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Cute Beams, Magic Girls
07 Some Situations Call For Better Beams

07 Some Situations Call For Better Beams

07 Some Situations Call For Better Beams

I wanted to be so far away from where I actually was. There wasn’t anything specific I wanted to be doing, but the vast majority of my life had been spent feeling better than this. It didn’t really matter what. I just wanted to be somewhere else.

But I was lying in the fetal position on the floor of a kayak shed. There was a massive gorilla creature blocking the entrance, and giant aliens that were mostly legs were kicking the shed. I was here. Nothing could change that.

“Need… healing…” I wheezed out.

The Familiar didn’t respond to me with words. Instead, I watched as it pulled my personal grimoire from my grasp, somehow tugging it with its featureless face, then jumped away as the grimoire began to float and flip through pages faster and faster. Then it stopped on a page, turned on its side so I could read it better, and held position long enough that my vision stopped swimming for me to read it.

A diagnostic spell was on the left, and I ignored that because I was pretty sure I knew what was wrong with me. Receiving a powerful blow to my chest, flying as a result of said blow and landing on a hook, before being thrown into the air and landing on solid ground, came to mind. But everything except that last part had happened twice. I dismissed the spell and focused on the spell on the right.

Emergency Regenerate was the name of the spell, which was promising.

But why did it need to have so many syllables?

My vision was swimming too much to read the paragraph describing how to activate the spell, so all I could try was saying the name with intent.

“Em…”

Talking was so hard. How had I even said what I did immediately after taking the blow? Why did it have to take so long to take effect? Why wasn’t the Familiar’s defensive suite working?

I gave up on chanting the first word.

“Re… gener… ate…” I somehow managed to say.

I closed my eyes with relief when I saw the cyan circle drawing itself around me. Needless to say, the relief didn’t last long. A turbulent feeling rose from my stomach, and it didn’t stop until it spread throughout my entire body. Then it intensified, and this time it didn’t stop.

My mind took a brief leave of absence, I think. The next thing I knew I was taking a deep breath as I jackknifed into a sitting position and the hookblow was a little further away than I remembered it.

“What happened?” I asked, and didn’t realise how easily my voice was coming until I had already spoken.

[The strike you received from the hookblow ruptured many of your internal systems,] the Familiar told me, surprising me by sitting in front of me on the floor like it obeyed the rules of gravity. [Many of your fluids were leaking through these ruptures, slowly damaging you beyond what the hookblow inflicted. A wide spectrum healing spell was required to restore you to an operable state. There have been some cosmetic side effects.]

“But functionally?” I asked. One hand came up to my face unbidden, but I didn’t feel anything obviously different through my glove.

[You are operating at an optimal condition.]

“That’s fine then.” I glanced at the hookblow when it was dragged a little further back. Its hooks had deployed and one had caught in a kayak while the other was stuck in the opposite wall. Whatever was dragging the hookblow backwards needed to drag it and the kayak back at the same time, while also tearing through the metal wall of the shed. The kayak was caught on the railing attached to the wall as well, so it was slow going. “How much time do we have?”

[We have enough for you to purchase a dedicated offensive grimoire, but not enough to discuss each option in depth,] the Familiar answered. [We have thus limited the options to darts, for alpha strike potential, chaining beams, for diminishing multi target destruction, and arcs, for a more dramatically effective version of the spell you are most used to.]

“Arcs,” I said immediately. It was the option I was most used to, so it was a no brainer. “What’s the grimoire called?” I asked, since the Familiar had only given me each grimoire after naming it in the past.

[It is the Stoccoro Grimoire for Flashy Rituals. The name is misleading, as Stoccoro rituals often involved bloodsport, and events that ended without casualties were considered dull affairs. It will take seventy five mana to scribe.]

I glanced at my mana levels before granting assent.

B: 0/24

U: 103

“Okay, take the mana.”

Stoccoro Spells for Flashy Rituals added to personal grimoire. Unbound mana reduced to 28.

