An alarm started blaring overhead as Molly sat with her classmates in the technology room. The alarm was piercing and high-pitched, making everyone cover their ears before the teacher told them they all needed to assemble in the basement outside the library so they could check on everyone. Or if they were closest to Thurisaz Hall to go there.

Molly and the others fought their way to the door. In the scrambled mess of chaos that were student bodies, she realized why the alarm was blaring.

There were students screaming and running outside the classroom. A few were crying. Some students had pieces of shiny black metal in their strands of hair. One student had metal growing over the left side of his face.

Whoever had opened the door to their classroom froze, stopping everyone else from getting out.

“Hivick, open the door so we all can move CALMLY to the basement!” Mrs. Fissh yelled over the frustrated and panicked students, who were starting to push. “We need to make sure this is not coming from the outside!”

In the midst of the chaos, Molly stared out the glass wall into the group of students who were almost trampling each other as they tried to fight their way down the stairs outside the classroom. She swore she saw particles of green dust.

She knew what this was….

She needed to get out of this class now and find Namu.

Usually, she would have been worried about upsetting someone, and that fear tickled in her mind for only a moment before she found herself pulling people aside by their shoulders and then shoving some behind her out of her way. She would brawl her way through them all if she had to. The fear of what might be happening curdled her insides, and she let it. She was over letting her mind guide her. She would let her feelings lead her now, like she had decided to last night. Her feelings were her feelings and no one else’s.

“Get out of my way!” Molly yelled, making her way to Hivick, who was shaking. She ducked down under his arm that was holding the door handle and then shoved him away when she was between him and the exit. Satisfaction shot through her when she saw his hand rip away from the handle. When she took possession of it, it turned.

The students behind her came flooding out of the classroom, and she came pouring out with them, almost getting knocked over. She steadied herself and tried to figure out where she should go. Would Namu be downstairs?

Long cold fingers wrapped around her arm and began pulling her to the stairs. “Molly, the stairs are this way.” It was Mrs. Fissh. “We don’t know what’s happening, so we need to be listening to direction.”

Molly wanted to fight her, so she did. She yanked her arm away from her and then stared at her teacher’s watery blue eyes that did, in fact, look similar to what a fish’s may look like. “I can go on my own. Thank you.”

Her teacher nodded but did not leave Molly alone. She held out her hand, waiting for Molly to take the lead. Molly did with prickles of goosebumps growing all down her neck, stemming from her anger. She just hoped that Namu was down there so she could figure out what was going on.

She was surprised to see that not many students had assembled where they had been told. Maybe some teachers had left the kids they knew were okay in their classrooms. Maybe Namu was still in his class. She couldn’t see Ova either.

Mrs. Fissh seemed to realize the same thing. She pulled at her greying blond-blue hair and approached another teacher. “I know the hall is also being used, but where are all of—”

A mist, an astral mist that Molly instantly recognized, soared right to them and then appeared as a teacher. It was Mr. Vero. He looked exhausted and was breathing heavily. All the teachers gathered in a group around him.

The gathered students were too busy standing around talking to each other to notice that the teachers were having a meeting. A few students with green sparkly dust and metal growing on them were being dragged out of the crowd by Mrs. Heard to sit away from everyone in a group. The larger group was unsettled by this and leaned in to hear what Mrs. Yitter was saying to the smaller group of students that they had pulled aside.

Molly was more interested in the teachers.

“I haven’t had a chance to check the source with trying to keep creatures off students and round them up. I need more of this—lots of it. As much as we can make in a short time.” Mr. Vero held up vials of the transformation drinks, which one of the teachers took and then ran off toward the classrooms with. Another teacher followed.

“How much has it spread?”

“It has reached the main floor. It will be here soon. I didn’t have time to check the two upper levels.”

“Why in the world would we have the students come down here?” one teacher asked.

“What is happening? What is the source?” another asked.

