Chapter Text
As quickly as the pair had come to an island, the entire month seemed to pass by in a whirlwind. Suzi had followed along with Caesaris and Josephine’s training, never participating herself but always watching their fights.
It was morning on the island, now only two days before February was over. Suzi swept dirt out of the buildings as she hummed a tune she heard on the radio, enjoying the crisp morning as the sunshine grew brighter. It was easy for her to get caught up in her work, brushing away the dirt, leaves, stones, and ash.
…Wait a second. Ash?
Suzi frowned as she looked down at the small pile she was sweeping. She didn’t go near the fireplaces this time, and Lisa Lisa and Caesaris didn’t smoke so much as to create this much ash.
Suzi looked up from the pile, no longer seeing the bright morning sky above her. The sky above her was a deep purple, with no stars or sun. Instead of the gothic architecture of the island, she was surrounded by grassy hills with cracks in the ground, dimly glowing orange as if it would catch fire any minute. In the distance, she could see walls and military garrisons reminiscent of Imperial China, along with terracotta figures marching in lines.
As she watched the figures march, she realized that some of them were coming towards her.
Suzi turned and ran, hoping that she could get out of this place and get back to Air Supplena somehow. There, she could surely find the island’s three magical girls for help. She didn’t know whether the figures were following her, but she didn’t dare risk looking behind her to check.
A shadow fell upon her and she looked up, freezing in place. Somehow, without her noticing, something managed to get in front of her. A monster with eight legs loomed over her, looking like an Aztec mural of a spider. However, the main body of the monster had only two large eyes, and its jaws were at the top of its body.
Ah, Suzi thought with dawning horror, so that’s what a witch looks like.
She took a few steps back, then turned around and tried to run, not knowing where she was going to be able to run to. She suddenly felt something warm and slimy wrap around her arms, holding her back and preventing her from escaping. She looked down at them, finding that it was veins wrapping around them. They constricted her arms like snakes, and dug into her flesh.
Suzi struggled against the bindings, watching as the witch drew closer. But it seemed to make no move to attack her. What was it doing…?
Mere seconds after, she realized why. Her body was beginning to heat up from the inside, making her drop to her knees, only held upright by the veins. Her body weak from the artificial fever, she watched as her body developed blisters that burst open with blood. Her boiling blood sent white-hot pain through her, and she could barely hear herself scream.
Suddenly, the veins let go of her, and she was dropped unceremoniously onto the ground. The sound of explosions and shouting weren’t as loud as the ringing in her ears. She felt herself being pulled into someone’s arms, and a red light came into her peripheral vision as she lay stunned.
The pain began to lessen, and more awareness came to her. She was lying on Lisa Lisa’s lap, and her mistress was holding her soul gem up to heal her with its light. She wanted to say something, but her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. She could see Josephine and Caesaris confronting the witch that hurt her, and the witch retaliating with heat and explosions.
But Suzi was sure that it would all be fine. They were magical girls after all, they weren’t helpless…
“…Suzi? Is she alright?”
“She’ll be fine. Go check the perimeter for any loose familiars.”
“Oh, she’s waking up…”
Somehow, she’d passed out before she’d realized it. She lifted her head wearily, her entire body still feeling incredibly sore.
“Don’t move, Suzi,” Lisa Lisa chided, gently pushing her head back down. “Your wounds are almost healed. Just stay still until then.”
From her position lying down, she could see the blue sky above them. The gothic architecture of the island surrounded them. The witch’s lair was gone, and she was finally back on Air Supplena.
Her eyes dropped to the ground, where she saw Caesaris and Josephine walking away from her. Her groggy mind slowly put everything together. Surely, it was them who defeated the witch. Lisa Lisa must have gotten her to safety while they fought.
“Was that…” Suzi quickly began, but paused when her voice broke. Lisa Lisa looked down at her, surprised from hearing her voice, and she tried again. “Was that a witch?”
“Unfortunately so. I’m not sure how she found this island…perhaps she was just wandering, and arrived here by chance,” Lisa Lisa replied. “That witch is the one in the trio they call the ‘Wise One’. She springs traps to catch victims in its barrier, winning without a fight. Josephine and Caesaris were lucky to defeat her.”
