"Aaaaaarrrggghhhhhh!" I scream in impotence as I'm surrounded by the streaks of dark colors again, meaning that I'm being teleported outside of the academy. This time will take me to yet another random place.
Wait, why again? Why another? Ugh, it feels like something's wrong with my memories. Why do I think I'll be transported to a random place when I see these dark colors? How did I get out of the academy in the first place? How did I get transported to that graveyard with the little girl missing her legs? How did I get to maou-mama?
As I travel through this undefined space with a feeling that I'm falling, I bring out Hestia's wings template, to make sure that I don't splatter on arrival. But wait, why does this feel familiar? I'm having an incredible sense of déjà vu and it's causing me a headache, even though I shouldn't even have a physical brain...
This must have to do with what Basarab did to me. He commanded me to forget, but I can't remember at all what it included... Damn, that ability of his is clearly the most dangerous one among all of them, even when compared to Thorvadis' cheat-like spell to cancel my magic. Next time I see him, I'll blast him with a volley of spirit spears from afar.
The moment my surroundings become real space again, I look around and try to orientate myself. I'm above a desert, sand as far as the eyes can see. The sun is just rising above the horizon, so this must be in around the same time zone as the academy. Considering the completely different climate, it must be much farther south, though. It took quite a long time after all, so I must be really far from the academy. Once again, I'm basing this on a feeling, but I know it to be true. How much did that vampire-like guy mess up in my memories...?
I land on the sand and immediately bring out Hestia, along with the map I got from maou-mama. While it may not have any border distinctions or markings of the world beside where the Demon Continent is located, I can at least find out where we are, and use it to know the approximate distance to the academy.
"Onee-sama...?" Hestia gasps for air, looks around and asks upon seeing that we're alone. "... where is Kamii?"
"Kortid!" I ignore her and shout at the piece of leather, which displays the map of the known world.
Spoiler :
http%3a%2f%2fi.imgur.com%2fcWNIOk1.png [http://i.imgur.com/cWNIOk1.png]
I remember the approximate location of the academy on the map, and know the distance to the demon castle from there. Compared to our distance to either of the two destinations, it's almost the same! If we walked, it'd take more than three months. While I can fly or run as a Vularen, it's still a considerable journey, and there's an ocean along the way. The bigger problem is that I'm in a desert, and I don't know how far the next human settlement is. If I can't find food, running day and night will take a huge toll on my body. After all, it will feed on itself if it hungers.
"Hestia, take to the skies and see if-" Before I can finish my sentence I feel heat expanding from inside my body. In the next instant my stomach begins to bulge outwards, extending up to my chest, before my entire torso bursts open and an explosion of fire belches outwards. Wha-
From the opening a man jumps out, his skin melted in some parts and scorched in others. He's holding a red crystal in his hand and breathes hard with a deranged expression, compounded upon by the fact that his face is barely more than a skull with eyes in the lidless sockets. It's the teacher I swallowed and kept alive for a torturously slow digestion, for hitting Hestia.
"Ignis!" He shouts and throws a small flame at the map on the ground before me, causing it to burst into flames. He then falls to his knees, unable to support himself due to the damage his body has sustained, and breathes hard. I extend my arm towards the map, but it's disappearing in the fire. No, that's our only means to find the way back!
"You..." I can't speak... it hurts... it really hurts badly! It's the first time I'm feeling pain since coming to this world, and it's unbearable. My insides are scorched and the huge hole in my torso is blistering and bubbling in an attempt to alleviate the burns. The damage must be even more extensive inside the space of my body.
"How dare you!!!" Hestia screams, an expression filled with murderous rage on her face. Her crimson eyes begin to glow in hatred.
"Mico Corus-" The half dead teacher begins to chant and lifts the fire catalyst in our direction, but suddenly stops dead in his tracks. All life vanishes from his eyes and his body begins to disintegrate in the breeze, falling apart and disappearing into the dust of the desert. Only his clothes and the red crystal he was holding remains, lying in the sand silently.
