Talia heard Liara before she saw her and would have run to the door of the student barracks shelter if she had working legs to do so. They had only just arrived at the new shelter zone a few minutes before, where Belle Noblesse had led them from the shelter in the senior student building to their current location. Belle had not told Talia much of what had happened in the time she went out, but apparently, she had encountered Liara and they killed a Destroyer together. Other than that Liara was heading inside the admin building alone and the school barracks were safer than their current location, Belle was being tight-lipped. So, when Liara came storming into the shelter, it was understandable that she was swarmed by girls with questions.
A freshman girl helped push Talia closer to the entrance so they could see Liara, but Talia was momentarily taken aback by the stranger in the doorway. She knew logically, that it was Liara, but in the short span of a few hours, something had changed in her friend, hardened. Other seniors were flocking around Liara and BElle, but Liara seemed to be taking their questions in stride with annoyed glances. She and Belle spoke to one another like equals, set apart from the mass of regular humanity around them, and for the millionth time in her life, Talia truly felt like she was falling while sitting down. The mire in her heart would have swallowed her whole and never let go had Liara’s red eye not accidentally glanced in her direction and seen her.
“Talia!” The lines of pain and grief disappeared off Liara’s face and her eyes lost the dull impassiveness they’d been carrying. Liara brushed past the others and half pulled Talia out of her chair and settling depression with a warm embrace. She may have been wearing mana armor, physically stronger, and covered in Yabanchi blood, but one thing had not changed; they still had one another.
“I was so worried about you, girl.” Talia pulled away from her friend and looked into that lovable dopey face. Liara put a finger to her lip and looked like she was thinking.
“Oh, did Belle tell you about the Destroyer?”
“Yeah, and someone also told me about your cafeteria stunt! Like, you’re going to end up in a wheelchair too if you keep this up.”
“Oh, then we probably should not tell you about the hand grenades then.” Liara’s golem chimed over her shoulder.
“Pellas, not helping.”
“Sorry.”
Liara’s eyes veiled and Talia was speaking to the Magical Girl all of a sudden. “Talia, we need to go. It’s not safe here.”
“What do you mean it’s not safe here?!” Ms. Stark’s voice cut across the room and Talia groaned. “Where is the president? Did you fail to go inside the building like Ms. Noblesse did too?”
“That’s not fair, Karen.” Dr. Holzer spoke from one of the couches, “You seemed pretty happy to find out there was a working shelter barrier here.”
“I’d expect you to defend her, given you’ve been made a little paladin again, Ken, but I wasn’t talking to you. Well, girl, did you speak to the president or not?” Ms. Stark was tapping her foot and crossed her arms. Talia was about to give a quip, but Liara’s somber answer made her pause.
“She’s dead.”
Ms. Stark stopped her tapping and looked aghast. She seemed so much smaller with just two words like the fight had been deflated from her, but Liara kept squeezing.
“It’s her fault the shelters didn’t work. It’s her fault so many people died today.”
“No, that can’t be.” Ms. Stark whispered to herself, trying to deny the truth that was obvious in Liara’s plain delivery.
“So, that explosion had something to do with her, I take it.” Jarron floated on the couch between Dr. Holzer and a sleeping Dana Cole. “When we heard it, the barrier system came back on.”
Liara only nodded and Ms. Stark started to become hysterical. “No, you’re lying! She can’t be dead!”
“Join her if you want to, but I’m not planning on dying today.” Liara dismissed the admin assistant and then raised her voice, “Everyone, we need to leave! It’s not safe in the shelter anymore!”
“Are you serious kid? The barrier system is back on again, this is the safest place we could be!” Jarron shouted back.
“Don’t you feel that?” Liara pointed to the ground and everyone looked at their feet, though there was nothing to see. There had been a couple more earthquakes, but since the last one, there had been a consistent, but low-intensity shaking that they had all just kind of gotten used to. Talia personally chalked it up to the barrier system being online, but Pellas’ follow-up to Liara’s question would shatter that illusion and cause a panic.
“It is a Kort. Madam Anatova’s golem himself identified it with advanced scanners. That shaking is it coming this way as we speak.”
