Chapter 19 Melodia

Arturo stood still as he looked at the old building Pickati and I had turned into a training ground. I frowned and tapped my foot, waiting for him to say something. I knew it wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but he could still say something.

“So are you sure this is the place or…”

And I had heard enough. I walked up to the fence and reached my arm out a little.

[Gravity.

Self.

Negate gravity.]

I kicked off and reached for the fence. I pulled myself over the edge and to the other side, landing on the ground in a motion I had down to muscle memory at this point.

I walked into the building as I heard Pickati explain to Arturo how to jump and get himself over the fence.

It hadn’t taken much to convince Mom and Dad to let us go out today. My brother told them we had been planning on hanging out today. It wasn’t even really a lie. What we were doing counted as hanging out right?

We had even stopped to buy ice cream for the three of us on the way. Of course maybe that hadn't been the best idea because now Arturo knew one of my secrets. No one was ever supposed to learn I had used Neutralize Object Gravity to keep my taco from falling apart that one time we had gone out for Mexican food.

Of course Pickati had needed to use that info to convince him he wouldn't spill ice cream in his bag. So now I had to make sure neither of them told anyone else.

“So I have a few questions,” I heard Arturo declare as I opened the door to the main room.

“It’s legally abandoned, there are permanent spells on it to keep people out, and the building has been reinforced with magic,” Pickati explained as he flew in right behind him with his cup of ice cream still in his paws. “That answer your questions?”

“Yes actually,” he looked around the main room as Pickati floated a bit of ice cream out of the cup and took a bite out of it, “so how do we start?”

I walked off, leaving him to awake my brother’s magic. Apparently Arturo’s magic had started fading, but he still had enough embers left to awake it. He’d never reach my levels of power, even without the power of the stars, but it was better than nothing.

I would have given them a bit of help, but apparently there wasn’t much I could do other than giving them the space they needed. In the meantime I had my own spell to work on. And I was pretty sure I had a new way to do this that might do the trick. I cast Internal Stabilization before casting the other spell. I went through the steps I needed until I got to the concept of a direction.

Up until now, I’d been using a relative direction. Concepts like ‘in front of me’. But in front of me kept changing so it kept changing which way gravity was pulling me. So what I needed was an absolute direction, and I think I had an image that would do it.

Instead of using a spot on the wall, I instead imagined a marble in a glass sphere. I gave each side of the glass sphere a defined direction before the marble started moving. The glass reached the side of the sphere associated with the direction I needed. I jumped up and cast the spell as the gravity around me shifted until I was falling towards the wall. I landed on my feet and got ready to move in case I messed it up again.

Nothing moved, I stayed on my feet. I gave the wall a careful tap of my feet before walking around a bit on it. The world looked weird like this. The roof was to my left while Pickati and Arturo were on the ground to my right.

It looked like the two of them were too focused on awakening Arturo’s magic to notice me. I guess that meant I had time to myself to get some more practice in. I had just the way to train too. I picked another wall and started running towards it. I jumped through the air as I redid the spell, changing the marble so it fell towards the new direction.

I twisted myself forward in the air and landed on the next wall without any trouble. I ran across the wall until I got to the next wall and did it again. I kept doing it again and again, getting better with each jump. After a few minutes, I was even adding in little spins and somersaults.

“That was a good attempt, do you want to try again?” I overhead Pickati from my spot on the ceiling. They must have finished the first try at awakening Arturo’s magic.

“Sure thing, let me just catch my breath… where’s Melodia?” I couldn't help but giggle at my brother's confused face as he looked around the room. He must have heard me because he flinched a little. “Melodia, where are you?”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Up here,” I waved even as Pickati was already looking up. He smiled from his spot and flew up until he was halfway up to me.

“You managed the spell,” It wasn’t even a question. I jumped up and undid the spell while casting another to slow my fall.

“You know I did,” I told him on the way down. “I'm going to keep working on it while you help Arturo, but do you think I’m ready for whatever comes next?”

“Maybe you are,” he hummed to himself as he thought it over, “you’re advancing faster than I would have imagined. We can talk about it after all, but maybe you can pull it off.”

“Okay, so what is it?”

“Let me meet your question with a question. Do you really think Gravity Crush is the only spell pre-loaded into the power of the stars?” My eyes widened at the implication. Gravity Crush was by far the most powerful and costly spell I had. Having another one like it could come in handy in so many ways.

Pickati told me all about the second pre-loaded spell, making sure I understood how it worked, how to access it, and how it should be used. I made sure to take out a smaller notebook I had brought along and wrote it all down. I could move it over to my main spell book later.

