A dozen giant moths slammed into the door, the walls of the staffroom, and made the entire dome rumble.
Zora didn’t think he and Cecilia had enough strength—both physically and mentally—to defeat twelve more giant bugs, so he didn’t waste any time. Turning his sword back into a wand and then sticking it in his pocket, he tossed four of the katydid’s legs at Emilia to hold onto, and then gestured her to jump onto his back.
“We’re leaving through the ceiling!” he said, eyes snapping over to Cecilia, who was trying to fit the rest of the katydid’s limbs somewhere under her cloak. “Leave the rest! You need your hands to climb, don’t you?”
“But–”
“Emilia can carry four since she has two extra arms, so just leave the rest! Points won’t matter at all if we die here!”
Cecilia gritted her teeth, but nodded firmly anyways as she dropped her lute before following his lead, climbing up the side of the great oak with both her hands free. Emilia had jumped onto his back with both legs curled around his waist, and thank the Great Makers she was light as a twig despite being so unnaturally strong for her age—the katydid legs she was curling under her armpits were heavier than the entire rest of her body.
Push through, Zora! He clenched his jaw, ignoring the burns in his muscles as he strained to pull himself up branch by branch, metre by metre. You’ve climbed plenty of trees back when you were a boy, haven’t you? Summon that strength! Where’s your adolescent vitality?
Now, he could egg himself on all he wanted, but the fact was Cecilia managed to scale the ten-metre-tall oak before he did, and they both managed just as the door was broken beneath them. The swarm of moths fluttered in, screeching, their oversized wings and antennae smashing into every wall and cubicle there was—he was just glad Cecilia was here to cast ‘Da Capo’ on the lute she left behind, making the instrument play on its own to distract the moths or a few more seconds.
… She’s got plenty of cool spells as a music teacher, huh?
He shoved Cecilia down the side of the dome as he slid down himself, the two of them hitting the roof of the bridge with momentum, immediately breaking into a mad sprint. Emilia was still on his back, and she was deathly quiet as he heard the dozen moths ripping through the top of the dome, making the entire building rumble again; no doubt they were going to collapse the dome, and there was little he could do to protect the bodies of his friends and colleagues.
A part of him wanted to be selfish and fight back, but… between the already dead and the still living, he knew who he had to protect. It wasn’t easy for Cecilia, either—her sapphire eyes were watery as they ran side by side, refusing to look back—so they had to get Emilia back to the dorm no matter what.
Of course, he wasn’t content being the distraction this time around.
“Strike!” he shouted, whipping his wand out and shattering the end of the bridge in front of them. The stone was already weakened and damaged from the initial invasion, so it crumbled with a single hit, letting all of them drop into the hallway just as the first moth swooped down at them. Cecilia landed light on her toes, but he landed hard on his heels, knees buckling; he had to bite down a groan as he pushed himself forward, ignoring the fact that Emilia was squirming uncomfortably on his back.
What are you doing?
Hold still. Stop moving around. You’re gonna fall off if you–
With a wave, Emilia tossed a ball of sticky red threads behind him, which splattered against a window to turn into a massive web. Neither Zora nor Cecilia slowed down to see what she was doing, but moments later, a giant moth smashed through the window in an attempt to crush them with sheer brute force… and it only ended up flying headfirst into her threads, much like the katydid, unable to free itself and take flight again.
The giant shadows of the remaining moths soared outside the windows on their left, and Emilia didn’t hesitate. She didn’t think. She ripped two dozen more balls of sticky threads from her nails and tossed them at the windows as they ran by, the splattered webs hiding them from the moth’s field of vision, and that made all the difference. Three, four, five moths misjudged where they were and smashed through the windows behind them. Five more moths made the same mistake and smashed through the windows in front of them, allowing Zora and Cecilia to jump over them as they continued towards the west-wing cafeteria—fifty metres more and they’d be banging on the dorm gate.
He slid to a halt and let Emilia off before the gate as Cecilia banged on it, shouting for Titus to open up; the final moth was still soaring straight at them, flying through the narrow bridge with its wings fanned out like blades, and though the gate was creaking open immediately… he knew it wouldn’t open in time.
… No choice.
So while Cecilia grabbed Emilia into a hug and whipped out her wand, struggling to even muster up the strength for one single ‘strike’, he snapped his own wand into a sword and sucked in a sharp breath.