Jarron’s body twisted into an unrecognizable shape and he started jabbing his sleeping Magical Girl none too gently.
“Wake up, wake up! Someone get this slug a stim!”
Dr. Holzer reached over and stopped Jarron’s incessant poking while he simultaneously stood. “No, no more stims. She needs rest now.” He then scooped Dana into his arms and said “I will carry the young woman.”
He looked over at Belle, like he wanted confirmation of something he already knew and she flicked a hand in his direction. “We just got here and now we have to leave. Seems sketchy to me.” The building shook again and Belle went pale. “But then again, it may be prudent of us to heed Madam Anatova’s warning.”
“Excellent idea Ms. Belle,” Holzer bowed as best he could while holding Dana. “If I may suggest, a Magical Girl should be placed in the front and back of our evacuation, with the wounded and non-mana users in the center.”
“Very well,” Belle nodded and started to shout at the assembled host of students, “Listen up, form an ORDERLY line at the doors. Senior girls, you should-“
“I’m not going.” Ms. Stark turned her back on the group and planted herself on a couch. She did not look at any of them and trembled while she sat there.
Talia was about to question Ms. Stark’s intelligence, but her view of the woman was cut off as someone grabbed her chair and started wheeling her out of the room.
“Fine. Die then.” Liara sounded like a different person, deeper, meaner, and colder. Talia tried to squirm in her chair and ask her to stop and go back for the scared woman, but when she looked at her friend’s face, she saw someone who was even more terrified.
“What’s coming, Liara?”
“I don’t know, something bad, Talia. So bad it’s even got the Golems spooked.”
They were already out in the hallway and headed toward the stairs, a stream of girls had started following them. “If it’s that bad, then we’ve got to go back and convince Ms. Stark to come with us. I know she’s a jerk, but it’s the right thing to do.”
“She’s made her choice.”
Liara just sentenced a woman to death whether she knew it or not and Talia could not see a flicker of regret in either eye.
“You’ve changed.”
This got some small twitch in her friend’s face and Liara replied, “You’ve never had to watch someone you love, die in front of your eyes, Talia. I’m not letting that happen again.”
There were no words that Talia could respond to properly with that, except for a small hand squeeze that was barely reciprocated. If her best friend could become like this in so short a time, what transformation would Talia go through if she became a Magical Girl too? The thought was sobering, so she changed the topic to something lighter.
“I guess Belle and Holzer are bonded now. They did it before you got back.”
“Oh, good,” Liara replied, but her attention was focused on the empty rooms they passed by and spaces from which things might jump them.
“Yeah, it was kind of awkward. Holzer refused at first, but Belle badgered him so much that he finally relented. Made her swear a bonding oath serious enough to burn your ears off though. Unless either of them dies first, they’ll be bonded for life.”
“Yeah, that’s good.” Liara again replied, but Talia stopped trying to make small talk. Perhaps now was not the time, but she would have done anything to rewind the clock and have Liara back the way she was.
But maybe that’s how she always was.
That thought was cut off when they reached the staircase. Talia swore and was about to call back to one of the girls behind them to help lift her chair, but she found herself and the chair lifted immediately and by only one person.
“Liara, what!?”
Grunting somewhat slightly, Liara replied, “Got a little bit stronger.”
“You’re telling me!?”
They made good time down the stairs and almost fell twice, but eventually, Liara set her friend down and they were in the lobby.
“It looks like someone microwaved something in here too long,” Talia looked at the burnt pieces of Screamer they had all passed by earlier. This time, Liara had the good graces to blush and rub her neck, confirming Talia’s suspicion that her friend had a hand in the messy affair.
Pellas floated past the stream of girls filling up the lobby and came before Liara. “Everyone is right behind you, but I wanted to warn you that the mana elixer has worn off.”
“Are there any other consumables I can take? I think we’re going to need them.”
“None that we can afford, other than the ten-point stims Jarron was feeding his girl. It will double your mana regeneration, from five to ten.”
“I thought my mana regeneration was one?”
“The elixir permanently increased it, hence why it has such a limited use. There are more efficient ways of increasing it when we get more points though.”
“Well, until we get more points, get me one a stim for now.”
