Code Gray [alpha] Now on Chapter 17: Thou foolish egoist

[Dr. Cakey]

Well, Shonen Jump has left alpha, so it's an appropriate time for me to enter it. Code Gray is a thing I wrote over National Novel Writing Month last year. I am now completely unsatisfied with basically every aspect of the plot, and I'm going to rewrite it from the beginning to reflect the significant changes I want to make, but in the mean time I'm going to throw you folks what I'll call the "alpha version". This is mostly something of a litmus test to see what people think, both of the story itself and my writing of it. I also won't claim I'm not fishing for suggestions, so if you have an idea/recommendation/fried chicken recipe, please voice it. If you think it sucks, please say so, so I won't waste my time rewriting it.
 
I'm beginning with the first two chapters and plan on releasing one chapter a day. Proofreading on these chapters is minimal to nonexistent. I'm decent at proofreading as I go, but I'm putting that out there. There are also a couple of places where I began writing in one direction discovered it led absolutely nowhere, and started writing in a new direction. Such places are noted. Other crap happens where it happens.
 
[spoiler="Chapter 1: Mirage Conflict"]
A princess, dressed in white, wandered lost in a valley of mirrors. Jagged crystal spires reached from the ground up at the sky like claws or trees, glass panes stretched between the branches, reflecting and refracting the light from the turbulent sky. The princess picked her way among these crystal mirrors, seeking the path to sanctuary. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted an azure swallowtail butterfly resting its wings on a mirror.
 
In silence it rose from its perch, fluttering on silent wings deeper into the glass forest. For many long minutes, nothing happened, and the princess continued to walk, only by the sound of crunching glass accompanying her steps. Perhaps the stormy sky was faintly dyed with the colors of an unseen setting sun, or perhaps it was a trick of the eternally reflecting light.
 
In time, the princess came to a hollow in which no crystal grew, as if the meteoric fist of some deity had come down and struck the earth in its wrath. If any such thing had occurred, it had been a long time since then, and great crystal arms - what in a true forest would have been ancient and gnarled oaks - stretched their branched hands across the deep depression. The roots of these oaks would have reached back into the natural stone pillars that ringed the hollow, and the mirrors between their branches gleamed more than a handspan across. As she looked out across the depression, an image burned into existence within one vast mirror. A red eye.
 
“Princess,” murmured the voice that went with the eye, a resonant, female voice with undertones that rumbled like thunder and shook the crystal forest. It said nothing else, but a stifling dread poured into the atmosphere, and the princess panicked, stumbling over the edge of the depression and sliding down. Quickly she regained her footing and ran.
 
“No escape.”
 
A second eye opened in another pane of glass, and another, and another, until she ran down a corridor of burning eyes, all turning to watch her flight. Suddenly the ground buckled and rose beneath her feet, a whole chunk of rock breaking off and lifting her upwards. All the eyes were gone save one, or perhaps there had always only been one, and the rock she stood on was drawn toward it. The crimson eye expanded until it filled all of her vision.
 
“No escape.”
 
And then the eye became a thousand fragments of glass flying through the air. The storm-clouds that before had covered the sky were now parted to reveal the rising moon. A figure stood on one of the rock pillars that surrounded the hollow, silhouetted by the luminous full moon. The eyes returned, burning on every mirror like a sea of blood. Only this time, each one was fixed on the figure.
 
“Do not interfere,” the eyes commanded. From behind every mirror crept one, two, five butterflies with wings of fire, rising as one and flying toward the intruder with such speed they were reduced to streaks of light. The intruder leaped, far higher than a human would be capable, and the blazing streaks followed, an evil hunger emanating from them as much as heat. At the apex of her leap, the figure produced from her billowing cape two objects, and four pairs of azure laserlight stabbed out from her hands, slicing through the storm of butterflies and carving a place for her to land. She leaped again, this time to the side, the blasts from her pistols - for that was what was she held - not letting up for a single moment. She landed on another pillar and leapt again, and again, the fiery butterflies continually giving chase. Whenever they would begin to surround her she leapt again; into the air, down to the ground, or off to the side. As the battle wound its dizzying course around the edge of the depression, an occasional butterfly would lose its way and collide with some object, creating a sulfurous explosion to engulf them both.
 
Through it all the crimson eyes kept watch, suffusing the air first with amusement, then irritation, and finally the stirrings of anger. At that instant, the remaining butterflies flew out in all directions, forming a domed cage around the figure where she stood between two pillars. Then they flew inward, like a squeezing hand.
 
To the two watchers, what happened next occurred extremely quickly and was almost impossible to see. The figure leaped again, not to her full height this time, arching backward as she did, turning and twisting through a long corkscrew motion. Butterflies passed by her sides, between her legs, on both sides of her cape, brushed by her cheek, one even scraped through her fingers, but in that half-second where everything moved, not one touched her. Then the instant passed, and the next several seconds were filled with explosions as hundreds of butterflies crashed into the pillars and ground. After that came billowing clouds of dust, and silence.
 
Silence broken by the crunch of boots on broken glass. The figure emerged from the dust cloud unscathed, pistols still in her gloved hands, cape swirling. The wrath of the eyes was a palpable thing, causing the very air to vibrate with malice. Taking no notice, the figure descended into the depression to where the princess lay.
 
“I’m here to protect you,” the figure said, helping her to her feet. It was a voice made of steel and the night wind. “Let’s go.”
 
At this it seemed the eyes could stand no more. They winked out one by one, and the ground rumbled and shook, as a grisly red light poured down from the sky. One star, hateful and red, grew brighter and larger, brighter and larger, until it rivaled the moon. It shone down through a massive mirror hanging across the depression, becoming the eye on a distorted, grinning face so large only half of it fit on the mirror. Dark laughter tumbled down from the heavens.
 
“Who or what being are you,” the voice of the eye rumbled, “that you would dare challenge me?”
 
The figure did not immediately answer, instead returning her pistols to their holsters, half-turning to the princess, and pointing across the depression to the far side, where the entrance to a cave was half-hidden amongst glass boulders.
 
“Go.”
 
The princes did as she was bidden and crossed the depression, but turned back to see the figure still facing the celestial countenance.
 
“You should already know what I am,” she said. “I know you have already snared others like me. As for who I am...I am Code 01, Gray Alice.”
 
“Well then, Code 01 Gray Alice, until the universe turns to dust, you shall never be forgiven.”
 
The star exploded, for a moment dying the whole sky with blood. Then the light disappeared. In a blink, Alice was at the princess’s side.
 
“Let’s go.”
 
Bonus for this chapter: Code Gray Main Theme[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 2: Intersect Codes"]
The cavern passage they entered into was rounded and low, brushing the princess’s head at some points, though Alice, being slightly shorter, was not bothered. At times the passage curved up steeply, and at other times it delved downward or twisted to the left or right, but never did the path branch or fork at all. The cave was dimly lit by clusters of mirrored crystal, which seemed to be placed naturally, but were situated in such a way that light from the entrance was reflected from crystal to crystal down the passage. After several minutes of walking, the princess pierced the silence.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“You heard my name,” Alice replied, “Gray Alice, Code 01.”

She tilted her head to the side, revealing the digits ‘01’ etched on her neck in silver ink, which had been concealed by the collar of her cape.

“Yes but -”

“But what does that mean for you?”

Here the passage twisted sharply upwards, creating a nearly vertical wall of rock some five feet tall. Alice sprang to the top without difficulty and turned back, reaching out a hand to assist the princess.

“I know it is essential that you be protected,” she began, lifting the princess as if she were little more than a feather, “but I don’t know why. I know I must return you to the palace and I know the way there, but I have not seen it before. Moonlight carried me to you, but if I came from the moon or elsewhere...I only have a few scattered memories. Or maybe dreams. Now, if I can ask, who are you?”

“My name is Alba,” the princess replied, running a hand along the wall. “I don’t think I know much more than you do. The palace is this way, I think, but I’m not sure exactly. It’s called the Palace of the Winter Rose. And I don’t know how I got so far away...I don’t remember ever leaving. And I don’t know why it would be so important to protect me...”

[What has been omitted here is way too many paragraphs explaining how they cannot be followed through the cave network they are in. I can assure you it was extremely riveting. My plan is actually to cut out these caves entirely. I'm probably going to replace them with a half-functioning subway system or something like that. The omitted passages also established that Alice has a photographic memory, which has exactly zero relevance to anything.
 
Okay, great talking to you. Bye!]
 
The rest of their journey passed in silence. They entered two more such honeycombed caverns, and each time Alice chose their path without the slightest hesitation. Uncounted hours drifted by, and Alba grew weary. She wondered if maybe Alice had made a mistake somewhere, and they were now lost in this labyrinth of crossroads.

“There it is,” Alice said, startling Alba out of a half-doze she didn’t remember beginning. Looking up, she saw in the distance a circle of pale light. While they had been wandering beneath the mountains, night had drifted away and morning had come.

They exited into a land of rolling hills carpeted with pale flowers and studded with the broken remains of thick marble pillars that thrust up out of the ground seemingly at random. Further eastward, in the direction of the slowly rising sun, one hill rose up slightly higher than the rest, and on it stood a castle white as pearl: the Palace of the Winter Rose. Alba took in a deep breath of fresh air and dropped to the ground by one of the pillars. Even Alice seemed slightly more at ease in this land than the cave or the warped Valley of Mirrors.

At length, however, she roused Alba, who had begun to drift off once more, and insisted they reach the palace before resting.

“But we’re safe,” Alba protested, though she rose groggily and followed Alice onward. “Nothing belonging to the Butterfly Queen can move in the daytime.”

Alice simply quickened her pace. “There are other dangers.”

They hurried onward, and soon reached the base of the hill on which the palace stood. Here the pillars were strewn about more thickly, and some were taller and seemed in slightly better condition, but whatever meaning they might have had was still unclear. They began to ascend when suddenly Alice paused, turning to look back the way they had come.

“Alba, get to the palace,” she commanded, guns appearing in her hands. “Now.”

Without waiting for a reply she leapt forward at high speed, toward a dark speck that had appeared on a nearby hill. The speck moved as well, coming closer at the same incredible speed, so that they met not far away, standing about ten feet apart.

The newcomer did not look precisely like Alice, but they could easily have been cousins. She was taller than Alice and not as lean and wolfish, and her hair was longer, falling over her shoulders like a river of serpents. Rather than a cape, a massive cylindrical device - almost as large as she was - was strapped to her back. When the newcomer looked in Alba’s direction, she felt a prickle of malice.

“You’re familiar,” the newcomer said after a moment. “You must be another Code.”

“01, Gray Alice,” replied Alice, pushing aside her collar to reveal the ‘01’ tattoo. The stranger turned her head so that the silver digits on her cheek caught the light.

“Code 09: Iron Shooter,” she declared, and the the device on her back swung around so that it rested under one arm. It was a black gun - closer to a cannon, really - with six thick barrels; what is normally called a minigun. “I only need the princess, but I wouldn’t hate it if I killed you, too.”

Alice’s only response was to raise one pistol and squeeze the trigger. Iron Shooter leaped back, landing on one of the marble pillars. She hefted her cannon with one hand, and the barrels began to rotate at high speed, spitting out a stream of amethyst bullets. Alice dodged to the side, retreating behind another pillar. She could feel each round slamming into the ancient stone - big as it was, it wouldn’t last long. She glanced back over her shoulder.

“Run!” she shouted at Alba, who hadn’t gone more than a few paces further up the hill before turning back, dumbfounded. Slowly, much too slowly, she obeyed. Hopefully it wouldn’t matter; Iron Shooter seemed like she planned on winning this battle before capturing the princess. Assuming that was her goal...

Alice abandoned her cover and sped to another pillar, squeezing off a handful of shots as she did, forcing Shooter to relocate, but otherwise doing nothing. No, continuing to fight this way wouldn’t accomplish anything. They seemed about equal in speed and strength, and Shooter did not seem like she was going to run out of bullets any time soon.

She fired a few blind shots to get Shooter to move again, using the fraction of a second of respite to locate a pillar slightly closer to her enemy, then raced across the distance. Gradually she was able to zigzag from pillar to pillar to a point reasonably close to her enemy. Much closer than this and it would surely become obvious to Iron Shooter what she was trying to do, so the rest would have to be done all at once. She leaped, not to the side but up, landing on the top of the pillar.

Iron Shooter hadn’t expected this, as Alice had anticipated, and took a few milliseconds longer to readjust. This gave Alice the opportunity to make another leap closer. By that time Iron Shooter had adjusted her aim and opened fire once again, her hail of jagged, gem-like bullets pinging off the rock pillars, but Alice leaped again, over the stream of bullets, landing directly on the barrel of Shooter’s cannon, and aimed a kick at her face, which she blocked with her arm. Alice pointed one pistol at her head and the other into the guts of the minigun, and fired. She would have to choose one to save: her gun or her life.

She chose the gun.

She swung it wildly, throwing Alice off. She landed in a crouch on the adjacent pillar. Iron Shooter was still standing, but had a cauterized crater where her right eye had been. Then the gun came back up.

“Did you honestly think that would kill me?”
 
Bonus for this chapter: Duel Between Codes[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 3: Locate Soul"]Alice looked more closely. The hole where I eye had been was filled with twisted metal and fused circuitry. Iron Shooter raised a hand, probing curiously.

“It’s one thing to know this would happen, but it’s another to experience it,” she said. “Maybe it’s just surprising I got hit. I guess your memories are even hazier than mine, if you expected that to work.”

Vague memories trickled back. The Codes had a different kind of existence than mortals, with circuits for flesh and ichor for blood, and with a few days’ rest even an eye could be restored. However...

She moved forward, and Iron Shooter retreated. They danced for a while, leaping from pillar to pillar, Alice trying to close the distance between them and Shooter trying to gain enough time to use her cannon again. Eventually she would decide this stalemate wasn’t worth it and would aim for close combat as well. Alice raised a pistol, aiming for Shooter’s left lung, and fired. She flashed right...and found there was no pillar she could reach. The loss of her right eye hadn’t killed her, but it had wrecked her peripheral vision. She landed on the ground, cannon tracking upward, the barrels beginning to rotate...

Alice landed in front of her, the cannon discharging right next to her. She brought up a gun, but Shooter knocked it out of her hand. But in that instant, while Shooter still held the cannon with her other arm, Alice’s left hand became a blade, and she drove it forward.

The cannon thunked to the ground, and Shooter’s other hand met it. They struggled for the span of a second, neither one able to gain an advantage over the other, then Shooter kicked Alice in the stomach, and they came apart.

“You remember now,” she observed, voice filled with anger despite the fierce smile on her face. Alice nodded.

“The body can’t be killed, but there still has to be a place to house the soul. Our hearts.” She paused. Shooter still made no move. “Why are you fighting for the Butterfly Queen?”