"Onee-sama!" Hestia turns around to me and I can see that her eyes are no longer glowing. Was that an effect granted by her curse? I don't have the presence of mind to try and analyze it, though. I'm in serious pain here.
"Sano..." I mutter, but it does little for such a huge wound. In this situation I can't recall any of the longer spells that I read in the book Arcelia gave me. I look down at myself and find that my body is practically ripped open and my scorched amorphous insides are convulsing as they try desperately to repair the damage. If I was a human, I'd be long dead... but I think I might actually be dying...
http%3a%2f%2fi.imgur.com%2f2QGzQxb.png [http://i.imgur.com/2QGzQxb.png]
I hear Hestia chanting, but I cannot make out anything familiar about what she's saying. In fact, the sound of it seems to elude my mind completely. I turn to her and see that she has spread her arms and wings, and a halo seems to have formed above her head. However, it's shaped like a ring of thorns, with blackness forming into drops and flying up towards the sky. Truly, a fallen angel whose existence is an affront to the gods themselves. A dark and murky aura surrounds my body and I begin to lose the sense of pain. I watch in surprise as my wounds begin to close and the burnt parts revert to their natural state.
"Thank you, Hestia..." I rip off the remains of the academy uniform and toss it aside carelessly. With one look at my regenerated body I can tell that not a single burn remains. My insides feel healed as well.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I look down at the ashes that was the map and anger wells up. The mages may have underestimated me in our clash, but I didn't expect them to pull something like this. Their teamwork, once realizing that I couldn't be dealt with using the remaining members, was spot on, and they banished me to some place far away from it. I should have killed the teacher who was inside me right away, but now he was able to nearly kill me and destroy our only means to navigate the world. If I hadn't taken Hestia out, she might have died inside my body, and I would have been killed by him afterwards.
"I am so sorry!" Hestia kneels down before me with an anguished expression and asks for my forgiveness with her hands clasped together. I takes me by surprise.
"What're you apologizing for?"
"I... I did not take Kamii with me and saved myself alone." Her mention of the little dark elf causes a sting in my figurative heart. Indeed, she jumped towards me and left her behind, but it would be unfair to blame her for it. Still, an ugly part of my mind is thinking why it was Hestia and not Kamii who was closest to me at the time. But I'm also reminded of the fact that Kamii most likely wouldn't have been able to help me against that teacher and heal me afterwards. I look at the pile of clothes swaying in the desert wind with a hateful expression.
"We'll have to make our way back as quickly as possible." But I have no idea where to go. While I may be able to orientate myself using the sun, there's the issue that the maps of this world seem to use a different means of coordinating than the cardinal directions I know.
I have a rough idea that the academy must be north from here, but doubt at that fact is nagging at me. We could very well be on the southern hemisphere of the planet, which means that the north will have a warmer climate - certainly not what the Kingdom of Lares is like. If we move in one direction for long enough to find out that it's the wrong one, we would waste a lot of time.
"Can you not use space magic?" Hestia looks at me with a questioning expression.
"... what do you mean?" My headache is acting up again. Damn, Basarab really messed me up.
"You... you used space magic to leave the academy last night, did you not?" I suspected it before, but now it's certain. He must have really erased my knowledge of space magic. I have all these contradictory memories from last night. Of me sneaking into the library, arriving in the place I think was the Fatas Triarchy due to what was most likely a defensive mechanism of the academy, and then teleporting to the demon castle and meeting maou-mama afterwards. I couldn't have gotten there without knowing space magic myself. I returned, but couldn't get through the same defensive mechanism that hampered with my first teleportation, so I dropped myself from a really high place, flying in physically instead.
I should know space magic, but I simply can't recall how it works. I think the fact that I'm not that strongly affected by Basarab's magic means that it's not as all-powerful as it may seem to be. But he pinpointed the one thing that hurts me the most right now, and it's causing more than enough damage. If he had even more time to mess with my memories, I might even have been made to forget about everyone I care. At the thought I shudder. Yes, I won't even let him speak a single word next time I see him.
