Cless gasped for air as she took in her bearings. No longer did brisk fresh mountain air fill her lungs. Instead the smell gasoline and car exhaust tainted her senses. Her spell had succeeded in catapulting her across realms back to London. It took nearly her entire mana pool. The strain of holding that much mana into a single construct left her breathless.
Concrete parking garage lit with sparse electrical lights surrounded her. The painting she left behind lay in the same position as she left it, tucked away in a dark corner. Through the open sides in the structure she saw a cloudy night sky tainted by light pollution.
She expected to arrive to the barking of search dogs and the yells of a coordinated party performing a manhunt, or at the very least some spotlights. She stood on the top floor of parking garage that served a jail. A jail from which her dad had been teleported out of by Ilea just earlier today. Surely they noticed him missing by now?
Already the clothing she wore in the mountains to protect her from the elements felt stifling. The fur-lined leather cloak trapped her body heat. Heavy pants, boots, and gloves didn’t help either. By contrast to the mountains near Ilea’s home, London came across as temperate. Her Vitality and resistances helped to increase the range of temperatures where she felt comfortable, but this proved to be a bit much.
Perhaps she could have weathered the frigid air without the extra protection, but Cless almost always erred on the side of caution. In her mind it was better to over-prepare in anticipation of hardship rather than suffer. Sentinels, the moniker given to members of Ilea’s organization of healers, would scoff at the notion of not becoming frostbite-ridden given the chance. Her Sentinel friends would always encourage her to undergo resistance training with them. Cless didn’t understand their masochistic nature.
Most people on Elos didn’t have the ability to heal, Cless included. Without a healer around she definitely wanted to avoid any injury. Doubly so when she was the only one capable of magic on Earth, as far as she knew. Other than the emergency lifeline to Ilea, she was on her own.
Noting no one watching her, Cless leaned against the concrete wall and did her best to ignore the growing ick of sweat building up on her skin. Slowly she slipped into meditation. Turning her mind’s eye inward and focusing helped calm her and surprisingly also increased her mana regeneration rate. She never knew where mana came from. It just seemed to appear within her and suffuse her body. She hoped she remembered to ask Claire about it later.
After recovering enough mana, a simple twitch of magic activated her portable spacial storage necklace. The majority of her heavy clothing and the painting vanished in an instant. This left her in a yellow long-sleeved shirt, blue pants, and bare feet. Now came one of the most difficult parts of her mission. What do I wear?
Tonight was Cless’s debut as a super heroine on the streets of London. She promised her parents she would be safe, so that meant some amount of protection. Magical girls, from what she could remember through her fragmented early childhood memories, leaned towards a certain aesthetic, a look that wasn’t conducive to staying alive. They showed entirely too much bare skin for the battlefields they found themselves in. It simply didn’t come off as practical to Cless. But skirts? She could get behind skirts.
Out from her storage came a leather skirt nearly going to her knees, a short sleeve leather top, and a pair of leather vambraces. The top had a thick stiff nonadjustable collar, permanently shielding her neck from attacks. A quick hop in the air and blip of magic had her feet covered in matching boots that came up to mid-calf. All the leather had been dyed dark, as close to black as possible, and of course they were tailored to Cless’s exact dimensions. The top couldn’t even be put on without a dimensional storage device because of the collar. A head simply wouldn’t fit through the gap.
Altogether, the ensemble guarded her from most attacks she expected Londoners to be capable of making. Only her knees, elbows, hands, and head were left exposed. The latter of which gave her pause. Magical girls definitely didn’t wear helmets, only tiaras at most. A few moments of internal debate lead her to choosing living over looks. The leather helmet would do double duty to both protect her identity and her squishy facial bits.
The stiff leather fit snugly, like all her armor, smoothly following the contours of her face. Only the lower back of the head was loose, to allow her blonde hair to flow out and to increase neck mobility. Oval cutouts perfectly outlined her eye sockets. Only from her nostrils downward on her face were exposed.
Cless frowned. Even without a mirror she knew her outfit lacked the typical pizzazz expected from a super heroine costume. For an artist like herself it simply wouldn’t do. In a blink her helmet relocated to her right hand. She conjured her ethereal paintbrush in the other.