“I’m not,” she responded. “I’m fighting alongside her. We made an agreement: I give her what she wants, and she will give me what I want. What she wants is the princess.”

“And what do you want?” Alice asked, genuinely curious. What would another Code want? How do we think? was what she wondered. Shooter frowned for a moment, then laughed.

“I’ll answer your question if you’ll answer mine,” she declared. Alice nodded for her to go on. “Why do you want the princess?”

“She needs to be protected.”

Shooter stared at her for a long moment. “You really aren’t screwing with me. You have a reason, but you don’t know what it is. Honestly, I was hoping you’d give me a hint why the Butterfly Queen is after this girl. Well, you answered my question, so I’ll answer yours.”

“The Butterfly Queen is very powerful. You have no idea how strong she really is. She can do things...things that should be impossible. Miracles, you could say. If I gave her the princess, she agreed to give me another soul. An extra life. Who wouldn’t want that?”

They stood at an impasse. Alice was down one pistol. Iron Shooter had lost her minigun, hands clasped behind her back. She shifted on her feet. They both seemed certain the fight had reached its final stage.

Alice moved forward in a blur. Shooter moved just as fast, backpedaling and producing a shotgun from behind her back. She fired, reloaded, fired again, reloaded, fired a third time, Alice dodging each bullet. Three cases clinked as they hit the ground. A dozen milliseconds passed as Shooter reloaded. Alice reached up, unfastened her cape, and threw it, diving forward as she did so. The shotgun fired again, blasting several holes in the black fabric. Alice hit the ground, gun pointed at Iron Shooter’s heart.

“You’re despicable,” she said, and fired.
 
Bonus for this chapter: Iron Shooter's Theme
[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 4: Execution Consideration"]
Alice returned to the palace to find that Alba had followed her instructions and entered. The door was more than twice her height and made from marble, marked with the crest of a white rose. Alba had left it ajar, which was troubling, and she shut it firmly behind her.

The palace foyer was also marble, with a vaulted ceiling and no ornamentation other than the rows of lamps along the walls. They were frosted glass, each skillfully blown in the likeness of a rose, and gave off a steady light. Her footsteps echoed loudly off the walls.

She continued into a long corridor equally bare of decoration. The were side-hallways and several sets of stairs leading upward, but she ignored them for the moment, proceeding in what she guessed was the direction of the throne room.

Her hunch proved to be correct. The throne room was dominated by a large throne of white marble, but the way leading up to it was covered with a deep blue carpet and lined with tall candlesticks, all lit, rather than steady-glowing rose lamps. Alba sat in one of several chairs arrayed at the foot of the throne and seemed to be asleep, but when Alice entered she leaped to her feet.

“Thank goodness!” she cried, nearly tripping herself as she hurried across the room and threw her arms around her. “Are you okay? What happened? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” replied Alice, once she had disengaged herself. “I killed Iron Shooter.”

It had been remarkably simple. There was no explosion of soul tearing from body, nor any time for last words. Iron Shooter had stared down at her with her remaining for a few seconds, looking very confused, then fell backwards. After a few moments, her body broke up into a fine black powder, like a sand castle collapsing due to time.

That was the first time in her extremely limited memory that she had killed someone. It must have happened before, she was sure, so she didn’t think it had much significance. Then she turned and went back to the palace.

She didn’t tell Alba all that, of course, but nonetheless Alba sank back into her chair with a gasp. “Oh my,” she whispered. “I didn’t think...I thought it wouldn’t end like that, somehow.”

“It was probably inevitable. She wasn’t the kind of person to ask for mercy.” Alice did not add that even if she had, she wouldn’t have granted it. Not without a very good reason.

Alba had no answer to that, and soon she was overtaken by fatigue and drifted off in her chair. Alice remained leaning on one wall. It had become obvious over the course of many hours and two battles that she required neither food nor sleep. The battle with Iron Shooter had made it clear there was a limit to how long she could continuously remain active, but such a limit was hours or even days away. So she remained awake, brooding on the vast gulfs in her memory and plans for the future.

As time passed, Alice began to enter a state more trance than dream, where misty forms from forgotten memories were overlaid on the real world and replayed. There were no answers; only more battles. Then someone knocked at the door.

The trance slipped away easily, and Alice was surprised to discover, through one of the arched windows of the throne room, that the sun had nearly reached its zenith. Alba remained blissfully asleep, so Alice went alone to the door. Halfway she paused and reconsidered, taking one of the flights of stairs up to the second floor. It was equally bare, but had more windows, overlooking the hillscape in all directions. She went to one that gave a view from the side of the palace, opened it, and leaped out, landing lightly on her feet. She could meet whoever was at the door without simply letting them in.

As she walked around to the front, the person at the door seemed to sense her presence and turned. Alice could not be certain exactly why, but immediately suspected it was another Code. She was taller again than Iron Shooter, and wore a gleaming black coat that fell past her knees. Rather than black, her hair was a silvery-white that twisted like leaping water frozen in time. Most notable, though, was her right hand, which was much larger than the left and crafted of black metal. Each finger ended in a hooked claw. As Alice approached, she raised it and revealed the back, on which the digits ‘07’ were stamped.

“I am Silver Maria,” she said. Alice detected no malice from the voice, but did not relax her guard as she introduced herself. Maria gestured out at the hills.

“I’m here to talk, not to fight,” she explained. “Will you walk with me?”

Alice agreed warily, and followed her out among the broken pillars. Maria did not speak for a while, simply running her clawed hand over each pillar as she passed.

“Each of us has lost most of our memories,” she said at last, “but each of us recalls what is most central to us. For myself, I have knowledge of the way things used to be. Where did I get that knowledge? Maybe someone else can tell me.”

She pointed out over the hills. “The pillars that way used to support a long road that ran for many miles. The bones of these hills contain the city it led to.”

She gestured back in the direction of the palace. “The pillars here must have supported the ceilings in the top part of a very tall tower. Probably more than one tower, actually.”

“So? Why are you telling me this?” Alice asked, as she carefully filed that information away for later. Maria shrugged.

“Making conversation. Trying to convince you I mean no harm.  Avoiding the real subject.”

She stopped, turning to face Alice directly. “Please listen carefully. When I’m done, if you want me to leave, I will. But first let me speak my piece.”

When Alice gave a slow nod, she continued. “There are things I think we both know, but if I’ve assumed correctly, please stop me. The Butterfly Queen has been trying desperately for some time to capture the princess in that palace. And we both know that she absolutely must not be allowed to succeed.”

Alice nodded again.

“You should know better than me whether or not this is true, but it seems her goal is specifically to capture the princess, not kill her. Is that correct?”

Another nod.

“For whatever reason, the Butterfly Queen requires the princess alive. So...” Here she hesitated. “The Butterfly Queen’s goal could be prevented if the princess...was no longer alive.”

Alice did not respond for a long time. Was she correct? It did seem to fit the meager facts at hand, and yet, if they were wrong...it could still be worth that chance. The wheels of her mind spun in endless loops. She searched the fog of her memories, but nothing surfaced. That red eye...

“Go.”

Maria flinched. “But -”

“If you’re finished, then go.”

“But...” she fumbled for a response. “Why not? Please just give me one reason why not.”

“I don’t have one!” Alice burst out. She shivered for a moment, like a bowstring about to snap, then mastered herself.

“I don’t have one,” she repeated, more quietly. “I have no problem sacrificing one single life if the stakes are high enough. You seem more uncomfortable with the idea than me. Maybe it’s only because I have so little information. But sacrificing the princess is unacceptable.”

Maria nodded. “Alright. I’ll leave for now. But this won’t be the last time I ask you.”
 
Bonus for this chapter: Silver Maria's Theme[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 5: Edged Speed"]
Alice returned to the palace, closed the window she had exited from, and went back to the throne room. As she did, Alba wakened from her sleep. She stretched luxuriantly.

“Hello Alice,” she said sleepily. “I thought I heard the door open. Did you leave?”

“It was nothing,” Alice replied, then reconsidered. “It was another Code. She wanted to talk - we did. She’s gone now. More importantly, it’s almost nightfall. Are we protected from the Butterfly Queen?”

“Oh yes,” Alba assured her. “All the lamps have the light of the sun in them. That’s why this place is called the Palace of the Winter Rose: even in the winter of night, flowers can bloom here.”

That satisfied her for the moment, although she would be sure to keep a sharp eye on all the windows as the sun set. As she’d told Alba in the morning, there were dangers other than things that served the Butterfly Queen.

If any thoughts like that stewed in Alba’s head, she didn’t show it. She scurried off and returned several minutes, wearing a fresh dress and chewing on loaf of bread.
“Want some?” she asked, moving to stand by the window with Alice.

“Don’t need it.”

“Right.”

She paused, chewing meditatively, and swallowed. “Wait, really? I guess maybe it’s not a surprise. You’re not a regular human at all.”

She finished the last mouthful of bread and wandered off to find something to drink, while Alice stayed, watching the swift shift from day to night. The Butterfly Queen was forever extending the boundaries of the night, or so it was said; encroaching with gradual steps upon her enemy, the day. Whether that was true or not, time seemed to have passed over ‘afternoon’ with barely a glance and moved immediately on to a dim sunset. Storm clouds rolled in from the west, though for the moment they brooded over the mountains and did not come any closer. Alba drifted back with a glass of water.

“Want some?”

“Don’t need it.”

“Right.”

As the last sliver of sun, mostly obscured by the brewing clouds, slipped behind the mountains, Alice permitted herself to make a mistake.

“If it were necessary,” she began, already regretting it, “if it were essential that you sacrifice your life...if it would save the lives of thousands of people, for example...would you do it?”

“I would have to, wouldn’t I?” was the simple reply. “Why? Is there -”

“No. It’s nothing. Forget it.”

In an instant, every changed. As if by an unseen signal, the clouds over the mountains rolled forth, crossing the hills in a few seconds and stewing directly overhead.

“The Butterfly Queen is attacking,” Alice observed. “I’m going to meet whatever’s out there. Alba, stay away from the windows.”

There was a response, but Alice missed it as she strode to the doors, opening them with a thrust of her hands and letting them slam shut behind her. Normally she would have found a good spot - nested somewhere in the palace’s towers - to snipe at whatever was coming. But somehow she could sense even from this distance that there was another Code nearby.

As she stood at the gates of the palace, she saw a black chariot advancing from the gloom. It slid to a stop not ten feet from the gates. Its occupant emerged.

“You must be Gray Alice,” said the other Code as she stepped out of the chariot. If Iron Shooter had exuded malice and Silver Maria secretiveness, this one reeked of evil. She wore it like a cloak, living and breathing it, while herself remaining pure. “I’ve been wanting to meet another one of my sisters. Iron Shooter wasn’t interesting at all.”

This Code was of average height, like Iron Shooter but more graceful. Her arms were bare, but she wore armbands of black metal, and there was a sword at her hip. The digits ‘08’ were etched on her forehead.

“And who are you?” Alice asked. Code 08 smiled.

“I am called Steel Blader,” she responded, “although I couldn’t remember even that when I first awoke. By the way, if you intend to surrender the princess, now is the time.”

The storm clouds overhead rumbled darkly amongst themselves.

“No?” she asked. “Good. I’d much rather have it this way.”

Her speed was shocking, and Alice barely had time to leap aside as she charged, sword flashing into her hand. The second strike was just as fast, parting a few threads on Alice’s cape as she leaped over it. She aimed a kick at Steel Blader’s face, but she stopped it with her free arm.

Alice kicked off it to get the slightest bit of distance between them, then gathered her energy into a powerful leap that brought her all the way up to the palace’s lowest battlements. Instantly she was forced to duck under another slash, and took the opportunity to grab Blader’s wrist to prevent her from attacking again before kicking at her ankles.

Steel Blader pushed off the ground, for a moment suspended vertically above Alice, tossed her sword to her off-hand, and stabbed downward. Alice released her opponent’s wrist and rolled desperately aside, losing a bit more of her cape.

“I’d like to say ‘I’m actually left-handed’ or something,” Steel Blader lamented, switching hands again, “but I’m better with my right.”

Alice leaped up and back, landing on one of the palace’s lower towers, now at a good enough distance to draw her pistols and fire. Rather than giving chase, Blader spun her sword at high speed, the blasts pinging off uselessly.

“Is this it?” she laughed, leaping to join Alice on the tower. “You’re the only being in the universe who’s ever killed another Code. You must be stronger than this!”

She stabbed at Alice’s chest, and she blocked with one pistol, aiming the other one toward Steel Blader’s heart. She grabbed the barrel with her free hand, pointing it off into the night air, so Alice kicked out again. As before, Blader leaped lightly over it, but this time, Alice leaned back, pitching them both off the tower. Using her momentum, she continued to spin so that Blader was on the bottom.

“You clever bitch,” was also she had time for. There was a ring of steel on steel, and they hit the ground.

Steel Blader had absorbed most of the impact, but Alice most certainly felt it, too. Much more keen, though, was the pain blossoming in her stomach.

Blader rose shakily to her feet, then reached out, wrenching the sword from Alice’s stomach.

“So that’s what our blood looks like,” she commented, glancing at the black fluid on the blade. “That really was pretty good, by the way. You actually made me draw my second sword.”

She stabbed, and Alice backpedaled painfully.

“When I said I was better with my right hand, I didn’t say how much better, did I?” Blader said with a laugh. “I’m eight milliseconds slower with my left hand than my right. Maybe you’ve noticed.”

Alice definitely had not noticed, and did the only thing she could do, under the circumstances. She ran.

Her jump to reach the palace battlements did not take her high enough, forcing her to haul herself onto a windowsill and scramble the rest of the way up. Blader moved to follow, but one leg gave out beneath her, and she stumbled.

Alice watched from one tower as she tore several strips of fabric from her black leggings and bound up the wounded leg. It seemed to work, as she walked onward with only a slight limp. With only one good leg, she also failed to clear the battlements, but jammed one sword into the marble, then swung up and over. She reached over the edge to retrieve her sword, then began to walk in Alice’s direction. At that moment, the clouds opened up, and it began to rain.

“So this really is it,” Steel Blader said, sounding almost wistful. “I was expecting more of a challenge. Maybe Iron Shooter was just that weak.”

Alice’s guns blazed in response. One of Blader’s swords whirled into motion, deflecting each blast, and she continued to advance. They silenced.

“No, this can’t be all there is,” she decided. “You must still have something in reserve. Unless you’ve forgotten what it is.”

She located Alice, clinging to the tower with one arm. Her rain-soaked cape covered her body.

“If you have an ace, you’d better use it soon,” said Blader helpfully, raising her sword.