Mr. Vero ignored the first teacher. “We needed our own resources and we had to make sure this wasn’t an attack from the outside.” He pulled another vial from his deep pockets, about to drink it. “I have to go and try to catch those damn creatures and keep them off the students. I’ll be back for the vials.”

But Molly grabbed Mr. Vero’s arm before he could lift his drink. He seemed shocked at first but then pulled her to the side. “What’re you doing?”

“What’s happening?”

“I’m not sure. I tried making it to Namu’s room to check on the door, but…those creatures… and the students…” he looked over her shoulder to the stairs. “I need to help them. I can’t have anyone’s soul…”

She knew what he meant.

“Where’s Namu?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Vero said, shaking his head, and then slamming the drink down his throat before turning to mist once more.

He was gone.

He didn’t know? He hadn’t had time to check Namu’s room? She understood he couldn’t risk those creatures eating away at anyone. The students’ souls were most important. But were the creatures truly the biggest threat? Wasn’t it more important to stop the door and where those creatures were coming from?

She needed to go upstairs to check on the door herself. She just hoped Namu was in one of the classrooms. She didn’t see him among the few students standing around waiting for the teachers to tell them what to do.

“Molly! Where’s Namu? He isn’t in class!”

It was Lily. They had come running from another direction, the direction where the teachers had run off to make the transformation drinks. Lily must have snuck out of their classroom.

“I don’t know,” Molly mumbled, heading past Lily toward the stairs. The teachers and students would hopefully be too busy to notice her slipping away. They all looked too panicked, trying to figure out what to do.

“Where are you going?” Lily asked, following her.

The top of the wooden banister was starting to turn a burning metallic black. Molly knew that color too well. She had stared at her arm that had been that hue when those things had dug into her when she had been in that world, but where were those things now?

Lily noticed the metal, too. “That’s just like what had happened in Namu’s room. What’s going on? What has he done?”

Lily started running up the stairs past Molly.

“No, Lily, wait!” Molly yelled, fear choking her.

Lily was almost to the top when she turned. “Why? What’s going on? I need you to tell me now!”

Molly didn’t know what to tell them. She knew she wasn’t supposed to say anything about the door, but it was already out, and Lily was smart. They had proved that with the bracelet. They would probably figure it out themselves at some point.

“Namu is in trouble.” Molly felt it in her gut. “He might be in his room.”

Lily ran up the rest of the stairs, and Molly followed, but they both stopped when they reached the top. Patches of the black metal from that other world were growing along the hardwood floor. It was strange, like a feverish nightmare. In some spots, the metal was disappearing and reappearing as if the world were having a hard time sustaining itself at the school, but when Molly stepped, trying to avoid the areas that she knew would burn her feet, she saw the stairwell. It had transformed into a mix of petrified wood and black burning steel. She then knew it was only a matter of time before that other world found a solid hold on this one.

“Owww! What’s this!” Lily asked. It had burned through their shoe. Molly wondered why the inner parts of the metal that layered itself over a living thing didn’t burn when it took over the skin. Molly remembered the warmth that had trapped her in the cast of metal.

“Don’t touch it!” Molly yelled at her trying to make her way to the stairs.

“And your plan for that is?” Lily asked, coming to stand right next to her.

Lily was talking about the stairwell. The impossible stairwell that they wouldn’t be able to climb. Molly didn’t have any of the transformation drinks to help them.

Heat sizzled right on the outside of her foot. She pulled it away from the metal that was crawling toward her.

“You don’t know, do you?” Lily asked. They grabbed hold of their hair over their shoulder and drew a symbol right above where their finger and thumb encircled it. A white light formed for a moment, making a white line that split and separated all the hairs in that exact spot like a cut. Lily held the insanely long ends of their hair in their hand.