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“You will crash hard when it wears off.”
“Get it.”
Talia watched with amazement as Liara’s golem bought and materialized a stim that was quickly injected into the Magical Girl. While Liara had to suddenly walk off the pounding in her chest and jitteriness, Talia asked Pellas, “You look like a spider, but could you be a butterfly if you wanted to?”
“Ah, yes, I could. Our appearances vary from ward to ward.”
“Why are you a spider then? Does Liara like them?” Talia stuck her tongue out in disgust. Spiders made her sick, Pellas being a rare exception.
Pellas lowered his voice, “You already know.”
“I knew she had a troubled past, but she’s different. Shorter and less kind. I want to help her, but I’m-“Talia finished her sentence with a gasp of disgust and frustration, waving at the chair underneath her.
“I know you want to help, in fact, I am planning on it. You humans are not meant to undergo so much darkness in so short a time like today. It can change a person.” Pellas laid an arm on Talia and she felt like the Light was calling to her with his next sentence. “You will be a key part of her recovery process my dear. The power of friendship and camaraderie can not be overstated. More so than that, when this is over, I will personally petition ME-GO for your selection as a Magical Girl.”
“You will?!”
“Keep it a secret for now. I want to surprise Liara with it when it happens.” Pellas put an arm in front of his eye in place of lips that did not exist. “I think you will make a great team.”
Talia could have fallen out of her chair in happiness and just laughed it off when Liara finally came back. She looked at the golem and girl like they were two co-conspirators and asked, “What were you two talking about?”
“You, of course, my lovable Magical Girl!” Pellas gushed with saccharine sweetness.
“Right, sure. Anyways, Belle just got here with the last of the others. We’re heading out now.”
“We got your back, Nerd Girl.” Talia gave her friend the best smile and thumbs up she could conjure and a little of her old friend came out with a blush and smile.
“I know, Tail Bones, thank you.”
The sweet moment was cut off by another round of shaking so severe that every girl in the lobby started screaming. It felt like even the walls were swaying with the ground and Talia was afraid her chair would tip over.
“Everyone out!” Liara shouted and pushed Talia ahead of her and into the open air outside. The ground was shaking there too, but at least it did not feel like the roof was about to collapse in on the girls. The group of over one hundred students gathered in a loose mass of nervous anticipation. None of them felt safe outside, but the ground was heaving so much, that running was difficult. Liara had stopped too and turned them both to look back at the student barracks building.
It really was swaying, back and forth, like some smaller model toy being shaken by a toddler, but it did not immediately collapse from the quaking. No, it did not collapse until a great sinkhole opened up beside it and even then only half of the building fell into a messy heap in the hole. The underground sewer lines and water piping for the building started filling up the sinkhole with water and from the depths of the miry wreckage a great, pale beast rose and reached toward the sky with its undulating bulk.
The screams of ten thousand tormented souls ripped their ears and made many of the young women listening, clutch their ears and scream back. Liara was trying to plug her ears too, but the sound reached into the depths of her soul and made the foundations quiver. She did not need to hear what Pellas telepathically said to her at that moment to know what they were looking at.
The Kort had arrived.
The Yabanchi towering over the host of assembled girls must have been at least a hundred feet tall, as even the top of the student barrack building did not pass its height. Yet its size did not measure the full horror of the newly arrived abomination, since Liara could make out what looked like human faces and waving limbs all along its body. Liara did not get a long glimpse of the beast to confirm if what she saw was true, since the Kort’s body twirled and it slank back into the earth. The ground rumbled once more and the girls snapped out of their daze.
“Come on!” Belle shouted, “Keep going!”
The assembled group of over a hundred people had barely left the half-collapsed student barracks building and Kort behind, so Liara started leading everyone toward the main quad, which would eventually take them to the tram station. Unfortunately, their journey was interrupted by the quaking of the dirt beneath their feet and the Kort reared itself once more, horrifyingly in multiple places at once.
Instead of bursting from the ground with its main bulk, the Kort had shoved several flailing tentacles up and into the air like half-rotten, flesh trees sprouting their macabre foliage. One of these evil growths had burst through next to Liara and she got a better view of the horror of the Kort.