Alice fired from beneath her cape. Blader’s other sword spun into motion, but this time the blast lanced straight through the steel vortex, penetrated her right lung, and vanished off in the storm clouds. It persisted for several seconds, drifting and nearly severing her right shoulder, then dissipated. The sword in her right hand clattered to the ground. The sword in her left was melted off two feet past the hilt.

“I did have an ace,” Alice agreed, standing up and throwing back her cape. Blood oozed from her stomach wound. One of her pistols glowed a dull red. “This is what happens when I arm my gun with my own blood.”

Blader tried to move her right arm and succeeded in twitching her fingers. She grimaced. “I guess you win.”

[Hey, me again. I'm not exactly sure what was here, but I cut it out and it's gone forever. I think I was beginning to discard the idea that there was an entire army rather than just Steel Blader, but I hadn't entirely followed through with that concept yet. So there's a discordant jump between these two passages.]

“Did you just save me?” Blader asked, still struggling with the tangle of weeds and shadow. Alice made no move to free her.

“No,” she replied, raising the glowing pistol. “I seized an opportunity to indulge my curiosity. Why do serve the Butterfly Queen?”

Blader let out a strained chuckle. “Did you ask Iron Shooter?”

“Why? Do you have the same answer?”

“Another soul would be very useful. But no, I have a different reason. Although it feels rather pathetic right about now. You see, swords -” she tossed her useless blade to the ground, “- are not wielded by kings and queens. Swords are wielded by soldiers. A sword serves, a king leads. It’s my part, your part, and the part of every other Code to serve. After that it’s just a matter of picking a side. Am I wrong? You serve the princess, don’t you?”

“I protect her.”

“It’s the same thing,” Blader insisted. “Or, if it’s not, you’re going to run into trouble. You can’t both lead or both follow. You’ll have to decide. Does that answer your question?”

“It does,” Alice replied, making certain she was aimed directly at Blader’s heart. “I don’t like it much better than Shooter’s, though.”

“Wait!”

Alba stood clinging to Alice’s arm.

“Please don’t do it. I don’t want anyone else to die.” She turned desperately to Blader. “You said it didn’t matter what side you were on, didn’t you? Doesn’t that mean you don’t have to fight for the Butterfly Queen?”

“Who else would I serve?” Blader asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Me,” the princess insisted. “If you swear to serve me loyally, I will spare your life.”

“I’m more worried about the one with the gun.”

Alba interposed herself between Alice and Blader. Alice did not lower the gun.

“Please,” Alba whispered.

Alice shifted so she could look Steel Blader in the eyes. They stayed that way for a long moment, then Blader winked. Alice lowered the gun.

“If you’re going to be a loyal servant,” she said, “You won’t mind if I borrow some of your blood.”

She plunged her fingers into Blader’s injured arm, and black blood began to flow. Blader groaned something incoherent. Alice opened the back of her pistol, allowing the blood to flow inside, and the glow around the gun increased in intensity.

“Blader, for the next twelve seconds I’m going to trust you,” she said, shooting the weed-shade that bound her with her unaltered pistol. “Both of you get inside.”

She holstered that pistol and held the now-blazing red gun with both hands, aimed it out at the remaining army, and pulled the trigger. An obsidian thread licked out from it, and she swept the blast back and forth over the hillsides. Anything the thread touched was sliced apart without resistance. Screeches and howls echoed back from the abominations lurking beyond sight. After about ten seconds, the blast ended. The blood had run out.

“I hope I’m not making a mistake,” Alice muttered to herself, and returned to the palace.
 
Bonus for this chapter: Gray Alice's Theme[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 6: Earth Shaker"]
“Hold on...” Blader groaned. “I wasn’t the only the Butterfly Queen sent here. She’s hiding her presence now, but...”

“Another Code?” asked Alice, half-carrying her back toward the palace. The pain from her stomach wound made it difficult to walk, but since she possessed no vital organs, little actual damage had been done to her. Blader shook her head.

“No...she was ordered not to attack unless I died. That’s why she hasn’t appeared yet. But she’ll figure out what’s going on soon, and then...”

Power bloomed on the edge of Alice’s perceptions, approaching fast. It was not a Code, not at all...it was far less human. A green comet broke through the clouds, racing straight at the two of them, and Alice threw herself aside. It sailed by, arcing back up into the sky and stopping. Its light dimmed.

It was a woman, tall and graceful, with deep green skin. She wore no clothes, but her body was smooth, as if she wore a form-fitting suit. Each of her fingers ended in a claw.

“My name is Veridian,” she said, voice deep like stones grinding together, and raised her arms. Two massive sheets of earth tore themselves up on either side of Alice and came together with a crash, which she narrowly avoided.

“I am the Butterfly Queen’s most powerful servant,” she continued, and the two rock slabs separated. “Don’t bother resisting. You can’t win this fight.”

The slabs crashed together, and Alice threw herself out of the way again, landing hard and rolling back to her feet.

“Put me down,” Blader groaned. “Put me down or you’ll get us both killed.”

Alice needed no urging. When the slabs came together again, she threw Blader aside and ran straight up the rock-face, drawing one pistol and firing at Veridian, who made minor flight changes to avoid every one. Once she reached the top of the slab she leaped straight at the witch to fire point-blank.

The witch seized her wrist with one clawed hand, bending it so the gun was pointed away from her. Then she squeezed, several things snapped and cracked, and Alice’s hand went numb. Gritting her teeth through the pain, she raised her other pistol, the one that still glowed with the power of her blood, and fired.

Veridian blocked the muzzle with her other hand, the black energy gathering in her palm, and she crushed down on it. Long seconds passed, and finally she squeezed it out of existence, though the flesh of her hand was heavily burned.

“Nice try,” she said, and drew back the hand to smash through Alice’s heart.

Steel Blader leaped from the top of one of the slabs, which had remained where they were, grabbing onto Alice’s shoulder with her good arm. Then she wrapped her working leg around Alice’s waist so she could use the arm.

“Alba told me to help,” she said, driving her fingers toward Veridian’s shoulder. The witch grabbed the hand and began to bend it backward. Snarling, Blader kicked with her wounded leg, slamming it into Veridian’s arm. The witch dropped them involuntarily. As they fell, Alice drove her unbroken hand into the slab of earth to slow them down, and landed with moderate pain.

“Sh says,” Blader gasped, “to get to the palace. There are underground tunnels.”

Alice got to her feet, thankful her legs at least were unharmed, and began to run. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Veridian gesture, and the ground beneath her feet rose up. She leaped aside and continued forward. Earth moved around her, more than the two from before, and she pushed even more energy into her limbs. Ribs of stone burst from the ground before her, and she leaped. A boulder floated by like a feather in the breeze, clipping her side, and she landed hard on the ground. Blader groaned, digging her fingers into Alice’s shoulder. Alice stumbled to her feet again, making it the last few feet into the palace and slamming the door behind her. Something large collided with the palace behind her, and the wall buckled.

“Alice!” Alba shouted from somewhere nearby. With weary steps, Alice proceeded down the corridor until she came to a flight of stairs leading down, and stumbled down them, reaching Alba at the bottom. Together they continued through the dark passages of the palace basement. Alba guided them, and Alice surrendered to her judgment whenever the path forked.

“I can walk,” Blader said after a while. Gratefully, Alice set her down, and they continued. Blader walked with a pronounced limp, but kept up regardless. Ever more distant booms echoed from above them. Piece by piece, Veridian must have been destroying the palace.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Alice asked, tearing a long strip from her cape with her teeth, beginning to wrap it around her injured wrist one-handed. With her own good hand, Blader reached over, jerked the cloth tight and began to help tying the knot.

“I think so,” replied Alba, sounding very uncertain. “There are lots of exits, and one of them is near the Freepeople’s City. That’s where I’m trying to get to.”
They continuing walking, every few hundred feet coming to another intersection of two or more directions. Alba would pause, sometimes for minutes at a time, trying to remember or guess the correct path. After perhaps an hour of walking in the gloom, Alice slowed her steps and drew Steel Blader back out of Alba’s hearing.

“You changed sides quickly,” she observed. Blader smiled, though it came out as more of a grimace.

“I never liked Veridian,” she responded. “Also...”

She moved closer and lowered her voice.

“Princess Alba is not normal. She has power hidden inside her. Alice, if we’re monsters, Veridian is a witch, and the Butterfly Queen is a demon, then she is a god.”

“What does that mean?”

“No idea. But I want to stick around and find out.”

She left Alice to brood over this new information. After a few more bifurcations, the passage came to an end. From there, a ladder led up to a hole blocked by a boulder. Alice pushed it aside and they crawled one by one back into the outside world.

“Oh no!” Alba cried as they took in their surroundings. “I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere...”

They had come out into a forest - a real forest of growing evergreens rather than crystal - on some mountainside. Morning had arrived as they wandered in the tunnels, and the sky was a washed-out blue. A mountain stream splashing somewhere within hearing.

“It’s fine. We’ll rest here,” Alice decided, and Alba immediately flung herself down on the softest spot of grass in reach. Alice moved slightly further upslope, looking for a place to survey the landscape and determine their location. She located the stream she had heard and plunged her whole body into the frigid water to cleanse herself of two days of dust and grime. It made her wrist ache, but numbed her stomach wound. She emerged dripping and proceeded to a sunny overlook, wringing out her cape as she did. The overlook face south, and she could make out the palace in the distance. She focused her eyes, and it resolved itself into a white ruin. Veridian had completely destroyed the place.

Satisfied, she cast herself on the ground, wrapped herself in her cape, and let fatigue overwhelm her.[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 7: Purpose Revelation"]
I was very surprised how much I didn't do in this chapter. There are several "kay, remember to fill this in later" bits. And you'll get to see all of them!
 
It was not sleep she entered so much as a tranquil meditation, a healing trance where she could feel the organic metal of her flesh regenerating thread by microscopic thread. She was roused from this state when she realized her body was no longer wracked by pain. However much time had passed, it was too much. She went back down the slope to find Steel Blader awake, sitting  near Alba and rubbing the bridge of her nose.

“I can feel them,” she said. “All the other Codes. Can you?”

“Yes. Nothing specific.”

They were like points of light, seven in all, bright or dim depending on their distance, but their locations or directions were hidden. She could identify Steel Blader’s presence, which was far brighter than all the others as well as the presence of Silver Maria, who seemed to be neither close by nor far away. All the others remained unidentified.

“Code 05 is close,” Blader murmured. “Dust Emilia is her name. She’s not with the Butterfly Queen, but other than that I don’t know anything about her. What’s the plan?”

Their talk had awakened Alba, and she sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“Unless one of you has a plan,” Alice said, “we should go to the Freepeople’s City. It’s less than a day from here.”

It was the closest thing to a plan they had, and each privately knew they were still too close to the palace. When the sun set again, the tunnels they had walked would be crawling with shades and the other, stranger, beings the Butterfly Queen employed.

They made good progress down the mountain. Alba especially seemed to enjoy the rarefied air, and Blader’s limp was much less pronounced. As they descended, the trees thinned and gave way to grassy slopes. Beyond that, the land made a sudden and dramatic shift to desert. They rested briefly at the foot of the mountain, then continued on into the desert. It was not very much hotter, but the sun beat down more harshly than before, and Alba was quickly drenched in sweat. Alice belatedly realized that traveling across the desert at midday had been a poor choice. The heat was uncomfortable for the two Codes as well, but they suffered no ill effects from it.

(Alice soon realized every step they took was bringing them closer to Dust Emilia.)

The desert land was a dry, cracked land. Great fissures opened up in the earth in various places, and twisted columns of rock rose up out of the ground. As they continued onward, the columns increased in size, until a massive butte loomed suddenly in the distance. The Freepeople’s City.

They increased their pace, reaching the city by mid-afternoon. The city was accessed by a long drawbridge that extended down from the top of the butte, which was withdrawn at sunset. In this way the Freepeople’s City remained safe from the creatures that roamed the night. As they approached the high sandstone arch of the city gate, Alice felt the back of her neck prickle, and a figure detached from the shadow under the arch and approached them.
“Which Code are you?” she asked bluntly. ‘05’ was etched on her forehead. She was petite, shorter even than Alice, and had cropped dark hair. She wore a black cloak with a hood. Alice did not sense any malice from her; not even the reserved threat of Silver Maria, and revealed the silver tattoo on her neck.

“Gray Alice? Good,” said Code 05. “I’m Dust Emilia. Steel Blader is...”

“With us. It seems,” Alice finished. Emilia raised a suspicious eyebrow but made no comment.

“Then come with me. I need to talk to you...and the princess.”

She led them to a small, one-room home buried in a back alley. The walls and floor were all stone, with little ornamentation besides a table and chair, which she offered to Alba. She located two apples, throwing one to the princess and keeping the other, slicing it with her fingers as she spoke.

“Out of all the Codes, I retain the most of my memories,” she began. “Most importantly, I know why the Butterfly Queen seeks the princess.”

Having sliced her apple, she began to eat.

“Princess Alba is the key to Heaven.”

Steel Blader opened her mouth as if to speak, shut it, and began to pace. Alba looked confused. Alice took in this information, turned it around in her mind, and realized it meant nothing to her.

“What does that mean?”

“The key to Heaven,” Emilia continued, steepling her fingers, “does exactly what it says on the tin: unlocks the door into Heaven. It’s said simply breathing the air will give you eternal life. If she gains entry to Heaven, that’s the end. Of everything. And the way into Heaven isn’t exclusively hers - any Code could walk that path.”

She bared her teeth in a hungry smile, and Alice tensed. Then it vanished.

“She knows that, which is why her fortress stands at the entrance to Heaven. Any Code with the key will get nowhere without the door. So you have nothing to worry about, Gray Alice; I won’t be stealing your princess from you today. However, that does bring us to the next part of our discussion: how to make sure the Butterfly Queen never succeeds.”

“Codes 06 and 07 were here yesterday, and I told them what I’ve told you. 06’s plan was to destroy the key.”

Emilia paused, and Blader glanced at Alice for a moment. Then, surprising everyone, Alba stood up.

“If...” she said in a small voice. “If it really has to happen...that way...then...”

Emilia waved her hand dismissively.

“Sit down. I told her it was a bad idea, although I don’t think she listened. I might have been stretching the truth a bit, as well. Nonetheless, killing you might not be enough. Suppose only your physical body is required to open the door, for example. I have another idea, although it might be even worse.”

“Well?” Blader demanded, when Emilia did not elaborate.

“It is theoretically possible,” she said, seeming to weigh each word carefully before speaking it, “to break the lock and close the door permanently. It would require you to turn the key the other way, so to speak. In other words, it can only be done from within Starhall.”

Blader gave a short, bitter laugh.

“That’s ridiculous. How is that any different from handing Alba over to the Butterfly Queen?”

Emilia held up a finger.

