero's heightened reflexes attuned her. Her halberd swung and blasted the blackness away, at the same time she shouted to her soldiers to cluster closer to her. They scrambled, Palatine finally turned her lantern, the blackness slapped the ground.

Before she had a chance to check which if any of her soldiers were sprayed by the splatter the blackness from all corners Palatine had not yet eliminated swept toward them. It carried the Senators like surfers, like a dumb comedy movie where the joke is how funny old people are, it's an old person doing a young person thing, and somehow Cicero felt that was the exact image DuPage was attempting to convey, anything to creep under Cicero's skin, pain alone was not her way, in fact pain was often a formality, a gateway into more insidious torture. Cicero at once realized her foolishness for considering a world in which she combatted DuPage alone, how could she have forgotten her own stringent plan so quickly? Well she knew the answer to that but she could rectify things. Hegewisch and Joliet had already crawled to the protection of Cicero's horse, they huddled with the other soldiers, the Empress swung her sword uselessly at the black murk, they had no need to linger.

"Retreat!" she shouted.

She could not swing her axe at the encroaching waves because if she used the full force she would certainly murder the Senators. Vestigial as they were, she could not do that—DuPage knew she could not do that, these surfing Senators were as much gaudy taunt as hideous human shield. But the way to the exit had not completely unraveled so she launched her horse in that direction and swung like wild. The smashed doorframe smashed harder.

Not gonna fight? Wow.

"Shut up," she said, uselessly, suppressing the urge to add an expletive in there, she had to maintain decorum, she could not unravel, this situation was not as unsalvageable as it seemed. She hacked a forceful swath toward where she assumed was the nearest wall to the outside world.

She chanced a glance over her shoulder to ensure the soldiers kept pace. Most did, they were not helpless, Joliet had scrambled to their fore, the Empress was the one who composed the rear, it didn't befit her rank but it scavenged a hint of that oh-so-exalted rectitude, after all, after all was this DuPage not of the Empress's conjuring? Was this not the outcome of her sin? Ha. Poetic justice. Cicero never believed in a design beyond the design one created for oneself, but she could not deny the coincidence. She could not revel long though, she noticed some of the soldiers supporting another, one who had fallen pale and ashen in their arms, who convulsed as if possessed, who had started to froth. The blackness had touched her. It dripped down the crown of her head between her eyes and none of the soldiers who carried her dared wipe it away. As Magical Girls, trained ones at that, they moved swiftly even while carrying their comrade, but the wave of blackness kept coming. It would consume them if they did not increase their velocity.

"Keep forward," she shouted, then bounded her horse over their collective heads and landed the opposite side of the Empress. Few of the Senators had funneled out the Senate chamber, most seemed to have caught on the shattered doorframe like bits of trash in a sewage drain, so Cicero had the space for a full attack. She brought down her axe and the wave, as big as any in the ocean, lost all its build and trajectory and came apart into a few scattered slops.

The Empress cut down one of the smaller waves with her sword. "We must destroy her," she said in a whisper only Cicero would be able to hear. "We cannot allow this blight to persist." She leaned on her third-person pronouns but the ripple in her vocal chords pierced the diction. DuPage was not Cicero's albatross alone.

"We need," said Cicero, "to bring these women to safety."

"Of course, of course—But this abomination, this slight against God. It cannot exist." Her face darkened. "She cannot exist—"

Several soldiers shrieked. The one who had touched some of the black material, her Soul Gem exploded. The shards fanned in dazzling array despite the lack of light.

[51/57]

But the gem did not simply break. Cicero had seen gems break before, not often but she had seen it, and she had not forgotten the image. They broke the way a real gem might, as if at the instant of breaking they lost all magical power and became ordinary mineral matter. It amazed her to think such a thing contained a soul, and yet when a normal human is shot they come apart in much the same way, soul or not. This gem acted strange. Its metal lining bent in a uniform pattern, snapped, reformed. The gem wasn't breaking—it was becoming something else—

"What, what!" Hegewisch swerved in an erratic pattern, she swung her attaché case like a weapon except at nothing. "That's not real. That's not real!"

The Empress darted her eyes feverish and frenzied. She and Hegewisch were the only two who understood. Cicero disliked it, not whatever phenomenon was occurring, but because it forestalled their escape. They had to abandon the corpse and keep moving, the danger still remained, the Senators were stalking toward them clapping their hands and singing Happy Birthday, which could only be DuPage's idea of a grand joke, one that evaded Cicero's ken. She dragged the Empress by the arm and barked an order for the others to move, at which point out of the transforming shattering gem whipped a stream of—leaves? Autumn leaves, red and orange and yellow? They shot everywhere, swirled to the ceiling. The soldier who had died, DeKalb, Cicero vaguely remembered some sort of plant theme to her abilities, or maybe she had mixed it up, her lack of knowledge galled her, it felt of critical importance to explain this phenomenon, because the leaves had enveloped everyone and if they proved dangerous an attack could not be stymied. She swung to diffuse the blast but the force overpowered and—

And they were in a different place. Clinging to the bare branches of a massive black tree. Cicero's horse lost its footing, it skittered its hooves, she had to revert it to its portable cube form and land on her feet. She grabbed the Empress who dangled from a branch over an abyss of the autumnal leaves below.

"A witch, a witch, a witch," Hegewisch kept shouting excitedly.

"That's not possible," said the Empress. "Not in this world. No! God would never permit it, the laws that govern this universe do not allow it!"

I guess down here we're too far for God to help us. DuPage's massive face stared from above, as though she looked into a tin can full of ants. I guess that makes this Hell.

"Every instinct I ever had about you was right," said the Empress. She had lost her speech quirks. "There was never anything in you but hate. Yasmin Esfahani, I swear I will redact you from this world's memory!" She traced an arc with her sword and the distant, godly DuPage spat on her.

The other soldiers, having helped those dangling onto the branch, crawled toward the Empress. They raised their hands, pleaded for her to explain what was happening, what world they now inhabited, a world that seemed to possess only this bare, lonely tree and a wash of forever-fluttering leaves that obfuscated any snatch of a bottom. The only exceptions were Joliet and one other soldier—Midlothian—who instead clung to Hegewisch.

The Empress remembered herself. "Stand stalwart, soldiers of the Empire! Our foe is known. We shall prevail over the forces of evil, for our cause is just and the world tends toward justice!"

"Guess the world's unraveling now," said Hegewisch. "Laws don't matter. Why would justice?"

Hegewisch looked senile. She looked like she had become displaced in space and time, but Cicero could not worry too much about her because something had started to crawl around the trunk of the tree. Something burrowing, eating, drilling—a hole burst in the bark and the head of a creature emerged.

Wraith, thought Cicero. But no. Its face was a flower. It sprayed a puff of yellow pollen on the Empress and those who clung to her. The soldiers started to swoon. One yelled, unfathomably, "It's her... it's DeKalb...!"

Cicero had enough of this horseshit. "Magic" was no excuse to suspend any semblance of sense. Even magic had an order, rules, regulations, and this inanity pushed her patience beyond even what Flossmoor had accomplished.

She hurled her horse at the pollen-spewing flower. Whatever this thing was, it might not be a wraith, but it couldn't be too much more dangerous than one. It failed to evade her attack. Her horse connected.

The explosive force cleaved off the top of the tree. Flower petals launched everywhere. Cicero didn't give a fuck. She didn't bother to wait to see whether the horse attack did the trick. She launched herself over the plume of pollen and came down with her axe. Hard.

Hard enough to shatter the entire tree world. The walls, leaves, branches washed away at the culmination of her stroke.

Cicero, the Empress, the soldiers, everyone real dropped out of that fake world back into the one they had inhabited prior. The world of black miasma.

Any areas of safety Palatine had created were gone. The room was utter black. Cicero had milliseconds to react and she was already coming down off of a swing. She had no time to pull back her axe and swing again. Instead she shoved her axe down and embedded the sharp tip into the ground. It stuck, her arms went rigid, she held herself suspended in a precarious balancing act that nonetheless prevented her from falling into any of the blackness.

She then got to watch the other soldiers lack such a luxury.

—

Bubbling bubbling bubbling.

In the.

Bubbling bubbling bubbling.

Rub a dub dub. Three men in a tub.

This is so disgusting. What were they discussing?

Bubbling bubbling bubbling.

"Try the screws."

Rubble dubble. Toil and trouble.

"We've tried the screws. They don't turn."

I smell the blood of an English muffin.

Bubbling bubbling bubbling.

