"?" Erina couldn't believe her eyes. "But why would they…?"

  "No time!" Akira grabbed Erina and pulled her along into a run. "Out! Now!"

  Lazarus picked up her railgun where she left it. She raised an arm and concentrated, calling the layout of the laboratory into her mind's eye. "…It's no good! Orochi is everywhere—I can't move enough of the components!"

  "Forget about that!" Akira placed Erina squarely at the edge of the broken wall as Orochi's tails moved away. "See that over there? That's the exit! Give us a launch pad!"

  "O-Okay!" said Erina.

  They launched across the open space through Erina's accelerator. The darkness of the laboratory's pocket dimension gave way to the outdoors. A cloudy sky shimmered overhead as they ran for more space across the empty city in the Reverse, away from the gash in reality where the laboratory once lay hidden.

  "Shit," said Akira as they stopped to catch their breath. "The fuck are they thinking?"

  Yamata no Orochi writhed, its many heads towering over them as they twisted every which way. They could run as much as they liked and it wouldn't matter. The mythical dragon was restored to full size. It dominated the skyline, every head reaching as high as any skyscraper.

  The heads gathered themselves and heaved in unison, shaking the world as their colossal body crashed against the edge of the rift. Several heads slammed down and bit into the earth for purchase. The seam in reality splintered larger, shards of the world spinning away into the void—and then with one titanic push, Orochi heaved its entire upper half out of the laboratory.

  "Welp," said Akira. "If you two have ideas, now's a great time."

  "Can you disable it with your Affinity?" Erina asked Lazarus.

  She shook her head. "There's too many heads. I could disable them one at a time, but I can't immobilize all of it at once."

  "But you can disable it?"

  Akira caught their attention as she suddenly snapped into a battle stance. "Heads up!"

  Orochi noticed them. Sets of red eyes devoid of humanity stared down on the tiny morsels, and then it struck in a barrage of massive jaws and spewing flame.

  A comet of light streaked out of the laboratory and took a hard bend, redirecting itself into the floor just outside the laboratory rift. Darius and Asayuki rolled out of the light, bringing their weapons to bear as one. The massive side of the dragon was like an endless wall of scales, rushing by as it continued to pull itself out of the laboratory.

  "Here it comes!" called Darius. Orochi cleared the laboratory entirely, a gigantic foot shaking the earth as it slammed down near them. The tails followed shortly after, lashing blindly at everything in reach—

  Asayuki tore across the landscape, red afterimages and countless slashes in her wake. Orochi jerked, three heads snapping around as the swordmaster hacked and slashed away at its tails. Their jaws unhinged, the first flames sparking in their maws.

  Streaks of light crossed the distance and shot out their eyes. The jets of flame went wide, finding nothing but the scenery as Orochi's heads writhed blindly. Six shots spent in a single second, Darius calmly reloaded and snapped the chamber shut.

  Orochi shook its heads and tasted the air, forked tongues flicking in and out as they neared. Sensing its prey by her heat, they lunged forward and were greeted by a massive sword of light. It speared one head and brought it crashing to the side, the wide blade blocking the other two from finding their mark.

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  A bright blue light flared briefly, standing out amidst the harsh orange of the quickly spreading fires. Asayuki leapt onto Orochi's back and wedged her sword deeper into the base of its middle tail, all the way down to the hilt, and then tore it out in a spray of noxious blood. Her mana shield pulsed as she reached down into the exposed flesh, digging and twisting for her target with both hand and sword. Finally, she found it and kicked away, flipping through the air to rejoin her partner as he fended off its heads.

  "Target acquired," she said. A chunk of metal several feet long rested under her arm, glowing bright blue. Blood and bits of flesh still clung to it.

  "Good," said Julian over her headpiece. "Can you proceed with extermination as planned?"

  "Lazarus just had to throw a wrench into everything," muttered Darius. He clenched his fist and tried to will his power to manifest. The black lightning didn't appear. "She stole the void. We lost track of her when Orochi emerged. Can you find them?"

  "Orochi is disrupting our observation. We can't provide scan support."

  "Right pain in the arse she is…" Darius chewed the corner of his lip. "Asayuki, any hope of killing it the normal way?"

  "It won't be easy." She sized up the far end, the twisting mass of heads. "It's not a mindless beast. It can prioritize targets, strategize, react to our plans… It'll start multiplying when it realizes what's going on."

  "But can you cut it?"

  "Who do you take me for?" Even in this situation, a humorous smile found its way onto her face. "It'll reverberate to the Surface, and we'll have to go on another amnesia campaign after, but I can take it down. I just need you to clear the path for me to reach its necks."

  "We're picking up a dimensional anomaly," said Julian.

  "We know. It widened the hole we used to enter the lab."

  "Not that."

  Asayuki made the tiniest double take. Then she looked up and bit her lip. Orochi had taken to hammering at the sky, cracks forming as it bashed its head repeatedly against the boundary between Surface and Reverse.

  "Bloody hell," said Darius, "it's still doing that?"

  "We won't have time before it does too much damage to the barrier," said Asayuki. "Retreating now isn't an option. We need a way to suppress it first."

  "No sight of Lazarus?" asked Julian.

  "None."

  "It seems we don't have a choice. Switch to plan B."

  "Roger!" they said in unison.

  Six bullets clattered to the ground and faded away.

  "I am the demise of evil," incanted Darius in his native tongue. "Fourth Seal, release!"

  A harsh light burned to life, casting shadows on the surroundings before compressing into a single shining bullet in Darius' fingers. He loaded the one round and fired it straight up, whistling high into the sky.

  The bullet exploded and the sky lit up. Above them all, above even Orochi's heads, a colossal network of spell circles formed, interlaid and revolving within each other as they cast the burning city in their radiant glow.

  Darius extended his arms and slashed down. Four towering blades descended from the heavens and shot into the laboratory depths as the seals faded. He twisted and heaved, and the blades returned with colossal links looped into their hilts—the same metal chains Lazarus used to suspend her units.

  Asayuki sheathed her blade and opened the pouch at her thigh. Talismans flew out in a continuous stream, dotting the huge chains and lining them with ofuda. Moving in tune with their master's motions, the massive swords swept around and crashed in from both sides, impaling the mythical dragon.

  "Nnngh…!" Darius strained as intense resistance met his will. Fingers quaking, he forced his hands to come together and then past each other with a yell. His blades followed suit, the guards crushing through Orochi's body and then running it through completely to erupt from the other side in a spray of poisonous blood. All of Orochi's heads moved as one, bucking in pain as lengths of chain snaked through its innards.

  The swords staked themselves in the ground around Orochi. Radiant light glowed to life in the cracks they left in the earth. The dragon's wounds closed, trapping the chains inside its own flesh with no hope of extracting them. The talismans covering them glowed an angry red.

  Darius dropped to one knee with a pained grunt. Glittering swords the size of buildings crunched in the earth as Orochi railed against its restraints. No matter which way it tried to move its body, another chain pulled taut. Its body ceased to grow further. Its fangs stopped just short of the cracks in the sky above.

  Several heads quickly took to biting and slamming at the blades, attempting to rip them out of the ground. Each shock reverberated through Darius himself, gritting his teeth as he willed his swords to hold fast.

  And hold they did.

  The titanic beast of legend was chained at one man's behest.