“There is one advantage. Destroying the lock would [somehow conveniently destroy most of the Butterfly Queen’s power]. Even without whatever new powers Heaven would grant her, the Butterfly Queen will eventually possess the world. Murdering Alba would only delay that.”

Blader opened her mouth to speak, but, once again surprising everyone, Alba spoke first.

“If you think you can get me there,” she said, addressing Alice and Blader, “I think we should try.”

Alice gave a slow nod.

“Running or hiding is no longer an option,” she explained. “Veridian is too powerful to avoid indefinitely. This may actually be  the safest course of action.”

Blader said nothing, which Emilia took as acquiescence.

“Then I’ll tell you what to do to destroy the lock.” She turned to the Alba and Blader. “These instructions are solely for Code 01, as she is Princess Alba’s guardian. So, Steel Blader, you had best make sure she doesn’t die on the way.”

Blader gave Emilia a dark look as she left the room, keeping herself between Alba and Alice. Emilia smiled, apparently amused by the reaction.

“Careful, Alice. She’s more concerned about the princess’s well-being than you are, and she knows it.”

Alice shrugged.

“Well, whatever. Here’s what you will have to do...”

Emilia whispered her instructions in Alice’s ear. When she was done, Alice did not move.

“You seem to think revealing one large secret will make me overlook the small ones you’re still concealing,” she said, drawing a pistol. “That isn’t the case.”

Emilia did not look overly concerned.

“Unlike the other Codes, I’m not a fighter,” she said. “All I have is information. I prefer to keep it to myself if I can.”

“I don’t care.”

“Go on then. Shoot me.”

Alice did, without hesitation, blowing a hole in Emilia’s knee. Rather than stumbling, her body dissolved into a cloud of fine black grains, until only her eyes remained.

“I can’t fight, but I’m quite good at running. Goodbye, Gray Alice.”

With that, the black cloud dispersed. Alice glanced around the room for a moment, then holstered her pistol and left. Blader gave her a suspicious look as she exited.

“Well?” she asked.

“Let’s go.”[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 8: Mental Considerations"]
Exactly what Starhall was or where it was located were unknown, but the way to it was no secret: Go west, and keep going until you reach the end of the world. The first of Emilia’s instructions had been only slightly more specific: Go not due west, but instead straight into the sunset.

Alice suggested they rest in the city until the next morning, but Alba insisted they leave immediately, and pointed out they had nowhere to stay. So they set out from the city, Alice liberating several of Emilia’s apples before they did so. How Alba would be fed after that, she had no idea.

With the sun receding, the desert was only slightly cooler than it had been, but Alba had clearly forgotten the heat while in the city, and soon lagged behind. Alice looked at the sun, then at the ground they had to cover before nightfall, and did a swift mental calculation. Then she turned around, slung Alba over her shoulder, and began to run.

“What are you doing?” the princess demanded.

“We don’t have time. I want to reach the Rootcaves by sunset.”

Blader, with her leg still not fully healed, struggled somewhat to keep up with her pace, but concealed it well. As they approached the mountains, Alice veered south, toward where she knew an entrance to the Rootcaves to be, and they indeed reached the entrance just before sunset. Alice set Alba down and looked to the sky, then backed up several hundred yards and surveyed the sky again.

“What’s she doing?” Alba asked.

“Checking where the sun’s setting,” Blader replied, massaging her injured leg. As they spoke, Alice drew a line in the ground and bowed her head in thought. “Obviously we can’t check where it is while we’re in the caves. Also, she’ll have to figure out which route will take us most closely in that direction. That depends on how much of the tunnels she knows.”

Alice returned and gestured for them to keep going.

“We should be part way along in the tunnels before we rest,” she explained as they entered. “Otherwise we run too much of a risk of being seen by a shade.”

This tunnel was darker than the one they had taken to reach the palace, as it was not lit by reflective crystals, and soon they traveled in near-complete darkness. They did not discover the floor-blanketing stream until Alba stumbled into it. Alice did not waver, anticipating each twist and turn by memory alone.

Eventually they reached the pale light of one of the circular chambers from which many paths branched off. Alice selected an upward-sloping tunnel, which led them to another such chamber, and then another. Alba did not complain, but step by step lagged further and further behind.

“Are you going to stop or are we going to walk all night?” demanded Blader, at length. Alice turned.
“We’ll stop here. This chamber is dry.”

Indeed, unlike the other chambers, this one had a shallow rise around which the water flowed. Gratefully, Alba skipped forward and curled up on the ground.

“I’m going to scout ahead,” Alice told her, proceeding toward another passage. “Stay here.”

“I’m going, too,” Blader said, moving to join her. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

The two walked for a while without speaking, only the splashes of their steps breaking the silence. Once they were out of Alba’s hearing, they stopped.

“What did you want to say?” asked Alice, leaning back against the cave wall.

“Do you care about Princess Alba?” Blader said, voice cold and controlled.

“I care greatly what happens to her.”

“That’s not what I asked!” she snarled, seizing Alice by the collar of her cape and pressing her against the wall. Alice’s expression did not change.

“Yes,” she replied. “I do care. I was telling the truth when I said this could be the safest path.”

“Safest for who?” Blader demanded. A flicker of irritation crossed Alice’s face. She drove a booted foot into Blader’s stomach to free herself.

“If you have another plan, share it,” she snapped. “Otherwise, this is pointless.”

Blader was silent. Alice shrugged, wrapping her cape around herself and going deeper into the tunnels.

“I’m going on for a while. You should get back to Alba; she shouldn’t be left alone.”

Alice returned a few hours later, rousing Alba and stirring Blader from her thoughts. She tossed the princess an apple and they continued through the Rootcaves, passing through two more of circular chambers before they entered a familiar, pale light. The Valley of Mirrors.

“What now?” Blader asked icily. Alice’s response was even, as if the events previous night had never occurred.

“I think I know this land reasonably well, but I cannot remember much of it. You should know it better than I do.”

Blader seemed for a moment to be trying to decide if Alice’s remark was meant as an insult, then she pointed forward.

“I only ever went as far the Tower of Orion; one of the Butterfly Queen’s other fortresses. It’s at the other end of the valley. Unless we want to get caught, we should turn south before then. That will put us in the Black Marshes. Other than that, I only know that the land goes on for miles more and it doesn’t get any more pleasant.”

They continued, steps tinking and crunching on the glassy ground. Alice’s mind was awhirl as she brooded over their options. The Tower of Orion would be tomorrow’s problem; today, she would have to determine where they would find shelter for the night. Was there some place in this forest of crystal trees whispering shades would avoid? She asked Steel Blader.

“I wasn’t exactly looking for places to hide when I was here,” was the cold reply. “But there is a place...it’s called the Gold Loop. It’s a place with a ring of crystals that absorb light and radiate it overnight. But I don’t know if it lasts the whole night or not.”

“It’ll have to do. Where is it?”

“I’ll point it out when we get there.”

Alice accepted this without comment. As they walked, she tested her injured hand. Yesterday she had been able to move the fingers slightly; now it seemed to be mostly healed. Her trigger finger was not as fast as she would have liked and her wrist was quite stiff, but probably by tomorrow those would clear up. The stomach wound - lethal for a human but virtually meaningless to her - was gone. Blader’s limp was gone, but her arm would likely take a few days more. Alice was not about to inquire after her condition, but she seemed to be experimenting with moving her fingers.

They took a short rest by a towering pillar of azure glass at midday - relying more on Alice’s time-sense than the position of the sun, as storm clouds blanketed the sky - and Alice gave Alba another apple. They would last another day or two, but no more. Then they went on again.

The crystal trees grew taller and clustered together, sometimes becoming so thickly interwoven they were forced to smash their branches in order to proceed. The obvious trail that left might have been cause for concern, but branches were broken in other places as well, presumably by the passage of beasts of the night.

As dusk approached, the clouds began to break up, revealing the sun just beginning to dip behind the mountains on the horizon. Blader called for a halt and began guiding them northward. They walked about a mile before they reached a hollow or crater, like the one where the Butterfly Queen had nearly seized Alba, but smaller and ringed by large, golden crystals. They were already glowing with the sun’s light - apparently absorbed despite the cloud cover - and faint bands of light joined them together, creating a sort of fence around the hollow.

Alba, fatigued as always, threw herself down in the hollow, falling asleep almost immediately, and Alice sat nearby. Blader at first did the same, but after about an hour (at which point the sun had slipped entirely below the horizon) she rose and began to pace the perimeter of the Gold Loop. Not long after, Alba stirred and crawled to Alice’s side, resting her head on Alice’s shoulder.

“Um,” she said, after several minutes of silence, “that time back at the palace, when you asked if I thought I would die if it was important, did you...?”

“Silver Maria, Code 07, tried to convince me killing you would be beneficial. She didn’t know anything Emilia told us.”

“Okay...”

Alba pressed closer for warmth.

“My answer’s still yes, by the way.”

“That’s not the plan.”

“Seriously,” Alba said, pulling away. Alice turned to face her. “If something’s going to happen, if the Butterfly Queen is going to capture me, you have to kill me.”

Alice said nothing for a long time, then slowly a smile spread across her lips. It had no warmth, nor did it express the pain of a grimace. It was an expression devoid of emotion. Alba shied away.

“Let me tell you a secret you’ve been keeping from yourself,” Alice whispered. “If I ever thought your death was the only option left, I would kill you. Without hesitation.”

For a long time Alba simply stared, emotions swirling on her face. Then she did something unexpected. She scooted closer and rested her head on Alice’s shoulder again.

“Good,” she murmured, already half-asleep. “I don’t think Blader could do it.”[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 9: Solar Memory"]
[Two important things, and one stupid thing happens. Flashbangs are useful tools I'm sure, but not exactly worth...er, you'll see.]

The night was about half over when the gloom beyond the crystals began to move.

“Shades,” Blader hissed, coming closer. “They can’t see us through the sunlight, though. But they can sense something’s here.”

Alice shook Alba awake and explained the situation.
“As long as this light lasts, we’ll be safe. If not...”

“If we’re seen, and even one shade survives,” Blader finished, “the Butterfly Queen will know.”

The light from the Gold Loop was already dimmer than it had been before, but whether or not it would give out before morning arrived. Blader resumed pacing. Alice rose, assessing the host that surrounded them.

The shades stood out in the night as an even deeper darkness. They numbered in the hundreds and were neither still nor silent, milling about as if each one was trying to press closer. A low, wordless whispering passed between them.

As the light dimmed, the dark host edged closer, inch by inch. Some were vague, genderless shadows with only the barest hints of form, but most were more defined. Many even wore the shadows of clothes; airy skirts, formal dresses, and at least two even wore armor. And still the light faded.

“Alice, have you fought shades before?” Blader asked quietly.

“Never.”

“Then pay attention, or you’ll put Alba in danger. They’re slow and easy to injure, but only daylight will kill them. It doesn’t matter how much you cut them up; they won’t die. Focus on getting rid of their limbs.”

Alice slammed her heel into the ground, breaking off several dark glassy fragments, and scooped up several of them, loading them into one of her pistols. The barrel lengthened and grew wider, and the handle began to glow a light yellow. Hopefully they would have the effect she thought they would.

The light between two of the crystals blinked out for a moment, and two shades passed through. Then the light returned, and they were burned out of existence. Alice and Blader stood nearly back to back, Alba pressed between them. Blader reached behind her back to touch her spine, and drew a katana from within it. A last-ditch weapon, like the shotgun Iron Shooter had used. The light went out.

The shades moved forward in a surging mass, whispers increasing in volume. Alice raised the yellow-handled gun and fired. It had an immense recoil that vibrated up her arm. The barrel spat a microscopic fragment of glass, which slammed into the nearest shade. The impact tore the creature’s whole body to shreds.

“Not quite strong enough,” Alice muttered, and continued firing. On the other side, Blader swung her blade low, cutting down shades at the knees to neutralize them, then hacking off their spectral arms when they crawled closer. After a few minutes, they were surrounded by a wall of writhing shadows.

“How much longer until morning?” Blader complained.

“Not long,” was Alice’s reply. Her yellow-handled pistol sputtered, collapsing into its normal state as the crystal ammunition was depleted. She drew her other pistol and began firing again, blasting at the shades’ legs.

“Alba,” she said, without turning around, “I need more crystal from the ground. Alba!”

She risked a backward glance. Alba was huddled on the ground, hands pressed over her ears.

“Stop…” she whispered, “please make it stop…”

The horror of killing, was it? Blader looked for a moment like she was about to stop, just to appease her, but thankfully did not. Nonetheless, they were not in a good position. Due to their numbers, the whispering shades approached slightly faster than she could cut them down. When she had said “not long”, she had meant morning would come in an hour or so. That was much too long, now. Maybe…

From amongst the mass of shades emerged a new figure, taller than the others. This was one of the shades with armor, and it held a large shield with which it guarded itself and those behind it. Her shots blew large holes in the shield, but it held firm. Another such shade appeared, and another. The first one came close enough that it drew a shadowy mace, and Alice planted a kick directly in the center of its shield, sending it flying back into the press of shades.

“Blader,” she said, a note of trepidation entering her voice. “I need your assistance.”

“I’m a bit busy -”

“I need you to cut out my eye.”

“What?”

“I think it would hurt too much to do it myself.”

“Well, I never thought I’d get another chance to do something like this,” Blader chuckled, swinging her sword wide to bring down all the shades near her, then dashed to Alice’s side. “Hold still.”

Her finger formed a hook, and moved forward. Alice let out a single snarl of pain and fell to one knee, clutching at her eye socket. After a moment, she raised her other hand and took the eye.

“I was right,” she said, voice flat. “I probably couldn’t have done that myself.”

Her gun opened with a click, and she inserted it into her pistol. This time there was no change to its appearance.

“If this doesn’t work, we may be out of options.”

With that, she raised the gun and fired. A large amethyst crystal shot from the barrel and hung, suspended in midair above them.

“Cover your eyes.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Then, with a noise like thunder, the crystal exploded, radiating a brilliant and blinding light. The whispers of the shades took on a note of panic, and they dissolved before the roaring light. For several long, blazing seconds the nova continued to shine. Then in a single instant it winked out.

Alice raised her head. The shades were gone. Any creature of the night within a hundred feet had been burned away into nothingness.

“What was that?” asked Blader in awe, blinking to restore vision to her eyes.

“Anti-Darkness ammunition,” Alice responded. “It converts my memories of sunlight into physicality. It’s expensive, but in this case...”

Alba moaned softly and shifted, removing her hands from her ears. She sat up, wiping tears from her eyes.

“I-I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I thought...I thought because they weren’t really people I wouldn’t...but it...it was horrible...”

Alice shook her head, partly in dismissal of Alba’s words, partly in agreement with them. Blader laid a hand on Alba’s shoulder and seemed to be searching for words. Alba glanced up, seeing Alice’s face.