My grimoire snapped shut and began to glow as the spells wrote themselves inside. Before, I had watched with wonder at the magic. Now, I felt myself getting fidgety as the shed shook again. It was hard to make out in the lowlight emitted by my Familiar, but it looked like there were several wide dents in the roof.

Diane was aiming the BB gun at the gaps between the hookblow’s shoulders and the shed door, which was probably why the smaller, sneakier starbanes hadn’t come in and given me another turn in the blender yet. I remembered something the Familiar had said when we were moving from the forest to the shed.

“Didn’t you say something about thirteen shots left?” I asked the Familiar over the sound of starbanes screaming from outside.

[Once Diane shoots the next pellet from her gun, the magazine supplying ammo will become empty,] it told me, and Diane shot a scoutscale crawling in from the top right almost the next moment. It stuck to the ceiling with one leg on a kayak, further tightening the gap. [We have not informed her of this.]

“Can you do something about that?” I asked, then muttered under my breath, “Authentic Energy Channel.”

The Familiar twitched its tail away from where the purple magic circle began drawing itself. [We are capable of crystallising mana from an incorporeal to physical form, then further transmuting it. However, the mana will need to be yours. Either bound or unbound mana is acceptable, but it must initially be yours.]

“Then take the mana and transmute more ammo,” I said, then pushed my beam at another scoutscale as it tried to crawl over the hookblow and into the shed. Diane took a relieved step back when my magic blasted past her. She also pulled the trigger in the direction of the scoutscale, but I couldn’t tell if she noticed the lack of pellets shooting out.

Things were pretty crazy at that moment. I almost didn't notice the notification message.

3 unbound mana crystallised for material transmutation. Unbound mana reduced to 37.

“Really getting this stuff fast,” I muttered when I noticed how my mana had jumped up. Diane’s gun had another magic circle appear on it, pure white in colour, which started at the top of the magazine and move down to the bottom. The next time she pulled the trigger it kicked back, making Diane flinch but not falter.

That was good. The small amount of relief I felt from seeing the scoutscale attaching itself to the hookblow and the shed, thereby becoming another obstacle the aliens needed to overcome, was undone by a hand reaching down from above and pressing the thing’s horn. It even flopped onto our side of the hookblow, and I hated that.

The hookblow was almost out of the shed. I had just gained access to more deadly spells, but I was still using authentic special effects. There wasn’t much time, I needed to be using my upgrade. “Familiar, what’s an offensive spell from the Stoccoro grimoire?”

[Would you prefer a high rate of fire, short beam spell, an autocorrecting focus spell, an intensifying spell, or a high focus spell with a lower effective radius and range?]

“Will the last one let me drag the beam across them?” I asked, then pushed my energy channel at one of the sentries that was pushing past the hookblow’s leg.

[It will be possible, but more difficult than with your current spell.]

“Then show me!” I shouted over the noise of my spell.

My grimoire floated off the ground and cracked itself open for the second time in the past minute and the pages fluttered past until they came to a new page that I couldn’t look at until I was sure the sentry dog thing was dead. Then when I did look, it was hard to focus on the cursive text on the page. Reading was supposed to be easy, but most of the time I wasn’t reading while aliens were trying to collapse the shed I was in.

The name turned out to be a single word. I didn’t have the time to laugh at it.

I flexed my casting hand to reclaim the mana in the magic circle, then aimed both hands towards the face of a second hookblow that was bellowing at us from the gap between the dead one’s side and the door of the shed.

“Anklebiter!”

The circle slammed into existence in front of me, raging purple but far narrower than the arcing spread my Authentic Energy Channel’s had been. No beam sprung forth, but an odd shape formed on my side of the circle’s centre, which coloured in until it seemed solid. It almost looked like I was meant to hold it, like a handle unattached to anything.

So I grabbed it and lined my arm up with the hookblow just as it was moving away from the gap and squeezed the magic handle. The result was better than I had dared dream of.