Suzi could hear the unspoken in her words: “You were lucky to have survived.”
“I’ve read the runes on the insides of her barrier,” her mistress went on. “The other two Pillars, the Strong One and the Leader, have gone elsewhere in the Mediterranean. The Leader is in Switzerland, and the Strong One is in Greece.”
“Runes…?”
“Witches don’t speak, but they write in an equivalent to Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic numerals, all of which correspond to German words. I’ve lived long enough to be able to decipher them by now.”
Suzi didn’t really understand, but that was pretty much the norm, so she just nodded along instead.
“That will be our next destination. Josephine and Caesaris are strong enough to stand up against them now,” Lisa Lisa determined. “Once their check of the perimeter has finished, we’ll be packing our bags.”
Suzi nodded again. “I’ll keep the island nice and tidy while you’re away-”
“You’ll be coming as well, Suzi Q,” Lisa Lisa cut her off. Suzi’s jaw nearly dropped as she was left at a loss for words. Her mistress went on, “You can see what we can see now, which means that this is your problem too. We can’t let you stay alone when there’s a target on your back.”
“A target…” Suzi trailed off.
“Not a metaphorical one, but more of a spiritual one. Being able to see witches and Incubators means that you’ve met their requirement to become a magical girl. Did Caesaris or Josephine tell you this?” Lisa Lisa asked. She received a small nod from the other girl. “Good. You should be healed by now. When you’re ready to get up, pack your bags for a short trip. Dress warmly.”
Within the next half hour, Suzi found herself on the mail boat with a travelling bag in hand. The three magical girls sat beside her, their faces equally grim. She knew that within the next few days, they’d be facing witches more powerful than the one that had attacked her. She had only barely survived.
The experience made Suzi want to curl into herself. For the past few years of working at the island, she’d seen heroic girls come and go, and she admired them for their bravery and magic. Her feelings only amplified as she shadowed her friends, watching them in action as they protected the innocent. She never thought a witch would come to the island, or that she would be the one needing rescuing.
Truth be told, the attack made her belief of “magical girls are desperately needed” more prominent. But she now knew just how dangerous these monsters were now, to face one up-close instead of hiding behind her superpowered friends. She couldn’t romanticize them as much as she could before - it was probably just the shock, she knew, but the idea of fighting them now made her shiver like a leaf.
The scenery changed as they got to Venice, procured a car, and promptly left Venice. The landscape of countryside and towns passed by, and gradually turned into snowy mountains. Suzi couldn’t help losing her breath at the sights. Her friends couldn’t say the same.
When the infighting started, Suzi had missed it completely. She’d been trying to find a staff member in the café they ended up at, since she hadn’t seen any of them go out on the balcony, in hopes of getting the group refills on hot coffee.
By the time she returned with a full pot, Caesaris had jumped over the railing and was headed towards an abandoned hotel in the distance.
Suzi put it down on the table and hurried towards the other two. “Oh dear, where’s she going?” she fretted.
Lisa Lisa quickly filled her in, “To the witch’s nest. The Leader is supposed to be in there.”
“Caesaris…what happened?” Josephine breathed, watching her comrade as she slowly became more distant. “What made you so huffy all of a sudden? Is there some reason why you can’t wait?”
Lisa Lisa turned to her next. “Jojo, you touched on something from her past that she keeps secret. Your words were flippant, but you managed to sit a sensitive nerve for Caesaris.”
Suzi looked between the pair, and then back towards the disappearing magical girl. Just what happened while she was getting them coffee? Was it another fight? They fought all the time, but this one seemed more serious than usual…
“Something from her past?” Josephine questioned, not taking her eyes off the hotel despite Caesaris not being in sight anymore. “What exactly is it?”
“Um…to explain the long and short of it…” Suzi began. “Caesaris lived with her family, minus her mother, and her father abandoned them. She kept picking fights, angry at her father’s betrayal, and she ran away from the orphanage she was put into. She spent many years in the slums of Rome, becoming a feared thug! But she found her father again four years ago, and he died trying to keep her away from where the Pillars had been sealed. So, Caesaris made her wish to have the power to kill the things that killed her father…and I think that’s it.”
