[X] Why not take a peak around that path along the cliffside?
[X] Is that a big bird's nest up in the tower…?
"Well, no point just sitting around here all day." You say, looking around at your surroundings. "We won't find Oriko by just doing nothing!"
Oscar nods. "Indeed. For now, let's take a look around this place and see if we can find a way up to the city proper. I'll see if there's any hidden paths within the ruins."
"Right. Then I guess I'll look… that way!" You reply, pointing over at the stone bridge crossing the valley. "I'll scout it out super quick and come back with a report!" You add with a mock salute before hurrying off.
The path along the cliff face is even thinner and shoddier than it looked from a distance. You're a magical girl, though, so it's no issue.
As you climb the path-stairs, you start to hear footsteps from up ahead. A half-broken sword suddenly swings out at your head when you round the corner. You duck under the attack with ease and hop back, getting a full look at your attacker.
It's a guy in some kind of thin leather armour and tattered sections of chain. Well, maybe calling him a guy is a stretch, as his skin is twisted and dried out like one of those shrunken head things, and his eye sockets are an empty black. This must be what Oscar meant by mindless Hollows, you suppose. It certainly looks like some hollow zombie.
The not-person looks at the spot you were just standing with confusion, as if unsure how you avoided his attack and not yet realising you've moved. It notices you again when you summon your claws and magical girl outfit, though, letting out a dry screech and charging you.
The thin and rusted armour puts up no resistance against your magical claws, and you easily cleave the thing apart. The momentum of your attack sends the corpse tumbling off the cliff and you take a peek over to admire your handywork.
You almost take another sword to the back for your troubles as another Hollow slashes at you while you're distracted. You deal with this one just as easily as the first, slicing its head clean off and kicking the body back onto its ass.
Bracing yourself for more, your look around for any other foes. You find them aplenty, as another, far better armoured Hollow approaches you slowly with a shield raised and sword ready. Even if this one seems a bit more competent than the first two, that doesn't say much, so you lunge forward and slash your claws out around the small-ish shield.
The Hollow suddenly stops and backsteps at your movement. You notice a small black shape pass by your head just before you hear a shattering sound and fire erupts up from beneath you. You don't feel the fire, since you forgot to switch your body's senses back on after escaping the cold of the Asylum, but your clothes catch alight pretty quick and you smell burning flesh.
Another Hollow stands up on a raised rocky outcrop over the armoured Hollow, a sack of little black balls laid out beside him. Seeing your apparent injury, the armoured Hollow lowers his shield and charges you.
You growl at being caught off guard and duck under the thrusted sword. As you dodge, you slash one hand out at the Hollow's legs, cutting through them with your claws. You flick your other hand up at the second Hollow, sending a pair of your claws flying up at him.
The first, now legless, Hollow hits the ground at the same time the second one is pinned against the wall of the bridge by your ejected claws. The first attempts to swing its sword up at you from the grass, but you simply sidestep the blade and hook one of your claws in its empty eye socket before pulling up.
Silence falls as the thing's head is destroyed and you inspect the damage to your body.
For the most part, it seems the fire didn't make it past your clothes. The few spots it did are a nasty red-black colour and stretch weirdly when you move. It's no problem to heal, however. No more than a thought and the skin begins to repair itself. You place your hand over the worst spots and manually heal them, speeding up the process.
With that dealt with, you hop up the stairs to where the guy throwing stuff is pinned to the wall. A loud half-gargled warcry erupts from behind a short set of stairs when you touch down, and yet another of these damn Hollows comes running towards you with a big axe. At the same time, a fourth one rushes down the stairs with a makeshift shield and broken sword.
You're now in no mood to deal with these guys after catching that fire attack, so you spin on your heel and lash out with your claws, cutting down both of them in one go.
Finally, with nowhere else for more of the things to hide, you let out an annoyed huff and relax. You dig through that sack of black bombs, but it seems most of them were shattered to begin with, so you decide to not bother with them and head up the stairs.