Inside the.

"You're incompetent. Out. My turn."

Poppets.

"Okay look maybe like—hear me out—maybe forget the screws. Her hands—imagine we like, snake up into her suit through the hands."

Doubling doubling doubling.

In the veins.

What's the longest word you can spell?

"Snake through the—inside the... Lieutenant Kenosha. Please. I respect your rank but I doubt the efficacy of your plan. St. Charles, move."

A-N-T-I-D-I-S-E-S-T-A-B-L-I-S-H-M-E-N-T-A-R-I-A-N-I-S-M.

What's that word mean, poppets?

"Sergeant, she's got the Blessing which means, I think it means, force doesn't compute against her. You have to exert force against the screws to twist them, the Blessing—theoretically—makes that impossible."

You can break it into its component parts.

Prefixes. Suffixes.

"That's not how the Blessing works, St. Charles. That defies physics."

Anti. Dis. Establishment. Arian. Ism.

"But—"

"Think for three seconds. How would that work? That would mean gravity couldn't work on her. Gravity's a force, is it not? Are you going to say to me right now that gravity is not a force?"

Against the practice of or belief in disestablishment. Anti-anarchism.

"Well, no..."

Not the true definition, of course. Something to do with English, English muffins. She looked it up. But every kid knew that word because it was the longest word. They didn't know what it meant. They knew it because it was the longest word. It had no meaning. It had been deconstructed—deconstructed in the original Derrida sense. It was up to these schoolchildren... these schoolchildren who knew it only as the longest, the most impressive word... It was up to them to reconstruct its meaning. From its component parts.

Prefixes. Suffixes.

Antidisestablishmentarianism.

T-I-N-T-I-N-N-A-B-U-L-A-T-I-O-N.

Not nearly half as long. The need to establish surpassed the ceaseless noise.

"But if all forces 'don't compute' against her, whatever that even means, then why is she not floating right now, completely immune to the force of gravity? Riddle me that pumpkin?"

Pumpkin. Poppet.

"Okay well, well not that force. But other forces..."

"That's not how physics works. Not how it works! You can't decide what is and isn't a force."

"Well, well it's, it's not physics, it's magic..."

"Magic has rules! It has to. There's a system at play. Laws. Law of the Cycles? Heard of that?"

"Look. Guys, guys. All we need is some kinda uh, long, flexible weapon. We go in through the uh, hands, bend it up her arms, to her brain—Egyptian-style, ya dig?"

A viscous trickle escaped with her moan. Her body stirred. She allowed the conversation of the three to waft over her as she abandoned her addlepated meanderings on the subject of anarchy and society. Her brain began to muddle back together. She became recognizant of her grossness. A puddle of her own sludge. She was the puddle, forming protozoaic into more complex forms. She twisted. There lay Darien's viscera topped by a shiny Soul Gem.

Her body refused to budge past these twitches. The only reason she failed to vomit was likely because she had already inverted the entire contents of her stomach. So disgusting... the three men in the tub must be discussing her.

"Lieutenant Kenosha. We have no such long, flexible implement, and even if we did, how would we be able to heal her brain in such a fashion?"

Kenosha. St. Charles... and Sergeant Schaumburg. Gathered around Cook like surgeons.

When you're ugly you simply want to die. Right now she felt uglier than even before her wish. Nothing soothed her more than imagination's manifestation of her form dissolving back into the puddle.

When you're hungover you simply want to drink more to mask the pain of your drinking. Berwyn couldn't inject herself with anything more, she would kill herself. The temptation might prove more irresistible if she possessed the strength to even summon a new syringe.

Either way... she could not surrender. Neither to pain nor disgust. Things existed, things beyond the material wants of an individual. She had to act.

Or she could sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep.

"Can't comment on physics—but those screws don't turn, ya dig? There's like zero way to remove that helmet."

When Kenosha said that a bright flash enveloped them. When it subsided, their uniforms had disappeared. Kenosha, St. Charles, Schaumburg. And Cook between them no longer wore a diver's suit—she wore a frilly bikini with an aloha-print skirt.

"Now that's the way I like to see a problem solved." Kenosha twirled her ponytail victoriously. A reckless, slobby masculinity, that Kenosha. Why be a girl if you didn't act cute? Oh rats, her brain still felt like vomiting up absolutely idiotic statements. Perhaps if she squeezed it through a wringer—

She and the three in the tub realized, like a lightning bolt, what the removal of their uniforms signified.

"The Handmaiden," said St. Charles.

Schaumburg bit her lip. "Ignore that. Lady Cook's injuries are now visible. Help me heal her. Now!"

St. Charles nodded and the two held respective implements toward the lovely lady's bashed brainpan.

Kenosha, squatting, now in a mime's stripes, looked at the sky, at the ground, and pantomimed pulling a cigarette out of a pack and lighting it. She held two fingers to her lips, breathed in, breathed out.

Neither St. Charles nor Schaumburg were exceptional healers. Berwyn could have healed Cook in seconds... They progressed arduously along the admittedly complex task of reconstructing brain and skull. Berwyn supposed she ought to credit them for being able to do it all; many lesser healers failed to restore beyond flesh wounds or the replication of simple organs. A healer's worth was based on speed and level of regeneration. Berwyn had long been the strongest healer in the Empire. Healing never gathered the glamor, though. She had accepted that fact and stood in Cicero's shadow... Cicero.

A body dropped beside her. Her head twisted, and lo, 'twas their fine friend Lombard, deposited by another of Aurora's healers, Des Plaines. Berwyn had made it her business to know her competition in the healing business, so she recognized their faces even with their uniforms changed to such strange and magnificent outfits.

Lombard curled on her side and said nothing.

"Hurry and help," said Schaumburg to Des Plaines. They had reconstructed most of the skull.

"Dark fluid is covering the Capitol," said Des Plaines, inflected toward the rudimentary. "You can't see it from here due to the ice. It's spreading toward us. Lady Cicero and everyone else went inside to rescue the Empress. Our orders are to restore Lady Cook—"

"That is known," said Schaumburg.

Kenosha exhaled.

Ah, milady. Charging recklessly into the Capitol? With none of your own soldiers? Cicero had once been part of the platoon that was now Aurora's, she perhaps possessed familiarity with its more veteran members, although platoons had undergone much reorganization in the subsequent years and most who had existed in the time of Lieutenant Cicero had since received promotions to governorships in Milwaukee or the like. Milady, milady. And you sent away all three of the platoon's extant healers. Milady...

Movement. She needed to. Ah. Yes. A shuffling shrug of her shoulder flipped her onto her stomach. Gravity did most of the work but it indicated progress. Milady. You're being rash again, milady. She always had this tendency to lead the charge herself. Bad, bad form for a commander. Even if she possessed the strength of an entire platoon in herself, there were reasons why commanders sat safe in bunkers while the cattle died in the fields. Cicero only knew this fact until her cattle became endangered. She cared too much about those who had sworn away their lives. Bad, bad form. "Unh... aag." Disgusting sounds she could not help but utter as her hands braced against the cracked pavement.

Should have sent Berwyn from the start. Instead of galloping into battle herself... Should have sent the poppet on a string. Her role, after all. Her assigned role to die.

Over the top of the glacial hill that obstructed her view of the Capitol flowed a wave of pure black ink.

Kenosha flicked her fingers and stomped on the spot for which she aimed. "That's a thing."

The other three, engrossed in their healing, took longer to see. Des Plaines, then St. Charles, lastly at the urging of the others Sergeant Schaumburg. "That is the dark fluid I told you about," said Des Plaines. "I do not know its properties but Lady Cicero believed it dangerous."

The mound of ice possessed the form of a pyramid collapsed upon itself. Cook drew it to ensnare that killer magician, instead she ensnared their own soldiers. Immobile bodies, obscured by layers, could be barely made out. As the ink inched down the uneven back slope Berwyn thought for an instant the ice would serve to protect the ladies encased from direct contact. Not so. The ink sank in. It did not pierce or crack or break the ice. It simply sank as though it were a semipermeable membrane. Tendrils of the darkness dangled down. The telepathic voices of those not yet unconscious by the cold began to buzz.

"Sergeant, Lieutenant," said Des Plaines. "I advise we remove Lady Cook to a safer location."

The ink swept too far down the slope of the pyramid. It obscured the view of the others, but they screamed for help louder.

[50/57]

"Those people..." said St. Charles.

