On the bottom floor of the senior studies building, it was quiet. The distant howling had subsided and the blood trail they had been following led down the opposite direction, deeper into the bowels of the first floor instead of the exit they were heading toward. Dr. Holzer motioned with a finger over his lips and Liara did not mind adding her own silence to the quiet. Nightmares stalked those halls and she did not want to get jumped by them. Every open door set her nerves on edge, expecting something to jump out, but as they passed by them, they were blessedly empty. When they finally reached the big double doors that led to the outside, they peered out its glass windows and looked to see if any Yabanchi were prowling outside.

Though the sky had darkened by plumes of her city burning, it was still the middle of the day, so they could see relatively easily. Not that the thing outside the senior building was trying to hide.

It was as pale as the Mylocks but bigger, much bigger. It was crawling in a grassy area with six limbs, four on a humanoid torso and two bent legs at the bottom. It pawed at the ground, scanning with red eyes, and screamed, a short, loud burst that made Liara think they had been caught. Yet the Yabanchi merely started pawing at the dirt with its top four limbs, apparently unaware of them.

“I remember those things,” Liara whispered to the others, “Screamers.”

“I know.” Dr. Holzer hesitated and looked back at his young pupil turned Magical Girl. “I read your file, you know, about your proctored field experience.”

An awkward silence stretched between them, broken only by another scream from the monster outside. Dr. Holzer shrugged, “I guess, I’m just trying to say that I’ve been hard on you girls for a reason. That what happened to you then should never happen to any other Magical Girl again, but so many times these Yabanchi pull something you don’t expect and make you have to adjust or die.” He paused, he was not looking at Liara anymore, but at someone else, someone not there. “It’s why you work as a team, make up for each other’s strengths and weaknesses, but we still need to be careful.”

Liara knew that he was not just talking about her anymore. The old paladin had a ghost in his past that drove him to expect the best from his students, to demand it. Yet it was neither love nor mercilessness that drove this desire, but the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind, fear. Something that Liara empathized with all too well.

“Thank you, Paladin Holzer,” Liara chose to call him by his old title, the one that would remind him what he was. “Do you have any advice about taking that thing on?”

“Ah yes, they are a particularly nasty type,” Dr. Holzer shifted his spear and returned to the moment at hand. “Especially when a nest of them get entrenched in a world.”

“Can we avoid it? Maybe walk around?” Liara suggested.

“No, I’m afraid not. We’re going to have to kill it," Dr. Holzer looked over at Liara, trying to give a confidence-inspiring smile. It kind of worked, but Liara was not totally convinced. Not only was she not used to seeing him smile, but it was a forced one at that. She knew that the man had been a former paladin, but that Yabanchi was so large…She banished the thought, doubtless that other people would have said the same thing about her the day before. Yet there she was, two Mylock kills notched on her belt.

It had only cost her an eye and hand.

She smiled back at Dr. Holzer, “Right, what do you need me to do?”

“Honestly Liara, your close-range attack is not suited for taking on something that big and we don't want to use all your mana with a fireball. I’d recommend just watching me for now.”

Disappointment mingled with guilty relief and Liara shrugged them both off and nodded at the paladin. "I'll be here if you need backup."

The party went outside, but Dr. Holzer advanced toward the Yabachi Screamer alone. It noticed him when the professor had covered half the distance between them and it stood up from the hole it was digging, shrieking so loud that Liara’s ears rang. Dr. Holzer stopped and grabbed one of the retractable spare spears he had on his armor, hefting it like he was about to toss a football. Meanwhile, the Screamer charged at the man, legs scrambling in a chaotic fervor to rip its prey apart. When there was only twenty feet distance between the two combatants, Dr. Holzer activated the spare spear, extending it to its full height, and tossed it at the Yabanchi.

The spear hit the Screamer right between its red eyes and its roar was silenced into a tumbling mess that halted at the paladin’s feet. Taking the spear out of the beast with his foot planted on its shoulder, Dr. Holzer turned to wave at Liara and paled to the same white skin tone as the Screamer’s.

Liara did not know what he shouted because as he did so, she felt the sensation of something crawling right behind her.