A little archway leads inside and – you immediately pull your foot away when you hear a splash under your step. A horrible stench reaches your nose and you quickly realise this isn't a bridge. It's a sewerage system. What's more, you hear a pretty loud squeaking to your left. When you look, a giant rat, rotting and filthy, comes barrelling down the tunnel at you with its giant teeth gnawing.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Wanting nothing to do with any of that, you back out onto the stairs and jump down to the rocky outcrop where you fought the Hollows. Within moments, you're back down at the bonfire in the ruins.
"Are you okay?" Oscar asks, coming up from the stairs besides Mr Moody, who only chuckles at your discomfort.
"Fucking sewers and fucking giant rats!" You exclaim, rubbing your wet foot against the dirt in hopes of getting the sewer water out.
Oscar seems taken about by your outburst. "A young maiden shouldn't speak like that…" He says in a way that reminds you of when your mum was about to give you a lecture.
"Shut up." You retort, finally giving up on drying your foot and crossing your arms. "I take it you found something better?"
His visor remains on you for a moment longer before he replies. "Well, I wouldn't quite call it better. There's a young woman trapped behind some bars on the level below, although she didn't seem to have noticed me when I tried to speak to her. I think she's this place's firekeeper."
"That doesn't seem nearly as bad as giant rats in a sewer." You say, putting a hint of annoyance in your voice.
Oscar nods. "Indeed. The bad part is below her. Another set of stairs leads down to an elevator. At the bottom of that is something I can only think to call a ghost town."
You frown, tilting your head. "Okay, so that's kinda spooky. What's the big deal though? You scared of ghosts?"
"Normally, no. Among the many beasts and evils that stalk the lands as of late, ghosts are hardly something I usually pay any mind to." He replies with a sickly tone. "However, something about the place made me unsettled. A few echoing screams from further in were enough to make me turn around. It's certainly not somewhere anyone, undead or not, would dwell, so we have no need to venture there anyway."
You nod your head in agreeance. No need to go somewhere Oriko probably isn't. At least, you can hold it off until searching more likely places first.
"There's also a rather large graveyard behind the ruins." Oscar continues. "Nothing but bones and corpses back there, I believe."
"Oh, there's more than just that." Mr Moody suddenly chimes in with a mocking smirk. "Those bags of bones are kept functioning by the power of a bunch of necromancers further within the catacombs. Stray too close and those skeletons will skewer you like a pig." He says, chuckling.
"No reason to go that way either, then." Oscar says. "I suppose that just leaves the ruins themselves."
Nodding, you look over the crumbling mess of a structure with only a passing interest. As you do, however, something up in the half-ruined tower catches your eye. "Hey, is that a big bird nest up in the tower?"
Oscar follows your gaze. "I believe so. Likely the home of that giant crow, if I were to guess."
A nasty idea comes to mind, making you smirk. "Hey, you think that damn crow would be pissed if I wrecked its nest?"
"I can't imagine it would be too happy." Oscar replies, turning his head back down to you. "That's awfully high, however. If you fell.."
"Nah, I'll be fine." You say, dismissing his worries with a wave. "Just watch!"
Without waiting for him to make another complaint, you leap up onto the stone arch. The giant crow eyes you cautiously as you hop from one section to another quickly making your way up to the top of the tower. It seems to be on alert, but doesn't stop you from approaching the nest, so you carry on.
As you reach the crest of the giant nest, you hear a high pitched caw and a small (well, slightly above average, but small compared to the big one) crow hops up onto the weaved together branches.
"Caw, Caw! You, you. Who, you? Caw!"
You stare at the bird, mouth hanging open. Did this crow just talk? Are you really not in a Witch's Labyrinth…?
As you contemplate this weird discovery, you notice a faint warmth coming from the pocket you placed the shard of Oriko's soul gem in. Reaching into the pocket, you grasp both the shard and weird pendant and retrieve them.
Both seem to be glowing brightly, the silver light of the shard appearing to mix with the pink of the pendant. What's going on? Is this-?
"Caw! Give me warm! Give me soft! Caw!"
The bird suddenly flaps its wings and snatches Oriko's shard from your hands. Panicking, you grasp for it, but the little black thing flies back out of your reach.