"If we move Lady Cook we'll take even longer to heal her, we need to wake her up as soon as possible if we want to save them," said Schaumburg. "Work! Work! Idiots! Work! Des Plaines. Des Plaines!"

[49/57]

Something was happening inside the ice.

[48/57]

[47/57]

[46/57]

Des Plaines wrenched her hair. "I left them. I left them. I left them!"

[45/57]

"SERGEANT I LEFT THE WOUNDED ON THE PATIO—"

"Des Plaines. Des Plaines."

"Some shit." Kenosha puffed another imaginary cigarette.

"SERGEANT I LEFT THEM ON THE PATIO, I ONLY BROUGHT LOMBARD, I FOLLOWED HER ORDERS TO HELP YOU, SERGEANT I LEFT THEM—"

The patio. Ah, correct. The ranged fighters who had fired from the Capitol patio. Addison, Westmont, Alsip, Clearing. Plus a few from Cook's platoon.

Berwyn's arms, which had held her halfway up for some time, wobbled and refused to cooperate. She hit the walkway with her chin and spat blood.

"Des Plaines. Des Plaines."

And those still screaming must be the ones trapped in the ice...

[44/57]

[43/57]

Lombard stood. She had taken to mumbling. She walked calmly up the slope of the ice toward the blackness.

A gunshot burst. Berwyn glanced, Des Plaines shuddered as smoke smoldered out a hole in her head.

"We must restore Lady Cook," said Schaumburg. "Now! St. Charles. St. Charles!"

[42/57]

[41/57]

The screams died one by one. Those on the patio had long gone, so these were the ones who had followed Darien on her initial assault, who had fallen to the magician, as well as Cook's personal strike force who tried to trap her in the pyramid. As before, Berwyn knew the names of those in her own squad, she recounted them one by one although she could not distinguish one silenced scream from another:

[40/57]

Niles.

[39/57]

Burbank.

[38/57]

Maywood.

[37/57]

[36/57]

[35/57]

Something was happening inside that ice. Berwyn needed to rise. Schaumburg seemed determined to wait until the last possible moment, to heal Cook as quickly as possible. The blackness would sweep over her and Darien before it reached them, they seemed content to let that happen, none even remarked upon Lombard—

Lombard.

Lombard. Lombard, stop. Please.

Lombard, without looking back, shook her head as she proceeded toward the ink. More screams within died.

[34/57]

[33/57]

[32/57]

Lady Berwyn, is that you? Lieutenant? Not Lombard's voice, but another she recognized, one of those trapped in the ice—a girl named Norridge. Lieutenant, what's happening? I can't see anything. Please. I don't know what's going on. Why is everyone screaming?

It's okay, Berwyn lied. Worry about nothing, Norridge.

Wait... Wait! The ice is gone. Where am I? Lieutenant, where am I?

The ice, gone? But it was not gone. Its base stood before her eyes. Almost entirely submerged now.

This place is weird, lieutenant. I don't understand. This is like, I don't know. It's like being inside a collage—

Norridge cut off and did not continue.

[31/57]

Berwyn the entire time had dedicated her body's energies to rising. Her hands and legs pushed. She glanced to Lombard, but Lombard had already walked into the darkness. She had not immediately died. In fact, the darkness appeared to do nothing to her. She continued to scale the misshapen pyramid which retained its shape even beneath the blackness. Her hands and feet blackened as she sometimes slipped on the icy slope and had to support herself.

Turn back, Lombard, Berwyn said, unsure whether it were already too late. You didn't do it. You don't have to die for it. She recalled a moment when she and Lombard, before Elmhurst arrived, paired up to fight wraiths. An old memory. Lombard laughed when they killed the wraiths, she said some joke. Berwyn failed to remember the joke but remembered laughing. Since then they had rarely spoken outside an official capacity. Berwyn realized she had spoken to very few people except Darien outside an official capacity. And she had always justified her extracurricular communication with Darien as her teaching Darien philosophy and morality—mentoring her to become a better soldier. It was an official capacity too. One for which she sensed Darien cared little.

Berwyn suddenly realized she had no real friends.

Lombard continued another two seconds, slumped, and her Soul Gem broke.

[30/57]

Their deaths mattered to her as numbers. Names ticking down a counter. A reduction of strength. Everything became the Empire's strength. She always knew she sacrificed aesthetic, personality, liberty to the Empire and its mission. She had never known she had also sacrificed her empathy.

A ripple pierced the air around Lombard's corpse, which slowly slid with the blackness toward Berwyn and Darien at the base of the ice structure. Behind that ripple something seemed to glimmer, something that attracted Berwyn's attention until she pushed aside everything to redouble her efforts to control her own body.

"Easy. Steady. Come on. Steady. St. Charles!" Schaumburg's voice became the only voice. The field of telepathy went dim. Berwyn gurgled and blood and other fluids dropped from her mouth.

Easy. Steady. The Empire required her as a function. She wanted to sleep. Lie still and sleep. Forever. The Empire required her.

Her arms gave again. She watched the blackness reach the base of the ice. It ebbed inches from her and Darien.

A hand wrapped under her torso and hoisted her away. Ash-scented breath heated her clammy cheek. "Heya there, couldn't uh, couldn't forget about my fellow lieutenant could I?"

Berwyn's mouth hung open. Drool coalesced at the base of her jaw. Then she flopped a shaky arm toward Darien. "H... her."

"Uh right, her. Thanks for the reminder." Kenosha stared at Darien's remains. She waved her hands to create some sort of container and scooped Darien into them, Soul Gem and all, a few seconds before the blackness would have reached her. Then she bounced with them both up the second mass of ice to where Schaumburg and St. Charles crouched over Cook.

You left Lombard, Berwyn said. She did not want to sound accusatory but she wanted to sound accusatory.

"Eh well." Kenosha placed the bowl of Darien beside Cook and dropped Berwyn onto the ice. "I've seen uh, I've seen a few girls who wanted to die. It's best to let em."

Schaumburg's hands slapped together. The sound would have cut off Kenosha if Kenosha did not speak unnaturally fast to finish beforehand. But the clap and Kenosha talking seemed unrelated and Schaumburg soon stood: "There. There. She's healed. Her brain's back. She'll wake any moment." She clasped her hands together, raised them to God, and shook. St. Charles gnawed on three fingers and flitted her eyes toward the ocean of black ink that had swallowed everything, the ice, the ground, the distant lights. Elevated a little, the totality of its advance became undeniable...

And Cicero had plunged into it. Ah, milady. Milady.

"Milady," said Schaumburg. Her gesture of prayer transformed into a sharp salute, one St. Charles rigidly mimicked as with a stretch and a yawn Lady Cook lifted her upper body and propped herself on her elbows.

"Ahhhhh... What happened? How's it going?"

"Milady I apologize for my terseness but I have little time to explain," said Schaumburg. "You must remove your ice and free our soldiers trapped within. Please, quickly, before that black substance reaches us!"

Cook considered. She looked both ways. Looked at the faces. Looked at the bloody Darien and the less bloody but equally unmoving Des Plaines. "Okay?"

She raised aloft her lovely fingers and snapped. The ice became water, warm wonderful water. It rushed as a current away from the blackness, it swept them and the girls trapped inside it. Everything in Berwyn's world became water, crystalline clear, vaguely fragrant. Some part of Berwyn's intuition stirred and her mouth forced into one of the hapless smiles of those without recourse to do anything but.

They washed up on a lawn amid some floodlights. At the base of the Washington Monument. The fragrance remained but the warmth went the way of entropy. A body slid against Berwyn's. Several more logjammed afterward. They were the bodies that had been trapped in the second glacier of ice, the one Cook created during her and Cicero's ill-advised personal tango against the magician. These bodies were not in one piece. The magician must have sliced them prior to their cold internment. They had lost consciousness, they would not have been able to scream.

"Ohhhhh, only this many? I thought there were more. What exactly is that black stuff?"

"Something, well we don't know but, something that seems to kill you if you touch it, Lady Cook."

"Ahhhhh." Cook tiptoed among the bodies. She counted on her fingers, finally pointing to herself and saying, "Fifteen."

Berwyn could twist and turn. She counted too. Cook, Kenosha, Schaumburg, St. Charles—the awake ones. Darien, Des Plaines, Bellwood, River Forest, Crestwood, Stickney, Hodgkins, plus three of Cook's she did not know by name.

These the all-important numbers. The size of a marshaled force. Manpower. They romanticized war, you know? They said courage and valor and even tactics mattered. But in the end, in almost all wars, what mattered was numbers. Number of men, number of weapons, number of supplies.