There were undeniable faces on the tentacle, but they were not just fleshy growths for show. The eyes and mouths moved and acted independently of each other and pale human limbs desperately reached out to the girls as the voices of men, women, and children screamed for help. Liara felt something in her stir like she wanted to grab hold of one of the grasping hands, but she shook off the feeling when she looked into the bloodshot and glazed-over faces of the moaning victims that had been hideously fused together. Compelled and not deterred like Liara, several students were moved by the piteous pleas and psychic command, and they reached out to embrace the pillars of roiling flesh.
Liara left Talia and grabbed one of the closest girls as the white hands on the tentacle just started caressing her face. There was significant resistance, though the careering hands did not seem to be actively pulling back, with a sickening ripping noise, Liara tumbled to the ground with the now-wailing student. She looked at the girl and jumped back up in rage and disgust, spear pointed at the tentacle. The other girl’s face was now missing a chunk of the flesh where the hands had touched her. The flesh between student and Kort had instantly fused and been ripped apart by Liara’s intervention.
The tentacle started lashing around and one of the former humans stuck on it started screaming even louder, a woman with a few strands of hair left and malformed breasts melting down her chest. It lunged for Liara with deformed claws and looked like it would have popped off the rest of the tentacle with so much effort. Liara met it halfway with the tip of her spear jammed into its belly and blasted it with a pulse of mana. Not only was the wretched remains of the poor woman torn in half but the rest of the tentacle was shorn as well, sending the remaining stump slithering back inside the hole it had come from.
Looking back at the others, Belle Noblesse had cut down the rest of the tentacles before they could touch any of the students. She had drawn her blade, crackling with electricity, and stood ready to cut down any more tentacles should they appear. Liara gave Belle a nod, which her former bully returned, they were in this together.
The main bulk of the Kort roared and the ground trembled some more. Liara just barely dodged the tip of another tentacle erupting from the ground and would have speared this one too had she not had to dodge the flailing and emergence of yet more and more Kort appendages. So many tentacles burst from the ground at once that it was like a forest of hands and teeth with branches that tried to rip your flesh off.
Even Belle was overwhelmed by the sudden tide and students started to get dragged into deadly embraces with the tentacles. One such tentacle started to edge toward immobile Talia, but before Liara could strike it down, a sharp gust of wind lacerated every limb that tried to touch the girl.
“Talia, are you ok?!” Liara brushed off a hand that had fallen on her friend’s lap, but it thankfully was not moving.
“Yeah, I’m fine, but we need to get everyone out of here.”
“Where can we go?”
They both looked back toward the only safe passage afforded any of them, like a tunnel of safety in the multitude of whipping tentacles. The student barracks building.
“I think it wants us to go there,” Liara said.
Talia replied, “I know, but I don’t think we have a choice. The building foundation will prevent the tentacles from reaching us. We have to go.”
Liara raised her voice and started shouting that everyone needed to go back to the student barracks building, but the tumult of screaming tentacles, shouting students, and carnage was too much for anyone to hear her. Talia put a hand on her friend's arm and said that she would handle it.
With her hands cupped around her mouth, Talia shifted the air around and used it to amplify her voice, “LISTEN UP. GO BACK TO THE BARRACKS BUILDING. GO BACK TO THE BARRACKS.”
Not every girl listened as some were too caught up in either the frenzy of fear and terror or in the mental compulsions of the Kort. As it was, only seventy of the remaining students were herded back together and started migrating back to the place they had come. Liara and Talia went backward so that Talia could keep delivering her blasts of mana-pressured air into the reaching tentacles behind them, yet at a certain point, when most of the girls had crawled over the rubble of the half-destroyed student barracks building and inside it, the tentacles all slank back inside the earth at once and the main Kort body towering above them started rumbling.
Liara carried Talia and her chair to where everyone was ducking inside and Belle asked, “What is it doing?”
Dr. Holzer glared at the great beast and replied, “I think it’s laughing at us.”
Now that he said it, the notes of sadistic joy were clear in the deep timbre of the Kort’s rumbling. A chorus of high-pitched giggling joined it from the myriad of faces that lined its body. They may have severed a few of its tentacles, but it had them right where it wanted them like little playthings.