“Well, there’s a lot more details than that, but…” Lisa Lisa sighed. “That’s the gist of it. It’s a sore spot for everyone to talk about, especially for Caesaris.”
“I see. So, the Pillars killed Caesaris’s father… I’m sorry, Caesaris. I didn’t know about your family.” Josephine’s gaze lowered. “If she’s going in there despite it being a trap, then…she’s probably got a plan.”
Suzi looked at Josephine, confused and still out of the loop about their argument. “Jojo…?”
Josephine straightened up. “Alright, I take it back! If she’s going in there, then I’ll be right behind her!” she declared, and she jumped over the railing as well.
Suzi ran up to the railing and leaned over. “Jojo!”
“Talk about a one-eighty,” Lisa Lisa sighed as she shook her head.
The trio left the café, with Lisa Lisa and Suzi leaving through more sensible means, and they followed Caesaris’s footsteps in the snow towards the abandoned hotel. The air grew tenser with every step they took, unsure of whether they would be able to stop Caesaris in time.
As they passed the rusted gates of the hotel, the front door exploded.
Josephine quickly threw up her purple thorns into a shield, and Suzi screamed as Lisa Lisa shoved her behind them. The debris and wind blew around them, but the explosion receding didn’t mean the rumbling didn’t stop.
“What was THAT?!” Josephine cried.
“The wind…it means the Strong One must have returned from Greece,” Lisa Lisa guessed. “But for an explosion like that, its barrier must have been broken! The witch must have tried a last-ditch attack!”
“But what about Caesaris?! Is she alright?!” Suzi shouted above the chaos.
After a minute, the smoke and rumbling settled down. All was quiet, and the trio was ready to move forwards. But they were halted by the sound of footsteps, along with a figure emerging from the ruined hotel entrance.
“Is that…?” Josephine’s face lit up in relief. “Caesaris! Hey, over here!”
She began running towards the other girl, who in turn took a step back.
“KEEP AWAY!”
Everyone was caught off-guard by her sudden shout, halting in place. Now that Suzi had a better view of Caesaris, she saw that the other girl looked haggard from the fight. She was injured, but at least still alive. But she made no move to get closer to them.
“Stay away from me… Run away, as far as possible,” Caesaris warned them.
Lisa Lisa took a few steps towards her, gesturing for Josephine to get behind her. “From all the wind, I see the Strong One returned from Greece. But if the barrier’s broken, does that mean-”
“She’s dead. I…” Caesaris opened her hand, showing them a grief seed inside, “…I made sure of that.”
“Good. Use it on yourself. We can sort out a plan to kill the Leader inside.”
Caesaris shook her head with a sad smile. “I tried. It doesn’t work…I guess it’s too late for me.”
She tossed the grief seed over to Lisa Lisa, where it landed at her feet. Her teacher had been frozen from shock and didn’t catch it.
“W-What do you mean…?” Suzi demanded. “Too late? But you’re still alive! You can save yourself…”
In place of a reply, Caesaris transformed her ring into her soul gem and showed it to them. Rather than the light blue of her magic, the gem was completely black. Suzi had watched Josephine and Caesaris fight for long enough to know that her gem was swarming with impurities. It would surely take multiple grief seeds to cleanse it completely.
“Jojo, I…I’m sorry. I should have listened to you,” Caesaris sighed. “It was a trap, just as you said.”
“Fuck, that doesn’t matter now!” Josephine shouted back. “Listen, I’m sorry for what I said! I didn’t know, I didn’t mean it! Come on, we have to get you a few grief seeds- Coach, you have some extra ones, don’t you?!”
“Don’t bother. If it wasn’t now, it would have been later,” Caesaris argued. She closed her eyes for a moment. “You know, when I killed her…I thought I’d be happy. I would be closer to getting revenge for my family. But…I don’t feel anything.”
