Pippy reached out again, just to confirm she had indeed bumped nose-first into something. Her hand met with the hand of her reflection… and, yes, met resistance. “Either I’ve just met my doppelganger and she’s screwing with me, or there’s a mirror here… somehow.”

“What?” Krey almost thought she was messing with them… until he, too, saw and felt it as he approached, bumping into something unseen, and then realising it was his own reflection. He stepped to one side, and it disappeared from his view as if slipping behind a curtain. He tried moving forward again, and it worked; he managed to reach Pippy and see the same phenomenon there before her. The others followed his lead to navigate closer as well.

Emilie, instinctually, reached out. “Something about this… is familiar…” when she touched it, she felt a flash of pink behind her eyes and an unmistakable presence. “Goddess…”

Livia’s attention was piqued. “What? You sense Phyrn?”

“No,” Emilie shook her head, “another goddess.” Her eyes widened. “Ponima. Ponima is hiding here. We’ve stumbled into her… defences, I suppose.”

“GO AWAY!” a voice boomed and echoed from nowhere. It was a voice they all recognised.

“Goddess!” Emilie cried, visibly pained. Krey offered himself to lean upon, and she accepted, clasping his shoulder and adjusting her footing. “Goddess, hear me! Please!”

“NO!” Ponima’s howling drove nails into their skulls and set fires in their minds. “BEGONE! BEFORE I KILL YOU FOR REAL!”

“I beg of you, goddess, at least allow just me to pass into your walls! As your hierophant, your faithful mortal servant! As one you chose to—”

“I CHOSE NO HIEROPHANTS! PHYRN CHOSE YOU!”

What am I doing? Emilie cursed. She’s right; not even a hierophant has ever had true audience with Ponima… though, there has been one… Emilie’s other hand clutched the scabbard of Trick of The Light. This must be destiny.

The hierophant threw herself forward, away from leaning on Krey, and hurtled toward the illusory barrier. She darted right, and vanished, as if turning a corner.

“Wuh oh!” Pippy blurted. “Quick! Come on, everyone!”

Emilie reappeared, now on the other side of the barrier, gazing through it like a window. “No! Do not follow me! That will only agitate the goddess further; I must seek her out alone.”

“Emilie, that’s crazy!” Livia bayed. “She’s dangerous! She nearly killed us all!”

“Pursue if you feel you must,” Emilie conceded surprisingly quickly. “This is a test of all our faiths. Be true, for it is the only way we shall gain her trust.”

“Blasted gods…” Krey muttered. “Playing games with us.”

“Don’t hate the game, human,” Bel groaned as he clambered down from Danu’s back. “Just play it. Better chance of winning that way.”

“What’re we waiting for?!” Pippy yapped. “You heard her! Let’s go!” Pippy dashed forward, immediately smacking into another illusory wall, but also recovering just as instantly and continuing to find her way.

No matter how many times her advances were repelled by the concussive shock of hitting invisible barriers, Emilie’s forward momentum did not falter. Labyrinths were not often best solved with brute force, but given the transient dispositions of the being at the centre, speed was of the essence. Just as she was thinking of that very notion, she felt a gust of air blow sand into her face, and when she regained her clarity, something was… different. She reached out again, and felt a barrier where there hadn’t been one before… and one behind her now as well, from where she’d just come. Of course, she realised, it was never going to be so easy.

“WHY DO YOU PERSIST? I WILL NOT SEE YOU!”

Emilie proceeded as best she could, slower and steadier now. “And yet you do not expel us from your house of mirrors. Your past actions betray and portray you, goddess. When you ejected Phyrn from a recent conflict in the night, she came to me, confided in me.”

“A FOOL JUST LIKE HER CHOSEN!”

Another shift in the walls. Emilie glanced to her side and saw Livia run into view. Bel appeared to her other flank, and Pippy and Krey appeared in front of her.

“Damn it!” Livia punched out to her side, confident she’d hit something she couldn’t see. “We’re never going to reach her like this! We can’t go to her, we have to bring her to us.”

Bring her to us… Emilie started nodding slowly as the gears turned in her head and the flame was stoked in her chest. She drew Trick of The Light and swung it as she turned in place, hitting a barrier behind her. The noise it made was agonising, a scratchy whine that burrowed into every part of the body.

“AAAGH!” Ponima’s screaming only made it worse.

“Do I have your attention, goddess?” Emilie asked to the empty air.