“Oh no...” she gasped, putting a hand to her mouth. “Oh no...Alice...”

“It’s fine. It’ll regenerate in a few days.”

Alba shook her head, fresh tears running down her face, and she placed her hand over Alice’s empty eye socket.

“It’s not okay,” she whimpered. “No no no no no...”

Her hand began to glow softly, and a blue light ran from her fingers to Alice’s face. Alice gasped and slapped Alba’s hand away. For a moment she probed at the socket, then drew her hand away.

“Impossible...”

Her eye had regenerated. Blader moved closer to examine it. Alba gave a gasp of amazement and joy. Then she swayed, collapsing in Alice’s lap.

“Alba! Alba!” Blader cried. Alice put a hand to Alba’s forehead.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled. “Just tired. I wish I knew...what I did. Blader...let me...”

She raised a hand, reaching half-blindly to Blader’s injured shoulder. Blader pushed her hand away.

“No!” she said fiercely. “Don’t use your energy like that. Just rest.”

“Let her do it,” Alice said, standing up and looking out in the direction the morning sun would arrive from. “You’re going to need both arms. 07 is close, and 06 seems to be with her.”

Blader smoldered for a moment, but let Alba place her hand on and her shoulder, and Alice focused on the other Codes. Silver Maria and one other - 06, based on what Emilia had said - had come a long way, probably traveling both day and night, and now weren’t more than a few hours’ travel away. Emilia seemed to have remained in the Freepeople’s City, based on the rate at which her presence had dimmed. The remaining three presences had grown stronger with every step they took into the Butterfly Queen’s lands - one somewhat strong, the others much fainter. Iron Shooter and Steel Blader had been the only Codes to serve the Butterfly Queen...unless she had gained new allies. Alternatively, they could be prisoners, or they could all live in these lands independent from the spreading shadow. Or there could be some other reason.

“I don’t think...” Alba murmured, “...I can walk right now. Could I maybe just nap...for a little while?”

Alice turned and scooped up the princess in her arms.

“I’ll carry you,” she said, and glanced over at Blader. “Let’s go.”

Blader finished testing her newly healed arm, and they set out back into the Valley of Mirrors. Alba was asleep within seconds of their setting off. Their course curved roughly southward this time; neither of them knew the area well, but they both knew the safest course was to go down into the Black Marshes and avoid the watchful eyes of the Tower of Orion.

Tattered gray clouds were spattered across the purple sky. As they traveled, the sun, small and pale, arrived from over the mountains and began the climb to its zenith. It had come nearly to that point when they rounded a large upthrust of rock and the tower came into view.

In physical dimensions, it was not a mighty structure. It would have exceeded the pointed towers of the Palace of the Winter Rose by only a small margin. Nonetheless, its form drew the eye and its aura the mind, despite still being a half-mile off.

It stood on a small plateau or bluff situated among the mountains at the end of the valley, and appeared to have been constructed entirely of perfectly smooth jade. Every part of it, from its cagelike foundations to its pinnacle, seemed to radiate starlight the way the Gold Loop had radiated sunlight, and every part was covered in staring windows.

“Do you think we can be seen from here?” Alice asked as they pulled away from the tower’s glare. Blader thought for a while before answering.

“I don’t know. The eyes in that tower aren’t normal. They’re much dimmer during the day, though. I...I actually think we’re safe.”

If Blader was confident in this case, even when Alba’s life would be at risk, Alice decided it probably was a reasonable bet.

“Alright,” she decided, “we’ll go - what’s that?”

A figure dropped from the upthrust of rock and landed behind them. Something bulky was attached to its right arm, but it moved easily. Its presence blazed brightly in Alice’s mind. Another Code, but how had she come close without being detected?

Alice made sure Blader was between her and the other Code, and lay Alba down. As she did, the other Code swung her right arm at Blader, who brought up her sword to deflect it. The tip of the bulky machine began to spin, and Alice realized it was a massive drill. The drill bit shot forward. Blader was not entirely able to dodge, and it bit into her stomach. Then Alice opened fire, and the other Code retreated back up the rock. Alice leaped and gave chase, but the enemy was retreating in the direction of the Tower of Orion, and she pulled back.

“Blader, how are you?” Alice asked as she came back. Blader waved her away.

“It’s nothing. It’s not very deep,” she replied. “More importantly, how did she sneak up on us?”

“I don’t know,” Alice said, scooping up Alba again. “Her presence is already fading away; more quickly than she could be moving. Maybe she can distort her presence somehow.”

Alba had been roused somewhere along the way, and stretched out her hand to the wound in Blader’s stomach.

“No!” both Alice and Blader said at once.

“The wound isn’t serious,” Alice elaborated, “and this power you have requires a lot of energy. Using it again could put your life in danger.”

“Alright,” Alba said, already sounding tired again, “as long as it’s not serious.”

They continued past the tower, encountering no resistance, as Blader had predicted. Alice caught her stumbling from time to time her stomach injury, but she guessed it would be healed by the next morning. At about midday, Blader came closer, checking that Alba was still asleep, and spoke in a hushed voice.

“Her power, do you know where it came from?” she asked.

“No idea.”

“I have a theory. If she’s the key to heaven, like Dust Emilia said, she’s not just a human being. She’s something else. Maybe, as she comes closer to her destiny, the energy inside her energy is awakening.”

“So then reaching the door is her destiny?” Alice asked, almost wryly. Blader did not take it lightly.

“I never said it was a destiny she should face,” she said darkly. They walked in silence for several minutes, then she spoke again.

“Alice. What were Emilia’s instructions for sealing the door?”

Alice stopped, turning to face her fully. The princess shifted in her arms, but did not wake.

“To be blunt,” she said, “I don’t trust you with that information.”

“What?”

“Forget it,” she said firmly, beginning to walk again.

And the darkness in Steel Blader’s heart began to spread.[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 10: Execution Certainty"]They reached the Black Marshes near sunset, but did not stop for the night. Shades did not patrol in those swamps; there were things below the waters so black they fed on shadows.

The Black Marshes were indeed black. The water was muddy and filled with a clinging black oil. The stands of swamp grass and other plant life were all rotting, even while alive. Thin, low-hanging clouds blanketed the whole area. As often as once an hour, it would drizzle for a for a few minutes, then halt.

As night descended, Alba woke up and walked for a while, but after a few minutes Alice carried her again, as she could take barely take a single step on the treacherous marshland. All the while, Alice paid careful attention to the two presences growing brighter and brighter in her mind’s eye.

“Alba,” she said at length, “can you heal Blader’s injury now?”

The princess nodded and reached out her hand. Blader pulled away.

“No,” she said emphatically. “I told you, it’s nothing.”

“We’re going to run into 06 and 07 at any moment,” Alice said. “We can’t afford the slightest weakness.”

“The sword serves. Not the other way around.”

“That’s stupid!” Alba snapped. “Steel Blader, I order you to accept this!”

Blader relented, and Alba placed her hand over the wound. Her hand glowed, sparks passing from it into Blader. Then Alba drew her hand away.

“I’m fine,” she mumbled, but her face was ashen. “I just need to...”

She lapsed back into sleep. Alice held her closer to keep her warm. Blader gave her a cold look.

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Maybe not. I’ll regret it later.”

They continued for a few minutes more, looking for a good place to battle 07 and her partner, if it came to that (Alice thought it would). Soon they came upon a flat, stony area mostly free of mud. Tall rustling reeds grew around it in clusters, drinking the rain water that trickled from it. Alice set Alba down by the water’s edge.

“Maria, come out!” she called into the mist.

Two figures emerged from the mist. The first Alice recognized as Silver Maria, Code 07, droplets of water clinging to her coat. The fingers of her large metal hand flexed. The other figure was tall and stately, clothed not in black but a silver battle dress that left her right arm bare, and held a long spear. The number ‘06’ glittered on her shoulder. Alice put herself between them and the princess.

“Have you reconsidered, Alice?” Maria asked.

“You already know what we’re trying to do.”

“Yes, Emilia told us the same thing. But it’s impossible.”

“You agree, don’t you,” 06 said, “Steel Blader?”

“How do you know my name?” Blader demanded.

“I am Platinum Claire,” she replied, “queen of the four metal Codes. I know more about you than you do.”

Blader laughed at that, drawing her sword.

“You don’t know a thing. It’s my duty to protect Princess Alba.”

“Then we fight.”

Alice fired her first shot at Claire, who avoided it by charging at Blader, their weapons clashing with a ring of steel. Her other pistol was pointed at Maria, who raised her metal claw, each blast splashing harmlessly off.

“Interesting,” Alice murmured. Maria approached slowly.

“I don’t want to fight you,” she said.

“Then don’t.”

“I can’t do that.”

She charged, guarding herself with her hand,and Alice fired at her legs. She leaped, Alice’s pistol following, but she knocked aside each azure flash with her hand, reaching for Alice’s throat. Alice rolled underneath the attack, feeling a kick to the back as she did, and came up firing. Maria had already turned to deflect the attacks with her hand. Alice paused to consider the space she had to work with.

“You can’t win this,” Alice said. “You’ve already let me put distance between us. You can’t touch me anymore.”

“You’ve miscalculated,” Maria replied, charging again. Alice opened fire, each shot dissipating against the large metal hand. She retreated step by step, continuing to fire, until she reached the water’s edge. Maria swung her clawed hand, but Alice sidestepped, pushing Maria into the water. She fastened onto Alice’s arm as she fell, pulling her down as well, and the black water closed over her head. She fired blindly in Maria’s direction, and the hand on her arm loosened its grip, letting her kick off Maria’s body and crawl back onto land. The other Code would be back soon, but in the meantime...

Blader’s duel was not going nearly as well. Claire was adept was with her spear, and seemed to have a strength advantage as well. As Alice climbed from the water, she knocked Blader’s sword aside with the back of her spear before driving the point through her stomach. She flicked something on the weapon’s handle, causing the point of the spear to separate into three, becoming a trident and preventing Blader from pulling herself off. Then she moved so that Blader was between her and Alice.

“What now, Gray Alice?” Claire taunted. Alice lowered her guns. There was no way to get to her except through Blader - the amount Claire would have to pivot was simply less than the distance Alice would have to move.

So she fired anyway, her shot penetrating Blader’s abdomen and catching Claire in the thigh. At the same moment, heedless of the tremendous pain she must have been experiencing, Blader pulled herself forward along the spear’s shaft, aiming her sword at Claire’s heart. Claire grabbed Blader’s wrist, stopping the point inches from her heart. With her other hand she reverted the spear’s point to its original shape and tossed Blader off it, flinging her at Alice.

Swiftly, Alice knelt at Blader’s side and plunged one pistol into the profusely bleeding wound on her stomach.

“I need this more than you right now,” she said, turning as Maria leaped from the water, clawed hand reaching for her. She squeezed the trigger of the now-glowing pistol, which spat a jet-black thread, severing Maria’s hand from her body. She dropped to the ground screaming, and Alice turned back toward Claire. Blader rose to her feet. She was shaking, but her grip on her sword was steady.

“I’ll retreat for now,” Claire stated, glancing only briefly at Maria shuddering on the ground, “but I will return.”

With that, she vanished into the mist. Alice turned her attention back to Maria, who was climbing back to her feet. Alice blew out her knee, drawing out a fresh cry. Blader was less indecisive, walking forward unsteadily and raising her sword.

“Wait -” was all Maria could get out before Blader plunged the sword into her heart. Like Iron Shooter, her body crumbled into a fine black powder, like ash. Then Blader pitched over, landing on her back.

“I’m not going to be walking for a while,” she said. “Going to have to...stay here...”

Alice located Alice and carried her over.

“Did something happen?” she asked, still half-asleep.

“We fought two other Codes,” Alice explained. “Blader is injured, so we’re stopping here for a while. Don’t try to heal her. It would probably kill you, and she doesn’t need it.”

“Okay...”

Alice set her down next to Blader, and sat by them. Maria’s light was gone from her mind’s eye, and Claire’s was fading into the distance. The presence of the Code that had attacked them hovered neither near nor far. She paid especially close attention to that.[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 11: Penetrate Heart"]In the depths of her healing trance, Blader dreamed a foul dream. Even as it played out, shame burned in her veins, and anger as well.

She stood in a red darkness. Some distance away sat the white shape of Alba. From out of the darkness loomed another figure, standing out black against against the darkness, and it reached for Alba. Blader began to run, but not quickly enough. The figure seized Alba by the hair and beat her savagely against the ground again and again and again, until her dress was stained with red. Then it put a massive hand around her throat and began to squeeze.

Blader hacked off the arm with her sword, and stabbed the figure through the heart as it turned to face her, and it dissolved into nothingness. Desperately, Blader knelt and cradled Alba in her arms. As she wiped the blood from her face, Alba stirred. She began to speaking, whispering that she was fine, and thanking Blader for saving her, thanking her over and over, wrapping her arms around her and burying her face in her chest.

Then Alba began to glow, a radiant glow pouring from her heart. Against it, Blader could see the silhouette of a key. They key to heaven...

“A tempting prize,” said a voice, “but not one that interests you, is it?”

The vision dropped away, and Blader found herself in a metal room, lit by a dark red light with no source. She sat at one end of a rusting table. A Code sat at the other.

She wore ebony body armor that left her arms and legs bare and similarly colored high-heeled boots. A study in sexuality, not by intent or concept but an expressive outgrowth of the mind it concealed; a study whose details its audience could not appreciate. Black bandages covered her left eye, and a massive black drill was attached to her right arm.

“Who are you?” Blader demanded.

“I’m Ash Grinder,” she said, in a voice not so much poisoned honey as sweet poison. The digits ‘04’ flashed on her tongue. “Well, sort of. I’m an echo of Ash Grinder, left behind in your head after she attacked you. But it’d be easier to just think of me Ash Grinder herself.”

“Did you make me dream that just now?”

Ash Grinder rested her arm on the table.

“I wouldn’t say I made you,” she replied, smiling an awful smile. “I was...exploring your subconscious. Trying to understand your desires.”

“What I want is simple.”

“Okay, here’s a question,” Grinder said agreeably. “Where was your philosophy in that vision? Oh, it might look on the surface like serving the princess - you might even be able to convince yourself that’s what it was - but what you really did was save her. And for that you got her praise, her gratitude.”

“And what did you feel?” she continued, pressing the attack. “You enjoyed it, didn’t you? What did you like about it? The kill? Her words? Or...?”

She licked her lips.

“...You can sort out your feelings for yourself. But you pulled back from the image of the key. That vision wasn’t the crux of your desire.”

Blader found herself shivering, but met Grinder’s cyclopean gaze.

“What...do you want?”

“Imagine each of the ten Codes represents one part of the soul,” she began, by way of answering. “Then Ash Grinder is the part of you that tries to make you happy. The part of you that wants things.”