Inspecting the curved leather surface, Cless couldn’t help but wonder if this was the kind of shake-up she sought before Ilea contacted her about going back to Earth. The northern mountains of the human plains on Elos failed to give proper inspiration. Perhaps a change of medium was in order.
Ever since being forcibly relocated to Elos almost all of her art lay upon canvases like the one she used as a realm anchor for her spell. She never dabbled in sculpture or sewing or even painting earthenware. That made the non-flat surface a novelty. The question became what to put on the helmet.
Cless grew up in Ravenhall most of her life. Their emblem of a raven atop a palisade tempted her. But she didn’t feel comfortable with it on her person. Having such a thing made her worried she would come across as some kind of diplomatic liaison or official representative, which she definitely wasn’t. The same logic held true for the Accords’ symbol. The Accords were a co-operative multi-nation defensive and trade pact of which Ravenhall was a member. Championing that felt even less appropriate. That would be like Superman not having his iconic S but rather the United Nations flag on his chest.
No, she decided she only represented herself. She needed a symbol to call her own. What captured her essence in as few strokes as possible? A special hue of yellow that matched her natural magic coated the ethereal bristles.
She started with her realmwalker nature and painted two conjoined circles but didn’t finish the overlapped parts. They were Earth and Elos, side-by-side. Together they rested horizontally on a minimalist paintbrush, her art bridging the two realms. Within those circles she filled in a smaller concentric portion. A smooth wide arc ended on the brush’s head and surrounded the circles, stopping short of connecting to the haft’s tip.
Combined together it looked like an otherworldly two-iris eye, meant to capture her divination specialty. The paintbrush and arc acting as the eyelids formed a stylized C. Cless smiled at her handiwork. The smile faded when she remembered super heroines didn’t go by their personal names. They came up with aliases, cool code names to protect their identity. Ilea went by Lilith, though it wasn’t as if the woman tried to hide. The populous at large who hadn’t met her personally still used it.
Names. Names were hard. Sometimes Cless struggled the most with simply coming up with a name for her artworks. Freezing a moment in time for all eternity for anyone to gaze upon at their leisure? Simple. Naming that moment in time? Oof. Aren’t my paintings supposed to speak for themselves? A half-forgotten idiom about a thousand words accompanied her grumbles.
She stood there, wracking her mind for ideas, growing increasingly frustrated by the banality of what she conjured. She took the time spent pondering to refresh the beacon on the spider painting. Screw it. She cribbed a word right off her divination class. Thankfully incorporating it into her icon required only a single extra stroke.
“Glimpse,” she tasted the word. Simple, hinted at her power set, not too ostentatious. Perfect. She quickly copied the updated symbol onto her chest piece.
Satisfied as she could be without a custom commission for fancier armor, Cless focused on the Art. She gave that name to the ever-present whispers of fate. The Art started its communication as soon as she set foot on Elos all those years ago. At the time she didn’t understand most of what they tried to convey. The many pulls of emotions jumbled together into a chaotic mess. Even now, despite years of experience translating their capricious and flighty messages, Cless struggled to truly comprehend. Every time she picked up on a new facet more would reveal themselves in the noise.
One of the strings in fate’s tapestry projected eager excitement like a puppy about to go out on a walk. It tugged on her leash of attention, trying to pull her towards what it found so fascinating. Tiny pin pricks of danger and desperation tainted the sensation. It came across as familiar. She recognized it as the one who championed the spider’s significance. She needed only to let it guide her if she wanted, but Cless had other plans. Saving the spider could come later.
Until recently she passively observed their calls. But now she learned to ask. Cless mentally crystallized a scene of her acting heroic before infusing the thought with mana. Its influence cascaded around her, quieting those uninterested, while others resonated into a frenzy. The puppy-like thread practically dragged her off her feet in its insistence. But a cavalcade of other stimulated threads vied for her attention, far more than Cless expected.
The sheer amount of crime present in London surprised her. It seemed safe enough in her earliest years. Did it fall apart after she left? Or was she simply ignorant to the problems? The newest and only magical girl on Earth vowed to make a difference, however small, and have fun when doing so.
