Twenty minutes of standing around the cafeteria hallway rewarded Liara with three glowing spheres. Their scarlet hues swirled in a controlled frenzy that matched the color of her right eye. She felt nervous about stuffing them into her uniform’s pockets, but Pellas had assured her that they were perfectly safe.

Essentially, the mana storage spheres were able to contain the fire mana that she would normally cast a fireball with. At her command, she could control the release of the mana from the storage spheres whenever she wanted and the result would be an explosion comparable to a hand grenade.

Well, if Pellas was wrong about the efficacy of their safety, then at least it would be quick.

When she said that joke out loud, Pellas took her as being serious and replied, "Oh no, given that it is your fire mana, you have a natural resistance to its effect. No, no, more likely you would suffer third-degree burns and severe trauma to your sensory organs, but you would not die immediately."

“Wow, Pellas, thanks.”

“I would say you are welcome, but I am not ignorant of sarcasm. In fact, I have been told that I am the best at it.”

“Are you sure whoever said that wasn’t being sarcastic when they told you that?”

Liara’s question seemed to genuinely make her golem pause in distress, mumbling to himself about how “she would never do that” and questioning that same statement in the next breath. The end result was that it gave the Magical Girl enough time to walk to the exterior doors of the cafeteria without any further macabre commentary from him.

“Pellas, please just forget I asked. I need you focused.”

“How can I focus when I found out that my whole life is a lie!” Pellas brought a pair of arms to his eye and pretended like he was going to faint.

“Fine, you’re the best.”

“How do I know that you are not being sarcastic too?”

“Pellas.”

“Liara, you need to lighten up.” The golem’s voice dropped all the levity that it had before. “You are too tense.”

“I’m the only one taking this seriously. You’re just acting like an idiot and making a joke every time I talk to you.”

"I am taking this as seriously as you, but since you have not looked in a mirror lately, someone needs to tell you that you look like you are going to fall apart.”

“I’m not hurt. Can’t you tell with your medical upgrade?” Liara motioned toward her body and while her clothes were torn, stained, burned, and otherwise not up to the academy dress code, she did not have any physical wounds.

“I am not talking about your physical health Liara, I mean mentally. You stared at those mana storage spheres for twenty minutes without saying a single word to me.”

“That’s because I have nothing to say.”

“No, it is because you have too much that you are not saying. You had your eye ripped out, sliced a Mylock’s head off with your bare hand, and then executed eighteen Yabanchi via electricity you ran through your body! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was?”

“I’m handling it. You’re the one who said I’m a trained killer.”

"You are also human, Liara, do not forget that. You are rolling with the punches now, but eventually, there will be a tipping point."

“And then what?”

“And then I’m not sure if all the jokes in the world can bring you back after that.”

The rising heat in Liara’s head cooled and she felt like the balloon in her chest deflated. She was still annoyed, but she was not going to blow up on her golem.

“Bring me back to what, Pellas? I’m sorry, but you hardly know me. All you know about me is what you’ve read in my file, but you weren't there on Crestline, you weren't there when I watched," Liara stopped, her voice trembled and tears threatened to spill from the memory of her home world. "You just weren’t there. You have these expectations of me and I’m not sure if I can fulfill them.”

Pellas softly hummed and replied “Oh, Liara. I wish I was there. Know that I am not lying when I say this, but I would cast myself into the void for eternity if it meant I could go back and stop what happened then, but just as I cannot promise you that I can stop tomorrow’s tribulations, I can also do nothing for past mistakes.” Pellas laid an arm on Liara, “But I can say that I am here, now. My expectations of you are the same that I hold for myself, that you will try your best. You will fail, but so will I. It’s why we need one another. So, to answer your question, I am bringing you back to the present, because that’s the only time that matters.”

Liara laid a hand on Pellas’ arm and squeezed it. His spindly golem limb was like metal, hard and unflinching, but there was a warmth to it that you would expect from another person’s hand.

“That was really cheesy.”

“So, it worked?” Pellas pulled away, a question mark formed in his eye.

“For now.”

“Now was the goal!” Pellas danced; arms flailed out in his spinning. “I’ll tell you what though. I know someone who runs the most magnificent spa in Windsora. Make it through today and I will see to it that we get free day passes.”

“I’m not sure this day is ever going to end.”

"Oh, it will. You humans have lives like the morning vapors. You are here one second and then gone the next, replaced with the next flower of the field, blooming where you once lived." The little spider-like golem started humming a happy tune and Liara stared at him, waiting for him to say "Just kidding”, but he seemed obliviously far away in his own whimsical wonderland.

“Pellas, are you trying to cheer me up or depress me?”

"Neither. Just trying to help you measure your days, for if you worry too much about tomorrow or if you regret too much of yesterday then you forget," Pellas paused, emphasized the last word, and leaned toward her. With one tiny claw he bopped her nose, “the present.”

