Cecelia kept looking back at the shadows ever since she saw one of them move on its own. The others had told her that she must have imagined it, but the truth was that the party of three Magical Girls and their paladins were on edge. The fight inside the Capitol building had been too easy, no heavies attacked them and there was hardly a Screamer roaming the offices, but their golems kept telling them that this was one of the best routes to take to the source of power detected in the inner parts of the capitol.

Despite their heightened awareness, none of them saw the shadows start to take shape before it was too late. The air mana specialist was looking at the nervous Cecelia one second and the ceiling the next. Her decapitated body tumbled to the floor alongside her head.

A black armored woman stepped forth and flung a dagger at the nearest paladin. The blade cut through his mana armor like he did not even have a full mana pool’s worth of protection and went out the other side of his neck, which instantly severed his spine. A red haired Magical Girl with the group screamed in agony and rage when she saw her paladin go down and loosed a stream of fire so hot and intense that every piece of furniture in her cone of death immediately caught aflame. She kept the attack up until the black armored woman came charging through the flame, the fire mana streamed in rivulets around her, but they did not burn, and she drove a sword through the girl’s heart.

Before the assassin could withdraw her blade, the two remaining paladins charged her, one with dual swords and the other with a short sword and shield. With inhuman strength the woman cast the corpse and sword she was holding at her dual wielding attacker and then deftly stepped into the sword swing of the shielded foe. Though she was unarmed, she ducked his first blow and started jabbing strikes into the weak points of his armor with her gauntleted hands. After several hits the paladin stumbled back, limbs trembling, and dropped his sword and shield from hands that could no longer grip them.

With a roll, the powered armored killer scooped up the fallen sword and placed the blade against the neck of its former owner. When the dual wielding paladin had regained his balance, the woman used his friend as a human shield to make him hesitate. The hesitation did not last long as she dragged the blade across and kicked the mortally wounded paladin towards his friend. This elicited a ferocious two sword flurry that actually made the assassin backpedal for the first time since she had begun her slaughter.

As the vengeful paladin continued pressing in and had the killer against the wall, a giant ice shard erupted from his chest. The force of it sent him sprawling to the woman’s feet, where and he moved no more.

The attack had come from Cecelia. She was in the center of the room and raising an arm aimed at the paladin she had just slain.

“Heinrich!” Tears poured down her face and she wanted re direct her arm and fire an ice bolt at the black armored woman, but her arm was forced to bend back and away instead. Her whole body started to levitate off the floor and her arm kept bending, far past the point that she was comfortable with. Her tears for her dead friends turned to tears of pain as the rest of her limbs likewise started to twist. Her screams degenerated into howls and gagging and-

“TURN IT OFF!”

Collete slammed the enormous conference table hard enough that Selanora felt it wobble from all the way at the end of the room. The image of Cecelia paused and the assembly of Magical Girls and high ranking conglomerate members all did their best to hide their discomfort, shock, and sadness. All except for Lady Collete.

The normally cool and detached Magical Girl had tears streaming down her face and she said, “I knew those girls. They were so close to getting their classes. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” Her words degenerated into a blabbering mess and Candice laid a hand on her shoulder.

Unlike Collete, Candice had no more tears to give. Hers had been spent in sleepless nights, drowning her pillows in the days following the attack on Apophyllion. The death of a paladin was rough on any Magical Girl, let alone their husband, as Candice and John had been. Since his death at the hands of the lich, a small light had extinguished behind the pink haired woman’s eyes and she no longer lit up the rooms she entered.

As for Selanora, the holographic recording of the other Magical Girls that had attacked the capital before them was like seeing a nightmare manifested again. For on the screen, so deep in the shadows, there was another figure besides the black armored woman. A tall man, draped in a green robe with a spiky obsidian crown covering half his face sat in those shadows. His fingers were frozen in the air, like a marionette master controlling a puppet, but above all the descriptions Selanora could draw about the man was his smile. A familiar and insane spasm of teeth and clenching, the very same she saw before slipping into unconsciousness at the capital building.

A woman sitting at the end of the king conference table waved her hand and the images projected before them vanished. While the lights returned back to their normal luminosity, she spoke, “My apologies Collete, I should have taken that into consideration.”

Collete shook her head and cleared her throat. “No, the offense is mine, my Lady. Please forgive my outburst.” Broken of her normal pride, Collete slunk back into her chair and Selanora took no joy in observing this. The deaths of Magical Girls was never a small thing and to have three who were on the cusp of earning their classes was unheard of.

Yet there was something worse than even that as this video showed, in the cruel smile of the murderer in the shadows.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Another lich? And, and, and whatever that other thing was? How is that possible?” A beak nosed bureaucrat with a nasally tone asked the assembly.

“Many things live in the old worlds yet to be cleansed, Minister, that two of our ancient foes happen to still be alive is a sign that we must redouble our efforts in those lost sectors.” Opposite of the thin minister, both in location at the table and appearance wise, a thick admiral with a burly mustache replied.

“So says the military man always asking for more military funding,” the minister sneered. “That reminds me of another question, Admiral Cline, where is that ship they came on? Where is the Pandora?!”