"Do you not have another one of those spell circles you drew on the papers you store inside your body?" Hestia looks up to me with a concerned expression. I have those? I try to search through my body and empty everything inside my storage space onto the ground, but all that appears are the scorched remains of a backpack, a blackened knife without a handle and ashes. That mage did a real number on me here. I really shouldn't have let him live just to torture him. It was really my own complacency...
Analyzing my battle with the teachers, I realize that there are many things I could have done better. From the start I should have simply expanded my body to its full size and filled out the room. It was the perfect opportunity, since we were in a really confined space. If the same confrontation had happened on the open field outside, the situation would have been much worse for me. I think I had enough mass to fill out the room at the time, but not to cover enough of the field to hit everyone simultaneously, if they scattered. But now a lot has been burned away and I'll need to recover my mass.
I should have fought the same way maou-mama did against Mithra, hitting him with a huge mass of her body so that he couldn't dodge. That way I could have swallowed everyone in the room at the same time and immediately dissolved the teachers, while saving Kamii and Hestia. The only reason I didn't do that can only be ascribed to my own foolishness in thinking that there was a possibility to talk things out.
What do we do now? Hestia and I can both fly, so we can scout the area pretty quickly. But transforming and flying without any perceivable sustenance in sight will take a lot of energy, and I'm already feeling hungry. At least magic can provide us with water, so we won't die of dehydration.
"Hestia, can you fly up and take a look at our surroundings? A settlement, wild animals, anything that can be of use, report it." She does as asked, jumping up and casting a gust of wind underneath her wings to help her lift off. As expected, that's how Fatas do it when they have no ledge to jump off from.
I look around once again, to take in the surrounding scenery. This looks like photos of the Sahara desert that I've seen. The sand underneath my feet is very fine, more like dust, suggesting that this is not somewhere near the ocean. From what I can see, this scenery goes on in every direction with no end in sight. But since dunes can pile up really high, they may hide things farther away, so I'll have to see what Hestia finds.
For now, to save energy, I reduce my surface area. In other words, I return to the loli size I had on the Dark Continent, but this time I don't care at all about faking clothes. There's no need for me to act like a human around Hestia, and even if I do find a human settlement, in my current mood I think I'd slaughter them all for food rather than try to blend in. I can always get information out of one or two I leave alive until the end...
"Onee-sama, I can see- woah!" Hestia returns from the skies and lands before me, making a surprised sound. I look up to her with a brow raised, but she already lunges at me. Wh-what? In the next moment I'm lifted up into her arms and my face is buried in her chest. So this is how Senka feels, huh? "Onee-sama, how cute you have become! Can this lowly corrupted Fata ask to share your bed tonight? Haa, haa, Onee-samaaa!" Her breathing grows wild. Alright, I didn't take her for a lolicon, but maybe it's also because it's me she's holding. She moves in to kiss me but I look up to her with a slight frown.
"... Report what you have found." I mutter in annoyance. This isn't the situation to go into heat; all I have on my mind is thinking of a way to get back to the academy and rescue Kamii, and so should Hestia. As if realizing what she has been doing just now, she immediately stops and places me on my feet, before kneeling down before me. I think she doesn't know the concept of seiza, but what she's doing is pretty close to it.
"I am so sorry, Onee-sama!" She lowers her head in prostration. "In that direction, I have seen a collection of large animals, although I could not tell what they are from such a distance." Pointing in the direction, she raises her head a little again to see my reaction.
"Very well." I'm not giving her the satisfaction to absolve her of the blemish from her actions just now. She's an M, so I'm sure she'll find a way to take pleasure from this treatment. I walk away without telling her to follow, and she looks at me in confusion, before getting up and running after me.
Wait for me, Kamii-chan. Onee-san... no, mama bear is coming to save you!