She kept counting numbers. She wanted to stop. She could not stop.

Schaumburg elbowed St. Charles. "Hurry, get to work healing the rest. You take Des Plaines. Maybe she's calmed down. I'll take this one. We must make this group operational as soon as possible."

"Ohhhhh?" Cook said. "Why's that?"

"Lady Cicero and the rest of my platoon entered the Capitol to rescue the Empress. As they have not yet returned, I can only imagine they've faced difficulty. With your abilities, Lady Cook, you can create a bridge to their position so we can reinforce them."

Cook nodded at this sensible suggestion. She regarded the piles of flesh gathered at her sandaled feet. She watched Kenosha flick another imaginary cigarette into the aether. She even gazed down at Berwyn, who struggled to make a signal that she could still be made useful. She failed to make that signal and Cook turned away.

"Sooooo... Yeah... I'm thinking here... Let's not?"

Berwyn's intuition proved correct. Womanly intuition they called it? Delightful irony.

"Lady Cook," said Schaumburg.

Cook pulled a flush flower pin from her hair and jabbed her skirt with it. The pin bent at the tip. "So the Handmaiden's dead, but the Empress isn't. I guess that's to be expected? Hmmmmm..." She replaced the pin in her hair. She tapped her lower lip and looked around at nothing in particular. "Yeah, yeah, I think we shouldn't overtax ourselves?"

"What do you mean, Lady Cook."

"I mean... Y'know, when I first started hanging out with our charming Empress and our less charming DuPage, I kinda envisioned chilling a few weeks then heading somewhere else? This whole thing kinda came outta nowhere. I guess I went along with the flow... It was always convenient to stay? I didn't have to do much and what I did have to do was pretty fun? I think the flow's changed now."

The others stared at her silent. Somehow, white smoke enveloped Kenosha's face.

"The clown girl, the Handmaiden's death, now this... safe to say we've finally reached our limit? There was always going to be a cap to what our little society could accomplish."

"L. Lady Cook. What you're suggesting... is desertion..." Schaumburg advanced, thought better of it, turned to St. Charles. "If that's what the lady intends to do I can't stop her! But we will reinforce Lady Cicero and protect the Empress and Lady Aurora. St. Charles—"

Cook drew the same floral pin from her hair and with a casual tap of her hand drilled it into Schaumburg's skull through the temple. Not a bead of blood dropped. Schaumburg slumped like a deactivated robot and Cook caught her to gently lower her to the ground. St. Charles watched without reaction. Like she watched a show on television. Her face had turned gray in the effervescence of the floodlights. She made no effort to do anything.

From Berwyn's vantage the three figures of Cook, St. Charles, Kenosha formed a triptych divided by the borders of the Washington Monument and its ice scaffolding. A flash of red and blue passed over Kenosha from a distant police vehicle. None moved for several seconds, completing the illusion of portraiture, penitent saints on opposite ends of an elaborate wood paneling. Berwyn supported herself on an elbow. She nursed a vague scheme of tricking Cook into picking her up, at which point she might jab a syringe into Cook's unprotected stomach. This plan lacked any tangibility; summoning even one syringe exceeded her capacity. And a woman who commanded liquid with such alacrity likely could control what flowed where within her own veins.

Quietly, Cook said: "It'll be better if no needless lives are lost in a hopeless situation, I think?"

"I did a lotta, uh, lotta bad shit for this," said Kenosha. "I killed. Dammit. I did it because I thought this would work, that we'd create something to uh, to help Magical Girls around the world."

Cook said nothing.

"You won't even try, Val? You won't even try? What if it's not even that bad? What if we can beat whatever's in there easy?"

"You can say that? After that clown destroyed us? Ahhhhh... I think that's a lie we teach kids. That anything is possible if you just try hard enough... I've always believed in understanding my limits. That—" She swept a hand to indicate the National Mall, now swallowed black—the Capitol, the Smithsonian, the lawn, everything. "That's beyond me. We don't even have grief cubes? We kept our stores in the Capitol... They're lost now."

"I know. I know Val. I just, uh, I just... fuck. Fuck. FUCK." Kenosha held a hand over her eyes. She might have started to cry but the chiaroscuro lighting concealed it and her vocal inflection did not change. "Sage... Fuck. It was for nothing."

Always a coward.

The tableau shattered. Everyone rose from their stupor in search of that unearthly voice. Berwyn rolled over. It came from the black pool puddling toward them.

Get in here and fight me Cook. Come on Cook. COME ON COOK. COME ON COOK. COME ON COOK. COME ON COOK.

Cook, Kenosha, everyone watched the ebbing tide of the black despair. Everyone listened to the voice that resounded from its every square centimeter.

COME ON COOK YOU KNOW WHO I AM. COME ON COOK. I SAID I'D BE BACK. I TOLD YOU I'D BE BACK DIDN'T I. DIDN'T I DIDN'T I DIDN'T I YOU USELESS FUCKING WHORE DIDN'T I.

It ebbed closer. Cook had transported them far from it but it somehow caught up.

LET'S GO. LET'S FUCKING GO BITCH. YOU'RE THE ONE. YOU'RE THE ONE I NEEDED. AURORA DIDN'T SATISFY. YOU'RE THE BITCH. YOU'RE THE BITCH. LET'S GO. COME ON. LET'S GO.

Berwyn collapsed. A figure began to emerge. The blackness ran off it like water. Everyone knew that figure.

BITCHFUCKER. MOTHERDICK. WHOREBAG. COME ON. FUCKSHITTER. HELLCUNT. LET'S GO. COME ON. I'M AWAKE NOW BITCH. BEDTIME'S OVER BITCH. LET'S GO. LET'S FUCKING GO.

Cook snickered. "Oh my god... Oh my god? Oh my god?"

DON'T FUCKING LAUGH AT ME BITCH. COME HERE AND FUCKING FIGHT ME. COME ON. YOU'RE THE ONE I WANT.

The snickering bloomed into laughter. Kenosha let her hands fall—her face glistened—she laughed too. Berwyn sputtered a laugh. Only St. Charles remained uncomprehending. Berwyn's laughs became a mouthful of bloody phlegm.

BITCH. BIIIIIITCH. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. COOK LET'S FIGHT. LET'S FIGHT. I WANT TO DESTROY YOU. I WANT TO BECOME INTIMATELY ACQUAINTED WITH EVERY MINISCULE ELEMENT OF YOUR BODY. I WANT TO UNMAKE YOU. FUCK. COOK. COOK COME ON. DO THIS FOR ME. YOU'RE OLD AS FUCK DON'T YOU WANT TO DIE ALREADY? I DON'T THINK IT'S POSSIBLE TO BE YOUR AGE WITHOUT WANTING TO KILL YOURSELF EVERY NIGHT. I NEED THIS COOK. I NEED TO DESTROY YOU. COOK. COOK STOP LAUGHING. COOK.

Cook stopped laughing. "I think... maybe it's rude to laugh when so many of our friends have died?"

"Fuck it," said Kenosha, sobbing and laughing together.

"Ahhhhh, but it's always so hard to know what's right to feel?"

COOK. COOK GET IN HERE. COOK I NEED YOU. COOK. IT'LL BE A PARTY. I HAVE AURORA IN HERE WITH ME RIGHT NOW. COOK. THE EMPRESS, CICERO, THEY'LL ALL BE HERE SOON. COOK. COOK. COOK YOU FUCKING WHORE GET THE COCK OUT YOUR EYE SOCKET AND FFFFFFFFUCKING GET IN HERE. GET INSIDE ME YOU BITCH. COOK. COOK.

The blackness seeped close to the outer ring of bodies. Cook's eyes flitted to its ebb despite the figure beckoning to her from the shallows. After a sigh, Cook held out her hand and bowed graciously.

"My apologies, First Centurion. But, ahhhhh, I'm not dumb?"

A new fount of water rose from the grass and washed the remains of the Empire of Chicago away. Berwyn rolled on the tides and watched the figure recede, it waved its arms wildly, it shrieked, it tore at its hair, it rent its flesh, but in the end nobody went into it and they said goodbye to the dream of the Empire forever.

—

The dream lived. No matter how many died. The dream lived, it never died. You may murder a million people but you may never murder an idea.

[29/57]

They who remained to wield this idea scattered into the Capitol rotunda. Her, Cicero, Joliet, Hegewisch, and one of whom the Empress regretfully lacked knowledge.

[28/57]

The others had fallen to despair.