“SOME HIEROPHANT YOU ARE, ATTACKING ME LIKE THAT! HOW DARE YOU BRING THAT MISBEGOTTEN BLADE BACK TO ME?!” Ponima’s words scathed worse than any mere sound.

“Please forgive me, goddess, but you are leaving me little choice. I must ensure you are listening.”

“I CAN HEAR NAUGHT BUT ALL OF YOUR THOUGHTS, STIRRING AND CHURNING!”

“Then I pray what I do next will reach your ears, goddess.” The hierophant took a deep breath, cleared her throat, and raised her rosary to her collarbone. She closed her eyes, and waited for silence to set in.

Then, slowly, like the pale light of dawn emerging from the dark, her voice slowly crept out of the silence. She hummed a continuous, unchanging note, growing in volume… and from a circle around her feet, wisps of twirling green began flapping up around her, like ribbons in a wind. She opened her mouth, and her humming evolved into singing. The melody was whimsical and tender, stepping from note to note in a rhythm of nary a beat, not a composition but the sounds of a soul that was reaching. The simple circle at her feet grew, flowering with patterns of intricate light, more circles forming. They turned gold, then faded white, then bloomed pink, more and more geysers of aura erupting forth and whirling through the paths once undefined, now revealed by the bending of the light. The barriers began to resonate, emitting faint tones and beginning to faintly glow.

“WHAT IS THIS?! STOP! STOP THIS NOISE, THIS… sweet… SOUND OF NOTHING!”

Emilie paused her spellsinging to speak, resuming right after. “I know you are in pain, goddess. It was selfish of me to assert my presence upon you… I now know how to reach you. I must fulfil my ultimate responsibility as a hierophant: the quieting of troubled divinity. Let me into your heart, goddess. Let me quell your turbulent soul.”

“NO SONG OR SALVE OR SWEETNESS WILL UNDO WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO ME! MY HOME IS ADRIFT, ALL BECAUSE OF THE WRETCHES I ONCE CALLED MY ONLY FAMILY. You… YOU KNOW NOTHING OF MY HEARTACHE!”

The sky itself seemed to crack, and sharp fragments of radiant pink glass rained down upon them. The others all dived and shrieked as they felt their flesh torn up by the hail of cuts and slashes, but even as she felt her blood let from her skin by a thousand lacerations, Emilie did not refrain. It is all an illusion, she kept reminding herself. My faith is absolute; I know you would never truly harm us, goddess. That is why you did not let Lu Sen truly kill us in single combat; that is why you did not obliterate us when we beat your test. That is why you have not killed us already here and now. That is why you hear my song.

The song possessed no words, just feelings. Her voice danced smoothly and deftly from note to note, cadence to cadence, volume and emphasis carefully measured. Though, it was not design that lead her voice; the composer was purely her soul, feeling the progression of the music within, not thinking too hard about where this trail of song was taking them. Looking for the destination spits in the face of the journey, Emilie recalled from the Pages of Prayer, the only known work of collaborate literature composed by all members of the Decakon. Those are the words you wrote when you could still compose your sanity, are they not?

“I WILL NOT BE MOVED TO TEARS BY THE THINLY-STRUNG MELODIES OF MORTALS!” Ponima’s power, as it was ever cursed to do, began flailing in her form, thrashing against her self-control. The reflection of this inner struggle was the cracking of her labyrinth, the unseen mirrors all now made visible by large fractures, the sounds of them all overlapping in such a way that the very air seemed to crack. “YOU CANNOT COMPREHEND THE DESPAIR OF AN ETERNAL BETRAYED! NO LYRIC OR LITERATURE CAN DELIVER THIS MISTAKE OF A WORLD FROM MY MOUNTING ANGUISH!”

The glass exploded upward in myriad shards, now radiant with pink light. The labyrinth was gone… and Ponima was revealed, floating just off the ground a short ways from them all, staring with burning eyes and glistening streams down her face. Her hands were raised skyward… and then she brought them down.

Emilie did not waver. When the hail of cuts began, she endured. Even has her posture buckled, her voice did not. Pippy danced to the hierophant’s side and did her best to weave a field of arcane aspects amid the rain of pain lacerating her flesh and damaging her precious apparel; aspects of peace, focus, clarity, yearning, bravery, determination, and most of all, resolution. It can all be repaired, Pippy kept reminding herself. Cloth and flesh both; just get it done, just like we always did, right Fainche? For a second, Pippy actually expected the long-dead esper to respond. She pushed those memories from her mind quickly after.

Emilie was reluctant to accept the presence of the red, but she was hardly in a position to argue, and just continued her song, trying desperately to reach out to the cracking mind of the frenzied goddess.