Like the magic circle, the beam that came out was sudden and malevolent, and sprung forth in a controlled ray that didn’t narrow because it was already a thin slice of death when it burst into existence. Varying shades of violet or magenta pulsed from the source of the beam to the end, casting a strobing light on us. I heard a bellow like pain from the other side of the dead hookblow, but my unbound mana didn’t indicate a kill.

B: 0/24

U: 18

I cut the channel as soon as I saw how low on mana I was. Casting Anklebiter must have taken twenty or twenty five mana. It was hard to tell, and I couldn’t risk spending more until I could guarantee getting more from the starbanes.

When the thrum of my spell died down, all we were left with were the hisses of hurt Starbane, and the sound of panting breath.

I took the time to stand up, since I was still sitting on the ground. Channelling anklebiter was all well and good, but I didn’t want to stay at that level. Something could stamp on me, otherwise.

“You’re okay,” Diane said in the brief reprieve.

I chuckled, tried to smother it, and ended up giggling. Diane gave me an odd look.

“What?” she asked.

“No, it’s ah… I got better,” I said. Then I kept giggling because it wasn’t actually that funny.

This was definitely me coping with how badly hurt I had just been. My body might have felt fine, but my mind wasn’t quite keeping up.

I got serious again when the corpse of the hookblow was finally torn up and away from the opening into the shed, and was hurled in the direction of the wide part of the river. The only thing I took the time to do before channelling Anklebiter was finding an appropriate target. A hookblow with one arm hanging limply by its side seemed more than adequate.

One feature about my new spell that I quickly learned was how it didn’t want to stay channelling in one place. Even the slightest tremble in my wrist or arm had the end point of the beam wobbling on the hookblow. So it was a good thing my new spell turned out to be so deadly, since I got the sense that it was dead after only around two seconds of channelling.

That was good, because I noticed two other hookblows lining up to try and punch us as soon as I was done with the first one.

I tried to drag the spell across to the nearer one, but movement from the spell was sluggish in spite of its sensitivity. It wanted to move back and into me, kind of like a high pressure hose. The spell might have made one of those sentry forms topple as I jerked the spell over where it happened to be, but I was far more worried about the massive bright red leathery gorilla thing with hooks and two extra arms barrelling towards me. The spell wasn’t moving fast enough, so I cut the channel and found the resistance went away in the same moment.

The world was briefly dark as the light from my spell, as well as my wisp, went out. Then everything was purple once again as I squeezed the handle my spell provided me and an anklebiter beam struck the approaching hookblow in the chest. And, because I learned from my mistakes, I angled the beam up after killing the first as the next one leaped over the top, and put in extra strength to move the beam far enough in time.

A death gurgling sound came out of the leaping hookblow, which cut out when it tipped forward and landed with its freaky face down on the concrete floor. The corpse even slid towards us from the momentum.

I channelled a beam into the back of its head for a second, just to be sure. Then I turned my attention back to the littler starbane forms that were trying to murder us, and ran into the problem of not being able to see them when I wasn’t channelling, since the wisp I’d cast outside had gone out.

That, at least, was easily solved. In between bursts of anklebiter, I cast another Wisp of Adjustable Brightness and somehow managed to turn it up a reasonable amount in between focusing down the sentry dogs. We managed to clear them out, mostly, and I was allowing myself to relax when the other threat that had chased us here reminded me of its presence.

A sudden breeze picked up as part of the roof was wrenched away with a deafening screech. I looked up and saw too many green arms reaching through the new triangle shaped hole above me.

“No!” I yelled as I turned the anklebiter beam on the strider without turning it off. A red trail of heated metal marked where my beam touched the metal of the shed before it landed on the strider, which reacted by flinching each of its too-many arms in slightly different ways. It continued to writhe as I kept channelling my beam, and sometimes the arms swung by close enough that I felt the air move. But eventually it slumped dead after too many seconds had passed.