[27/57]

The Empress could not die. Joliet and Hegewisch somehow seemed immune to despair's grasp; they plodded upon the black floor at leisure. Cicero possessed enough acrobatic acumen to evade death and beat a path for herself by ramming the butt of her halberd against the floor to form a series of shockwaves. Her method lacked grace, it looked foolish, but it invariably worked.

[26/57]

The final one rode upon Hegewisch's back. Hegewisch sagged under her weight and finally dropped her onto the safe ground of the rotunda.

[25/57]

A jovial DuPage curled out of the darkness as the Empress passed the threshold into the rotunda. She severed its grinning face and slammed the doors shut behind her, afforded a final glimpse of the unseemly beings her soldiers had become.

[24/57]

Yeah, run in there. Run wherever. If you're lucky it won't be me who kills you.

[23/57]

Joliet struck the ground wailing. She beat the tiles. "This world, this world can't, kch, can't hate me any more. Not any more than this."

[22/57]

The Empress jabbed the steel heel of her boot into Joliet's unprotected section of thigh between her stockings and skirt. "Cease. It is moments like these we must exude the most fortitude."

[21/57]

She understood her hypocrisy. She could not die; others could. This was the most strategic line, though. Joliet could not be reduced to a burden.

"Where'd the black stuff go?" asked the unknown soldier.

"There was some the first time we passed through," said Cicero. "What is happening? What is this archon that transforms my soldiers into monsters?"

"Forget explanations," said Hegewisch. "We're close to the exit. Look—windows." She pointed high.

"Where's the Handmaiden's body?" said Cicero. There was only one body on the ground, in a ruined tuxedo.

"WHO CARES?" Hegewisch had abandoned all decorum. "There's a way out RIGHT THERE—"

"Your wits are rotten." Cicero dismounted her horse. She tapped the ground with her halberd, and even a tap caused the ground to shake. "We've simply fallen into another trap."

"It never ends, it never ever ends," said Joliet. "Kill me or kill this world, aaaaaauck..."

The appearance of their world changed. Its gradations ran in ringlike layers up the rotunda's height. Scissors propelled by no hand cut squares into the bright daylight windows and pieces of paper floated away to reveal eyeballs staring in at them. At this point, discerning between the hallucinations of the miasma and the vagaries of the labyrinths proved impossible. The tile paneling effected unusual checkboard colors, first dark, then pastel.

"Whatever this is," said Cicero, sliding close to the Empress, "it was your sin that birthed it."

The Empress readied her blade. She knew.

From the onset her mind flashed back to that singular moment, that swift stroke of metal through DuPage's Soul Gem. How quaint, one might think, that so slight an action harbored such devastating repercussions. Not so quaint once they remembered the omens bestowed, from godly envoys, prophesying exactly what transpired; one might consider it an exercise in hubris, the Pharisees proclaiming their knowledge of YHWH but when His Son stared them in the face they denied him. Perhaps that was the message to be taken, perhaps God in Her power placed upon the Empress's road this challenge, and mere faith would have saved her.

But other interpretations existed. For the Dolorous Stroke that severed DuPage's mortal coil and created this unholy abomination to lay this land to waste fell of her own will. She had long considered the shedding of DuPage a necessity for the Empire to purge corruption. She knew few of her Centurions led the lives of spiritual edification she impressed upon them; she knew some of her Centurions wallowed in the sloughs of lust and gluttony. They believed themselves either undetected or exempt, though they were neither; and DuPage, worst of them all, wretched to her fibrous roots, tainted with overwhelming hate and the pure narcissism that can only come from such hate—even when one's hate is, as turned toward everything external, turned toward everything internal—DuPage could not continue a member of this Empire.

Yet DuPage had existed from the beginning, the Empire had grown around her, her influence had shaped it, Cicero was her pupil, Aurora her pupil, the next generation of Centurions her pupil; DuPage's hate engendered reflective hate or reflexive fear in them all. This poison had to die. Perhaps this necessitated death caused the Empress to put undue weight on the tactical advantage of using DuPage's Soul Gem as a weapon against the Washington Magi. She might yet grant that. But there had been a significance to that Dolorous Stroke. It had not come of wanton disregard.

If the death of DuPage sparked the circuits for the deaths of them all, of Aurora, of Cicero, of all her legions, then perhaps that had always been the price to pay for leaning upon her evil. If given the fantastic opportunity to undo her action, to unswing her sword, would she? And what would her alternative become? To keep that blighted sphere in her possession forever? As she captured America, the world, as she implemented her goals in practice, as she formed the utopia she desired—would that sphere always linger, always throb as an aneurysm in her brain, ready to burst and flood the brain with vile fluid? DuPage would never die of her despair. Never. She would never fall to the Cycles. The Empress could not believe it. In the week she held the corpseless gem it sometimes birthed, at random, a fell creature, nothing she could not dispatch, but its seething life terrified her, and she wondered if when the critical mass of despair had finally been reached would the crystal ball simply vanish or would it expunge that evil en masse?

She could not be sure, but even if it didn't, even if she locked it away in whatever vault the nations of the world prepared for her, whatever pocket dimension formed by the craftiest Puella Magi, always it would throb, always in her brain, always leaking its blood to poison her.

DuPage had always needed to die.

If it cost them all, every one of her soldiers, if it cost Hegewisch, if it cost Joliet—

Then so be it.

After all, it would never cost her. She would never die by its hand. Even if it took her ten years of hacking and slashing she would slay DuPage, excise with surgical precision the blot in her brain. The blot in her brain was a more dangerous prospect to her life than an apocalyptic danger. For the key to her death lay in her brain, nowhere else.

No matter how many years it took, she could rebuild everything she lost in this day. No, she would rebuild it more efficiently, more stalwart to her purpose, foreknowledged against past error. Possessed of a greater understanding of the Incubator, and whatever understanding he gleaned of her mattered not because, as he knew everything, he could never learn anything.

What had she said before? "Hopelessness is the very thing that gives us hope." She had not spoken idly.

Nonetheless, she would not abandon the lives still left her. As long as they drew breath, Cicero and Joliet and Hegewisch and the unknown soldier who clung to a jar full of clouds, the Empress would fight for their lives.

The phantom scissors glided across the surface of reality. The pieces they cut away revealed letters in newspaper print. Snip, snip. They read:

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.

A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers.

Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink has pins. It shows a nail.

What is a nail. A nail is unison.

Reality ripped at two separate spots and a pair of long white arms drawn by crayons swerved outward. A Cheshire smile split between them and opened to reveal a panoply of hideous colors.

Each finger on the hand was a Swiss army implement, a razor edge or a corkscrew or a paintbrush or the head of a mule. One arm swept for Cicero and the Empress, the other for Hegewisch and the unknown soldier. The lines of newspaper-print gobbledygook curved in rings around the arena, mazelike passages of text. Some passages she recognized, her mind fell to distraction even in this peril, while Cicero's mere paroxysm brought a cataclysmic force upon the hand.

It burst into letters. They fluttered like confetti. The Empress swore she detected snatches of Christine de Pizan's writings but before she could confirm the letters drifted into the groundless ground. Across the way Hegewisch crawled bleeding while the other soldier struggled between two fingers.

While Cicero bounded to strike down the second hand the Empress reached out and snatched a scrap of paper. It wasn't words, it was a string of albino paper dolls, one that extended as an endless accordion when she pulled until finally the string went taut and snapped between her hands. The paper dolls came to life and crawled up her arms, but she ignored their useless attempts to slice her and regarded the multicolored smile as it spewed a deluge of literal word vomit.

The paper dolls were everywhere now. Hegewisch, who crawled to the tuxedo body in the now-dubious center of the labyrinth, beat them back with her attaché case. Cicero destroyed the second arm with a second strike and caught the bloodied soldier before she fell, only for a circle of fifty-seven new rips to appear in the newspaper covering the walls and an arm extend out of each. The Empress became dimly aware that Joliet clung to her leg like the bestial creature depicted by her humiliating uniform.

From above, fifty-seven eyes watched. The Empress said: "So it's you."

"DIE," said Cicero, sweating and panting, hurling herself at the smile.

Fifty-seven.

Cicero drove her halberd into the face of the thing that was once the Handmaiden. As happened to most things Cicero struck—it died.