“Instinct,” Blader spat. “Animal instinct.”

“You can be cruel and call of that if you like,” Grinder replied, “but it’s still there, and you can’t ignore it. Let me put it this way: you can either be active and take what gives you pleasure...or you can be reactive and run from everything that hurts you. Any other system of thought you build for yourself is just obfuscation.”

“You’re disgusting.”

She grinned, the room beginning to fade.

“So are you.”[/spoiler]
 
Further chapters are in the post below.

[Dr. Cakey]

Chapters 12+ are posted here.

[spoiler="Chapter 12: Desire Divide"]
And here's where things start getting creepy...
 
Alice woke them with the morning sun. They had already passed through the heart of the Black Marshes, and the going was easier now, easy enough that Alba walked with them again. By midmorning they had cleared the marshes entirely, reaching the Shadow-Downs - hills of compacted volcanic ash that some said demarcated the edge of the world.

If the Black Marshes had been a land of dying, the Shadow-Downs were simply dead. The air was dry and flat, neither warm nor chill, and the lurked close overhead in a thick dark sheet, obscuring the sun. Nothing grew there, and no creature crept among the rocks.

After crossing the first hill, though, they began to discover signs that it had not always been that way. The skeletons of buildings - beams and girders - thrust out from the sides of the hills in places. It was as if the ocean had risen up to engulf a city and became petrified.

“What happened here?” Alba wondered, giving voice to their thoughts. Alice could only shrug.

As they pressed onward, Blader began to lag behind. Her injuries made it difficult for her to walk, but beyond that she seemed to have withdrawn into herself, wrapped in a poisonous mental miasma. Sometimes she shivered. Alice left her to herself; she could come up with a dozen reasons for Blader to be behaving strangely, but none of them seemed likely.

By contrast, Alba kept up without difficulty, no longer asking for nor seeming to need any rest. Whatever the catalyst, she was changing, or had changed, into something no longer human. Every few minutes she would glance back at Blader struggling behind them, but didn’t say a thing.

“Usually you’d want to heal her, wouldn’t you?” Alice commented, when her curiosity became too great.

“I do want to,” Alba responded, “but...right now she’s fighting something in her head. The pain is giving her something to focus on.”

Alice raised a quizzical eyebrow.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” Alba admitted. “I can just tell.”

Alba was mostly correct. The inside of Blader’s mind was filled with poison, and the aching pain of her wound was something tangible to cling to, yes...but she wasn’t fighting anything. Ash Grinder had reached into her heart and pulled out something foul, but this was a nightmare Blader created for herself. For all she knew, Grinder’s echo had faded away. This knowledge, that she was in a torment of her own making, drove her rage to an even higher pitch.

Alba’s blood stained the walls of her mind as a hundred different visions cascaded by, some similar to her first dream, some different. She was plagued with a parade of figures, some familiar, some strange. Alice appeared often, inspiring a sourceless hatred. The only time it abated was when Alice pointed a gun at her heart. That would end this spiral of shameful pain.

Her world had become one composed solely of pain. The only escape from the pain of her interior world was the throbbing ache of the exterior. She had to flee the pain altogether, but there was nowhere to run. What was it Ash Grinder had said...?

“You can either be active and take what gives you pleasure...or you can be reactive and run from everything that hurts you.”

All she had to do was finding something...that didn’t hurt...

Even Steel Blader was roused from her internal world when the group reached the end of the Shadow-Downs. The moment they reached the top of the final down, they crossed an invisible threshold into a different world. Time and distance fell away. So did the sunlight.

The clouds were actually less thick here, and the sun remained a bright orb in the sky, but it no longer provided warmth, and it no longer seemed the case that its rays were shed more in some places than others. The perpetual gloom of this place was unchanging. Nothing cast a shadow. None of them knew it for certain, but each guessed on some subconscious level the place in which they now stood: the Black Marshes were dying, the Shadow-Downs were dead, and this place was beyond even that. Beyond the body’s final moment.

The Land of the Dead.

The cosmological meaning of that concept - whether this was hell, or purgatory, or a waiting-place while the door to heaven was closed, or heaven was not meant to house the souls of the dead, or something else - would have been of no concern to any of them, except perhaps Alba. All they cared about was reaching the pale light of Starhall that could now be barely glimpsed in the distance.

As they stood examining the broad plain of the Land of the Dead, the sun slipped below the horizon, and the landscape transformed. In the span of a few seconds, parts of the plain rose up and becoming walls, until the entire plain became a vast labyrinth.

Alice guided them down to the entrance of the labyrinth. The walls were smooth, as though they had been carved rather than transformed by an unknown power. From the entrance, the path immediately diverged in three directions.

“You two wait here,” Alice decided. “I’ll figure out the route.”

Blader said nothing, simply throwing herself to the ground, resting her back against one wall. More than anything else, she seemed relieved for the break. Alba sat down by her. With a final glance at the two of them, Alice proceeded into the labyrinth, arbitrarily selecting the right-hand path.

If she were fighting a battle, Blader would have surrendered by now. But there was no one and nothing to surrender to; just more imagery dredged up from some void in her heart. Maybe there was no end at all - maybe Ash Grinder had unsealed this part of her and it would continue tormenting her until the thread of her life was cut. No, they were in the Land of the Dead now. It might not end even then.

Blader opened her eyes as something rustled nearby. Alba had moved closer, and now sat within arm’s reach. She began to shiver.

“Do you want me to heal you?” Alice asked softly.

Hundreds of times within her mind, Blader had seen that innocent countenance beaten and cut, tortured and slaughtered...and much worse. Simply to see that face alive and vibrant...Alba was a flawless profile of ivory and gold, so lovely it was agony to look upon her. No escape from pain, even here...

“You don’t know what you’re asking...” she said. In her ears, it sounded like a whine.

“Do you want me to heal you?” Alba repeated, sharply.

Oh, Blader thought to herself, is it that simple?

And she nodded. Alba placed a hand on her stomach, and light blossomed. She closed her eyes as the throbbing pain melted away.

“What are you afraid of?” asked Ash Grinder. “And what do want?”

Maybe it was that simple. Blader plunged a hand down into the swirling maelstrom of shame from her heart, and dredged up the burning core of her pain.

This vision took place in darkness – not the red darkness, but a truly black world that eclipsed her rage and went beyond it. A world of despair.

Alice held Alba in her arms. One hand rested on her shoulder, the other covered her mouth. Alba’s gaze was filled with a deep sadness that leapt across the boundary of the vision. With a face as devoid of expression as ever, Alice’s hand drifted from her shoulder and hooked onto the back of her dress and tore…

Rather than pain, Blader felt a powerful sense of release. Everything seemed so clear now, where before it had been dark and confused.

“Sorry, Alba,” she said, placing her hand over the princess’s. Then she stood up, stretching her newly-healed muscles, and seized the princess, slinging her over her shoulder.

Alice had followed the labyrinth through two more branching paths, committing each twist and turn to memory, before she reached a dead end. As she retraced her steps, a sense of dread blazed up suddenly in her heart. The presence of the Code that had attacked them burned bright in her mind’s eye. She was close. Very close. And Blader was in no shape to fight.

Cursing her stupidity, she sprinted back to the entrance, reaching it just in time to see Blader sling Alba over her shoulder and begin to walk away. As she did, she turned back and gave Alice a demonic smile.

Possible explanations bloomed in Alice’s mind, but she pushed them aside and raced to close the gap between them. She came to a stop, however, as the mysterious Code dropped from one of the walls of the labyrinth and landed by her side.

“You’ll have to get through me first,” she laughed, her drill screeching as she stabbed it at Alice, who threw herself aside, out of the Code’s reach, and continued running after Blader. Then something heavy slammed into her back, knocking her to the ground. The Code planted a foot on her neck.

“This is what happens when you don’t focus,” she said, pointing her drill downward. The massive bit slammed down again, smashing into Alice’s back and snapping her spine. The last thing she heard was Alba screaming.[/spoiler]
[spoiler="The Lost Chapters (read before moving on to Ch. 13)"]
We've reached the heart of the madness. Two chapters go here: Chapter 13: Endure Truth - Black and Chapter 13: Endure Truth - White. Both take place over the same seven days. Endure Truth - Black follows Alice, and Endure Truth - White follows Alba. I wrote all of Black and the second half of White, but I will not be posting Black, for two reasons. First, it contains a number of scenes of graphic torture. Second, and more importantly, these torture scenes served no purpose to the story.
 
You will get the half of Endure Truth - White I wrote. "But wait," you say, "you said you wrote the second half of it. How will I know what's going on?" Here's my summary of the first half of the chapter: Alba escapes. There. You now know just as much as I do about the first half of White.
 
Have I pissed you off suitably? Yes? Then let's move on![/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 13: Endure Truth - White"]
Day 5:
After she escaped, Alba fled blindly, stumbling down the slopes of the Shadow-Downs until she again found herself at the border of the Land of the Dead. Then she stopped and began to think.

What she wanted to do most of all was find Alice and save her. But no matter how she thought about it, that was impossible without knowing her location. Among all the abilities she had gained, sensing the presence of Codes was not one of them. What she could feel was long black thread that pulled her westward. That was the door of heaven, she was sure.

If she couldn’t find Alice, she wanted to find Dust Emilia and ask how to lock the door of heaven. But crossing back over the downs, through the Black Marshes and Valley of Mirrors, and then finding the path through the Rootcaves would be even more impossible.

She could also forge ahead, crossing the Land of the Dead, finding Starhall, somehow reaching the door of heaven and then...then maybe she would know how to seal it. That was the most impossible of all.

There was one option that remained. She could return to Steel Blader. It would be horrible, but she would be alive, and that way she would make someone happy, instead of falling into the hands of the Butterfly Queen and dooming the world. Given a choice like that, any suffering she herself might have to endure was a small price to pay.

“There she is,” said a voice, quiet and wavering and astonishingly close. Alba jumped to her feet, casting around for the source of the voice.

“She’s even prettier than you,” another voice commented. “Oops. I think she can hear us.”

Two figures stepped out from behind a gutted building and approached. One, which Alba thought was a Code, had her arm around the other, and assisted her where the footing was rough.

“I’m Dusk Breaker, Code 02,” she said. Her colors were inverted from those of most of the other Codes: rather than dark clothes and ivory skin, she wore a gray-white, and her skin was black as night, making the ‘02’ on her neck stand out. She didn’t seem to be carrying any weapons. “And this is my traveling companion, Raven.”

Raven held out an awkward hand, and Alba felt a spark when she shook it. Raven was slightly shorter than her companion, and wore a long dress decorated with, or perhaps made of, black feathers. Her skin was more gray than white, and her eyes seemed slightly dead.

“Hello,” she said shyly, and avoided eye contact. Dusk Breaker gave her a pat on the shoulder.

“Right,” she said. “I was expecting you to be with someone. Are you...?”

“We got separated,” Alba said quietly. Breaker blinked in surprise.

“Separated. Well...” she stopped and glanced at the sky. “It’s going to be night soon. You should come with us.”

Alba didn’t feel any evil intentions from them, although something about Raven made her nervous, so she agreed and followed them over the last hill of the Shadow-Downs and into the Land of the Dead. Breaker found a husk of a tree for them to sit under.

“Isn’t this much nicer?” she said wryly. “Now, can you tell us what happened?”

Alba explained in stops and starts what had happened, clarifying and explaining until she realized she had told them almost everything that had happened since she met Alice in the Valley of Mirrors. When she finished, Breaker sat back against the tree and frowned in thought.

“Well that’s not good at all,” she sighed. “We haven’t had half as much trouble as you. We came from Dust Emilia like you. Raven here is the Black Princess, just like you’re the White Princess. She’s the key that opens the door to hell.”

“To...hell?” Alba repeated. What did that mean?

“Right now, though,” Breaker said, “we need to rescue Alice.”

“What?” Alba gasped, in a mixture of joy and confusion. When had that been decided?

“Well, we’ll have to wait until morning,” she continued. “She seems to be somewhere in the Shadow-Downs, and that’s crawling with shades right now. But then we’ll rescue her and you can be on your way.”

“I...” Alba tried to think of something to say. “Thank you.”

Dusk Breaker grinned.

“Don’t thank me yet,” she chuckled. “We could still get slaughtered. Or worse. Ash Grinder isn’t the kind of enemy I’d ever want to fight.”

With that, she lay back and closed her eyes, as if she had fallen into a peaceful slumber. Alba looked over at Raven, who gave a little smile.

“She’s...different from the other Codes,” she said, and lay down beside her.

Day 6:
Dusk Breaker was the last one to wake up even though she was entirely incapable of sleep. Alba for her part no longer required it, and couldn’t manage more than fitful doze, and Raven had gotten up at least a half-dozen times over the course of the night to gaze in the direction of Starhall, before curling back up by Breaker’s side. When she rose, however, Breaker wore an expression of concern.

“I can sense another Code nearby,” she murmured, “and I don’t recognize her. That means it’s either 03 or 08. Or Alice, I suppose, but I doubt it.”

“What should we do?” Alba asked.

“There’s nowhere to hide,” she responded. “All we can do is wait and see who it is. Look...if it’s Blader...I’ll probably have to kill her.”

Alba thought about that (for a very long time) as a speck of black appeared on the horizon, arriving from deeper on in the Land of the Dead. It approached with great speed, until soon Steel Blader stood before them, sword in hand. Alba did not know it, but she had been thrown off her trail by Dusk Breaker, and had searched for her for nearly the whole night through the labyrinth.

“The princess is mine,” she said, and Alba recoiled. Breaker seemed unfazed.

“Well, this princess is mine,” she replied, putting an arm around Raven. “That princess I just happened to find, but I think she belongs to herself.”

Blader glanced briefly at Raven, curiosity probably piqued when Breaker referred to her as another princess, but then her eyes returned to Alba, who retreated further behind Breaker.

“Very funny,” Blader said, pointing her sword at Breaker’s heart. “No point in drawing this out any longer, is there?”

“Nope,” Breaker agreed, putting her hand on the dead tree. It glowed and transformed into a thick lance, too large and heavy for an ordinary person to wield. She twirled it easily, and struck.

To Alba’s eyes, the battle dissolved into a blizzard of slashes and stabs, advances and retreats she could not hope to follow. So far as she could tell, the two Codes were evenly matched, neither one gaining the upper hand for more than a second or two. What she intuited, and Breaker later explained, was that Blader was both quicker and the more skilled, whereas Breaker relied on her weapon’s greater reach and weight.

The battle continued without interruption for over an hour. Neither one had some secret weapon to defeat the other, and on the dead plain in which they battled, there was no terrain either one could use to their advantage. That was until Breaker, using a thrust of her lance to gain a half-moment’s respite, reached down and drew a stone from the ground. It glowed in her hand and became a jagged, amber-colored knife.