And while Emilie tried to reach her mind, Livia rushed to reach her body. She did not draw her weapon, but did sprint at her as fast as she could given the terrain.

While she was closing the gap to hopefully finally get a literal hold on the slippery Ponima, Bel unslung his gun and began lining up a shot.

She’s not Fyren… but she might do.

“Hey!” Krey bellowed, punching the gun to throw off Bel’s angle and then tackling him into the sand.

Bel let out the faintest grunt of discomfort. “What’re you playing at, human?!”

“Did you miss the fucking memo, moralim?” Krey hissed. “We’re not god slayers… not if we can help it, at least.”

Bel, begrudgingly, acquiesced.

“STAY BACK!” Ponima’s shrieks made Livia’s ears ring and head pound, but she pushed on, so close yet so far.

I wonder if I’m really getting closer, she thought, or if this is all one big illusion. Something in her heart knew that it was not, that this was real and that Ponima was far too upset to conjure anymore meaningful tricks. That, or Emilie really is getting through to her. She dared to hope it was the latter. If she is, then the crazy idea I’m having may just work. Emilie’s spellsinging had reminded Livia of her own childhood chapel choir days, singing and dancing with the other children of her home town. She cringed slightly at the recollection of singing one of said hymns on the ship they took from Bahngol to Narkato, so far ago.

Livia slowed her pace as she got within a few meters of Ponima, who had gathered pulsing orbs of magical energy in her hands, poised to throw them at any moment. “Hello, goddess.”

“You…” Ponima spoke a voice almost undisturbed. “Phyrn’s truest chosen. Be thankful for that, or I would have spread your blood across the sands by now.”

“Do you hear it, Ponima?”

Ponima clutched her own head and started growling with clenched teeth. “I cannot stop hearing it! That… din!”

“It’s beautiful singing of a faithful heart, Ponima. I remember, many years ago, I would sing similarly with other children, dance elaborate dances, to garner the grace and attention of our goddess— of Phyrn. At first, it didn’t work for my group… but when we started understanding the meaning of it all, started to believe… that was when she felt us reaching out to her.” Livia extended a hand. “I don’t know you very well, Ponima… but after what happened to my world, I think I understand how you feel. I see in your eyes what I saw in Phyrn’s when we realised Aubade was unavoidably lost, and we were never getting it back.”

The sizzling balls of pink plasma in each of Ponima’s hands began to wilt, fade. “You… YOU COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND!” her very words caused a gust of wind to blow Livia back, nearly knocking her down.

Livia did not retract her hand. “Dance with me, Ponima. Let the song of your most faithful in, and let us dance to it. Doesn’t it speak to you? That in spite of it all, even after you tried to kill us, we still extend this hand?” she shook her hand slightly, emphasising her gesture. Please work, Livia prayed, please work… please… don’t let Fyren drive yet another wedge between would-be allies. She thought back to Tecal and felt a pang in her chest.

“I… I…” fresh tears flowed from Ponima’s eyes. “I… no… NO! NOOO!” she threw her arms out wide, and the blast of raw force sent Livia spiralling through the air, spinning head over heels several times before crashing into a nearby dune. “YOU INSULT ME WITH YOUR PITIFUL PLATITUDES, OUTLANDER!” her voice resonated and echoed with agonising, impossible acoustics.

Livia was all but out cold, looking up at the approaching avatar of lunatic despair, and realised her body was not responding to her mind’s commands. Well… this might be it. At least I’ll die trying instead of letting myself fall. Sorry, Pippy.

As if she’d heard her thoughts, the Battlecaster Extraordinaire leapt down from the top of the dune and landed between Livia and Ponima. Without hesitation, she swung Doom with all the force she could generate with her body, twisting her torso and shifting her stance as well as throwing her arm. The head of the mace smacked Ponima full-force in the face, blowing her hood down and sending her reeling back with a hit that, to anything less divine, would have been a gory fatal blow. “Stop it!” Pippy cried. “Stop lashing out at everyone who tries to be your friend!”

“Y-you…” Ponima stammered. “I feel… what is that I feel in you?” she eyed Pippy up and down, this scrawny thing, and saw an aura surrounding her that simply did not match. “How… delightfully maddening… what have you done?”

“Nevermind me!” Pippy scolded. “Look at yourself! You’re pathetic!” with no motion, leaving a red-tinted afterimage in her wake, Pippy slid forward with blinding speed and kneed Ponima in the stomach.