One must wonder what properties of this particular miasma prevented the Law of the Cycles from functioning. What circumstances had been created that disallowed the intercession of the Goddess Madoka Kaname? Was the despair simply too great for even Her? Nonsense. According to Hegewisch, God would eventually have to contend with the planet-sized despair of Her own celestial Soul Gem, and She would do so effortlessly. DuPage's despair, although great, appeared as a mere drop to Her. So what caused this? A unique property of the archon known as DuPage? No archon had ever exceeded the laws of this universe. Or perhaps the explanation were more simple... Perhaps it was not Her capacity to fight the despair that proved the impediment, but Her inability to peer inside a space so dark... As though they were no longer part of Her universe at all, but placed within an entirely separate, if parallel realm—DuPage's realm.

The labyrinth broke. The words and familiars shredded to dust. The rotunda returned as a shape of perfect blackness divided only by the distinct forms of human bodies. Cicero created a spot of safety for herself and the unnamed soldier before she landed.

THAT WHORE.

The voice emanated from a twisted panoply of Laocoön figures, fifty-seven or maybe less (truthfully she could not count with such precision at such a glance, and perhaps she had ascribed more significance than merited to generic clusters) images of DuPage clawing, tearing, cutting at her own sallow flesh with breadknife nails.

SHE CAN JUST WALK AWAY LIKE THAT? SHE CAN JUST WALK AWAY? THAT WHORE, THAT SLUT, THAT FUCK, THAT EEEEEEEJJJJJJKKKKKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHH!

"No matter how many I times I strike her she reforms," said Cicero with a sense of cool if breathless detachment the Empress envied, "I perceive no center or weakness... no point of vulnerability."

"She's, she's the miasma herself," murmured Joliet.

"I suspect the same..." Cicero's eyes drifted from DuPage to DuPage. The Empress, though accused of blindness, knew well the workings of her underlings, knew their rivalries and spats, knew that most of all Cicero strove to surpass this very enemy they now faced. Yet she continued the discussion with tactical clarity, and despite her great physical stress. Was it true that any mind could be shut off? Or was Cicero simply strong enough to progress despite her foibles? Yet against the Washington Magi she disobeyed orders, ruled by her passions...

WELL. WELL WELL WELL. YOU'RE ALL STILL HERE. THAT'S REALLY GOOD, THAT'S REALLY REALLY GOOD I SAY, BECAUSE NNNNNNNGGHHHHHHHH. AAAAAAAAAAAAKKKKHHHH.

Ahhhhhhh.

...You know, you know that skank left you all to die? She knew you were here and left you. You should all hate her as much as me. She left you. Flushed herself right down the toilet with all that slimy afterbirth she calls water.

"Cook," said Cicero.

THAT'S RIGHT! So now you can all die twice as hard because of it. Then she screamed in consonants inimitable by human lettering.

Cicero did not give her space to continue her scream. She rushed down the center of the room slamming her halberd and blasting back the ink. She beckoned for the Empress to follow as she continued to cut a path for the exit. She rode, stoic, unbending, attacks so practiced they fell with uniform force and velocity. The curvature of her body showed through the tight-fitting jockey's clothes she wore, where before it might have been obscured by armor. Her face shone with sweat but her arms moved unfailingly.

The Soul Gem that substituted the top button on her coat swirled black.

The Empress kicked Joliet off her leg and followed, cutting what she could. Joliet scampered behind while Hegewisch knelt in the center of the room doing something to the tuxedo body.

Cicero neared the edge of the rotunda, swung her axe, and did nothing. Her axe bounced back. Her whole body lurched, stunned.

We'll start with you, Cicero. You might be a little fun. Like old times, right?

Cicero swung again. Her halberd clanged against the miasma as though she struck an invulnerable barrier. The twisted, melting forms of DuPage ebbed toward her.

Her strength must be failing. She could push her body to its limit, she had trained herself to do that, but her soul had rarely been so tested.

"Administrator," the Empress called. "Your power—you must cleanse Cicero's soul or you will all perish." She realized only after she spoke that she had used the proper second-person pronoun. But—she could forego that vanity in this instance.

Although Hegewisch had eventually decided to follow, she dragged the limp body behind her. She did not appear to hear the Empress.

Don't worry, I'll take my time. I'm learning from my mistakes. I have to draw it out to get any relief.

Cicero's horse reared back to strike with its hooves at the figures thronging it. Cicero rolled onto the narrowing strip she cleared before, the unknown soldier rolled with her. The island began to close. Cicero howled and smashed her axe down; the blackness drew away, but only temporarily.

"DIE," she said. But what she struck did not die.

"Administrator, swiftly," said the Empress. "Joliet, do something useful and fetch her!"

The distance between her and Hegewisch seemed to stretch. No, it did stretch. Hegewisch grew smaller and smaller, although she continued to drag the body behind her on a dogged path toward them.

"Hegewisch!" shouted the unknown soldier.

"I don't need her." Cicero spat into the miasma. She wiped her face with the back of her glove. "She can't handle my despair anyway."

"Even if she can only siphon part of it—Cicero, you are the only one with the necessary strength."

"Aye, milady," said Cicero, suddenly effecting a bizarre cockney accent. "'Tis the truth, ain't it poppet?"

A DuPage lunged for Cicero and Cicero swayed too sluggishly to react. The Empress dove in front of her and parried the creature with her blade, but more pressed inward. "Cicero! Centurion Cicero, remember your training!" Cicero had faded fast, too fast, she had seemed so strong and stolid until but a few seconds ago, no gradual decline, she had burned herself at full percentage until she simply lacked any more to burn. Hegewisch had become pathetically tiny.

Let me chew her, Your Munificence. It's the death she deserves.

"Let it be known." Cicero clapped her hand against her cheek. "Let it be known, Your Munificence. Let it be known. Let it be known, in the end, of all your servants, I was the greatest."

But Cicero, how can that be true? I'm right here.

"The Handmaiden... too weak. Cook, a coward. DuPage... tainted. But me. But me...!"

Too many DuPages. They thronged. The Empress could not keep them back, yet they swelled only slowly, without great effort to push past her, allowing the gradual pressure of their combined weight to do all the work for them.

"It's time!" Cicero shouted, swirling her halberd around herself like a show performer or a character in crass entertainment, "it's time for my FINISHING MOVE!"

She had well and truly lost it. "Cicero, you have no such ability."

"I do now." And she sprang a hundred feet into the air.

For a moment she became lost in the miasma that swirled all the way to the top of the rotunda. Her uniform, mostly black, could not stand out, and she shrank to a size equivalent to the still-distant Hegewisch.

Oh what the hell is this. Come back here Cicero. You can't just jump into nonexistence what the hell—

"REASON—"

Cicero's voice, tiny, at the end of a tunnel, traveled to them.

The Empress heard that word and started to tremble.

"RECTITUDE—"

Out of the above blackness shot Cicero.

The Empress's vision misted. Yes... yes...!

Oh what the hell. This dumb book again? This reason rectitude shit again?

"JUSTICE!" Cicero and the Empress screamed in unison. A swell of strength surged into the Empress's own breast. Cicero was right. Cicero had always been right. She was the Empire's greatest creation, its most flawless outcome, the embodiment of the ideal Puella Magi she had striven to attain, one both strong and learned, pure and just, the hours she had spent with Cicero, lecturing her, teaching her, the potential putty she had found in a wisecracking young girl trotting on her pony from Cincinnati who could smash a big hole but had little else to speak of, that girl who the Empress had molded, formed, shaped, detailed, composed into a sculpture worthy of any Michelangelo, these words of Christine de Pizan roared in a final cry of triumph, DuPage corrupted, Cook corrupted, Joliet corrupted, Cicero remained, Cicero proved the enterprise had worthy goals, that even with a rotten center the Empire could create good, this strength she felt inside her was hope—HOPE—that truest expression of HOPE, Cicero, Cicero the Empress could love you no more were you her own daughter, for you were, a soulless golem like one of Dr. Cho's but while her homunculi trended toward wicked depravity you trended toward the light of God and understanding, and together you will usher forth the rebirth of the Empire, NOW!

Her Blade of Endless Regents and Cicero's Axe of Endless Servants struck together, as one, united in purpose and power. Everything that was black and damned flashed white.

This was a Stroke to counteract the Dolorous.

This was the Fisher King revived. These were his lands set in order.

This was the fragment shored against the ruins.

The Empress had never felt such power, not with all her armies arrayed before her. She knew then what was writ in the ancient texts was true. Evil could be destroyed. Hate could come apart in pieces. She had sought so long for this emotion, this unmingling of what she hated and what she loved; and as she thrust the emotion from her own heart she thrust her sword into its physical embodiment. Die, DuPage. Die you old ailment, you persistent malady. Here is your panacea!

