It was like floating through liquid glass. My hair fluttered up, yet an invisible hand pulled me ever downwards, eyes focused on the thin veil of a surface as it shimmered. Everything before this moment felt like a blur colored gold, red, and white; now, only the cold of the water and silence shared with every other shape that drowned with me. A massive vessel could’ve been mistaken for a whale, piercing the water like a knife and carving a way down to an unseen bottom, and pieces of a satellite followed true together with many a rock and other sediment. Water flooded my lungs, made it impossible to breathe, though I wasn’t keen on breathing or focusing on anything but the pale light and—joining the wobbly tentacles that made my hair—my hands…

… My charred hands, mummified in a ghoulish cast of bubbling porcelain and marked by long, charcoal-like peelings. A single gold thread remains.

Still hot, still impossibly hot.

Are my spiders safe? Is Chen okay? Hana will be okay; she fights so well—she fights like her mother.

Water ballooned my windpipe, bloated the back of my eyes, and Alice’s kind arms wrapped around me pulled me further and further down to the dark. “… Nothing else remains of you.” I said without words. “She was the last of your dolls, and now she’s…”

She nods absentmindedly.

A small shadow paints the light, and if I could, I’d frown. “She lives forever,” her voice was as beautiful as the kiss we shared; the touch of her hand upon the boiling layer of porcelain was the coldest sensation I’ve ever felt. The name Death feels the most appropriate. “And she does it for you, Anon. The last doll I’ve ever made…” The shadow grows, gets closer, and Alice’s hands had moved to press against the small of my back.

“… Am I that worthy? Worthy all of this?” Ice formed on the walls of my arteries, heartbeat a dying laugh. It did not stop burning. “I don’t think I am—I don’t… want to be.” Her death replays before my eyes like a broken record, ten and twenty times, and a hypoxia-stricken brain tries its best to focus. Brutality without an A or a Z, for the sake of it, and dismissed just as quickly, brought by unmatched power. Unfair, senseless and… “I am…”

“Afraid?” Her voice brushes my ear. It’s angelic.

“… Next will be my Hana, then Chen, then… someone else. They’re all caught up in this hell because of me,” memories flood as does the water: a tiny baby, cradled in my arms. She would revive my marriage. Years later, on the edge of a bed, knitting together, scratching her ears occasionally.

The shadow is immense; it fills my vision, and it's daughter-shaped.

“… Yes, Anon Hakurei.” Shivers circulated every nerve of this sinking body; a bated breath wholly metaphorical, for those gentle hands of an expert craftswoman had pushed me upwards and lungs worked again, water spouting from my mouth as hands reached with fervor for my throat, clenching it to stop the invasion of cold sludge, darkness surrounding me like a plague, reflexes working overtime to keep me alive for just a second longer. What had happened?! Why had I just— “Yes, you are.” Her words echo final, and Alice Margatroid—or whatever had spoken those words to me—disappeared in the darkness.

I tried looking for her, though one arm had wrapped itself around me, and before I could even blink the underwater world had stretched like bubblegum, the soft sways of red and white ribbons contrasting an unfurled world of every tone of blue that exists. The next second I had these trembling, burnt hands of mine pressed against the rock and there was a ringing in my ears—

—puking. Uncontrollably getting rid of the rancid water from my body, gasping for fresh air, no matter how sulfuric it tasted on my tongue. “FATHER!” Not as forcefully as underwater, her hand reached and patted me on the back, hearing slowly returning as the excess water drained from within my eardrums, and… And rumbles I know too well filled them, spine straightening and water-damaged eyes looking out for the source: a thunderstorm had brewed above the lake and not by the hand of magic or lights, only two of Gensokyo’s most brutal fighters meeting above a floating blade of brimstone, Gaps sprouting to no avail as Ibaradouji ripped through them with five jagged nails or thunderbolts with the same girth as the tree logs I used to haul over on those few, peaceful weeks away from the shrine. Below, the water responded in kind, waves rising and breaking depending on which side employed more force. Inside the shrine, I saw a controlled war of gods…

… Now, I see two beasts vying for victory.

Where gods stand proud and untouchable, beasts have limits.

The small glimpses I got of Yukari Yakumo amidst showers of bloodshot eyes crawling on unstable Gaps, decommissioned trains and cars and metal signs flying at such speeds they’d bite into the earth with the same zeal of a gravekeeper showed a woman at her very worst, soaked in her blood and struggling with the pressure of a battle of gods.