“Interesting,” Blader commented, as Breaker - now armed with two weapons - began to push her back. “It seemed too strange to be true, but your power is to turn anything you touch into a weapon. However - !”

She switched to the offensive, and suddenly it was Breaker giving ground before an onslaught of attacks. Blader had all but been holding back before.
 
I bet you wish you knew how this fight concludes. So do I. As I began writing this fight, I realized that Breaker's ability to turn anything into a weapon was ENTIRELY USELESS on a flat plain. How boring is that? Eventually, Breaker drives off Steel Blader, but I don't know any more than that.

Day 7 (apparently...):
Following Breaker’s sense-perception, they made their along the Shadow-Downs to where Alice was trapped. The going was slow, as Breaker could only the approximate the distance to Alice’s location and had no finer method of measurement, so they traced an erratic course up and down the hillsides until, past midday, they located a thick metal hatch facing away from the gaze of Starhall embedded in the hillside. It was weathered and rusted, but still sturdy.

“Go on, Raven,” Breaker said, and turned to Alba. “Watch this.”

Raven shuffled up to the door and placed her hand on it. A shadow spread from her palm across the surface of the door, until the whole of it was pitch-black. Then she removed her hand, and the whole thing disappeared.

“It’s the opposite of your power, I think,” Breaker mused as they entered. “She can make anything that isn’t alive just disappear.”

Breaker took the lead as they descended into the hillside. They were in a downward-slanting corridor lit by banks of flickering red lights. The walls were sometimes metal, sometimes chipped concrete. Piping, most of it broken, ran along beside them for much of the time. At about the point where Alba began to suspect they had descended not just into the hill but below ground level, the corridor ended in a small room with hallways snaking off in several different directions. They chose one at random.

This first hallway ended after a few dozen feet where the ceiling had collapsed. There was one doorway, however, that led into a cramped room. It was occupied primarily by a rusty workbench, and the walls were hung with tools of all kinds in varying states of repair. More importantly, two objects rested on the workbench: a pair of gleaming black pistols, which Breaker took.

The second hallway they entered had several more rooms, all occupied with similar corroded metal furniture. Some of them had various materials or supplies scattered about. One room was piled with jagged sheetmetal, another with copper wire. Two rooms contained all manner of broken hardware, crushed and smashed beyond repair, as well as engines and generators of varying types and sizes.

The third hallway also had a number of rooms branching off. One large room had an enormous basin fed by water from a number of large pipes. The next room was full of glass containers, neatly stacked, each containing some hazy dark object. Alba peered at them, and Breaker picked one up to examine it more closely. As Alba stared, the thing in the container twitched.

“Shades,” Breaker observed. “Well, pieces of them anyway.”

Alba shuddered and retched. Breaker carried her out, and they paused for a little while she regained her composure. Raven, by contrast, kept trying to steal another glance at the boxed-up shade parts.

The hallway continued only a little further before it opened into the largest room they had yet come across. There were a handful of tables scattered haphazardly throughout, piled with various items. Broken lengths of pipe, wires, knives, nails and screws, lengths of some black chain. As they proceeded further into the room, Alba spotted something suspended from the ceiling by a length of chain. It was pierced through by a long metal spike.

“Alice!” Alba screamed, running to her. Alice’s eyes were half-shut, and she did not respond. While Alba clung to her, sobbing with relief and horror, Raven put her hand to the chains that bound her, and disintegrated them. Breaker lowered her to the floor, and put a hand on the spear in Alice’s stomach.

“Hey, Alba, listen to me,” she urged, and Alba wiped the tears from her eyes. “I’m going to take out the spear. You heal her. Okay?”

Alba nodded, covering her mouth as Breaker retracted the weapon’s forked end and pulled it out. The whole length was smeared with black blood. Still trembling with horror, Alba put her hand to the gaping wound and poured power into it. When the light faded, it was gone. Alice shifted and opened her eyes.

“Alba...?” she mumbled uncertainly.

“Oh, Alice,” Alba cried, “you’re alright!”

Alice sat up slowly, staring around at everything as if she didn’t know where she was. Then she did something unexpected. She put her arms around Alba’s neck, pressed her face to her chest, and began to cry. As the tears ran down her cheeks she began to talk, a long torrent of words that spilled out and would not stop, as everything that had happened to her over the past seven days poured out. Alba could barely understand her as she spoke, but put her arms around her and held her close.[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 14: Colors Dispersed"]
Alice was broken, but over the few minutes in Alba’s arms she rebuilt herself piece by piece, brick by brick, until she was once again Code 01 Gray Alice. Then she disengaged herself from Alba’s embrace, and the tears were gone.

“I’m sorry. That was...” she searched for the right word, failed to find it. “Who are they?”

Breaker apparently was possessed of enough to tact to withdraw, and had been busying herself examining some of the devices that littered one table. She approached as Alba introduced her and Raven, and tossed Alice her pistols.

“Can you fight?” Breaker asked. “Ash Grinder’s coming back this way, and very quickly.”

“I’m fine. Have you fought her before?”

“Once,” Breaker replied, picking up two lengths of pipe and transforming them into a pair of long knives. Alice observed the process with interest. “She’s strong. I wouldn’t want to fight her alone. Her drill is both short and medium range, and it has a lot of weight behind it. She’s strong, too.”

Alice aimed both her guns at the doorway into the room. The sound of boots on metal echoed from somewhere up ahead before fading away. They waited. Alice was beginning to grow suspicious when Grinder broke through the floor behind them, drill still spinning from boring up from the piping below.

“Alice,” she said, lips peeling from her teeth. She did not seem at all concerned by the current turn of events. “You’ve been a bad girl.”

Alice turned slowly, guns tracking toward her heart. She retreated with slow steps behind one table, up-ending it with a flick of one hand to give herself cover.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Alice said slowly. “You are the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered.”

Grinder raised an amused eyebrow and rested her drill against the table.

“I guess you just weren’t purified enough,” she said, spinning the drill against the table so that sparks flew, and laughed when she saw Alice flinch.

“It’s my fault,” she continued. “I didn’t train you well enough. You shouldn’t run away from the fire. You should welcome it.”

As she finished her sentence she kicked the table, and it skidded at high speed across the floor toward them. As they dodged aside, she shot toward Alice.

“Let me tell you something,” she laughed, as Alice avoided the first strike of her keening drill. “This time, I’m going to kill you.”

Alice tried to gain distance so that she had enough room to use her pistols, but Grinder moved in front of her so that she was caught against the wall. By this time, however, Breaker had crossed the room, and Grinder had to throw herself aside to avoid being skewered. As she did, she activated her drill’s second function, so that the massive bit extended at high speed like a piledriver. Breaker blocked the attack with her knives, but was thrown back by the force of the attack. Alice fired at Grinder’s heart, but she dropped low and rolled aside.

Rather than coming in close, however, she had retreated, increasing the distance between them. Alice smiled to herself. She was trying to retreat. She took two more steps back and Alice was about to fire again when the wall right near Grinder exploded.

Through the rocks and swirling dust stepped the emerald form of Veridian. She took one glance at Grinder, who had been knocked over by the explosion, and made a downward gesture. The ceiling above Grinder caved in, burying her beneath massive chunks of stone and concrete.

“I am here for the princess,” she said, addressing Breaker and Alice. All the loose stones in the room rose up around her. “If you surrender her to me know, I will spare your lives.”

Breaker stepped between Veridian and Raven.

“I don’t mean to be...” Breaker said to Alice, sounding apologetic, “but I’m not going to...what I mean to say is...good luck.”

With that, she grabbed Raven by the hand and ran from the room. Veridian spared her no more than a glance. Alice wanted to be angry, to be furious, but couldn’t. Had their roles been reversed, she would have done the same thing. She just wouldn’t have felt nearly as guilty doing it. Without taking her eyes off Veridian, she took a slow step toward Alba.

Veridian flicked her hand, and a massive sheet of concrete detached itself from the wall beside her and flew forward, separating Alba from Alice, then flew toward the princess. Alice slammed her foot against the concrete barrier, breaking through it in a matter of seconds, just in time to see Veridian catch Alba by the hair. She raised her hand and the ceiling split open, and she levitated up through the gap. Alice moved to leap after her, but she made one last downward gesture, and the entire ceiling began to crack and shake.

A very valuable part of her want to leap through the collapsing masonry and give chase, but the rest of her mind was already guiding her feet to the exit. Only seconds after she cleared the doorway, the entire ceiling gave way, burying the entire room in a deafening crash. Alice spared an instant to hope Ash Grinder had taken the full force of that. Then she began to run, the corridor around her blurring as she reached deep into herself to find the nebulous limits of her speed and then to challenge them. Maybe she could go faster than Veridian flew, maybe not, but one thing was certain:

Veridian was going to Starhall. And so was she.[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 15: Starhall-Upon-Ararat"]
The Land of the Dead was, more or less, the edge of the world. Alice had never considered the shape of the world in any detail, and she certainly was not doing so at that moment, but she did know the Earth was round, and set in a vast cold void surrounded by stars, and it rested in orbit about the sun. If she had attempted to probe her memories in this sector, she would have discovered she knew a great deal about the stars, their origins, their fate, and much more besides. But she also knew the world, and that it extended off to the east, west, north, and south and there was nothing beyond a certain point, and heaven lay above it. She did not attempt to reconcile these two ideas. There was no point.

Nonetheless, the Land of the Dead was the edge of the world, and Alice had only begun to enter it. To the beings that lived there, this part of the brown plains was probably there version of the Shadow-Downs; a place that that their unliving sensibilities reviled.

As Alice ran, she began to see shadowy figures wandering about. They were, she eventually recognized, shades. Soon they came in scattered groups of twos and threes, then in larger clusters. Some of them turned their heads as she passed, but most seemed to ignore her. It was possible, she supposed, that these beings didn’t take action unless directed by the Butterfly Queen to some purpose. Otherwise they remained here, where the sun was pale and did not harm them. In a next world that was part of this one. And even if they were hostile, she did not have the time to kill every one of them. As she had exited Ash Grinder’s hideout, she had seen a streak of green in the sky heading west, but even at her present pace, it had outdistanced her in a few hours.

By the time the sun set, Alice guessed she had covered half the distance to Starhall. She had made a journey of about four days (for an ordinary human) in that time, and It had grown from a pale glint on the horizon to a faint, broad glow that smudged the boundary between earth and sky. Dimly she could make out the vague edges of a vast structure within the cloud of starlight.

The stars here in the Land of the Dead were bright and cold, particularly after the choked skies of the other parts of the Butterfly Queen’s domain. Here the ground sloped upward, even though from a distance the plain had seemed to be flat, and with each step she took, the lights in the sky seemed to grow larger and brighter. When the moon was about halfway along its course, she happened to turn back and saw the clouds gathered miles below her. The air had grown thin, but breathing was more convention to her than necessity. That was when she realized space itself no longer behaved as it normally did. What from outside appeared completely flat was within a shallow incline, and yet each step covered a great, invisible vertical distance. Indeed, although Starhall appeared from everywhere to stand at the edge of a plain, it in truth dominated the zenith of the tallest mountain ever to stand on the face of the earth. Where better to build a stronghold climbing to the door of heaven than a place that already scraped the sky?

The moon set, but the sun did not rise. Alice was now beyond even the Land of the Dead, and was in the eternal night the Butterfly Queen wove about her stronghold. The stars burned brighter in the sky than anywhere or anytime else, lighting up the world nearly as though it were day.

Then, slowly, the spires of Starhall came into view. They climbed gradually over the horizon as though Alice were ascending a mountain - as, indeed, she was. So massive were they it was an hour from her first glimpse of the fortress’s apex to when she at last stood at the outermost limits of the citadel. When she reached that point, she fell to her knees, gasping for a barely present air, and rested. In the course of less than eighteen hours she had traveled more than five hundred miles. That distance at that great a speed, even she was forced to rest.

She did not permit herself more than five minutes, and once she had mastered her breath she stood again. Starhall itself was a citadel constructed of multifarious spires and towers - seemingly composed of radiant glass - all of varying heights and all clustered around a tower tube that stretched like a thread even further up into the night sky. That slender column - according to the instructions Dust Emilia had given forever ago - was Atlus, the lone pillar that held up the firmament. Metaphysically speaking. According to her, the interior of the pillar was hollow and ringed with a flight of steps that led upward to heaven’s door, and downward to the bowels of the earth. Emilia had stated it reached “the underworld”, but Alice had just passed through the underworld (and it had very much been a part of the ‘middle-world’), so exactly what that meant she did not know.

Around the sprawling feet of Starhall was another marvel. There, going right up to Alice’s feet, was a city. She stood right next to a vaulted bridge that crossed a canal that mirrored the eternal night sky. The buildings of the city were low, no more than one story high, and constructed of a slate-hued stone nowhere in evidence in the surrounding landscape. The roads were paved with a similar stone, and everything was nestled between many flowing rivers, so that the whole place seemed more like a statue garden than a city. A few shades drifted forlornly among the buildings.

Alice’s boots echoed resoundingly as she set foot on the bridge, and she half-expected some alarm to go up, but nothing happened. She continued into the city, now moving more slowly, partly out of wariness and partly out of curiosity.

Many canals and streams ran through the city, even more than she had thought from outside, and suddenly something else Emilia had said made sense. She had stated there to be five springs set at equal points around Starhall, each with a name: Acheron, Cocytus, Lethe, Phlegethon, and Styx. Each spring fed a number of streams and brooks. But she had emphasised that those waters were not to be drunk; even a Code would likely not be immune to whatever venoms or curses they possessed.

As in the Land of the Dead, the shades in the city did not spare her even a glance. As she passed one open doorway, she thought she saw a pair of very un-shade-like eyes peer out at her, but nothing came of it and she proceeded to the gates of Starhall. Here she was challenged.

Two mechanical beings, stood on either side of the gate. Their bodies had no identifying features, but their faces were female, and hair of crafted bronze fell around their faces. Each held a silver sword, and they were perfectly identical save for the numbers stamped on their chests: ‘19’ and ‘61’.

“Gray Alice,” they said as one, brandishing their swords. “We have been expecting you.”

They attacked with great speed, but they were much slower than a Code. She opened fire on them, but they rotated their swords at high speed - like Steel Blader but with far less grace - and deflected away her shots. Faster than they could move, she leaped over them and planted one shot each in their metal skulls, blowing their heads off. To her surprise, this did not slow them down at all, and they came at her again.

She leaped away from their attack and considered the situation for a half-second. Then, on a hunch, she sprang over them again, dropping a blast each down their throats. At this they stopped, stiffened, and shattered in hundreds of pieces. Alice picked up one fragment and examined it for a moment, then tossed it aside. She put both hands and the great gates of Starhall and pulled them open, and entered the heart of darkness.[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 16: In the Halls of Babel"]
The interior of Starhall was actually dimmer than the bright night outside. The place was constructed mostly of a blue-green stone so smooth it seemed more like polished glass. Crystals of purple and crimson rose up from the floor or stabbed out from the walls at various points, shedding pools of colored light and serving as the principle illumination.