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I had to scramble back from where its arms fell down before I got crushed. That whole ordeal had left me breathless, even though all I had really done was point my arm up and keep it there for a bit. Well, there was more to it than that.

I kicked a dangling arm of the dead strider. “Bad touch,” I grumped.

“Donna!” Diane called from beside me. She was firing pellet after ineffective pellet at where another green arm was reaching into the kayak shed. It took me a moment too long to realise the enchantment on her gun had run out.

Thankfully, it didn’t take me a moment too long to aim my anklebiter spell that way and project the beam at the motley green arms before they grabbed at Diane. They appeared suddenly brown in the light of my spell and quickly flinched before retreating out of sight.

I looked at the many corpses on the ramp leading up to the shed. It didn’t look like any of them were moving. The strider would be moving to ambush us again no doubt.

It needed to die, so I chased it out of the shed. Diane called out from behind me, but the sound didn’t really register.

“Wisp of Adjustable Brightness,” I cast, and turned its brightness up the moment it was out of my finger. The light wouldn’t last long, but it did reveal a form against the trees beside the shed. That was the direction I channelled my anklebiter beam next.

It had actually been moving around the shed in my direction, but the moment my beam landed on its high up fake ribcage the whole thing started convulsing every which way. It lost control of itself and tipped over the shed as it died. Diane came hurrying out after me as the whole thing started to warp and groan.

I stopped channelling. The bright wisp I had cast burned out a few seconds later. We both panted as the quiet sound of a slow moving river became the loudest noise once again.

“Is that all of them?” Diane asked.

A shadow cast by the wisp of light still glowing from in the shed shifted, and I snapped my beam at the sentry dog thing responsible.

“I think so,” I said once I was sure it was dead. “Where are the Authorities?”

[They are flying above,] my Familiar informed me as it came sauntering out of the kayak shed. [That is where they will likely stay until you return to the relative shelter of the forest.]

“Yeah,” I agreed. “There’s no telling what’s approaching.” I started to go but paused. “Diane.” I gestured her over.

“What is it?” she asked, stepping over a dead sentry dog.

“Rifling Acceleration,” I explained by way of casting the spell. This time I didn’t bother being frugal, and just dragged my finger along the barrel until the magic circle formed to indicate that the enchantment was active. “How many pellets does she have now?” I asked the glowing creature that had decided to climb up my leg. It was weightless and had no claws, but stuck there all the same. I could only tell it was there through a touch that was difficult to notice if I wasn’t looking its way.

The Familiar was oddly hard, and hung itself on my shoulder with its legs and tail hanging down my back as it answered. [The magazine in Diane’s gun contains another ninety two metal balls of relatively small size. Your enchantment would affect each of them, as well as another magazine at capacity if used within the next twenty one hours. We also used spare transmutation mana to ensure the mechanism’s pressurised cartridges were functional.]

“So it’ll keep firing,” I concluded. “Good.”

“It does make me feel safer,” Diane said. “Metal is good too.”

[Some minor adjustment was also made to ensure certain structural points were strong enough. That tool was used as a bludgeon in the past, which had a negative effect on its integrity.]

“Yes, yes, you did a very good job,” I said, quickly deflecting. “Let’s go. We’re just standing around.”

We successfully cut the chatter and hurried around all of the corpses and into the trees. I paused as I realised something that might be good to bring up.

“Are the starbanes going to be doing anything with the bodies we leave behind?” I asked without actually stopping. Diane slowed to a walk beside me as well. Right now we were only relying on the light of the Familiar on my shoulder, as well as the spell readied in my hand.

[Once certain objectives have been reached in their occupation, the Starbane will begin to harvest biomatter,] my Familiar told me. [Using magic to make corpses of the Enemy unusable is something we encourage, and there are many methods of doing so. However, you should save your mana for your personal benefit at this time.] It adjusted the way it was holding onto me. [We also advise you to reclaim the mana in your readied spell. It just claimed five mana for upkeep, and will claim another five in another fifty three seconds.]