With the sheer density of trouble Cless didn’t even need her magic to find the entertainment she craved. Simply walking towards the spider would find something along the way. With an amused snort, she gave into the whim of the puppy-like thread. It vibrated into overdrive. The others dropped off her senses, used to tuning out the noise. She clambered over the railing and jumped off the side of the building. A small application of flight arrested her falling speed and her superhuman body absorbed the rest of the impact.
The thread tugged in the most direct route to her destination, but flight was completely out of the question. Far too many eyes, both human and artificial, would catch that anomaly. Lacking Ilea’s space mage expertise to teleport long distances, Cless began her trek on foot. While she loved the free-spirited feeling of her hair whipping in the wind while she flew using her own magic, she didn’t mind a more pedestrian approach to travel. It often came to that when she teamed up with her Sentinel friends on adventures to caves and dungeons to eliminate their monstrous denizens. Tight corridors didn’t exactly make for easy flight.
Joy spread across Cless’s face. She couldn’t help grinning at the fact that she had made it back to Earth. At that moment she didn’t care about the propriety a super heroine should embody, so she skipped everywhere she went.
Cless couldn’t help but compare everything she saw here to her life on Elos. Electricity stood in for the passive presence of mana and its constructs. Lightbulbs instead of enchantments, lanterns, and torches lit up the night, allowing for easy navigation. She had yet to pass anyone walking the same path as her. Apparently the area near this prison wasn’t the most popular part of London at this hour.
Concrete and asphalt replaced the stone and dirt paths. It surprised her to see just how much land had been surrendered to the constant stream of automobiles traveling down the roads. Here standing on a road courted death. Cless was certain some Sentinel friends would wish to test that assertion, much like they did against the dwarven mecha suits of the Pit. She could envision them squaring up to grapple an oncoming car, only to be disappointed when the car swerved to avoid them.
Elos lacked the concept of a wagon-only path. In fact, on Elos wagons were on the decline with the new establishment of the teleportation network. Why spend numerous days on the road to bring people and goods elsewhere when a small fee could zip you across the plains or further in an instant? The decision was an easy one to make. Only those seeking adventure or traveling to places not in the network still bothered with wagons. And Aki worked with a legion of enchanters to expand that network every day.
Plastics were the main source of material difference between the worlds. Sure, fancy magical Taleen dwarven metal alloys weren’t being shown off via mechanical marvels, but Cless didn’t know much of anything about forging. So only colors differentiated between the steel and aluminum of Earth and the more exotic fare on Elos.
But plastic? Elos didn’t use plastics at all. Yet they covered Earth, replacing a wide variety of materials. Cless took note of clothing the most. People wore a lot of plastic instead of monster materials. Where was the hide? The scales? The feathers? The bone? Even plant fibers had been largely usurped. This fact made Cless stand out in her clothing more than she thought. But she shrugged any worry away, certain that super heroines were meant to be distinct.
When Cless came across a small shopping plaza with a chippy shop her eyes widened. Any thoughts of heroing went out the window. At least seven years had passed since her last true fish and chips. A busy intersection blocked her path. Temptation to just leap over the road dug away at her. She danced from foot to foot occasionally mashing the button. She cursed the traffic and the red light at the crosswalk where she waited impatiently.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
The light turned and Cless bounded off. It took only three strides to clear the four-lane intersection. Her boots clacked on the pavement, small bits of loose asphalt getting kicked away in her hasty wake. She wove around the parked cars and made a beeline for the entrance to the chippy.
A group of men were leaned against the wall outside the shop, Styrofoam containers packed to the brim with fish and chips, as they forked the greasy food into their mouths. Even in the brief moment as she darted past them, Cless smelled the nostalgic vinegar soaking it all.
“Oi, gurlie, whars the Con at?” one of them called out, “Yeh auditionin’ fer Wunder Wummun?” Drunken laughter followed.
Untamed excitement unleashed itself upon the shop door when Cless straight-armed it open. It crashed into the wall, glass vibrating dangerously from the blow, barely staying intact. The laughter stopped. A drunk couple slurring through an order nearly startled off their wobbly feet. The two men behind the counter flinched at the ruckus, but otherwise weren’t phased – just another Saturday night to them. Weirdos of all kinds came during the late night shift.