Molly watched as Lily did soul magick to draw a part of themselves out of the separated ponytail. Their spirit was pink like Kren’s but deeper. Lily then used transformation magick by pushing their thumb against their white teeth, while trailing the pink wisp to their mouth before flicking their thumb away from the edge of their teeth and snapping their fingers. Their limp hair turned to solid rods of straw-like sticks. They broke those sticks into four unequally large pieces that were stuck together and then used a quick glue spell on the bottoms of their shoes to keep them there. They handed the other two to Molly.

Before Molly glued the two pieces of the straw-like board onto her tennis shoes, she watched Lily draw something on theirs. The symbol they drew, which Molly couldn’t make out, glowed red for a moment. Molly still couldn’t believe that Lily had chopped their hair off to shoulder-length in front of her.

“Quit looking at me like that! It’s just hair!” Lily said as they made their way to the stairwell and then tested what they had made by putting their foot on it. Smoke formed, curling around their ankles. They pulled their foot off and then asked for the bottom of Molly’s shoes.

Molly obliged. The bottoms burned red briefly before they calmed back to their original color.

“It won’t last long, so we have to move fast!”

Lily ran up the stairs.

Fehu’s hall was no longer golden but a dark, dreary black when they ran past it. Uraz was no better, with black metal spider webs suspended in various places glinting silver. The next hall was Thurisaz, where Lily dove, panting, pulling Molly in with them. Nothing was wrong there.

Molly checked the already half-worn burnt bottoms of her feet. “Why is this hall okay?”

“This is the one they said to go to if you were close to it. This hall protects its occupants already. Don’t you know that?”

Molly thought she remembered Kren saying something about that but felt a sting pierce her back. She turned, ready to see the growing metal she had seen on the others.

“Why is it touching you like that?”

It was a spirit sprite.

Molly didn’t care to explain, especially not to Lily after everything that had happened with the bracelet. “Let’s just go,” she said, swatting at the blue menace. She hoped it wouldn’t follow them.

They got up and continued to run up the stairs. Although the smell from Lily’s burning creations made Molly nauseous, she was thankful for them because she felt no heat. She was also grateful that the spirit sprite refused to leave that particular hall, probably scared of the burning metal.

They reached the next hall, Ansuz, and Molly almost grabbed onto the scalding banister before she caught herself. There was a student there. They had been running to the stairs but was now a statue, one hand covered in black metal reaching out for the banister.

“What the dimensions?” Lily whispered until the smoke rising to their nostrils from their feet made Lily cough. Lily pulled Molly up the stairs with them.

Once they made it to Namu’s hall, the floor itself didn’t burn as much. It took Molly a moment to notice why. The carpet was rubber, like the grass in that world had been. But it also had patches of shaved metal in it. Lily barely made it down the hall when Lily squatted to get a closer look. Molly continued to go to them, watching her steps, but then let out a gasp when Lily jumped two feet in the air. They were staring at something in the wall. Molly ran up to them and noticed the glint of blue-black metal eyes glaring at them through a crack in the wall. Unmoving. Paralyzed.

“I hate this hall,” Lily mumbled.

Above them, a spirit sprite was stuck halfway into the ceiling. Its bottom half was turned to metal.

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When they finally reached Namu’s door, they saw it was open. Sheets upon sheets of black and silver metal had poured out over the threshold like a tidal wave had barged its way through.

“Namu!” Lily tried to yell over it.

There was no response.

Lily got on their hands and knees to crawl over the burning hot metal to enter the room. They let it scorch their skin. Molly heard them fall to the floor on the other side. “Screw this stuff!” Lily yelled. “Namu!”

There was a silent pause. Molly, who had been opening and closing her fists, waited for some kind of reply. When there was none, she tore across the metal like Lily had to get inside. The metal welcomed her with flashes of burns and the smell of her cooking skin as she climbed over it.

The room distracted her from the pain. It was a disaster. Everything had changed. Parts of the bed had turned into rubber. Some areas on the walls and the floor were stained purple and green with glittery dust all around. Metal spikes protruded out of the dresser, the bed, and the floor. Random waves of wood were growing from various places.

