"Shade."
The blonde young lady, pretending to still be very weak, reached out to touch Shade's face and complained softly:
"This body is merely a flesh puppet, not my main body. And only a third of my soul has been projected here. Otherwise, that damned thing would not have been able to affect my consciousness so easily."
That thing had chosen Miss Violet rather than the weaker Miss Liard, likely for precisely this reason. But this also explained what lay beyond the wall before them. Shade could practically picture the "Swollen Lady" waiting behind it with a fan in hand.
"If a Soul-Forging Skeleton is touched by a living person, even a Thirteenth Order Great Witch will be injured. The best way to deal with it is to temporarily transform oneself into an undead creature. This is not difficult for us. After all, we have remained in this world for too long, and each of us has acquired certain traits of the undead."
Shade reached out and touched the rusty bronze skeleton before him. The skeleton embedded in the wall opened its mouth and spoke. It used the Common Language of the present Fifth Epoch, though its tone held no inflection:
"Answer one question, and you may pass through this door—who is the most beautiful in this world?"
"I think I understand why that thing deliberately put up a wall to stop us. What terrible taste."
The bespectacled young lady said, then took out the Sure-Kill Handgun:
"It wants us to say that it is the most beautiful, so we will not. Let's use this gun. It can kill living things with one shot, but it can also remove shackles and break seals. That skeleton will not withstand two shots."
Shade hurriedly stopped her:
"There are not many bullets left.