Chapter Eleven

It was hot, like the inside of an oven starting to warm up. The air took the moisture from my breath. Greasy sweat was on my face, neck and back. I had to stand up, dizzy or not. The floor was too warm to sit on. This heat came from Flandre’s accumulated magic energy. The air buzzed and stank with it, like nearby air just after a lightning strike.

Throwing Remilia out of the vault, then pulling Marisa and me into it, was a small expenditure of the Flandre’s collected power. She used a bit more to shut the vault door tight, and block sounds from the outside. Remilia’s shouts and poundings stopped.

There had to be a source of fresh air down here, a vent that led to the surface. I wanted to find it, put my face on it.

“Marisa,” I hissed into the darkness. “Light!”

“No can do, Reimus,” she said in a normal voice. “Bleeding pretty bads. Kinda hard to spell up like thats. ‘Sides, get the feeling our hostesses doesn’t like lights. Don’t wanna be rudes and hurt her eyes.”

“Hold still, witch,” said Flandre. “I’ll clean this.”

I heard Marisa groan, but nothing else. I soon saw that I didn’t need a lamp, magic or otherwise. Light came from Flandre herself. It was dim, but enough to see once my eyes adjusted. It showed me a vampire even more bizarre than Remilia.

Flandre was barely shorter than her sister. She wore a similar outfit, red dress and vest over a pink shirt. All her clothes were dirty, tattered, threadbare. She had unkempt blonde hair, a shade darker than Marisa’s. She had her sister’s eyes, bright and bloody red... but I saw all of this as an afterthought.

Her wings - if they could be called wings. A pair of long bars sprouted out from her back. They were dark like iron rods, but flexed and curved like flesh. Bound to each were seven pointy crystal shards, starting with violet at her back and ending in red at the wingtips. Each shard was shaped like a big spearhead, the sharp tip pointing down, the broad base attached by twisted little vines of iron skin. Those wings wouldn’t help her fly, but she could cut a person to shreds with them.

She stood with Marisa, licking up the blood coursing down her arm. Marisa cringed at her touch, but held still. She wouldn’t risk upsetting Flandre. I stood there and watched, only because I didn’t dare move. Marisa’s wound bled severely, but the knife was nowhere to be seen. It looked like Marisa had been stabbed and pulled the blade out herself.

Flandre pulled back, licking the blood from her lips. She swirled her fingers around Marisa’s wound gently, then touched her fingers to her tongue. Just like tasting the sauce on a side of meat.

“You’re so sweet.” She said it like an endearment, which made my guts roil.

“Flandre,” I said. “Do you know why we’re here?”

She ignored me, kept going at Marisa’s blood.

“We can’t let you keep building this spell,” I said. “You’ll kill everyone in the Scarlet Mansion, including yourself, and your sister. Do you realize that?”

Again, no response. Marisa shook her head at me, telling me to leave things alone. Maybe she had an idea, since she had managed to talk us out of tough spots before, or maybe she was just too scared to act.

Even the vampire Remilia Scarlet had a moral conscience, however worn and weary it had become through the centuries. I bet her little sister had one too. I had to reach it, or at least try.

“Flandre!” I said, stepping forward. “Listen to me!”

“You leave me alone, human!” she yelled.

Flandre jumped back to get within reach, and swung her wing at me. Its blunt side lashed me in the side like a chain whip. Something snapped in my chest. It hurt like getting stabbed with a rusty pitchfork. I growled pain out through clenched teeth, collapsed to the hot floor.

“Stay there and be quiet,” said Flandre. “Don’t make me knock you around anymore. I don’t like my food tenderized.”

She turned her back to me and went back lapping up Marisa’s blood. Marisa stood still, petrified in shock. She heard whatever had broken inside me. I couldn’t count on any help from Marisa; she was as helpless as me. She could use the ambient energy for a spell - but without a spellcard or other foci, she would bring the mansion down on top of us. If Marisa even tried, Flandre could beat her down before she finished casting.

I refused to die before I had my say.

“Why, Flandre?” I said. I barely got the words out before a fit of deep, hacking coughs took me. Each one ripped new pain into my side, like someone was digging into my torso with a clawed hammer. Hot flecks of bloody phlegm came up.

She ignored me again, so I kept going.

“Why do this?” I said, making sure to breathe shallow. “Did Remilia hurt you somehow? Did Sakuya? I wouldn’t be surprised. Sakuya’s a murderer, and Remilia’s—”

“You shut up!” She turned and kicked me in the side. It hurt, but not like my other side. It was a childish gesture of anger, not a serious attack.

“Words hurt!” My body wanted to cough again, but I choked it down. “If you like them so much, why are you trying to kill them?”

“I said be quiet, you big beast!” She kicked me again, harder. She hit only soft flesh, but I was bleeding inside.

“I’m doing what my sister wants,” said Flandre, standing over me. “She told me all about you humans, the thing that makes you act nice.”

She went back to Marisa, leaving me to suffer on the floor. What was Flandre talking about? The thing that makes us act nice?

Then it hit me.

I knew why.

---

I remembered before all of this started. Standing in the courtyard of my shrine two days ago, I looked up at the mist and wondered. The question of who made the mist was a big one, but far bigger was the question of why. I couldn’t understand how anyone could feel enough hatred to kill all of Gensokyo.

Now I knew. It was never about hate. It was about love. What was that Marisa once said?

Heads is tails if you flip the coin over.

---

“Flandre,” I said, struggling for breath. “Did Remilia tell you that she wanted to die?”

Her head snapped around, her eyes blazing bright red. She opened her mouth and showed me her teeth. Blood dripped from her incisors.