“Augh?!” That… hurt! Ponima couldn’t believe it. THAT ACTUALLY HURT?! ME?! SHE CAN HURT… ME?!

“I don’t want to hurt you!” Pippy replied, blatantly reading the goddess’ soul and mind.

Ponima looked up and saw those honey eyes had taken on a red radiance, streaks of the same harshly bright colour running through her blonde hair. Her form was outlined with a red glow, and sparkles of red leaving wispy trails slowly flew in strange orbiting patterns around her. “I’m not strong enough to do any more damage… but I reckon I’m just strong enough in this state to take anything you could dish out too. No more thrashing, no more destruction… if you have to get it out of your system, take it out on lil’ ol’ me; I’m tougher than I look.”

“Pippy!” Livia called out, nearly being sick in response to the effort it took to reach such a volume after the impact that’d just winded her and then some. “You’re just as insane as she is!”

Ponima let out a wordless whine. What is this sympathetic ripple? It cuts through me! “And is that… SINGING… getting LOUDER?”

Livia, Pippy, and Ponima all looked back toward Emilie, who had been slowly approaching this whole time, one gliding footfall at a time, engrossed in her song, the whirling light of her magic growing more intense, gradually but noticeably.

In that moment - that brief, beautiful moment - Ponima was defeated. For just a second, the goddess was overcome, and a few discordant, quaking notes arose from her throat. She clapped her hands over her own mouth, catching her voice before it could betray her anymore… but it was too late. She’d already heard the harmony of her voice with the hierophant’s… and she’d already felt the shiver run down her spine, the flare in her chest. Without looking, she launched a fist out to her side and hit Pippy square in the face.

“Ow!” Pippy rubbed her nose, but her form didn’t break. “Do it again!”

“Wh-what?!” Ponima, for the first time, was stricken by the absurdity of a mortal. That’s a new sensation… I’m melting… and I think I… like it.

“Come on! Do it!”

Ponima hesitated for a second, but wound her arm up and let loose again. Her fist failed to rattle Pippy, a burst of red exploding from her body, as if dispersing the force of the attack.

“OOOOW! FUCK!” Pippy started cackling. “Again! Come on, I know you can hit harder than that!”

Another hint of melodic intonation escaped Ponima, and the goddess nearly screamed, balling her hands into fists and crashing them like battering rams into Pippy’s shoulders. Pippy had to step back to keep her balance, but her limit-breaker spell was holding firm.

My outsides will hold… even if it costs me my insides.

Ponima started laughing now as well, laughter laced with melody, haphazard singing that she could no longer fend off. She nearly flew into the air when Emilie reached out and placed a delicate hand on her shoulder. She didn’t stop singing; in fact, her voice only became more passionate, more tender, and her eyes…

Those eyes… so full of… “Love…”

Emilie just nodded, continuing her song.

Staring into the hierophant’s eyes, Ponima punched Pippy in the face again and again in rapid succession. On the final punch, she pulled right into her shoulder and groaned, feeling a cumbersome ache flow from her entire being that she didn’t realise was there until it was gone. This final punch broke Pippy’s self-enchantment, and she stumbled back into a familiar embrace.

“Oh, Livia…” Pippy sighed. “You’re feeling better, I take it?”

“Shush, you,” Livia chastised lovingly, planting several kisses on the top of her head. As she held the only semi-conscious Pippy, she willed up her white magic and let her arms and hands hum with the healing aura. She didn’t know if Pippy desperately needed it or not, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

Ponima, at long last, raised her voice in song. Her palms found themselves pressed against Emilie’s, their fingers interlocked, and they closed their eyes… approaching a crescendo that, in Livia’s estimation, would’ve caught the attention of gods several worlds over, nevermind just in this one.

Krey and Bel looked on from afar, having taken the opportunity to get things straightened out.

“You see?” the knight waved with an open hand at the scene playing out before them. “Mindless aggression is always outweighed by the potential rewards of just having a bit of patience and faith.”

Bel smirked and shook his head. “That woman, goddess or not, is the magical manifestation of the word ‘fickle’, Sir Knight. We’ll see how long her placation lasts. And when it expires, and she starts losing her mind again, you’ll thank me when I put a magicked bullet through her cranium and pluck her empyrean soul from her ethereal flesh.”

Krey just about managed to resist the urge to deck Bel again. “Wordy little bastard, aren’t you? Let’s just shut up and enjoy the victory, shall we?”

Bel shrugged with upturned palms, as if to say whatever, have it your way.