Liara asked the obvious question, “Why doesn’t it just come crashing on top of us and bring the building down on our heads? It’s big enough.”
Pellas whispered the answer in her head since he did not want to scare the rest of the students who may have been listening.
[Because it wants you alive.]
While Liara shuddered at imagining herself becoming one of the many faces forever fused on the Kort’s body, Belle stepped forward and clenched her hands.
“Laughing at us? I’ll show it who exactly it is laughing at!” She gestured toward Cassandra floating by her head, “Mana blast module, now!”
“One big, dead Yabanchi coming up,” Cassandra purred and her feline form started elongating and transforming. Her mouth unhinged and her feet curled up until her entire body was the shape of a bazooka. The Kort stiffened and leaned toward the sudden burst of mana energy it sensed, the fleshy prongs of its face undulated in hungering curiosity. Its curiosity was met by a blast of mana so bright, that if Pellas had not warned Liara to close her eyes, she would have been temporarily blinded.
When she opened her eyes again, she was greeted by the sight of the Kort standing stock still with a hole the size of a monorail car in its face. The hideous laughter had stopped and Liara hoped for one moment that the Kort would fall and end their troubles.
It was not meant to be, as the opening around the Kort’s wound started closing and in a few moments the flesh had totally reformed, as if Belle had never even attacked it.
Belle staggered back from the healing monstrosity and paled, mumbling to herself, “But that’s all I got.”
Liara’s mind raced for possibilities, escapes, plans of attack, and like the flash of Belle’s mana cannon, inspiration hit her like a million volts of electricity. Before she could tell the others her idea, the Kort’s scream cut her off. It was the loudest scream by far, a series of three high-pitched chirps again and again, and it did not seem like it was focused on them anymore.
Jarron chirped, “Maybe that attack of yours broke it?!”
But Dr. Holzer broke the happy expectation by pointing one of his spare spears into the distance, “No, I don’t think it is.”
Everyone followed where he was pointing and saw the horrible truth. In between the other buildings and scurrying onto the nearby grassy quad, hundreds of Yabanchi were gathering. Screamers, Mylocks, Gargoyles, Cadavers, and Lurkers were standing there, staring at the host of assembled students. Towering among them, Liara recognized a familiar figure, charred and burned, but still imposing with its whip-like arms. The Lurch had survived the admin building blast.
“Alright ladies, it’s time to put your training into action,” Dr. Holzer’s voice hardened and rose above the Kort’s din. “All seniors get ready, front row for ranged attacks, juniors get behind them. Just like we taught you!”
Dr. Holzer and the other paladins had been merciless in their training junior year, so every senior student almost automatically heeded his command voice. Liara and Belle marched to the front of the line, their presence gave the other girls some peace of mind.
The assembled horde of Yabanchi and towering Kort reminded Liara of a similar scene three years ago. Of a metal and flesh Titan that had almost killed her on her first orientation trip for the academy, but now she was the Magical Girl fighting on the front lines and she couldn’t hide behind a bunch of Imps like she did before.
The Kort stopped its chirping, everyone held their breath, knowing what was coming, and their expectations were met when it wailed loud enough to shake their bones and the foundation of the building. The massed Yabanchi charged forward, and their combined roars rose to meet the Kort’s in challenge to the audacity of the humans’ refusal to lay down and die.
Some seniors fled from their position in line to the deeper recesses of the student barracks, but Liara knew that if they did not hold here, none of them would survive the day. She raised her shield and readied her spear, the drum of the Yabanchi’s rage echoed in her own heart. The final battle for Apophyllion Academy had begun.
Liara (Dragoon)
Strength 12 Constitution 9 Reaction 13 Authority 11 Mana 805/830 (10 rpm) Mana Art Specialization Flame Strike (15), Fireball (300), Lesser Hallucination (50) Augmentations Reinforced mana hand, Mana eye (Thermal Vision) Golem Upgrades
Basic Medical Suite, Mimicry, Camouflage
Lesser Suggestion
Items Mana Storage Spheres (2), Light Mana Armor, Mana Spear, Shield T1 Special Ability Minor vitality regeneration, Bloodlust