Cless took in the sights, enduring the stares. Dust and detritus crowded the corners of the checker-patterned linoleum flooring. Dingy grease-stained wallpaper bubbled off the wall. No room for seating existed inside. Instead a long glass-enclosed counter showed off their wares under a line of heat lamps to keep it warm. Backlit plastic, faded from age to a dull brownish yellow, with black lettering spelled out the menu and prices. All things signaled the presence of a truly good chippy. If it could stay open while looking so poorly maintained, then surely its food made up for its appearance.
The flickering florescent bulbs annoyed Cless’s eyes, but she had witnessed eldritch abominations. Some flashing light wouldn’t deter her from her goal. She pressed her face into the glass, ignoring all the fingerprints built up over the day, while taking in the offerings.
“Order?”
Cless looked at the worker’s warped visage through the glass. After years of Elos Standard, hearing English again threw her for a loop. Despite not using the language for years the General skill made her just as proficient as when she left. Which meant she was as adept as a seven-year-old. “Fish and chips and curry,” she said, breath fogging up the glass.
He packed the container full before her eyes, actually having to break the long portion of fried fish in half to fit it all inside. “That all?”
“Salt and vinegar.”
He doused the whole pile using a squeeze bottle. A quick dusting of salt finished it off. He closed the lid and put it in a white paper bag. A fork, napkin, and her cup of curry sauce joined it. A few electronic beeps later, her order had been logged into their transaction ledger. “Eleven quid.”
Cless thought back to how much she paid for Kayla’s cooking. Spacial storage put a gold coin in her closed palm. She straightened up and clinked the coin on the counter. Rather than the smile she expected for dues paid, the slightly overweight bearded man frowned as he picked up the coin. He turned it over in his fingers, studying it.
“What’s this?”
“Money. Food please,” Cless held open her hand.
“We don’t take this,” he said while handing back the coin, “Eleven quid.”
Cless dumped a handful of silver in front of him, “Food please.”
“The hell’re these coins? We aren’t a bank. British pounds. Quid. Eleven,” his voice raised while sweeping the pile towards her.
Cless huffed in frustration. She eyed the food, contemplating whether she should just take it. The coins were good enough to pay for anything in the human plains of Elos. Heroes don’t steal, she reminded herself. Unless they’re Robin Hood, she corrected. She narrowed her eyes at the worker. Is he rich? She had no idea how to tell.
Finished serving the drunk couple who stumbled out of the store, the older male worker with graying hair came over. “There a problem here?”
“Won’t give me proper money. She’s got weird coins. Never seen ‘em before.”
The old man adjusted his glasses to look at them. “Lass, you got any pounds?” He held up an example for Cless to see.
Cless came out of planning her heist. “No. Everyone else takes these coins. They’re silver.”
The older shopkeep’s eyebrows rose, “Well, I’ll make an exception.” He quickly pocketed the foreign currency and handed the food over. “T’was a pleasure.”
Finally. “Thanks.” Cless stopped herself just before she stored the food away. The urge was reflexive. She couldn’t recall the last time she actually carried something around other than her magical brush. The door didn’t see a repeat performance, Cless handling it gingerly now that she held her food. While Cless left the store she overheard a whispered conversation between the vendors.
“You can’t just take weird coins instead of actual money, George. Owners aren’t going to like that. I don’t want to get fired for a mismatch.”
“Relax, I’ll put my own money in the till.”
“You think they’re real?”
“I have –.”
The door clacked closed, cutting off the conversation from her eavesdropping. The drunken men outside the shop had left sometime during her struggle to pay, leaving the space open for Cless to use. She placed the bag down and took the food out. Fork in hand, she stabbed through the crispy golden-brown exterior to reveal the flaky white fish inside. Anticipation swelled in Cless as she gazed upon the chunk of food suspended upon her utensil.
She popped it in her mouth. What? One-note greasy crust added only oily crunch. The sour vinegar played the strongest role, stomping over anything that might’ve been misconstrued as flavor coming from the forgettable piece of fish. Maybe I just had a bad bite. The second proved to be no better. The chips? The starch sticks’ soggy exterior gave way to a dry grainy interior that made Cless regret not buying a beverage.