This question got a stir from everyone listening and between the hushed voices, Admiral Cline shot a look toward the Voice of the Queen. With a subtle nod, she bade him to answer.

“We lost all tracking on the inter system jump transport when it performed an in-atmospheric jump, we do not know where it is.”

"So there's a ship full of Yabanchi and ME-GO knows what still on Apophyllion!?" A Magical Girl shouted across the room.

Admiral Cline held up his hands and motioned them down. He waited until everyone else had stopped talking before he replied.

"I’m sorry my lady, but other than a general awareness that it is in Bilkai Park, we have no other information on the Pandora at this present time."

The minister who had been harassing Admiral Cline asked, "How is that possible? Weren’t your fancy satellites tracking it?"

"Minister Garron, if you had read our report, you would be aware that since the ship made an in atmosphere jump, tracking it from there would have been impossible for even our best satellites."

The Voice of the Queen measured in, her voice calmly reached around the room. "We are sure that the Minister has read your report Admiral, but his concern is similar to ours. How is the navy responding to this situation?"

"We are evacuating all settlements adjacent to the forest and establishing a perimeter defense network around areas with identified infestations. So far, attempts to investigate Bilkai Park have been met with high casualties. That’s why we need Magical Girl support so badly."

"Can’t you just nuke the place and be done with it?"

"Minister, the ecological concerns with such an idea alone make that suggestion implausible. Yet even if we did employ strategic weapons, the Pandora is a transport ship with void shields equivalent to a super carrier. Unless you're willing to crack that planet in half, a strike team would need to board it and place explosives in their generator room."

"This farce is causing instability in the markets. The sooner the problem is taken care of, the sooner-"

"Minister, we appreciate your input, but we cannot condone the use of nuclear weapons on one of our worlds, a core world none the less." The Voice of the Queen cut Minister Garron off. "We agree with the admiralty in this matter."

"Yes my lady, forgive me. It has been a stressful week for all of us, you most of all, I am sure. I am only concerned that the Navy has not been doing their due diligence in defending our borders. Apophyllion herself was ravaged and now they not only are dragging their feet in fixing their mess, but now they want to bring Imps to the inner systems as well. It’s becoming intolerable!"

The Admiral stood up, alongside several of his aides and sympathizers in the conglomerate. "See here, Garron-"

"Gentlemen, this meeting is becoming unproductive.” The Voice cut across the room. “Admiral, send a request for whatever Magical Girl intervention you deem necessary and we will see that it gets done. Your other request is to be put on hold for now for future risk analysis and debate, as this moment I have a ceremony to attend to."

"Thank you, my lady."

"This meeting is dismissed. If anyone has further inquiries or suggestions, relay them through the system." The Voice of the Queen stood from her elevated platform and everyone else in the room stood up too, even the high-ranking Magical Girls. As the Voice of the Queen strode past Selanora, there was a chill that swept through the air that made her shiver. A voice swept into her head.

[Selanora, come to my office after the ceremony. Bring your paladin and golem.]

The shiver deepened and Selanora felt like rubbing her arms, but the numb pain where her right arm used to be was useless for such gestures. She tried to telepathically reply to the second most powerful woman in the kingdom, but her message met an insurmountable mental barrier, one that made the impulse come crashing back on her in a backlash that instantly gave her a piercing headache. It was probably an automatic defensive measure, which made sense given who she was, but Selanora had to grip the table with her only good hand to ride out the pain. A firm, yet not rough hand, grabbed Selanora's shoulder and from the familiar callouses of the hand, she knew it was Leng.

[Are you ok?]

Without looking at Leng, Selanora stood up and started walking out with the rest of the room's occupants. Most of the Magical Girls did not speak, likely in telepathic communications of their own, but the whispers of the Conglomerate executives and ministers were made all the louder by the silence.

[I'm fine. I just got a message from the Queen's Voice, she wants to meet us after the awards.]

[Lady Margaret herself? Maybe this meeting was not as useless as I thought.]

A third voice broke in, Danford's. [What Leng? You're telling me that you don't like going to worthless meetings that could have easily been handled by email?]

[Well, when you've already watched the video evidence a thousand times and read the reports just as many, it does get a bit much my friend.]

[Keep talking you two, I'll just figure out why the right hand of the Queen is inviting us to a private meeting on my own.]

[Obviously, she is going to assassinate us for knowing too much.]

[If only that wasn't a joke.]

[Feel like dying young?]

[More like I feel like death would be preferable to another obnoxious award ceremony.]

[Maybe you two could show a little respect? Not every woman getting a medal will be there today.]

The three seconds of mental silence that followed were louder than any apology could have been on her golem and Paladin's parts, eventually Leng replied.

[Is that girl doing any better?]

[As far as I know, no, but her golem keeps requesting we stop by and visit.]

[What for? That girl looks even worse off than Candice.]

[I honestly don't know, maybe he's hoping we can make her talk again?]

[Maybe if they didn’t have her hopped up on benzos, she’d be a little more talkative.]

Selanora stopped and glared at Leng, for his part he raised up his hands, though he knew she would never strike him.

[I was there when she woke up the first time. They had stabilized all her wounds and I tried greeting her, but those meds you degrade became necessary since they were the only things that stopped her screaming.]