She felt momentarily faint as her slash subsided. She knelt and balanced her head upon the hilt of her blade as she drove it straight down. The sky opened above her and the pale thieved fire of a Cheshire moon-smile bathed them from the heavenly spheres. She sensed no blackness in her field of vision; everything glowed white, so much so it blinded her and forced her to squint. She exhaled with exertion and turned to her servant, her comrade, her friend, her daughter, her sister, Cicero. Cicero also knelt. It was clear by the state of her Soul Gem she had expended every last ounce of energy.

"Cicero. Cicero!" The Empress pressed her hands against Cicero's head and raised it. "Cicero, you are everything I wanted to create. Cicero! Do you see Her? Do you see Her?"

Cicero's black irises rippled. Her sight set on something over the Empress's shoulder. "I... She..."

"It's Her you see, Cicero, it's God Herself. You're worthy, Cicero, you are worthy of me and you are worthy of Her." The Empress grew aware of a wetness on her face, it was tears, real tears, tears she had not shed in many decades.

"DuPage..."

"DuPage is dead, we've irradiated this world of her presence, our Stroke was absolute—Cicero! You are loved. You are loved!"

The Empress wished she could see. That glimmer that lurked in Cicero's eye, the reflected image of God, the sensation of divine beauty tingled against the back of her neck. What did she look like? Hegewisch had described her, unsatisfactorily, as "kinda plain," but the Empress could not believe such rot. She turned and of course nothing but the glowing whiteness greeted her, it was not her time, if ever her time could occur, and so she was denied the privilege of sight that Cicero had so rightfully earned.

"Tell me, Cicero, tell me, what does She look like? Please, you must let me know. Even a single word... A single word...!"

Cicero's jaw hung open, her tongue trembled, the Empress could see the word forming, with almost as much corporeality of the final words of the Handmaiden inside that wretched labyrinth.

The word she spoke was—

"Don't you dare blame me for this!"

That wasn't Cicero's voice, although it had synced so well with the Empress's expectations for her to speak. Out of the white at Cicero's back appeared a figure, still dragging a body behind it—Hegewisch.

"This was your fault from the start. You idiot, you moron, how can you be so weak? How can you be a god and be so weak? How can you have changed one bad thing in this world and called your work finished? How can you look at me for what I did when you let this and all of it happen? Did you think your stupid blueberry friend could stop it? Did you? Did you?"

Cicero vanished in the Empress's arms.

[20/57]

So. The Assumption. Cicero carried to heaven.

"Answer me. Answer me. Madoka Kaname, answer me. Answer me. Answer me. Madoka Kaname. Answer me. Answer me! Answer me. Why did you let this happen? Answer me. Why have you let all of this happen. Answer me. Do you actually have any power at all? Answer me—and you're gone."

"Silence... silence thy blasphemies, Administrator. Give thanks for thy sinful life and the benison thou art allowed to witness."

The Empress wiped her eyes. Things became much clearer; she realized most of the blinding glow came from her tears. She noticed beside her, at her knee, a body turned facedown... It was the unknown soldier.

Dead. Her gem, shattered.

[19/57]

She could not make sense of this body. When did she die? She had cowered near the Empress almost as Joliet had. That was her final memory of this small, unknown soldier. She ought to have been protected, how had this...

Hegewisch saw her too. "Midlothian," she said. Her face crumpled in bitterness. "Midlothian. So Cicero gets to go to heaven and here you are, dead. There's justice. There's your reason and rectitude." She let go of the body and swung her attaché case against her own head. "FUCK." She kicked the tuxedo body and the tuxedo body gurgled a little life.

Crawling catlike came Joliet from some undetected corner, a black smudge on the everlasting whiteness. Behind her, as though she brought it with her, came a black line, spreading, a circle around them, closing slowly.

A piece of the dome creaked, snapped, and broke against the ground. The blackness swallowed it and continued.

It's not the world of a millennia past, King Arthur. Heroism alone can't kill me.

The Empress watched only the ground between her feet, where the corpse of the unknown soldier lingered on her periphery. The incandescence had already begun to fade.

"Thou did not exist one thousand years ago, DuPage."

There's a part of me, now, that has. And of course, you're not that old either.

"This is, hhhh, this is when we need to run," said Joliet. She pointed at the gaping cavity at the top of the rotunda. "There's an escape."

Everything in the Empress's mind darkened. Her face went slack and she scraped her swordpoint idly against the tile. She felt the bead form in her brain, that deadly little bead.

She reached through her skull and crushed it like a pomegranate so its fluid ran down her fingers. "Joliet. Thou must fight."

"W, whhh, what?"

"Thou art a servant of this Empire and thou shalt do its bidding. Just as Cicero did, to the uttermost."

Joliet stared back, blank, but not blank enough to stop her from keeping just beyond the encroaching line of the blackness.

"Didst thou not hear? Hath thy feline ears gone deaf? Thou cringing, sniveling blot, thou wretched useless being, hath thou ever had a single mote of courage in thy self-parodic frame?"

"Uh... I..."

The Empress reached out and seized her by the hair. She brought Joliet's face against the iron plating of her kneecap. "ANYTHING? ANYTHING, JOLIET? HATH THOU EVER DEMONSTRATED ANY WORTH? Cicero did her duty and died without question in the war against evil, what is it thou hast done?"

She struck Joliet's face with the hilt of her blade. She flung her away, her mere sight suddenly disgusting, repulsive, inducing of nausea, she a withered lump in comparison to lordly, ascendant Cicero, and Joliet ostensibly the product of her own womb—ha!—well, the second contributor to her creation had admittedly been lacking in value. And the other Centurions suspected she were merely another creation of Dr. Cho's, one who used her magic to forget her own origins—if only! If only the Empress could disown such failure so readily. Cicero had risen from garbage, from the dregs of a society on tilt, unlearned, willful in her pugnacious ignorance, contrary to all attempts at edification; and yet the Empress had formed her clay into greatness. With so much more time and so much more control over Joliet, how had her shape turned so unseemly? What ingredient in the one proved absent in the other? Joliet's brothers, seventy years dead, had been unremarkable but not slime.

"Fight! Make thyself useful! Idiot girl!" Every strike eased the bubbling beads. "Even if one's body fails, the will can always be mastered! And is thy power, so graciously granted thee, perhaps not the exact thing necessary against such an evil? She may be an abomination, but if she truly bears the mind of DuPage—have her destroy herself!"

"I, I can't, my powers, hhh, hhhhaaah, they're not that strong..."

The Empress kicked her in the stomach, a useless gesture due to the Empress's own ill-conceived Blessing, but her foot lifted Joliet into the air and flung her toward the boundary of the black. DuPage had laughed the entire time.

More of this. More please. I could watch this for hours. This is what I need.

If this Empire crumbled, let it crumble entirely. If Cicero had died, nothing else of it harbored worth—save perhaps the Administrator. No, the Administrator faltered too, she raged at the God she ought to glorify; let her crumble as well, it would only take a few years before the Empress found another with her power, another better suited to the mantle of prophet.

Joliet crawled on hands and knees away from the DuPage who leaned forward to laugh in her face, but their world had yet again constricted. The whiteness had all died and the Empress could see that Cicero's final attack had left most of the rotunda intact, had not carried even to its ends. Cicero had fought stronger in ordinary combat. Her soul had been exhausted too much. The sickness strengthened in the Empress's stomach.

"N, no... I won't fight, I promise... Don't hurt me," said Joliet, capable apparently of suppressing her stammer when groveling for her pathetic life.

The mother-daughter spat's over already? I guess nothing lasts long anymore. She placed her palms upon Joliet's cheeks and Joliet refused to even resist.

Wait.

No.

It was—it was a momentary flight of fancy—she lost her mind for a moment—NO.

The Empress rushed forward with her blade raised and brought it down on DuPage. No matter what she believed she could not allow the murder of her child, no! Joliet was still young, only fourteen, her development had only begun, she could be salvaged, she could be someone worthy of love rather than hate. The bile in her belly burned as she divested the DuPage creature of its limbs. She turned and swung again to sever the torso. The head fell laughing and when she reached for Joliet the hands still gripping her cheeks turned to black ink. Joliet screamed and reached for the liquid, miring her fingers with it.

"No, stop—It hurts, IT HURTS. Stop it, stop it, I'll do anything, ANYTHING!"