I actually didn’t like that. Having the Anklebiter beam in my hand made me feel safe. It was something for me to hold onto for reassurance, like how Diane naturally stood a little taller while she was holding her gun. The knowledge that the magic was just words away didn’t do enough to bridge that gap.

But I let it go all the same. I didn’t have enough to keep the spell prepared if I wanted to use it ten minutes from now. At least I got refunded on the mana in the circle.

B: 17/24

U: 48

Considering how much mana I had needed to spend to win that fight, I had come out ahead.

Ahead, but not the same person as I was before. Someone who pettily kicked a dangling corpse was not how I’d describe the person I’d been when I arrived at this camp. And after all that I wasn’t exactly feeling exhilarated while Diane was still breathing harder than usual.

“That was touch and go for a while there,” one of the Authorities said from above. I looked up and saw them both zip down into the light of the Familiar. “You pulled through though. How are you feeling?”

I was distracted by figuring out which Authority was which and ended up answering second.

“I’m going to be having nightmares tomorrow,” Diane answered, sounding like her usual self. “But for now, I can keep going.”

“I…” I frowned. “I…”

The words to describe how I felt didn’t come to me. I was certain I was supposed to be feeling something intense, after being in a fight like that. The fight in the fire clearing had left me running high, but this one left me feeling… odd. Not numb, but odd.

“That was a good spell you upgraded to,” the other Authority stated, and I immediately pegged her as the Authoritative one. “Which grimoire is it from?”

“Uh… the Stoccoro Grimoire for Flashy Rituals?” I looked at my Familiar, and it dipped its head, nudging my shoulder. “The spell is called Anklebiter.” I looked at my Familiar again. “Why is it called that?”

[As stated, the Stoccoro expected their rituals to result in casualties,] it explained. [The ritual featuring the spell Anklebiter involved placing the caster on a lowered platform and having it rotate. The caster would attempt to maintain the spell and keep it steady, while contestants would stand on higher platforms and leap over the deadly beam as it passed. Winners were whoever was standing when the caster finally lost control of the spell, or the caster if all contestants fell.]

“I’ve seen that game at fairs,” Diane said. “Kids play it.”

[We sincerely hope they do not perform the Anklebiter Ritual. Your youth lack the coordination to avoid having their lower tendons boiled, as well as the constitution to survive such an occurrence.]

“I meant with foam wrapped poles. They have one at head height as well. Jump then duck”

[The Stoccoro equivalent is an execution method, and is unavailable in the novice level tome.]

“Alright, that’s enough of that,” I said. “We need to keep moving. They’re probably converging on the area, and we need to get to the gym.”

“Before that,” Authoritative said, “we should do a quick A.A.R.”

I frowned at her.

“After Action Report,” the gentler Authority explained. “It’s a practice in the military, and is widespread because it’s effective. We won’t go in depth now, of course, but saying some things out loud can help you realise what to do better next time.”

I looked between the Authority fairies, but they stopped there. When I looked at Diane, she seemed to be waiting for my lead. Everyone was waiting on me.

“What are you trying to make me say?” I demanded, coming on hotter than I thought I would. “That I should have picked a better spell to start with because that hookblow got close to me? That I should have invested in defensive magic because it punched me and it hurt? Maybe I should learn a flying spell so I can catch myself the next time I’m hurled somewhere. Or, maybe, just maybe, I should just fight good enough that none of that happens anymore and I win every fight ever, the end!”

“Up until the end there,” Authoritative Authority began after giving me a few seconds to cool down. “You were actually touching on the whole point of an after action report. Things went wrong. You identify what went wrong and why, then explore ways to make things not go wrong that way the next time.

“So please, go over what happened in the order you remember it happening. We missed everything that happened between you entering the shed, to you leaving it. That’s as good a starting point as any.”

I really, really didn’t want to. I ended up giving my Familiar a searching look, silently asking for advice.