A last-second dodge on her part narrowly avoided the grasping hands of a spider hanging from the exterior walls of the senior studies building.

This Yabanchi was the smallest she had seen yet, about the size of a large dog, but it had so many eyes and limbs, that her mind blanked on any other appropriate description and settled on thinking of it as a spider.

Spiders weren’t covered in pink, quivering flesh nor did they have human-like hands grasping from long, multi-jointed arms, but this thing did. It focused all of its eyes on Liara at once and she heard it, the melody, the Yabanchi's mournful song of desire being telepathically communicated.

It did not want to hurt her. It wanted to embrace her, to take the pain away and carry her off to a place that was warm and soft. She just had to let go.

Something was buzzing in the back of her mind, but Liara did not hear it. She was somewhere else now, far away from the pain of the last few hours. The Yabanchi reached out and caressed her face and something twinged in Liara. The memory of her eye staring back at her broke the siren trance of the beast and she screamed as it touched her face.

Activating the spear Dr. Holzer had given her, she jammed its tip into the largest cluster of eyes on the spider. Its song broke in a squeal and it tried to climb back up the wall, but Liara drove forward and pinned it to the building. Pushing until the spear's tip broke through the Yabanchi and hit the concrete on the other side.

The pitiful thing shook a few times, and lamely struck at Liara without any effect, until with a final shudder it ceased its mewling. The buzzing noise behind Liara took concrete form as Dr. Holzer finally reached her and asked if she was alright.

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She did not feel alright, but neither did she feel terrible. Screaming out all the rage and fear with the Mylock earlier and now this spider Yabanchi had emptied her. She was numb, yet the sensation was a familiar one, so she did what she was so practiced in doing.

“Yup, I’m ok.” She smiled at Dr. Holzer and Pellas, “I guess that spear you gave me is coming in handy.”

Dr. Holzer held her gaze for another long moment and nodded, “I’m glad, but we should get moving. I’m afraid the shrieks of that Screamer may have attracted more.”

“What about the mana core?” Pellas was floating over the Yabanchi Liara had killed, prodding it with one of his legs.

Dr. Holzer was about to tell him that there was no time, but Liara stepped up and used a right-handed mana strike to pierce through the creature and extract its mana core. Her hand came ripping out of it, steaming from the heat and blood mixing and she gave the core to Pellas who readily absorbed it.

The golem’s eyes flashed between pink and red for a few seconds and he hummed a cheerful melody. “My oh my, that Gardener’s core gave me a most interesting ability!”

A scream, similar to a human's, but much louder and distorted by electronic static punctuated Pellas’ statement. Dr. Holzer grabbed Liara and Pellas and started pulling them along. “Later messenger; we need to go. Right now.”

“Is that another Screamer?” Another howl punctuated Liara’s question and answered it at the same time. She was familiar enough with her past experience to know that whatever was making that noise was no mere Screamer. It was like a train was going by, the old locomotive kind the outer worlds used, but in Apophyllion they did not use that kind of archaic technology. Everything in the inner systems was sleek, modern, and progressive, but the thing that made this noise was a discordant note of brutalism that ran counter to the soft milieu of civilization.

The trio dashed inside the closest building, not the student barracks, but the cafeteria. When the doors closed behind them, Dr. Holzer answered Liara’s question. “It’s a Destroyer. One of the nastier types of shock troopers that the Yabanchi employ.” Liara glanced at him and nodded, she was holding her breath and had no words to spare in reply.

The old paladin was perturbed, but not just because a Destroyer was nearby. He was worried about Liara. The way she had just so nonchalantly ripped the core from that Yabanchi with her flame strike was eerie. The young woman was erratically swinging back and forth between bravado and terror. Normally a new Magical Girl would be dipped slowly into combat experience with the enemy, with each encounter leading to a decompression session with trained counselors that would allow the woman to process her feelings of rage and terror before going out again, one small step further and more hardened against the terrors of their eldritch enemies. This emergency situation afforded them no such luxury and as it was, Holzer guessed that the only thing that held Liara together was her past traumas, though those events had left her scarred, they prepared her more so than the average academy student. He resolved that once they gave the Destroyer the slip, he would speak to Liara, gauge how she was doing, and take action from there.