Lily was standing in the room through the opening in the wall, their back turned to Molly. Molly went over and gasped, her hand finding its way to her teeth as it slapped the bottom of her lip. The door had been torn away and was lying on the floor on top of a body.

Molly ran over as Lily continued to stand perfectly still, paralyzed.

“What is…” Lily asked as Molly ran by them.

They were looking out into that other world. That world that was mixing with their school.

“A dangerous place—we have to get Namu.” Molly heaved the door off him with a clatter and then burst into tears when he cried out. The metal handle had burned its way into his side, melting his shirt into his skin. His feet were encased in metal and his thighs too. Had the door protected his head? The other parts of him?

“Namu! What do we do!?” Molly yelled at him as he stirred. They didn’t have much time. She could see that the atmosphere of that world was thickening through the opening. She had been in that world. There was no emptying it. Would it just continue to grow and completely fill theirs?

“Mol—the door…”

“It’s ripped off.”

Lily was next to them, getting on their knees and lifting Namu’s head. “We need to get him out of here so he can explain everything later. What—what is that? Why is it—”

The metal on his thighs was thickening, not spreading out, but thickening across his limb like wadded gum. Namu yelled out.

“I have drinks—those drinks in my drawer. Give me one. Take some. Let’s go!”

Molly knew what he meant. She ran to his dresser and started pulling out drawers beginning from the top. By the time she reached the bottom drawer, any tears she had escaped her eyes.

There were five of them. She pocketed two in her shorts pocket, then ran and handed Namu one. With a shaking hand, he took it from her and tipped his head back, emptying it into his mouth.

He turned to mist in Lily’s hands.

“Here!” Molly yelled, shoving one into Lily’s grasp and then taking one herself.

She had never taken one before. Her world splattered around her, extending as her thoughts turned white and everything slowed down, leaving her with nothing. Then everything gradually came back, but she was left with no feeling, sense of self, or ability to grab anything. She started floating toward the opening into that other world. She couldn’t do anything to get herself to float the other way.

Then she felt someone or something mesh with her.

“What are you doing?!” a distorted voice yelled.

Whatever it was started pulling her with it, showing her that if she pushed, almost swam to an extent, extending and condensing the particles that made her, she could head in a specific direction. She could head into Namu’s room and then out the door into his hall.

Soaring back down the hall and the stairs was less painful than it had been coming up since Molly couldn’t feel or touch anything, including her burns. But then she passed through something or someone that made her lose all sense of self. She sneezed, making her particles scatter.

“Namu!” she heard Lily’s distorted voice yell.

Molly didn’t know why they had stopped and why she was left only floating until she saw that same boy they had seen earlier. That statue with the extended hand… It had a creature on it. One of those white creatures with the three heads and three toes that were digging into the boy’s metallic skin.

Mr. Vero must have missed this one, unless more were coming through.

“What is it?”

But Namu didn’t answer. She felt and then saw his mist. It was shaking, shivering, becoming more of a fog.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lily asked.

The creature took two of its wide white oval heads out of the boy’s extended arm and then jumped up to the boy’s head to dig in again.

Out of nowhere, Lily was their full self again, trying to hit and shoo the thing away. The creature ignored Lily, worming around their hand to find another spot to continue its feast. Lily’s feet were smoking again from the shoe protectors they had made. The straw planks must almost be worn through now.

“What is it? I’m so sick of no one answering me!” Lily yelled.

“Fro…m…th…at….wor…ld…” Molly tried to answer, but she felt like it came out garbled.

Lily sighed, took the remains of the smoking straw hair off their feet, then wrote a symbol in it with their nail before digging for something from the back of their ear and flicking it at the straw, bursting it into flame. They threw it at the creature.

It landed on the ground next to the statue’s feet.

Lily then did something that Molly had never seen before. They put their hands across their eyes for a moment, standing on one foot while the other continued smoking, and then after pulling a bit of their soul from their palm, wrote another symbol with it and blew it into the flame that had landed on the ground. The whole boy in metal erupted into fire.