At ground level there were many hallways snaking off to other towers, but by looking up Alice could be certain she stood now in the very tallest spire. Looking up, she could not perceive where it ended, and none of the others could possibly have been so tall.

There was a ramp that spiraled up the interior, and she began to climb it. The citadel seemed empty, and it made her wonder why it was so large if it was virtually devoid of inhabitants. There were probably shades brooding in some of its dark corners - perhaps like the ones at the Gold Loop, with armor forged from shadows - but as far as she could see, no soul stirred in these halls. She also wondered why, with each step, the rippling glass walls seemed more and more familiar.

Periodically along the ramp were shallow alcoves. The first one contained nothing except the letters ‘CVII’ scrawled in a large, uneven hand. The next, however, contained a portrait, exceptionally detailed and painted directly on the wall. It depicted a woman dressed in white, tall and willowy, and with sparkling wings. Alice thought the feathers looked like they had been fashioned from metal. In her clasped hands she held a bow, though no arrows were in evidence. A plaque at the bottom stated ‘CVI’, followed by two dates.

The alcoves were spaced about a hundred feet apart, vertically, which meant there were several minutes of walking between them. ‘CV’ had no portrait, nor did ‘CIV’ or ‘CIII’, but the next three did. Two of the portraits listed pairs of dates, while ‘C’ listed only one. When the next alcove (which contained the portrait of a girl dressed in a hooded cloak and holding a scythe), was labeled ‘XCIX’, Alice confirmed what she had been reasonably certain of - the alcoves were labeled with Roman numerals, counting back from 107. She picked up her pace; trying to decipher the meaning of these portraits was costing her valuable time.

Some of the portraits gave her the briefest of pauses. ‘XXCIX’ was simply a matte red with no portrait. ‘LXI’ depicted one of the two mechanical guards from the citadel’s entrance. ‘XLIX’, curiously, was a portrait of Veridian.

Alice had a suspicion - an intuition with no solid conclusions - that these portraits were important. ‘XIX’ was, unsurprisingly, the mirror image of the guard depicted in ‘LXI’. ‘X’, unlike all the others, had an ornate gold picture frame, but there was no painting inside. The next alcove had no number at all, only two lines of text. The first, with an arrow pointing back down, stated “Novus”. The other, pointing upward, stated “Primus”. ‘New’ and ‘first’.

Her vague suspicions were confirmed when ‘IX’ was a portrait of Iron Shooter. There were ten Codes, that she knew, but she also knew that this gallery depicted Codes. There was a clear delineation between numbers 10-107 and those lower than that...which still only made nine Codes in this “second set”, but Alice could provide copious explanations for that. She was more confused by the fact that Iron Shooter’s portrait listed only one date. Her best guess had been that the two dates on each plaque were ‘birth’ and death dates.

Steel Blader also had a portrait. Silver Maria did not, though Platinum Claire and Dust Emilia did. Then there was a gap where Ash Grinder would have been. When she came to the ‘III’ space - the only Code she did not yet know of - there was, instead of a portrait, a large case of glass or crystal set in the alcove. Inside it was the black-clad figure of a Code, imprisoned within the case. The Code tapped on the glass and pointed over and down. She wanted the case dropped over the edge of the ramp. That was one way out, Alice supposed. She considered the situation. In plain terms, more of the Codes had been hostile than friendly. But 03 was imprisoned here in Starhall, so she wasn’t an ally of the Butterfly Queen. Maria, Claire, and Grinder hadn’t been allied with the Butterfly Queen either, though.

Alba would have wanted to help her. Alba was also about to be used to give the Butterfly Queen unlimited power. Alice rubbed the bridge of her nose. This had been supposed to be a decision, not a crisis of conscience. If she passed by this Code now, they would probably end up being enemies later. Broadly speaking, a possible ally now would be better than a certain enemy later.

Still with deep misgivings, she pried the case free of the alcove and balanced it over the edge of the ramp. The other Code gave her a nod, and she kicked it over the edge. It fell for a very long time. The distance from here to the bottom was over a mile. Alice heard the crash of the case on the floor, then a light flared up. It grew larger and larger until she could see it was the Code, rising on a column of fire. She alighted on the ramp next to Alice, and the machine spitting fire on her back quieted. Then it folded in on itself and disappeared into her back.

“Thank you for aiding me,” the Code said. “My name is Code 03: Shade Guinevere.”

She revealed her right palm, where the the number ‘03’ was stamped, as proof. Alice did not sense any evil intent from her. In fact, she felt nothing at all. It was not as though Guinevere were hiding herself. Rather, it seemed there simply was very little to her.

“I’m Gray Alice, Code 01,” she responded. Guinevere seemed to pause in thought for a moment.

“If you will permit it,” she said finally, “I wish to accompany you. I am grateful for your assistance and will attempt to repay you.”

Alice nodded, and they began to walk together up the ramp. As they did, she considered her probable new ally. Guinevere was large compared to the other Codes, both tall and muscular. But she did not give off an impression of strength. Alice suspected it might instead have to do with ensuring there was enough space to store the machines in her body. Her back was bare so that the heavy engine that had propelled her could open up from where it was stored without garments getting in the way. There was a long line of metal running the full length of her back to mark where her flesh sealed in the machinery. Her sleeves were flared and there were similar lines on her arms, where some other devices were presumably hidden. Her dress was stiff and did not seem to be made of fabric. In the back it was flattened so it would not get in the way of the engine’s exhaust, and also served as a heat shield for her legs.

“You’re different from the other Codes,” Alice commented, letting Guinevere decide for herself what that meant.

“Yes,” was the reply. “I operate differently. I am incapable of most forms of thought.”

“What?”

“I do not have free agency,” she continued. “I respond to outside stimuli and follow appropriate directions when possible.”

Not like the other Codes at all.

“When you say ‘follow appropriate directions’, what does that mean?”

“When possible, I follow any directions given by the other Codes. In short, I function as a ‘body’ while the other functions as a ‘mind’.”

Dusk Breaker had a portrait. Alice herself did not. She felt, oddly, that everything Guinevere had said made sense. As they walked the last few dozen feet up the ramp, she quickly explained the situation. Guinevere gave a sharp nod.

“I will assist. Simply tell me what you wish me to do.”

The doors to what was almost certainly the Butterfly Queen’s throne room were only slightly larger than one might expect a door to normally be. They had no mark or sign on them. They were crimson rather than the sea green of the walls, but otherwise seemed to be made of the same material. On either side of the door was an alcove, each with a painting. Rather than portraits, these were landscapes. The one on the left was a picture of Starhall and the surrounding city. The one on the right depicted a barren plain. Fissures opened in the ground, spilling out torrents of lava, while a storm raged overhead. Each painting had a large oval scrawled on it in the same messy manner as the the numerals painted in the empty alcoves below. Or, rather than an oval, maybe it was meant to be a zero?

“If it’s possible, we should avoid being seen at first,” she told Guinevere, and opened the doors.[/spoiler]
[spoiler="Chapter 17: Thou foolish egoist"]
They stepped into an entirely different space. It had no walls or floor or ceiling; instead, they stood on insubstantiality, surrounded by the night sky. It was not that they now stood outside Starhall. Rather, they now existed in a separate space that occupied the same location, one where in all directions there was an infinitude of stars, each glowing like a miniature sun, so the place was brighter than ordinary daylight.

A few objects maintained perspective. The door through which they had entered still stood. There was another door above and across from them - the ‘other side’ of the room. A third door rested half-hidden behind the room’s final object: a grand throne, carved entirely of a bright red crystal. In the throne sat the Butterfly Queen.

Somehow it seemed she had not noticed them. Indeed, her eyes were closed and her focus seemed turned inward. But even with her focus elsewhere and with a long distance between them, her presence struck them like a physical pressure. Alice took an involuntary step back and Guinevere recoiled as well. It was a force at once hot and cold, with so much potency Alice began to see it as a physical phenomenon - a magnetic field that poured out of her in waves and tinged the vision red.

The queen’s physical body was different. It was more a girl’s body than a woman’s, and unhealthily thin. Her clothes were all red, barely distinct from the throne in which she sat. Her dress was long, so long it fell past her feet, and she wore long gloves that went past her elbows. Her hair was also red, but a natural red, and fell in spirals on either side of her face.

They stood for a while, making no move, while the Butterfly Queen sat in silent meditation. Alice was tempted to blow a hole in her forehead and put an end to everything, but she suspected any movement, no matter how slight, would alert the queen to their presence, and then their deaths would likely be all but certain.

Suddenly the Butterfly Queen rose from her throne and floated upwards, vanishing through the room’s invisible ceiling. Alice waited for another full minute. When nothing happened she turned to Guinevere.

“Alba must be somewhere else,” she said, and pointed to the door above them. “We’ll start searching that way.”

The other door, the one behind behind the throne, would be the one that accessed Atlus, according to Emilia. They had taken no more than a few steps when the door they had been moving toward swung open, and Veridian flew out, carrying Alba. Unlike the queen, she noticed them immediately.

“Hello again,” she said pointing at them. A piece of the invisible, intangible wall tore off and flew at them.

“Fight!” Alice commanded Guinevere, leaping aside as she did. “Don’t let Alba be harmed.”

“Understood,” Guinevere replied, jumping back from the object hurled at them. Two thick metal barrels extended from her arms. Veridian gestured again, and two more chunks of semi-visible stone flew their way. Guinevere’s guns banged, ejecting a pair of missiles, each of which crashed into the chunks of stone, destroying them.

“Now that’s interesting,” Veridian commented, making a fist. The whole room began to shake, and dozens - hundreds - of long rock needles were torn free from the walls. They all flew at Guinevere. She was able to fire another pair of missiles before she was skewered from all sides.

Alice took advantage of the distraction and fired at Veridian, who flew aside without difficulty. She made another gesture, and part of the ceiling collapsed, plummeting Alice’s direction. She leaped aside, only to find a massive slab of stone blocking her path. She dove back from the falling rubble, but knew she didn’t have quite enough time. A ton of stone fell on her legs, pinning her to the ground.

“I told and told you,” Veridian chuckled, “there’s no use fighting me. The difference in our power is too great.”

A jagged length of stone floated into her hand.

“You can’t even be compared to me. There’s nothing in this world that can equal my -”

“Enough.”

A crimson tendril of light smashed through Veridian’s stomach, and she coughed up black blood.

“If you thought I didn’t know you wanted to steal the princess for yourself,” said the Butterfly Queen, descending back down through the ceiling. Her voice had just as much power as it did in the Valley of Mirrors. More, even though it came from such a tiny frame, “you’re even more pathetic than I thought you to be.”

Another appendage of light appeared, removing Alba from Veridian’s grasp. A lattice of light wrapped around Veridian’s body, and she went limp.

“I won’t kill you,” she continued, drawing her closer to the throne. “You will become another part of me. Through me, you will gain your wish of attaining the power of heaven.”

The Butterfly Queen took Veridian by the shoulders and set her mouth on her neck.

Alice moved. She had discovered that her legs were mostly undamaged by the falling rubble, and in the seconds while she was unwatched by both parties, she had shifted enough rock that she was able to slip out and make a leap, snatching Alba from the Butterfly Queen’s grip. She landed hard, felt something injured in her leg give way, and kept running regardless. She felt crimson powers swirling and moving behind her, but she did not dare look back, focusing all her energies into crossing the distance to the door behind the throne. She reached the door, flung it open, and slammed it shut behind her. As if that would actually make a difference.

Alice decided everything would come down to the distance between that door and the door of heaven at the top of Atlus. If it was more than a few dozen feet, she would probably be caught. She paid no attention to anything within the pillar - she simply found a spiral staircase leading upwards and followed.

“Alba, please wake up,” she whispered fiercely as she ran. Almost immediately, Alba stirred in her arms.

“Listen to me,” she said quickly. “We’re almost at the door of heaven. The Butterfly Queen is behind us. When we get there, you have to do exactly as I say, alright?”

Alba mumbled in agreement just as the door behind them blew inwards and the Butterfly Queen emerged, flying after them. Several tendrils of light extended from her back, reaching in their direction. Then Alice made the final round of stairs, coming out on a small platform in front of a circular portal.

The doors of heaven. It was pure white and perfectly circular in shape. Its only adornment was the shape of a human engraved on its surface. Alice set Alba down. She stumbled for a moment, then ran to the door.

“Alright,” Alice said. “All you should need to do is stand in that depression and focus on causing the doors to open.”

She was suddenly struck by how ridiculous this was. She was taking this all on faith from Dust Emilia, who could have been lying or mistaken at any point.

“I thought we were trying to seal the door, not open it!” Alba protested. Alice threw a panicked glance over her shoulder. They had about three seconds.

“Emilia was lying when she said there was a way to break the lock. The only way to seal the door is to open it, then close it with the key inside. Since the only way to open the door is with the key, as long as it - as long as you stay inside...”

Alba nodded understanding and closed her eyes. Without fanfare, the door swung inwards. Beyond the threshold was a bright light. It obscured anything else that might have been inside, but it did not hurt Alice’s eyes. The Butterfly Queen appeared behind her, blazing appendages grasping for her. For a moment Alice thought Alba would be paralyzed with fear, but she stumbled through the doorway.

“Oh,” Alice suddenly thought to herself. “The door has to be closed.”

A tendril coiled around her ankle, but she drew her pistol and blasted it until she felt it let go. Then she sprinted the few feet to the door, skidded past the threshold, and slammed it shut behind her.[/spoiler]

[Catterjune]

I'm going to rewrite it from the beginning

After reading the first paragraph, I think I'll wait for that version instead.

[Dr. Cakey]

After reading the first paragraph, I think I'll wait for that version instead.

Good choice.

[Dr. Cakey]

If no one responds, I'm just going to assume my writing is just so clever and high-brow nobody can comprehend it.

[Dr. Cakey]

:(

[Dr. Cakey]

bump again?

[Catterjune]

If no one responds, I'm just going to assume my writing is just so clever and high-brow nobody can comprehend it.

... Yeah, maybe that's it.

[Catterjune]

Nah but seriously...

My criticism may be a bit hard to explain or hard to understand, but just go with I guess... > >

There's a thin line between being "factual" and being "interesting". The bits of the story I read in the first chapter were more towards the former rather then the latter.

She's walking through the a field of mirrors. So what? Is she searching for something? is she worried? Is she peaceful? I don't care about what I see. I care more about how the story makes me feel, or in this stories case, how it does not.

tl;dr - It reads like a textbook, not like a story.