"Hey give that back, you little bird brain!"
"Caw! Warm, mine! Caw!"
Growling, you summon your claws again and go to leap up at the little bastard. Apparently the tower stonework is even less stable than you thought, since a loose brick shifts and gives way under your foot. With your balance suddenly thrown off, you flail about in attempt to recover.
The last thing you hear before plummeting to the ground is the caw of that damned crow…
You awaken with a start. The ruins and birds and zombie things have disappeared, being replaced by… is this the tea table in Oriko's garden…? Wait, was that all just a dream?! Oriko! Where's Oriko?!
"I hope you like the garden. I thought you'd like something familiar."
You jump at the sound of the voice, leaping up out of your chair and summoning your claws.
The speaker lets out a small "eep!" and shrinks back into her chair. "I-I'm sorry! I didn't mean to startle you!" Her panicked movements send her long pink hair flying and it floats about as if you were underwater or in space. "I mean you no harm, I promise!"
Something about the girl seems familiar. It doesn't click where you've seen her until your gaze meets her golden eyes.
"You… you're that girl, aren't you?" You ask, unsure. "The one Oriko wanted to kill. Ka… Kadoma!"
"Madoka Kaname…" The girl corrects, sighing.
"Yeah, that."
Wait… if this is the girl Oriko was after, and she's here right now…
But… you killed her. Oriko pierced her heart with a shard of your crumbling witch. Right…?
But if she's here right now, then that means you failed.
You died for nothing.
Oriko died for nothing.
"You... I killed you…" You mumble, your mind racing. "But, I didn't… I… Oriko died, and…!"
"Ah, no, wait! You did kill me that time!" The pinkette exclaims, waving her hands about in a panic. "You definitely did kill me in your world, so you didn't die for nothing!"
You can't help a frown. "What? But… But you're here, right now…"
She nods slowly. "I am, but I'm mostly a different Madoka from the one you killed. See, one of the girls you were fighting at the end can go back in time. Whenever she does that, she creates a different timeline – and slightly different world. My main consciousness is from one of those other timelines."
You stare at her blankly. "Uhh… what?"
Sorry, that probably doesn't make any sense." She muses, pressing her fingers together awkwardly. "Um, think of it like this: There are a bunch of different worlds and you certainly succeeded in achieving Oriko's goal in yours. Even if Mitakihara was destroyed not long after…"
Still not entirely sure about what's going on, you slump back down into your chair. So, she's saying you achieved what Oriko wanted, right? That's all that really matters, you suppose. But that doesn't really explain what's going on right now, though.
"So, uh, what's with... all of this?" You ask, gesturing around at the fake garden.
Her mood seems to improve immediately at your acceptance. "Oh, right! Well, It would probably take too long to explain properly, but I'm something like a super powerful being now. I go round to every Magical Girl, past present and future, and take them into the Law of the Cycle just before they die or become Witches."
"…I'm pretty sure you weren't anywhere to be seen when I became a Witch or when Oriko died."
"Hmm, that's right…" The girl admits with a shallow nod. "Certain factors around your transformation and Oriko's following death made it difficult for me to get to you. The thing is, though, when I came to get you afterwards, you were both… gone."
You tilt your head at her wording. "Gone?"
"That's right. I'm not quite sure why, but you were somehow transported to the world you're in now." She says, frowning. "My power is very limited outside of our normal reality, so the best I could do was try to contact one of you. That's what that pendant you have was for; it acts as a kind of beacon for me to reach you."
"Uh, right." You reply, nodding along despite not really following. "But… why contact me? Would it have been better to talk to Oriko instead? She's much smarter than me and probably already figured out what to do."
"That's the thing. I can sense that Oriko is somewhere in the same world as you – somewhere very, very high up in the city you're in – but I can't pinpoint her location or contact her at all."
"So… you want to help me find her, then?"
Madoka nods. "Yeah, I want to save both of you, but I can't do that unless I can reach you. For now, it's probably best to have you search, while I do what I can to help."
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