“What?” she said.

“It’s totally normal.” I swallowed something trying to come up my throat. “When a girl is unhappy, when she’s worried about something, who does she tell? Where’s the first place she goes for a sympathetic ear? Her sister.”

Flandre stood over me again. She was silent, but her face spoke volumes. Marisa was forgotten for now. I was the next on the menu.

“She scared you,” I said. “I’m sure she didn’t mean to, but who wouldn’t be scared? Whether it’s a man in the sky, a mother from the earth, or just the rules that everyone agreed on – something is judging you. Something hates you for not being good enough. Remilia hasn’t handled it well.”

Flandre knelt beside me, the crystals of her wings clinking against each other. She got on all fours and smelled my neck, paying special attention to the bandage. If Flandre bit me, I wouldn’t have any blood left. She didn’t strike me as a light eater.

“So what can you do?” I kept going. “Morality comes from outside you, pressuring you from above. The first instinct is fight-or-flight. You can’t really flee because you’re locked in a box down here – but you can fight back, or at least try to.”

Flandre’s fingernails were long and sharp. She used them to cut the bandage off my neck, like she was unwrapping a pastry.

“But there’s a problem,” I said. “It turns out you can’t fight or run. Morality is inside you, too. Your path to redemption is not paved with corpses, Flandre. Not Remilia’s, and not your own. Dying doesn’t make you good.”

Her tongue flicked over my skin, numbing everywhere it touched. She opened her mouth wide, ready to bite. I closed my eyes and waited for the end.

---

A sudden gush of hot goop flooded over my neck. At first I thought it was my own blood, and that Flandre was a messy eater, but my neck couldn’t spray blood that fast. I opened my eyes and saw Marisa standing over Flandre. Her wounded arm hung limp at her side. Her other hand held the rounded base of a throwing knife, stuck into Flandre’s back.

Flandre coughed up all of Marisa’s blood, right onto my neck. I pushed her head back and scooted away, fast as my broken body would let me. My insides wailed in agony, but I had to get out of the line of fire.

Flandre fell to her side. The tip of the throwing knife poked out the front of her vest; Marisa had stabbed clean through. She stood over the Flandre, looked up at me.

“So sorry, Reimus,” she said. “Couldn’t get a clear shots­—”

“Get back!” I yelled, and started coughing for it.

Marisa only looked at me, as if to say, what for? It wasted the one second she needed.

---

Flandre’s body tensed, her limbs clenching and her back arching. Her wing crystals flared with rainbow light, numbing my eyes. One of Flandre’s wings swung around and clipped Marisa’s feet out from under her. She fell down beside the vampire. The other wing came from above and stabbed two of its crystal shards into her lower back. Marisa screamed. I screamed along with her.

Flandre yanked her wing out of Marisa’s back, prompting another shriek. She got to her feet, reached back, took hold of the knife and yanked it from her back. A splash of blood followed the blade, splattering to the floor like a spill from a bucket of paint. The strobe lighting from her wings turned the blood charcoal black. She took one look at the knife and threw it away.

“You killed me, witch!” Flandre yelled at Marisa. She reached down, grabbed Marisa by the jacket and picked her halfway up. “Come to Hell with me!”

She swung Marisa around and threw her against the wall. Marisa folded to the floor, lay there like a dead thing.

Flandre turned to me. She looked ready to give me the same treatment, but her strength left her. The light in her wings flickered, then died out, leaving the room mostly dark again. She wobbled on her feet, couldn’t keep her balance. She fell to her knees, then to her face. Pitch blackness fell.

I lie there, my eyes burning from the light now gone. The only sounds were the windstorm of my own labored breath, the manic thumping of my heart in my ears. I shivered and shook, even though I was fever hot.

“Marisa?” I said. “Are you okay?”

Silence. I couldn’t even hear her breathing.

“Marisa!” I said. “Answer me!”

Nothing. I feared the worst. Losing so much blood, getting two deep stab wounds in the back, and maybe snapping a few bones on a hard stone wall. How much punishment could her body take?

“Marisa!” I screamed. I would have gone over and tried to shake the life back into her, but I had no strength to move.

New light flooded into the vault, along with a blast of cold air... except the air wasn’t actually cold, just far cooler in comparison. Flandre’s spells were gone. The vault door had swung open. Remilia came in, one wing hanging limp off her back; she had taken the hook out. Sakuya was at her side, her silver hair matted with blood. Patchouli came in behind them, holding the blue crystal lamp that lit the chamber. Back in the slaughter room, Meiling lay on a pile of scrap metal that used to be a wood stove.

“Good God!” said Remilia, looking the scene over. “Sakuya, help me with Flandre. Patchouli, see to the humans.”

“Yes, Mistress.” The youkai witch came over and knelt beside me. I tried to point at Marisa.

“Her first!” I gasped. “She might be… She might—”

Patchouli put her hand over my mouth, silencing me. She spoke quickly. “I can see you are going to be difficult if awake. I do not know how badly you are injured, and I care not to learn by autopsy, so you must be docile. Sleep now.”

Her words strung into no meaning. I was panicking. I would have yelled at her to tend Marisa before me, but I didn’t get a chance. Patchouli moved her hand up to cover my eyes. She muttered something under her breath. A jolt went through me.

I was far away from myself. My body stayed, to suffer its hurts and injuries without me. I went somewhere else.

As I left myself behind, something came with me: Marisa might be dead.

My own death didn’t frighten me, but the death of someone close to me... that couldn’t happen. I would never recover from it. The most important part of me would die with her.

Don’t go, Marisa.