[Simulacra of experienced magicians hold no power,] it said. [However, the personalities and memories available to a simulacrum are the same as the caster’s. This one holds no true power over you, but the advice is sourced from genuine experience.]

It seemed I was being ganged up on. With nothing else for it, I took a deep breath and gave a play by play as I remembered it.

I think I only spoke for a minute before reaching the end. Diane added a few details as well, mostly the things that happened while I was regenerating. Apparently I’d glowed yellow for a few moments. When we were done I watched Authoritative Authority carefully for her reaction. Her fairy face wasn’t quite a normal human’s, but it was close enough, only she had a good poker face. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, or what was going to come out of her tiny fairy mouth.

“Do you want a hug?” she asked me, holding that serious expression.

“Do I want a hug?” I repeated. “Are you serious?”

“Quite serious.” She hovered down a bit and continued in a softer tone. “When I breached my first veil I also found myself getting injured. Nothing so serious as what you experienced, and I had a mentor watching over me. Someone who could cast a healing spell if I lost the ability to speak. Back then I felt better after receiving a hug, so a hug is what I advise you seek after hearing the play by play.”

“That’s…” Ridiculous. Crazy. Not helpful at all for getting somewhere safe. It wasn’t even actually this fairy that would’ve gone through that, she was just a simulacrum with that memory.

But I couldn’t truly say that I didn’t want a hug.

“Ah,” Diane tugged on the gun strap so it dangled behind her and wrapped her arms around me from my side. I didn’t react.

“Hug time!” The gentler Authority proclaimed, and flew into my cheek on the other side. Her fairy feet kicked against the skin halfway down my neck, and she was so light that I barely felt any of it. Authoritative Authority followed more slowly, and hugged my shoulder through my cape. My Familiar was of course already on me. I think its tail came around my waist for a few moments before its endless twitching made it twitch away.

“I thought we were doing an after action report,” I muttered, my ears starting to go red.

“We can still do that,” Gentle Authority told me. “Just think that we’re doing it over a call.”

“That’s kind of difficult with all of you touching me like this.”

“Morale is important too,” Authoritative Authority said. “You just survived a harrowing ordeal. Enjoy this while it lasts.”

“I can’t help but wonder how long this is going to last,” I said.

“It lasts until I let you go,” Diane told me.

“Excuse me, I came to save you.”

“I am grateful. This is me expressing my gratitude.” Her grip shifted, then relaxed a little. “Squeezing you doesn’t work like this.”

“Wait, the defensive enchantments work?” I asked out loud.

[In the previous conflict, the defensive suite reduced the damage sustained by your body to a fraction of what it could have been,] the Familiar told me. [Primarily, this is because the material is resistant to being pierced, and prevented the hookblow from properly grappling you. If it had, your lungs would have both been impaled by its hooks, and your body would have been held close to the hookblow while its smaller arms pummelled you repeatedly. Likely continuing until you or it were dead.]

“I was wondering what the tiny arms were for,” I admitted.

[Additionally, the physical blow you experienced was one fifth the force of what it could have been. Each piece of your current clothing is connected to a lattice of semi physical mana in a liquid environment, and distributes kinetic energy to that lattice when a threshold is met. It also protects from hostile mana injections, but you are unlikely to encounter a form using that method for another three hours.]

“Huh.” I turned to look at Diane. “Did you just try to squeeze me?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “It was affectionate because I’m thankful that you are doing this for me.”

“Sure,” I said, then wrapped my arms around her waist and lifted her up. I was taller, so I had the natural advantage there, but I wasn’t expecting her to be basically weightless. The tirade I was about to go on was lost when I realised I wasn’t straining to keep Diane in the air. “The defence suite gives me strength as well?”

[It will allow you to more easily clear rubble from on top of you,] the Familiar told me.

“Ugh.” Now that I thought about it, a fair number of veils were cast over cities, and not all blocks made it out unscathed when that happened. Now that I was a magical girl, there was a good chance I’d be the one slapped into a load bearing pillar of a building. Or I’d be the one doing the slapping. I hoped I would be the one doing the slapping.