Liara nodded. “Ok, I’m a little confused by all that and something tells me that was your goal,” Pellas giggled and Liara continued, “but if I’m going to make it to live and appreciate this short, human life of mine, then I need your help.”

“Was that ever in question?”

“Never,” Liara’s smile grew a little wider and she beckoned to the doors. “Now will you please scout outside for me? I don’t want to open the door and find that Destroyer waiting for me.”

“I suppose I can,” Pellas sighed, “but you really need to give me a raise.”

Liara rolled her eyes and gave a forced laugh. To the nonexistent ears of the little golem, even that was better than nothing. Pellas slunk through the doorway without opening it all the way and came back shortly after.

“It’s clear.”

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“The walls and roofs too? You don’t see the Destroyer?”

“Walls and roofs too. And no, I didn’t see the Destroyer. Maybe Holzer killed it?”

Liara would have liked to hope so, but that Yabanchi was literally built like a tank. Yet if an experienced ex-Paladin like Holzer did not have a chance at beating it, what would she be able to do? The weight and heat of her mana storage spheres gave her some small comfort and she stepped back outside and started heading toward her original destination: the school barracks.

Now there was another uncertainty. Given all the dead students and staff she’d seen in the cafeteria, there was a chance that everyone who had sheltered in the barracks was dead too. A part of her wanted to follow Dr. Holzer's original suggestion and just head toward the admin building. President Anatova had to be there and if not her, then maybe one of the other school paladins. Yet, in her quick journeys between the school buildings, there was no sign of those other paladin battle instructors either, namely Mr. Penn and Dr. Clarke.

She knew the cold-eyed Mr. Penn would probably agree with Holzer, both of them being staunch pragmatists, and advise that she find reinforcements rather than concern herself with other students in need, but Dr. Clarke would have said differently. He was always the most encouraging out of all the battle instructors and made Liara believe that she could succeed at anything if she tried hard enough. But the number one thing he always drilled into his students was an old poetry line that he seemed to love making them repeat back:

“Ne’er a moment too soon, nor made too quick, when a brother loves another, thinking not of himself, but of others.”

When Liara had been forced to recite it with all the other girls over the years, she never gave it much thought, but now it rang in her head, convicting her of a decision that might very well cost her life. Yet what if Liara was one of those students, cowering inside a shelter, waiting, praying for rescue or aid? Of course, she would want someone to help her; what was the point of Magical Girls if they just pursued objectives and points like robots instead of helping their fellow man in their hour of need?

Liara's steps did falter, a moment of hesitation, to take to the seemingly easier path and find her way out of this nightmare. Yet the moment passed and her heart found a new pulse of determination to stay the course and continue to the student barracks.

During the span of a few seconds that Liara considered her options, Pellas saw the turmoil written on Liara’s face and guessed what was eating her. The question tore at him too, but he wanted his Magical Girl to make this decision herself. When he saw where she was going, a small part of the anxieties within his small frame were comforted and he followed without a word.

The detour to the cafeteria had fortunately taken her closer, not further from the barracks, but every step under the dark, open sky felt like a million pounds of weight were coming down at her at once. She must have looked like a ridiculous sight, sprinting from shrub to shrub and using lampposts for cover, but Liara did not want to run into any number of the big uglies that might be crawling around campus.

She had never thought about it before, but whoever chose the architectural style for the academy really should have gotten out into the sun more. Most of the buildings were black and angular, covered in the kind of fancy photovoltaic cell surfaces that absorbed energy from the sun. A lot of buildings in Apophyllion had that energy-saving feature, but then again, most buildings did not also have gargoyles on the rooftops.

Ostensibly the gargoyles were there to camouflage the defensive network of mana golems the school employed, but that was hogwash for a number of reasons. Firstly, said mana golems turned out to be as useful as tissue paper stopping a knife, the remnants of the things were scattered all over campus and secondly, the gargoyles looked nothing like the mana golems.

The gargoyles were ugly things with too many teeth, wings, and arms. From their elevated places on the corners of rooftops, they seemed like they were meant to look down at the students. Reminders of the inhuman foe that humanity had been fighting for as long as anyone remembered.

As if Liara would ever forget after today.

She was fortunate that her distaste for the ugly things caused her to keep looking back at them as she crept toward the student barracks because otherwise, she would not have noticed that one of them had moved and gotten closer.

“Pellas.” Liara hissed, “Did you see that?”

“Oh my. Liara, I think you should run.” Liara felt him tap and point. Pellas was not staring at the currently unmoving gargoyle, but at a Screamer that was coming around the corner of a building. Given that she was out in the open, it saw her and when it did so, it screamed. In answer, a moment later, another louder and electronic scream came from the direction of the administration building. The Destroyer was not in her line of sight, but the volume of its shout made it clear that it was close.