The curry sauce! In her despair she had forgotten the secret weapon to flavor. A liberal coating soaked her next bite. The rich spices livened up the taste but it still paled in comparison to her normal meals.
Did my taste buds break? Cless didn’t understand. She loved this dish when she was younger, often begging her parents to stop by the chippy when she saw one. Now, even with the curry sauce, it ranked as below average if she felt generous.
A sudden urge to slap herself in the forehead came over Cless when she realized the problem. She grew up in Elos eating Kayla’s cooking. Cooking literally infused with magic to be more delicious. Cooking from a chef that might be the most renowned in an entire realm. Cooking that used ingredients literally impossibly fresh compared to the possibility on Earth. Refrigeration didn’t hold a candle to the time suspension items underwent while in dimensional storage. When it got to Kayla’s chopping block it could be seconds old.
The truth was this fish and chips weren’t bad. She had just become spoiled, her palate accustomed to otherworldly flavors of a quality unmatched on Earth. A pair of rose-tinted glasses fell away, leaving her disappointment and a single harrowing question: how many am I wearing. She shut down the train of thought leading towards figuring out what other experiences on Earth had been ruined by Elos.
Cless shoveled down the rest of her meal, doing her best not to sulk. She felt she wasted enough time reliving a piece of her earlier years and lost sight of why she had come back to Earth in the first place – being a hero and saving the spider. She binned the leftover refuse. A small bit of concentration brought a vague pulse of desire leading towards her quarry.
She set off, leaving the bright light of the parking lot behind. From a dark alley a hand shot out and grabbed her wrist. She reflexively jerked her arm back, bringing whoever held her stumbling. They shrieked, collapsing into Cless like a boneless heap. Another person came along, adding to the pile up.
Cless stood her ground under the weight of two grown adults. Even as one who primarily relied upon spell casting, her strength proved to be more than enough to handle the load without strain. She didn’t see a reason to retaliate.
“Whadder yeh doin’, Gayle? Yeh cannae grab ‘er lie ‘dat,” the woman furthest from Cless slurred, dragging the other woman off, “Sorrae ‘bou ‘dat, sheila. Gayle’s a lil’ handsy when she’s sloshed.”
Cless recognized the couple from the chippy. The one who spoke was a head taller than her with short purple-dyed hair buzzed on the sides. A veritable jewelry store’s worth of rings and studs decorated the woman’s face and ears. A sleeveless black denim top covered in patches and safety pins showed off her strong arms as she wrestled Gayle into a standing position.
Gayle, on the other hand, stood just a smidge taller than Cless’s still-growing height. The mousy bespectacled woman sported a riot of untamed red curls. She practically lost herself in an oversized hooded sweatshirt covered in cute animal pictures. Gayle cradled and slowly rotated the wrist of the hand she used to grab. A strong smell of alcohol tainted them both.
“Sorry,” her soft voice barely carried over the constant din of traffic.
“It’s fine. No harm done.”
“Go’un,” the purple-haired woman encouraged her partner by giving her shoulders a loving squeeze.
“Do you want help getting home? I saw those blokes eyeing you like a winnin’ lotto ticket when you dumped those coins. It’s dangerous to be alone this late.”
Cless smiled at the proposal, heartened to hear that complete strangers would be willing to go out of their way. The problem stemmed from the fact that heroes didn’t hang out with unpowered individuals while they were on duty. At any other time she might enjoy getting to know this couple, perhaps even becoming friends, but their presence deterred the action Cless craved.
“No thanks. I’ll be fine.” Cless answered.
“Ya sure?”
“Yea, have a good night you two.”
She walked away, down the dark alley in the direction the last ping of desire signaled. Behind her, footsteps crunched loose bits of gravel. Cless picked up her pace. The footsteps matched her. She slowed and turned, “Really, I’ll be okay.”
“Wer’in same direction. Pay us no mind.”
Cless could barely make out the taller woman’s smirk in the dim. The pair hadn’t stopped walking. Their gait seemed steady, a far cry from the drunken stumbling earlier, not even leaning on one another for support. Cless turned and ran. A brief, shrill whistle came from behind. In front, three silhouetted figures blocked off the end of the alleyway and started closing in.