Lisa Lisa gathered her wits and picked up the Strong One’s grief seed. “Power overuse, and despair…this is a mix of the two,” she muttered to herself. An indent appeared in her cheek as she bit the inside, trying to remain composed.
In her hand, Caesaris’s soul gem began to shrink before their eyes. The egg-like shape became a small circle, and the golden cage seemed to rust into silver with elongated spikes. In just mere seconds - the soul gem became a grief seed.
“Run! Just hurry and go!” Caesaris shouted. She tried to say something else, but a strangled shriek left her mouth as she doubled over and grabbed at her chest. The grief seed in her hand flashed with a sparkling light.
And then the world exploded. Wind and light consumed the surrounding area, and Suzi screamed as she was tossed about. Before she knew it, everything went dark.
When she opened her eyes again, she didn’t feel hurt. She was on her knees, propped up against a stone wall. She turned her head to gaze down the corridor beside her, taking in the underground stone tunnels and the wooden support beams. The floor was completely flooded, and the chill made her shiver. When she made herself stand up, she found that the water went up to her knees.
Looking beside her, she found that she was right next to Lisa Lisa and Josephine, who were also coming to their senses. Still, they seemed less dazed and more ready to fight. Quick recoveries must be a side effect of being a magical girl, she supposed.
“Where the hell…?” Josephine muttered, looking around. “A mineshaft? Why are we in a… Oh.”
“What are you thinking, Jojo?” Lisa Lisa asked. She was turned away so that they couldn’t see her face, but Suzi was sure that her expression was not a good one.
“I just remembered, underneath the Colosseum looked something like this. I had to escape from the Pillars using a minecart.”
Lisa Lisa nodded. “So then, this really is her barrier.”
“Her? What do you mean, ‘her’?” Suzi questioned. “Do you mean the last of the Pillars? Did they do something to Caesaris?!”
Josephine sucked in air through her teeth, while Lisa Lisa remained turned and did not answer. Suzi looked between the two, hoping for answers, but they never gave them.
“All…that’s left to do is kill the witch,” Josephine sighed, looking pained. Suddenly, she punched the wall beside her. “Damn it, Caesaris…!”
And speaking of, Suzi wondered, where had Caesaris gone to? She was right in front of them, but told them to run while she seemed resigned to something. Her soul gem turned into something like a grief seed, and the other magical girls were acting like something horrible happened to her-
Suzi stopped those thoughts while she was ahead. No, it wasn’t possible…she didn’t want to think about it. Even if it could be the only truth, she couldn’t let herself think about it.
Lisa Lisa walked ahead of them, down the corridor. “Jojo, let’s go. Suzi, stay close.”
They began their trek down labyrinthine tunnels, straining their eyes against the darkness and searching for the witch. As they travelled, they were attacked by some strange hooks, which came out of the water and tried to impale them. Josephine and Lisa Lisa were quick to dodge (or pull Suzi out of the way) and cut their cords, killing the familiars.
At last, they reached an oddly-colourful door at the end of the dull and dreary mineshaft system. Scratched into the door, showing the wood beneath, was a set of runes.
Lisa Lisa quietly read them, then translated aloud: “Erynia.”
“Eh?” Josephine looked at her. “Uh, bless you?”
“That’s the word carved into this door. The witch’s name, no doubt.”
Without further ado, Lisa Lisa opened the door.
Behind the door was a large cave, with narrow cliff faces around the edges of the room and a center that was progressively more concave. In the center was the witch, growling and wailing as it fought its own familiars’ hooks latching onto her flesh.
Erynia looked like a woman with snake tattoos just from her torso, but her head was replaced with a melted candle. She was hunched over, and weighing on her back was a pile of stones like a turtle’s shell, or like an island. Broken wings jutted out from underneath the stones, desperately flapping as she tried to escape. Her lower half was that of a leopard’s body, seeming almost like a misshapen centaur.
“That witch, she’s…” Suzi trailed off.
Lisa Lisa turned to her. “You must have realized it by now. This witch used to be Caesaris,” she said, her face trying to conceal the grief that couldn’t be fully hidden by her voice. “Truthfully, I thought this would happen sooner. I didn’t expect her to make it past sixteen.”