Molly found herself streaming for him, needing to save him.

“Molly, don’t,” she heard Lily warn as the creature scurried away. “It’s vision magick mixed with gnome magick for effect. The flames aren’t real, but once the real ones die, then those will die too. Let’s go!”

Molly couldn’t help but to admire Lily and view them as a warrior as they ran down the stairs two at a time, not screaming or wincing but leaving a trail of blood from their injured feet. Molly could feel Namu following close behind.

***

When they got back to the library, Molly heard one teacher tell another that most of the students had been sent outside to get them out of the building. All, apparently, except for Koz.

Koz was still there, typing away at one of the computer desks, with his laptop sitting on top of another computer that Rem was balancing for him as he ran back and forth.

Rem looked horrified, her eyes wide and glossy, moving from one person to the other.

Mr. Vero was instructing Koz about something, shaking the many vials into his face whenever Koz had a chance to turn to him.

But they all stopped when they saw Namu appear holding his bloody side. The metal on his legs must have fallen away when he had turned, but Molly hadn’t noticed. Lily was sitting on the ground, blowing on their bleeding feet. And Molly was trying everything she could think of to grab onto herself to turn herself back, which was impossible when she could not feel herself at all. It was like working with a sleeping hand.

“Where’s Molly? What happened! Namu—what—where—” Mr. Vero stopped himself.

“Molly is somewhere,” Lily informed, waving their hand around. “I don’t think she has used an astral-transformation spell before.”

Molly watched as Mr. Vero squinted and then walked toward her. He snatched her from the air. All of a sudden, she grew heavy and fell to the ground. Her body tingled all over.

“What happened?” Mr. Vero tried again. “Someone get the nurse in here!” he yelled to a few of the teachers who were running around pulling books off the shelves and storing them in boxes and containers.

Someone ran off.

“The door opened,” Namu said, clutching his side and wincing in pain.

Mr. Vero looked to have no sympathy for him. “How? Magickally?”

“Of course, magickally! We live in a magickal school!” Namu spat but then took a deep breath and looked around. He saw the few students tucked in the corner of the library; the ones who had been infected by the world that had leaked through. “What are you doing? You know those creatures are roaming around. They need to be stopped!”

“I already stopped them. They’re in my room. I collected them all,” Mr. Vero said.

“There are more!” Namu challenged.

Mr. Vero’s eyes widened.

“One was eating that boy who turned into a statue near the stairwell in one of the halls.”

Mr. Vero grabbed a vial and started heading that way, but Lily yelled at him, “I handled it!”

The nurse came running in, her long black hair pulled back into one thick braid that was six times the thickness of Molly’s hair. She fell down to her knees next to Lily with a medical case and drew a circle around her, then started pulling out ointments.

“I wish I could bring that child down here, but I can’t. I don’t have a way to figure that out right now,” Mr. Vero said to Namu. “My hope is that he will turn back after we figure out how to get rid of all of this and send it all back into that place.”

“How?”

“Well, first, I’d like to know how it happened!”

Molly noticed that Koz was listening as he took one of the vials and poured it into some kind of machine that looked like a computer box. His ear was tilted to the side, his eyes downcast.

Namu started pacing. “I did it, okay! But it was an accident! I was trying to destroy that place! Nothing else was working to destroy that door, so I had to do something!”

“For the last time, Namu, what did you do!”

“I put my phone in there with an app that creates nonstop metal coins.”

Koz dropped one of the vials. It broke, spilling its contents all over the carpet.

“How would that do anything like this?”

“Because I made it into a weapon by wanting it to destroy that world.”

Mr. Vero turned his back on him and walked away. “So, instead of listening to me, instead of ignoring it, instead of doing your duty, you do this! You release catastrophe into this world! You release chaos! You know that it’s a realm with dimensional magick we don’t understand, right? Magick that seems to have a mind of its own because of the metal we have stored there. Released, over time, it will kill off this world and make it its own! It will kill everyone!”