Liara did not have to be told twice and she started sprinting toward the student barracks building, now in sight and close enough that it only took a few moments for her to get to its large glass doors and slip inside. Mercifully, the door was unlocked and nothing was waiting for her inside the building lobby, so she continued running inside and up the large set of stairs that led to the building's shelter upstairs.

She was panicked. As far as she knew there was not one, but three Yabanchi outside chasing her, so when she took the stairs, she threw caution out the window and did not check if anything was waiting in the stairwell. A nearly fatal mistake.

It took her like a predator. Liara was slammed against the wall of the stairwell and pummeled in her stomach with rapid, viscous blows that drove the air out of her lungs and bounced the back of her head against concrete.

This Yabanchi was shorter than Liara, though Liara was taller than most of her peers anyway, and it was smaller than even a hunchbacked Mylock. The only thing the white-eyed ambusher had going for it was the long claws at the ends of its fingers. Said claws would normally have been ripping into Liara’s stomach and tearing out entrails, but the Magical Girl had purchased a cheap set of flak armor earlier that was paying dividends.

The Yabanchi hissed and kept clawing at the reinforced vest, like a mole burrowing in the dirt, but Liara put an end to its futile efforts with a dig of her own. Her flame strike buried her right hand up to her second knuckles in the Yabanchi’s head and it stopped its flailing with a shudder and collapsed in a miserable heap at the bottom of the stairwell.

Liara did not even have a minute to catch her breath and examine the damage done by her ambusher, since the glass door of the barrack building shattered with the loud entrance of the Screamer. The hulking Yabanchi screamed and shook its head, snorting and looking around. When it finally saw her, it glared at Liara with red eyes and charged, scrabbling over the broken glass, heedless of the damage it did to the bottom of its hands.

“Liara, no!”

Pellas screamed, but she did not listen to him. The high of surviving that sudden attack in the stairwell stirred a battle fervor in her bowels and caught her up in the flight of brain chemicals that gave humans their instinctual fight or flight. She charged back at the Screamer, right hand raised, and when close enough, delivered a flame strike into it.

She was only partially successful.

The mana-reinforced hand sliced through flesh, muscle, and bone at where the Screamer's neck met its shoulder, but it only traveled a few inches into the thick meat of the beast. The Screamer staggered back in pain and Liara was dragged with it, her hand caught in its shoulder. She tried backpedaling away, but the Yabanchi grabbed Liara's left wrist and yanked.

Liara would have thought that she would be at least a little more grounded with handling pain after losing her eye and hand, but this still hit her with a nova shockwave of white and red as she felt her shoulder joint pop when the Screamer grabbed her. Not stopping there, the hulking monster lifted her in the air and tossed her away from itself, over its shoulder, and into the shards of glass on the floor.

Dozens of small splinters of the reinforced, green glass dug into Liara’s palms and legs, but the flaring pain in her left shoulder and terror of the moment had those quickly forgotten.

The Screamer would have charged her again and ground her face into the shards had Pellas not launched himself at its head and wrapped all his arms around it. The beast clawed at the little golem, paws gouging into Pellas’ exterior shell, but it was temporarily blinded by the desperate attack.

“Liara, fireball!” Pellas shouted.

Liara wobbled up and felt like running instead, but there was nowhere to go. Outside was just more death, but throwing a fireball at the Yabanchi would also hit Pellas. She was torn, because he said he would be able to recreate himself, but she wasn’t sure if he would. She didn’t want to be alone again. Pellas’ final shout made the answer for her as the Screamer yanked him off its face and repeatedly bashed Pellas into the ground.

Pellas’ central eye popped out and dissolved into blue stardust immediately, his body followed soon after as it crumpled beneath the savage assault. The Screamer grunted in triumph and looked back toward Liara, but the last thing it saw was a light brighter than the sun.

The fireball scattered burning pieces of the Screamer all over the student barrack’s lobby. An arm fell on a table where Liara and Talia used to study together, a flaming eye splattered a small painting of a Magical Girl, and a former student who had called that place home for three years crawled to the promised safety of the stairwell and huddled underneath it.

Pellas had told her that he would be able to recreate himself with her mana, but for now, Liara was alone again. Was it like the old days again? No, she had friends and family even then. This was the now that Pellas had told her to appreciate, but now that she did not even have Pellas' silly jokes and company to distract her, the weight of her present circumstances dragged her to the darkest corner she could find. She’d wait, it was all she could do really. Liara cradled her injured arm as best she could and she pulled one of the mana storage spheres out of her pocket. Yes, she would wait, but if any more Yabanchi came, she would not let them catch her.

“Pellas. Talia. Mom. Dad. Anybody.” Liara cried, not knowing if anyone heard, since alone in the dark, no one answered, but as she knew from experience, sometimes no answer was better than when the shadows talked back.