Scene 4

Somewhere in the space between spaces

As the shadows subsided, Mĕilì found herself in liminal space. She stood atop a polyhedric pillar surrounded by other polyhedric pillars that slowly shifted up and down, back and forth in a geometric maze perpetually reorganizing itself. They were cold, hard, crystalline structures; seemingly hollow but filled with a grey fog. She bent down to stare at her own reflection but instead she was met with a face that wasn’t quite hers.

It moved in perfect tandem with her as she touched her face or tilted her head. They were both had approximate features and purplish-pink eyes, but this woman had free flowing silver hair with a wrought iron crown. As Mĕilì went to put her mask on, the “other” woman removed her crown and her image was swept away in a billowing fog.

“Haaaheehaaa,” a woman’s laugh echoed from out of the maze.

Mĕilì drew her pistol and began scouring the dark corners for any signs of movement. Her ears flicked as her survival instinct heightened her senses. They were prepared to hear a mouse in its burrow a mile away. Yet all she did hear was the faint sound of those polyhedric structures gently bumping into and grinding against one another.

Manipulating her flip belt with her thoughts, she sprang in between the levitating columns. As fearful as she was for Odyn, Mĕilì was a proper Harlequin who knew the first order was to “survive to kill your enemies another day”. Peril in its most absurdist and terrifying manifestations was all part of her chosen path. One doesn’t get to be a demon slayer if they can’t keep their shit together when things get real. Lock in, load up.

If she wanted to see him again, which she wanted so badly that it made her heart falter, she would have to get herself out alive. She’d have to win. Mĕilì focused her thoughts and cleared her mind. Her mind will be warded, but Belle’s always been temperamental. If I can get under her skin she just might give me an opening.

“Sorry to snatch you away like that Mĕilì,” her rival chuckled, voice echoing from all directions yet emanating from nowhere, “but while our boys are busy with one another, we could use some girl time.”

“Oh Isabella,” Mĕilì excessively enunciated every syllable of her proper name, “so nice to hear from you. Would be even nicer to see you.”

“Meiy! I’m just feeling a little bashful. I done up my hair in a new way and I need you opinion on it. How about this: you step into the shadows and you have a looksee-loo?”

We’re going to do this all day, aren’t we?

“Izzy! Don’t you know you’re always beautiful,” Mĕilì maintained the feigned joviality as the Harlequin’s Kiss mounted on her right gauntlet hissed, “Why don’t you come out silly and let me give you a little kiss.”

“Now now Meiy, we’re spoken for. As tempting as it is for us girls to play with one another as the boys are away, I know your sweet kiss will make a right mess of me.”

“I certainly hope it does.”

A shadow darted on the cusp of her field of view. Mĕilì whirled around to train her sights on what was ultimately nothing. The polyhedric pillars slowly grinded against one another as Mĕilì danced between them. She reoriented her gravity to the side of one of them and stood up on it as she stared down at the slowly oncoming crystalline mass.

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“I love what you’ve done with the place!” she shouted.

“Aww! That means so much coming from you,” Bella’s voice echoed back with sinister gentility, “I was afraid it was a little drab.”

Mĕilì smiled.

“Well, having seen you prior efforts at interior design, I think it’s wise that you reigned in your…ah hem…eccentric aesthetic.”

Mĕilì sensed a rising psychic heat. She snapped her head in the direction of it to find a faint outline in the shadows. With a “pew” her fusion pistol fired a single illuminated orange round. Bella Hex broke out of her shadow guise, desperately diving out of the way of the shot. The energy round buried itself in the crystal-like substance behind her. It fanned out in a pattern of impacted glass. Bright orange filled the crevices of the structure as the liquid heat passed through it.

The sorceress tumbled forward into a cartwheel, drawing her own pistol and firing off a half dozen shots, whilst balancing on her free hand. Mĕilì flipped up into the air, reorienting her gravity above her, allowing her to fall upwards. All the while she kept her sights trained on her foe. She answered the volley with her own.

All the shots missed their marks as Bella Hex weaved in and out of them with a grace that far exceeded her human limitations. As loathed as she was to grant a monkeigh such praise, Mĕilì could not deny that Bella’s agility rivaled her own.

As the combatants whirled around each other the searing orange lines ran further and further into the crystalline structures that were beginning to crack.

Bella melted into a pool of shadows, manifesting behind Mĕilì as she drifted like a leaf on the wind. With a wild glee, Bella lunged out, punched Mĕilì, seized her by the braided pony tail and whipped her down. The force she struck the ground with would have certainly snapped her neck had her flip belt not been still pulling her upward. It gave her just enough time to brace herself against impact using her gun, which cracked in two, and thrust herself back into the air. Another volley of shots narrowly missed their marks.

Her holosuit dazzled with a checkered array of white, black, blue, and magenta As she drifted up and backward, she turned her head back and took stock of the closing distance between her and the next wall. Mĕilì turned her attention back to her foe who had subsumed herself into the darkness. Okay, I know where you’re going to be.

As Mĕilì neared the wall, a bulge in the shadows manifested and a slender arm of darkness reached out from the shadows. As Bella’s face emerged from the shadows, cocking her gun with her teeth, lips curled up, blue eyes shining with feral delight.

Should have had trained your shot first! Mĕilì spun her body so tight and fast that she practically vanished in the prismatic blur of her suit’s patterns. Then she whipped her hair at her enemy and the serrated clip in the tip of her braid sliced Bella’s face. She dropped her gun to reach for the fresh wound. Mĕilì continued her momentum, spinning her Harlequin’s Kiss into position for the killing blow.

She threw her fist forward, point of the barrel level at the center of Bella’s head, but with lightning-fast reflexes of her own, Bella caught the kiss in her teeth. Only partially apparated out of the shadows, Bella stuck out of the wall from her waist up. Mĕilì seized her throat, squeezing the life from her lungs all the while redirecting her gravity downward; slowly dragging her opponent out of the shadows. Gagging, gasping, and snarling; Bella unleashed an unrelenting flurry of blows to Mĕilì’s face. One after the other, her player’s mask chipped away till the glaring hate in her eye and baleful grimace were visible.

Fucking die already! Mĕilì found it mildly amusing that Bella’s mind was screeching the same thought as hers.

Locked in mortal combat, the two women were oblivious the rapidly spreading cracks in the structure they remained suspended from. The crystalline cracked, creaked and splintered into uncountable shards as the explosions ripped through the polyhedrons. A wave of heat and flame engulfed them. Mĕilì had her death grip on Bella’s throat ripped free as she was tossed aside into the ethereal nothing. That haunting, gaseous grey fog, now free of its confines, subsumed them both.