“Then why put it in a school!” Namu screamed. Blood was pouring through his fingers.

“I don’t know why they put it here, Namu! My guess is because they assume we have ideas on how to stop it! Because, they know we can work more diligently than some can. Because, like I told you before, we do not want power. We want safety for all of you! Why else would it be made in the first place?”

To stop all the school shootings and all the war. Molly knew that. Why didn’t Namu?

“Who would decide to put it anywhere near them if they didn’t want power?” Namu muttered under his breath.

Mr. Vero turned back to him, grabbed Namu by the shoulders, and looked him in the eyes. “Who cares that that door was brought here and that a very few select people have to deal with it? That a very select people have to know about it. That even fewer people have to protect others from it. Who cares if it means others can live in happiness and live free? I’m sorry I failed to help you see that, Namu. I’m also sorry that in a way I caused all this to happen!”

Namu shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I still hate it. It should be somewhere else.”

Seeing the way Namu was still holding onto his hate brought questions to Molly’s mind that had never been there before. Who had made that final decision to put that door in their school? Why had they decided to put it in a student’s room? Why not a teacher’s room or at least an adult? Who knew about it being there? Did Kren?

Mr. Vero shook his head, too, giving up on his student. “Some things can’t be destroyed once they are made. Some things must be put elsewhere for those responsible enough to take on the burden. I have no idea why the school chose you.”

He let go of Namu and returned to Koz. “How is it going?”

“I’m almost done. But won’t it be dangerous having all the students do this? Molly just proved that. She had no idea how to come out of it, and the students could mesh together and become one.”

“It’s only for the infected before we do the light spell. We will put them in separate places in the library and then have the teachers pull them back together.”

A flash of red and purple from upstairs set off most of the lights, throwing the room into darkness. That flash was followed by a deafeningly loud clap of thunder.

“Was that lightning? In the school?”

“Why is it so dark? Why? Why is it so dark?” Rem yelled.

Green emergency lights came up, and the computers started turning back on. Koz cursed. Molly looked to the stairs. The black metal was now halfway down the stairs and traveling like frost.

Mr. Vero noticed. “We need to hurry! I don’t understand any of this, but the first thing we need to do is heal those students and then get them out of the building.”

“No. The first thing we need to do is turn that thing I put in that world off,” Namu interrupted.

“It’s still on? Are you sure?” Mr. Vero asked.

Koz was the one to ask the next question, “When did you put it in… wherever you put it?”

“During lunch.”

Koz looked down at his phone. “It’s still on,” he confirmed.

Mr. Vero didn’t ask how Koz knew about it. “Well, you can’t go, Namu. I need you to help us with a few larger spells to get everything back through that door.”

“But I need to—”

“The answer is no, Namu! Maybe we can get one of the other spirit magick teachers.”

Molly spoke before she realized. “I’ll go. I’ll take one of those vials again and go in there. Just tell me where it is.”

“Also, no.”

Molly wasn’t having it. She wasn’t about to have someone tell her what to do. Not when she wanted to do this. “I’ll go. You know why I’m fit for it! I’m the safest in there! Just tell me how to undo the astral- transformation spell and how to shut off the app on the phone. And tell me where it is!”

Namu grabbed her hand and dragged her to the stairs. The nurse followed. Cream was being applied to Molly’s legs that she had burned. It might have been soothing, but instead it was too much at the moment with her nerves.

“Do you have the other vials?” Namu asked.

Molly nodded. The nurse moved away, arms crossed, waiting for Namu to be done so she could attend to him.

“When you are in that astral-transformation spell where you can’t feel yourself, you only need to tell yourself you can. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s all about incentives. It’s your brain floating and playing mind tricks on you. There’s a button on the app. You should be able to just push it off. If that doesn’t work, find a way to destroy the phone. It’s by the trees.”