“Why am I holding you again?” I asked Diane. My mind had wandered a bit there.

“For morale purposes,” she said.

“Huh. I guess I’ve been moraled.” I put her down but she didn’t let me go. “I said, I’ve been moraled.”

“I need morale as well.”

I held myself back from rolling my eyes. “Sure, whatever. For a few more seconds. Authority, has this after action report thing been done enough?”

“A typical after action report can take hours,” the gentle one told me from where she was still nuzzling my cheek. I decided that was enough and picked her off with my more free hand. The one that Diane wasn’t holding in place with her boobs. The Authority’s wings fluttered in protest, and I let her start floating in front of me again. “But this is the field, and action is ongoing. We should get moving again soon.”

“We also have a complication,” the other Authority said. This one fluttered off of my shoulder all on her own. “It’s difficult to explain. Easier to show you.”

“Okay, where do we need to go?” I asked.

“The gymnasium. Your objective.”

“If you do the trick with the adjustable wisp again, you’ll get a very clear sight of it.” Gentle Authority added.

“Alright…” I said with uncertainty. All the same I raised a finger to cast the spell. “Wisp of Adjustable Brightness. Diane, is that enough morale for you?”

“Yes,” she said, and stepped away from me with dignity. “Now I won’t contemplate suicide when I see whatever this complication is.”

I blinked, having forgotten she talked like that sometimes. “I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

Neither of the Authority fairies commented, which didn’t bolster my resolve much. This time the overly serious one grabbed my wisp while the other stuck with us. Gentle Authority guided us to a spot where we waited to see the wisp flying in the other Authority’s grasp. The gymnasium was significantly closer to the kayak shed than the kayak shed had been to the campfire site, so it was a much swifter journey.

“Lightly strobe the wisp, if you can,” Gentle Authority suggested once we had taken position a few trees away from where the forest ended. It gave us a semi obscured “view” of the blackness between us and the building, but we were close enough that we could probably sprint to it in ten to fifteen seconds. “That way she knows to drop it. Do you see her?”

Instead of answering out loud, I placed my fingers around the drifting light in the sky and gently rocked them from side to side. The wisp began to descend a moment later.

“Wait…” Authority said, presumably to give the other one enough time to fly to safety. “As bright as you can, please.”

I turned my hand clockwise, then did the thing where I continued to turn the knob with just one finger. It worked well enough for the spell, and the area underneath the wisp was revealed for a brief moment before subsequently burning out.

What I saw wasn’t the gymnasium. Instead, I saw a whole bunch of somethings that were between me and the gymnasium, covering the entire thing in a throng of colour that didn’t have the decency to stay still. There was purple and yellow in clumps across the top of the side facing us with more shapes of those colours moving between them, and I caught glimpses of red on top. Mostly, there was a shifting shiny black making a wall where I remembered the gymnasium being a distinct brown.

The light faded before I could make out any more details.

“Hm,” Diane reacted.

“Don’t even consider it,” I told her quietly.

“I was not. This just reminded me of book three of the Starbane Strife anthology.”

[The similarity is not surprising,] the Familiar said, and finally dropped from my shoulder to leap up onto a nearby branch. [The Eight-Eyed-Abyss that was a secondary antagonist in that fictional sequence of events was based on the form your culture calls arachno.]

“Do you know why they are called that?” I asked.

[The form has an appearance similar to that of a spider with roughly half the mass of an average man, but is not an arachnid. The magician who first encountered this form named them with this in mind.]

“Still looks like spiders though,” I said. And there were so many of them too. “For the record, I hate spiders.”

[Fortunately for you, Donna, while the arachno form may generate thread similar to a spider’s and possess the same number of legs, they are not arachnids,] my Familiar told me, it's tail twitching to rest over its front feet. [Any discomfort you feel regarding spiders is therefore irrelevant.]

I really wanted to kick the little thing.