Suzi froze. “…What?” she gasped, her voice soft. “So…you knew. You knew that she would…?”
“This outcome was inevitable. Even for Caesaris. And even for Josephine, and myself,” Lisa Lisa replied. “I told you, the fate of a magical girl only ends in tragedy. Either we die in battle, or we fall to despair and turn into witches.”
“So…that’s why…”
Josephine put a hand on Suzi’s shoulder. “Yeah, that’s why we never really encouraged you to be like us. Not many magical girls know the truth. Even less of them survive to see adulthood.”
Despite her words, her voice was thick with tears as she watched the witch writhe in pain. Suzi wanted to collapse and cry too, even if this was a far from perfect place to do so. But she felt like a statue, stuck in place as tears ran down her face.
“Whatever we feel right now, it’s certain that Caesaris is suffering much worse pain.” Lisa Lisa stepped forwards, summoning her magic. “We owe it to her to put her out of her misery.”
Josephine sniffled, but allowed her purple thorns to wrap around her hand. “R-Right…”
As the magical girls dropped down past the door into the giant cave below, Suzi collapsed against the wall and slid down the side. She covered her face, unable to stop her sobs. She couldn’t watch them kill this witch, something that used to be her friend.
Caesaris hadn’t been evil. All of them knew that. She wouldn’t kill innocents like, like some evil witch…
The shrieks of Erynia below mixed with Suzi’s cries. Not even covering her ears could block out the sounds of fighting. But she heard one last shriek, and the walls and floor seemed to wobble in place, as if a stone had been tossed into a still pond and the ripples were ruining what was reflected.
Suzi closed her eyes again, and when she felt the snow seeping into her skirt, she opened them again. She, Josephine, and Lisa Lisa were back outside the entrance of the hotel. In Josephine’s hand was a grief seed, adorned with the same feather decal as on Caesaris’s soul gem.
Josephine fell to her knees, holding the grief seed to her chest as she screamed Caesaris’s name over and over. Suzi crawled to her side and wrapped her arms around her, and they grieved together for their dear friend. Even Lisa Lisa collapsed, covering her mouth as her tears flowed freely.
Time gradually passed them by, as uncaring to all tragedies as it always had been.
By the time they pulled themselves together, a deep heaviness had settled in their bones. Lisa Lisa and Josephine would have to go further into the hotel and confront the Leader, the last of the two Pillars.
“Suzi Q, it would be better if you went back to the hotel and waited for us there. If we come back at all, that is,” Lisa Lisa decided. “Perhaps it was not good to bring you to Switzerland. But now you know the cost of becoming a magical girl. Perhaps this will sway you against making a wish.”
“She wouldn’t have been able to decide on a single one anyway,” Josephine laughed mirthlessly. She stepped closer to Suzi and gave her the grief seed, pressing it into the palm of her hand and closing her fingers around it. “Look after her, okay?”
With a face still covered in tears, Suzi nodded as she held the grief seed up to her chest. The two of them shared one more hug, almost imagining that Caesaris was in the middle, before they finally had to part.
Suzi began her long walk back to the hotel they stayed in last night, still safeguarding Caesaris’s grief seed. Lisa Lisa was right, there was no way that she’d become a magical girl now. Why would anyone make such a deal in the first place? It just seemed so stupid, so foolish…
But Josephine and Lisa Lisa, they were both so strong. They would kill the last Pillar, and if that witch was anything like Caesaris, perhaps it would be better for her to die. As her mistress said, to put her out of her misery. And then afterwards…afterwards…
…What would happen afterwards? She didn’t know. All she could do was wait for them to return, crying for the loss of her friend.
A few hours later, the remaining magical girls returned. They looked ruffled and were limping, but they were both alive. They’d barely made it through the door before Suzi suddenly tackled them into a hug. More tears were shed between them - at least, between Suzi and Josephine - but ones of happiness this time.
It would be better, she decided, for things to stay as they were. Even if her dearest ones were destined for tragedy, even if one of them had already met that fate, they could embrace the happiness and hope in the moment. Reality could wait for just a little while longer.