She’s Genghis Khan in everything but appearance. Curved horns adorned her head and a dangerous gleam her eyes, a sick smile just below. Blood and mud caked every visible centimeter of her body, and her nails clamped around two gruesome pieces with murderous intent. No armies backed her, but as Yuuma trampled Lady Patchouli’s side of the miracle, the realization she needed none was crystal-clear—I recall how she came to the mansion to play with Lady Flan. The contrast of then and now drowns my blood in ice: she’s paces away from Lady Patchouli; if she tries anything…

… I won’t be able to help, four hands—two spectral, burning with a battery made of dead memories, though it’s of the same design as the batteries of Baghdad. Spiritually-charged, as taught to the elders of the temple I grew up at eons ago—sunk into thick roots spanning as fields in all directions, inverted to veil the skies in Sekai’s blue. Lady Patchouli made it more than certain: should I release this tree when the ritual is underway, our Sekai is… No. Don’t think such thoughts, Meiling. Not even when Genghis Khan stands before you and her.

Every muscle fiber screams, the balance of Ki lies in disarray.

Sekai—La… Patchy—is counting on you.

“Welcome to the fucking reckoning, ladies,” Toutetsu Yuuma spells, Lady Patchouli taking a step back. Without the book, she has no more right to Sekai’s tier of magic. “Aren’t you two gonna be the part? Tell me what I’ve asked of you? I’m not patient with those that have allied with that Yakumo woman.” The smile was a betrayal: only crassness lurked in her vertical pupils. She stepped forward, and Lady Patchouli stiffened the slightest—

—Knowledge sparked immediately inside her slit eyes.

“We are not of her ilk, never were, Toutetsu Yuuma.” She draws the dignity with which she regarded herself under the stars of our daughter’s birth, yet it does not come. The corners of her eyes are bluish—anemia—, her voice shakes, and a spasm is ever-present. “Yukari Yakumo was a mistake, committed under fear and—” Blood and mud and iron hit against paved dirt, destroying dozens of thousands of words and symbols in an instant. The reaction is crude. “DON’T!” Her body had lunged forward two centimeters, and against her best efforts came a coughing fit. My heart boiled, muscles brought to their limit screaming. Not from effort. Fury.

Hundreds of hours of tireless work for our girl’s life, erased just like that…

“Lady Patchouli! You monster, how—” I tried, but within the second, Patchouli had turned, grasping the center of her bosom with one hand and throwing the other in my direction. Smoldering coals made her eyes, but not those of a war machine; rather, the coals of an oven baking the bread attached to its ceiling, infuriated and blazing, yet not destructive. It eased the burden of rage.

“—No…! No. I…” Blood parted her lips and poured in fine strands. Lady Patchouli remained. “There’s no need for a battle. We know what we are, and we are not savages!” Her eyes sang a strange tune, and one that my bleeding heart lashed out against: the ritual has started, compromising us to keep it going. It fails if we stop, and we cannot stop Toutetsu Yuuma like this…

For their sake, and against the wishes of this rocking heart, I maintained an unwavering focus on preventing the tree from sliding. Lady Patchouli has come through once and again in situations that seemed final—my almost death, the play-fight, the two rituals…

S-She got this.

“You heard her, Gatekeeper? Civilized folk: I got the cards; you, the info. Dead people rarely talk—and you don’t want these cards to burn.” She places the end of the bigger jagged metal against the ground. “The dead kid, the ritual, the tree. Now.” The demand is a gong, and it shakes the earth. This time, Lady Patchouli is steady, her weak body protecting our slumbering Sekai. Relief rears its head despite the budding nerves and whispering fear: if she explains everything with that elegance she and Lady Remilia share, Yuuma’s surely backing down. She’ll know we mean no harm to Gensokyo and just want to have our child safe and sound, the ritual will proceed unmolested, and then I’ll never have to hear those words of suicide again in my dreams—

“… I cannot tell you any of that.” Eyes snap and lock to the back of her head instantly, wide and confused; a moment of hesitation lends the tree a few inches. My muscles roar. Yuuma frowns. W-What is she…? “The whole of that information is known to me, and I beg you to understand we are not a threat to Gensokyo. This won’t benefit the Gap Sage, nor will it weaken your forces.” She stammers but stays set like the cord of a bow. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter. What is she doing?! Why is she keeping information from an Underworld gangster marinated in blood?

“Wait, wait, wait,” Yuuma waves at her to not proceed, expression unreadable. Meanwhile, the ritual hums in stillness, fragile as glass.

One wrong movement, a breeze too strong…