Cless put her back to a wall to keep an eye on both directions. “What’s going on?”
“Seems the danger arrived,” the punk girl flicked open a switch blade.
“Really? All of you? Here?” Cless’s heart beat faster in excitement. She had to remind herself to not become overconfident. William would scold her otherwise. Her head swiveled back and forth, watching both sides approach.
“Yes, now drop the money.”
“This isn’t how it was supposed to go. I wanted to help other people.”
“Help us by paying up.” “C’mon, girlie, we dun wanna hurtcha.”
“I think I’ll go now.” Cless casually walked towards the three men blocking her path.
One of the sobered thugs reached out to grab her, “No coins, no passage.”
Cless turned the meaty hand aside with an open palm of her own. She scoffed. The man clearly didn’t know how to grapple properly. He didn’t use his size and weight advantage, instead just stretching his limb out carelessly and leaving himself in a less mechanically advantageous position. A quick hop and she was already out of range, past the blockade.
The man looked flustered and confused at how easily he had been rebuffed. “Grab ‘er.”
The open alley stretched out before Cless. She could easily run at this point, assuming none of them had a gun or other ranged weapon to strike her down. But she turned back.
While her quick footwork dodged lunging tackles, she took the time to think more critically about the situation. She supposed if they focused on her, then these people they couldn’t prey upon someone more vulnerable. They also provided a unique opportunity to spar against level zeroes.
The spar here would be a far cry from what happened in the depths below Ravenhall where William taught. Everything short of lethal blows were permitted, even expected, from the participants. Each round left the fighters mangled and bleeding. Wounds seen in only the ghastliest of emergency departments stained the ground red with blood.
On Earth recovery time from such gruesome battles would measure in months. Healing magic cheated. It unlocked the ability to not need to hold back. Mere minutes mended even the gnarliest of flesh wounds and broken bones.
Cless couldn’t afford to be so cruel here. She held back her magic and never struck them. Instead her quick hands redirected their own momentum. Her legs and opponents’ own clumsiness provided the only obstacles needed to send them tumbling. Each time they fell they were a little slower to rise. A little more tired. A little more scraped and bruised.
Gayle pulled out a cell phone. Cless identified the true threat. Weaving around the uncoordinated attacks she snatched the device right out of the mousy woman’s hands. “No proof.”
“Oi!” the theft riled up the punk. Up until that point the two women of the group seemed content to let the men handle the dirty work of subjugation. Now the purple-haired woman rushed into the fray yelling out, “Take ‘er out!”
She swept her blade in wide deadly arcs, forcing Cless to dodge back. Back into the range of the three she had bypassed to get the phone. A chaos of limbs attacked Cless from all sides. No longer did they simply try to grab her. Fists curled into deadly bludgeoning weapons.
Cless twisted below the first blow aimed at her left shoulder. Her left arm followed through with the motion, deflecting the fist previously going for the back of her skull. The final man’s attack impacted the displaced fist with a solid crack causing both to groan as their knuckles impacted one another. Cless raised her right arm into a cross guard while sinking even deeper down. The woman’s knife edge dulled itself on the hardened magical leather of Cless’s bracer leaving not a single mark.
She kicked off backwards, shoulder checking the unbalanced man’s hip. He spun out of the way allowing Cless to break free of the deadly encirclement. She sprang to full height, squaring up for the continuation.
“What are you?” the punk asked.
Exhilaration flooded Cless. Blood roared in her ears. She understood Ilea more now. This up close and personal fighting, a far cry from her typical style, lent itself towards heart-pounding action. Just fractions of a second to predict the best course. The high of adrenaline had her giggling. “Just a girl from London.”
“Right. And I’m the template for prim and proper.”
A sudden tug of despair brought Cless out of the moment. She followed the pull with her senses, glancing backward. Pretending to check the time on the phone, Cless opened the camera app. “Cheers!”
A bright flash blinded the gang. Cless put the phone on the ground for them to recover. A jumping start to her flight brought her out of the alleyway onto a roof. Fate’s bridge to the spider oozed frenetic desperation. No more time for fun.