We spent the next hour or so with Pickati helping Arturo awake his magic while I either reread the notebook on the ceiling or kept practicing my gravity shifts. After a while, I was pretty sure I had the spell down. I would be more than ready for the next doll fight, whenever it happened.

“Melodia!” I heard him call as I landed on the ceiling. I looked back down to see him flying up to me. “The doll, it’s appearing.”

I jumped up and undid the spell to fall towards the floor. I made myself weightless at the last second before undoing that spell too and landing safely.

“Where is it?” I demanded as Arturo came out of a daze.

“What’s going on?” He muttered while blinking his eyes.

“It’s close, very close,” he explained as I started leaving the building, “I think it’s in the same park as the doll with the stretchy arms.”

“Wait, Break’s attacking the same place again?” That was new. At least the park was right across the street from here.

I jumped over the fence and quickly crossed the street into the park.

My first thought was to head to the little island where I had fought the stretchy armed spider doll. But on my way there, I spotted the vortex of goo out of the corner of my eye. Looked like the doll was going for a corner of the park this time around. Specifically the padded part of the park where all the little kids played. I started running towards it when I spotted three people also running across the park towards it. Well, might as well get this over with now.

“Power of the stars, guide me through the deepest wells,” I appeared in the void, my new clothes appearing over my old ones mid-run. We all made it to the vortex around the same time. We all looked at each other awkwardly before Anna raised her arm. The other two quickly did the same.

“Power of light, protect my heart.”

“Power of gusts, clear my path to freedom.”

“Power of ice, stop all that would harm me.”

There were three glowing sets of pink, green and blue lights that faded away to reveal the three girls in their transformed states.

“So…” Anna clicked her tongue at me as she gave the usual glare. You would think I would have gotten used to it by now. You would be wrong. “Are you going to say something?”

I blinked for a second before suddenly remembering the last time I had seen them, they were angry at me for sticking them to the floor while I fought the snake doll. I probably should apologize…

Yeah that wasn’t going to happen. Instead I was going to stand here like an idiot who can’t talk to people because that’s what I was.

“Really, the silent treatment again? You’re still going to do this? After what you did?” She growled as we heard a familiar barking laughter.

We all turned to the child’s play area, particularly the big metal jungle gym closest to us. Standing at the top, balancing his feet on the bars, was Break in his usual furs and tattoos.

“Oh look at that, all four of you girls today.” Finally, something I could hit without worrying about them being mad at me. I took a single step forward and started casting a spell to increase the gravity under Break so that he would fall onto the bars when he put his hand up. “Wait, slow down Ribbon, don’t start attacking me yet.”

Yeah that wasn’t going to happen. The doll commanders were the weak link here, better to take them out as soon as possible. I cast the spell as Break crouched down and gripped the bars with his hands. He grunted as the gravity pushed him down. Looked like he was strong enough to keep himself from falling. Time to find out if he could still do that with eighty or so pounds of girl standing on his back.

Well with the increased gravity zone, it would feel like four hundred pounds.

[Gravity.

Self.

Negate gravity.]

I jumped and flew through the air towards the increased gravity zone. I dropped the spell as I got into the zone and aimed my legs downward.

I got pulled down and landed right on Break’s back. I heard a cracking sound as his limbs went limp and he fell through the bars to the ground below. Padding or no, Break wasn’t going to be getting back up anytime soon. Not with the force of the fall hitting him from one side and my own weight getting him from the other.

I aimed my fingers down at him and got ready to finish him off with a Gravity Crush when a crashing sound came from my side. I looked over just in time to see a giant arm swing through the metal bars of the jungle gym. I dropped the increased gravity zone and scrambled out through the bars as the fist crashed into the metal behind me.

Towering over the jungle gym was a giant doll, the largest I had ever seen. Its legs were as thick as trees and its arms were just as big. Its skin looked like it was made from dark purple leather. The only thing about it that wasn’t big was its little goblin head.

Underneath the doll was the jungle gym with Break still at the bottom. I could only watch as the pool of goo appeared under him before he sunk into it. Looked like I was going to have to fight the doll instead. I glanced over to see what the other girls were doing. My first assumption would be that they’d try to help me fight the doll. But one glance was all I needed to know that wasn’t going to happen. Break hadn’t brought one doll, he had brought four. All at the same time, all of them fighting one girl by themselves.

Looked like I was going to be dealing with this doll on my own. Honestly, I kind of liked it better that way. I put my fists up as the giant doll roared at me.