(The Empress had allowed this. She had wanted this. Her last-second change of heart shifted no blame.) She stood over the writhing Joliet, unsure what to do. Joliet's outfit had a high starched collar and its Blessing would prevent a clean decapitation to keep the black matter away from the gem hidden among her frills. She raised her blade anyway and aimed for the chin. But as the blade came down it bounced against the flailing cuff of Joliet's blouse and the Empress staggered back.

She tossed away her blade and dropped to Joliet's side. She reached for the blackness to pry it away. It would never hurt her, she thought, but as she groped for it she discovered her fingers passed through it as though it did not exist, as though either the matter or her person were intangible. She pawed Joliet's face but could not scrape even a drop of the blackness away, as her gauntleted hands rose they shined with the same unblemished metal luster as before.

What had she done? What had she done? What had she allowed to pass? Joliet screamed, and screamed, and kicked her feet, and writhed. Her back arched against the ground and every muscle in her body went taut. Like an incubus possession. Her cat tail became a rigid black line.

They're dying one after another.

Joliet held suspended in her arched position—then collapsed. The black fluid on her face drained into her mouth and nostrils. The face that remained behind was pale, wide-eyed, unresponsive. Her body did not move.

"Joliet... Christine." She jostled Christine's face. "Christine? Christine?" She gripped her own forehead.

The main thing that staved off hysteria was that Joliet had clearly not died. She remained in a transformed state. But the Empress had no idea how long her life's thread would remain uncut, with that vile matter inside her... She seized her discarded sword and rose. She turned to DuPage who stood before her, still bare.

"Perhaps," said the Empress, "perhaps my strikes to you are like those a plastic knife. Is that so? Perhaps it is. But, DuPage, I can inflict upon you a million of those strikes, ten million, however many it takes to destroy you. I can strike at you for five years straight without tiring. Do you understand? This is what I can do to you."

Sure.

"Your only hope was to inflict such despair upon me by destroying everything I had. It must have satisfied you greatly to destroy my Centurions one after another, even my own daughter... Or whatever you've done to her. Do you intend to use her as a hostage? Is that it?"

Why would I do that.

"Do not act the idiot, DuPage, that's Cook's game and it even ill befits her at times. Jester you may have always been, but of the Shakespearean variety. This battle may rage centuries, but I will always win. I will outlast you. You cannot kill me. Whatever bind or jail you may place me in I will dig myself out of, even if it takes me a year gnawing at my prison to break it. Your defeat is preordained. And everything you took from me can be rebuilt."

For curiosity's sake, let's say I did use Joliet as a hostage, would that actually make you stop? A widened smile.

The Empress closed her eyes and considered. The distress she had felt to see her daughter hurt was already beginning to fade. The logical component of her mind knew the illogical DuPage, who desired misery above all else, would never allow Joliet to live; Joliet was, essentially, already dead. Her death was the Empress's fault, just as the unknown soldier cold at her feet, just as, if she considered it, the deaths of Cicero and all her other soldiers.

But she had prepared for that. Sayaka Miki's warning, that her actions would cause a calamity that killed millions, had echoed in her ears an entire sleepless night. She had shored herself to this proposition. She had over a century of training. She could distance herself from any emotion, become cold to any heat; and in the greatest despair she found the most hope. Joliet was not her first child, nor the first to die; the death of her creations was something to which she steeled herself upon their creation.

"No," she said.

Thought so.

"You will die, DuPage. By my blade, unless some stronger champion arrives before I finish. Once you've killed everyone who matters to me, you'll have no further way to hurt me. So, will you kill Joliet now or wait until you're desperate?"

Millie, your speeches won't work on me. I've got an idea, you see? A really good one. I thought it up just now. I'm starting to feel a little excitement inside me, I'm starting to shake. See this hand? Even I can tremble, look.

Perchance DuPage possessed an aim in her rambling, perhaps she merely rambled. The Empress wondered which would happen first; the Empress struck DuPage to death or DuPage exhorted the Empress to suicide. Despite everything, the Empress placed her odds on the former.

"For God and for the world I will create," she exhaled, almost a whisper, as she raised her blade and prepared to commence the longest battle known to humankind.

Before she took a single step Joliet sputtered. Her body twisted, she gurgled, she turned onto her side and vomited. Black liquid burst out, mingled with saliva and stomach bile. She retched and coughed. Her legs cramped and fingers clenched.

"Christine—Joliet. Are you well? You have nothing more to fear. I will protect you."

Joliet reached out to her. She lifted herself, shaking. DuPage did not seem about to attack, so the Empress reached back and grabbed her hand. She helped her to her feet. She said, telepathically, because if DuPage were an archon she should not be able to perceive it: I will distract her. Take Administrator Hegewisch and escape through the roof of the rotunda. If you move quickly you may be able to evade her—you'll only need to jump a short distance. Do you understand?

She and her daughter were the same diminutive height. Their eyes met upon an even level. Joliet's were fearful, rattled. Whether DuPage gave her up willingly as part of a prank or whether Joliet somehow, somehow gathered the inner strength to fight the darkness, the Empress could not tell. If the former, DuPage would likely snatch her away again at leisure, and the Empress could do nothing for her. If the latter, then hope remained...

Joliet extended a hand and graced the Empress's cheek. "I'm so sorry," she said.

"I forgive you," said the Empress. "You're still young. You'll learn. You'll grow. Now run!"

She wheeled on DuPage. DuPage laughed as the Empress hacked at her, hewed her to pieces, struck at the black ground until she reformed anew to be hewed again, she offered no resistance save that same black laughter.

Why wouldn't she die? Cicero hypothesized DuPage was herself the miasma, which meant only the miasma's total destruction would destroy her; Cook would have been most suited to a task like that, but Cook had departed. Cook had never needed, or seemed to need, to learn anything; the Empress's teachings had never touched her. Cook abandoned her, after so many years of servitude. Cicero had died... They had all died.

The Empress had killed them.

Her useless strokes blew bubbles in her mind. Beads coagulated. She thought of their deaths, they suddenly and inexplicably turned hot on her again, she didn't understand. Cicero, the Handmaiden... all of them... the young, scared soldier she had slain with her own attack. Why were these images appearing constantly in her head?

And she was so eager to cast them aside. To dump them all in the trash and start anew. Those faces who had served her loyally, who had believed in her project, who had conformed to her rules. That was her mentality, disposable pawns, ten years to whip up a new batch... The next would be better. Was that what she told herself? Really? Without the corruption of DuPage, the next Empire will be stronger. She told herself that? She believed it?

Face it. Millicent. Face it. DuPage was not the source of the corruption. Face it. You've known this the whole time, haven't you? DuPage wasn't the source, it was you, Millicent Luce. The root itself. The Empire failed because you failed. Your talk had been pretty, you had read a lot of books, you effected an aura of intelligentsia; pedantry. Superficiality. You created what looked like an Empire but in reality you were unneeded. A vestigial, greedy tumor sucking its lifeblood with your voracious gulps. Willing to discard any host at any inconvenience... With that mindset, what could you ever build that mattered?

You led them to death. You deserved all of this. It was your Dolorous Stroke that unleashed this evil. Cicero was right, those accusing eyes, when she said it was your sin that caused this. Your sin, Millicent Luce. Your sin against the God you claimed to worship.

You are every hideous hypocrite this world has ever known.

King Arthur? King Arthur was history's most infamous cuckold.

She was the one who sinned. She and DuPage were one, unified, inextricably linked. Their hates wove together. Had there ever even been a DuPage? Truly? Had DuPage ever really existed? Or had it been merely a shard of the Empress herself, Millicent Luce a century and a half old having congealed decades upon decades of this world's strife into her own body finally plucking from it a shadowy breathing entity composed of what she could no longer contain. Mordred was Arthur's incestuous progeny. What was DuPage to the Empress? What were these souls she had let plink into the gutter?

She reeled. She tripped over the body of the unknown soldier. Why had she, bestowed so many years, groped so greedily for the years of the youth? What had she done? What had she done? What had she done? What had she done? What had she done? What had she done? What had she done?

She was the poison. SHE WAS THE POISON.

Everything inside her became a husk. A terrible longing filled the emptiness. She seized her head and scratched at her scalp. She blinked and roved her eyes for something, something to hold onto, but the world was dropping fast away from her, and she knew, she knew there was only one way to atone, only one way do make up for all her amazing evil.

She tore at her sheath and pried at the inset gemstone. She could not pry it, not with her gauntlets, she had to pull them off, and even then her