They waited there in silence; Dr. Holzer pressed against the door and peeked out its small window, and Liara stood further inward, torn between glancing at the cafeteria’s doors and the darkened interior. In the dim stillness, Liara’s senses were heightened and she could have sworn that she heard scraping noises coming from deeper inside the building they were in. The two humans were holding their breath, waiting for whatever came next, until Pellas quipped, “Maybe it went away?”

Everything happened too quickly for Liara to process. The wall next to Dr. Holzer exploded into a shower of tile and wood fragments as a vehicle burst through the wall. Yet what Liara had mistook for a large ground car, sprouted arms and a head from a top hatch and it peeked inside through the hole in the wall . It could have been a man at one time if men grew to be giants and had drooping skin hanging in puddles on their bodies. It roared again, a screech like an angry engine crossed with a tortured lion blasted their ears and threatened to deafen them. Liara was so focused on where its eyes should have been, transfixed by two large lamplights that beamed down at her, that she failed to notice the gun turret on its metal chassis swivel and aim at her. Dr. Holzer on the other hand was all too aware of what was about to happen and roared back at the Destroyer, trying to get its attention away from her.

If the Yabanchi did not hear him, it felt him as Holzer aimed his mana spear and ignited it. A glowing blast of concentrated air mana materialized at the tip and surged toward the cyborg. A fist-sized mass of the giant's torso twisted and blew apart in a small explosion of pressurized air. It roared again, lamplight eyes swung toward Holzer and its gun turret found a different target.

“Run Liara, run!” Dr. Holzer bolted out through the hole in the wall, back outside, and fired his spear again, taking another chunk out of the Destroyer’s flesh. With a mighty revving noise, the Destroyer reversed its chassis, its tank treads ground the rubble beneath it to powder, and it gave chase to the paladin, leaving Liara and Pellas behind in a blinding plume of exhaust and dust.

Liara started to follow after both man and machine, but Pellas jammed himself in her face, his main eye flashed orange. "What are you doing? Do you want to die?!"

"We have to help him," Liara shouted back and began to push past her golem, but he snagged her uniform with three of his spindly arms. His voice was low, steady and the only source of calm in her panic as he said, "Do you want his sacrifice to be in vain? If you both die, then no one can get the safe zone barriers back on." Liara struggled only a little more against his arms, but she had no fight left in her to keep trying. Pellas was right, but it was just that she wanted to stop running and make a difference for a change. She said as much to him, to which the golem replied, "We are not running Liara, we’re just advancing in a different direction. Remember, ‘you’re the one who hunts’.”

Pellas said the last part with his mimicry ability, mimicking Dr. Holzer’s voice.

Liara snapped at him, “Don’t mock him like that!”

“I am not mocking him.”

Liara looked away from the fading plume of dust, Dr. Holzer and the Destroyer were out of sight, though she heard the sound of its roar not too far away. She could run after the paladin, make a last stand with him, and potentially win the fight, but indecision ripped at her worse than fear. She nodded to Pellas and turned from the hole leading outside, she made up her mind and marched toward the bowels of the cafeteria building.

"If we go through here, then we will be closer to the student barracks on the other side," Liara said, her tone mute and reflectionless of the turmoil that boiled inside of her.

Pellas took her statement as a question and replied, "Yes, close enough that a quick dash should get you from this building to there. However I am afraid my audio-receptors picked up some disturbances from inside the building. Something else is in the building. Maybe survivors?"

Liara did not reply, for it did not matter to her if it was survivors or not. If they were, then she would help them, but if they weren’t…Liara clenched her reinforced hand, fire mana flowed in it, ready to be released.

If they weren’t, then she would not run away again.

Liara’s Stats

Strength 9 Constitution 9 Reaction 10 Authority 11 Mana 300/330 (1 rpm) Mana Art Specialization Flame Strike (15), Fireball (300) Augmentations Reinforced mana hand, Mana eye Golem Upgrades Basic Medical Suite, Mimicry, Lesser Suggestion Special Abilities Minor Vitality Regeneration