Molly nodded again as she listened, taking everything in. She could see Mr. Vero approaching them, regret all over his face. But she downed the drink before he could have a say in her life. Before anyone could try to stop her.

She had to do this. For Namu, for the school, for all of them. She would go back there. Back into that world. Back through that opening to fix Namu’s mistake. A mistake that she didn’t even blame him for making.

She saw in his eyes that he felt bad about it but held firm in his belief that he hated that place. She could see his pure wrath about it. His want for that aspect to change. It was like how she wanted to change the part she hated about herself. Even though she saw the goodness in the door, the benefit it had brought for the world, she didn’t know what it had done to Namu. It wasn’t her right to judge. She had to believe that what he was doing was for the good of others. To keep others from slipping through the door like she had.

She could only admire his strength in standing up for his beliefs, even if it went against anyone else, including his teacher. Just like she had made mistakes in the past with following her friends, he had made a mistake too, and she was sure he would never do it again.

Mr. Vero reached them both, but Molly had already floated up and away over the metal stairs where he couldn’t grab her. He would be wasting his time, energy, and any chance at saving the school if he went after her now. They could bring her back again like they did before. They could go in and get her out if anything happened.

The school was truly turning into a nightmare. The ceilings now were deep purple with swelling bruises. The floors had turned completely metal, and the stairwell… the metal on the stairwell was growing, merging, almost blocking the way up.

She slipped inside where there were a few of those creatures chillingly staring at her. When she made her way past them, they gave her no notice at all.

She made her way up the stairs, past the boy who was now only barely flaming, and then to the Raido hall and into Namu’s room.

Then she flew as fast as she could straight into that world, and it made her cry out. It felt like she was back in the world of her mind right when she fell through the aching ice, and it ripped at her skin. Except here, ice shards were tearing all through her. Every piece of her.

She didn’t remember it being like this when she had last been here. Maybe it was because she was in the form she was in now, and the world didn’t agree with it.

She made her way to the trees over metal spiked grass. Sure enough, lying on the ground sprouting black coins shifting to a green residue that got siphoned up into the air like a small tornado, was a phone flashing black and green as if it contained its own lightning. When she got closer, she saw that the screen had a few cracks in it.

She did as Namu had told her. Although it felt silly to tell herself that she could actually feel herself when she couldn’t, in a way, it almost felt like the shift of her mind recently. Like telling herself that she was done following people and would only live for herself when she did not truly feel that way deep down. She was grasping at nothing but making herself do it anyway.

It was then that she felt her hand. Bits of it, as if it couldn’t take form but wanted to. She guided it to grasp onto the spell that made her into this astral-floating being. Heaviness returned to her limbs, erasing the stinging pain she felt in every nerve, although there now was a different kind of toxin in her lungs from the air.

Lightning flashed as she put her hand into the fountain of coins. It resisted her touch. The coins stung her with heated flares as soon as they shifted to that black metal, but her finger found the screen that thrummed against her as more coins kept emerging from it. She hit it and hit it again, but the thing would not turn off.

At first, she thought it was a coin burning her other finger, creating a warm throbbing heaviness on her other hand. But when she looked down, she saw a metal casting starting to grow.

Panic seized her. She came in here to do this one thing. To get rid of this one thing. To help. To prove herself to herself. Had she made the wrong choice?

No. she could not think of it that way. There was no wrong choice when her heart, her very being, wanted to help. When she had chosen to listen to herself for once, she just had to find a way to stop this.

She dug the last vial out of her other pocket with the hand she had used to try to stop the phone. She uncorked it with her teeth. Then she slammed her metal fingers down from her other hand into the phone with a fist, breaking into the already cracked screen. She did it again. And again.

The screen flashed black and then laid there dead. No more coins were being produced. No more waves of green sand or dust were being eaten by the sky like a storm.

She downed the vial, and the metal casting released her hand. She made her way back to the opened door.