Then, as the moth was about to bowl straight into them, he stepped forward and knelt and slashed overhead at the same time—his blade ripping through the underside of the moth as it carved itself open with its momentum.
Cecilia and Emilia threw themselves out of the way as the moth smashed into the gate with an unceremonious bang, making even the boy who was standing behind it yelp in fright, but it was most certainly ‘dead’. It fell to the ground with its head caved in, its insides spilling out, and the four-metre-long giant twitched for only a few more seconds before it stopped moving.
For his part, he was still kneeling with his blade in both hands, trembling from head to toe as a gasp of cold air escaped his lungs.
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“... Alright,” he muttered, managing to compose himself somewhat as he stood up shakily and turned around, throwing a half-confident smile on his face. “If even moths leave the moon for the flame, we don’t wanna stay outside when there’s a warm hearth inside, do we?”
Cecilia stared at him, dumbfounded, and so was Emilia, Titus, and all of his friends standing right behind the gate. They looked between him, the giant moth, the sword he turned back into a wand, then back at him—and finally Cecilia coughed, ushering all of them into the foyer while Zora struggled to drag the giant moth in.
For her part, she still looked utterly bewildered as she helped him drag the moth in by its legs, nodding at Titus to close the gate by the side.
“When did you learn how to use a sword?” she muttered. “Aren’t you supposed to be ‘bookworm Zora, the most unathletic, clumsy, physically incompetent, can’t-sew-for-his-life boy in school’?”
“The one fitness class I took somewhat seriously was swordsmanship,” he muttered back, his legs and spine about to snap as they both fell backwards, the gate slamming shut just as they managed to drag the moth into the dimly lit foyer. “You know, all of us boys took that class really seriously, but I took it more seriously than everyone else. While all of you were playing ball and trying out a variety of other exercises, I was studying the blade–”
“–bullshit–”
“–I wasn’t a particularly good student, though. Mainly coasted by on Cs and Ds,” he finished, sighing a huge breath of relief as the rest of the kids surrounded the giant moth, poking and kicking curiously at its fluffy carapace. “It was luck, by the way. I’m not actually good at the sword. You could’ve done it, too, seeing as it was just flying in a straight line.”
Cecilia raised a tired brow, leaning back where she sat. “Still takes courage to walk towards something charging at you.”
“You do know I’ve already been chased by a giant butterfly and a giant stag beetle. Compared to them, the moth was rather adorable.”
“...”
So she looked away with a small smile as they traded a fistbump, crawling slowly onto their feet. Zora wouldn’t mind passing out on the foyer carpet like this, but he was still a teacher, and his students were in front of him—Titus and his three friends were still kicking the giant moth, while Emilia was standing far back, peeking out at the boys from behind a pillar.
He gave Cecilia a knowing nod. Their next move was obvious—eat the giant moth and the katydid legs before heading out to look for the two teachers who hadn’t been in the staffroom—but right now, they were both exhausted. And it was already late. They’d put the kids to sleep and then get some rest themselves, because there was no point heading out again when they could barely take another step; their expedition would have to come tomorrow morning.
“Where are the other teachers, Miss Sarius?” one of the boys asked suddenly. “I thought you… went to the staffroom to find them?”
“...”
Cecilia glanced at him and gave him a look that said ‘I’ll take them up to their rooms’, so he left the boys to her while he turned towards Emilia, beckoning the little girl over–
“They’re dead, aren’t they?”
He paused. Looked around. Cecilia was ushering the other three boys to the common room while fending their questions off with clever diversions, but Titus alone stayed behind, hands behind his back.
Zora blinked.
Then, he dipped his head slowly and pressed his wand against his lips, shushing the little boy.
Thankfully, his star student seemed to understand and returned the gesture, racing off to join Cecilia and his friends in the common room.
… Right.
His profile said he was rescued as the sole survivor of an infestation in a far southwestern town, huh?
His lips thinned into a line as he beckoned Emilia over, motioning for her to just drop the katydid legs behind the pillar. He’d come back for them tomorrow morning. Right now, it was more important they all got a good night’s rest, and that meant leading Emilia to the communal bathroom where she could at least wash off the blood trickling down her torn nails.
He couldn’t help but grimace as she skipped over with a cheery smile, walking hand in hand with him to the bathroom. She wanted to pull him inside as well, but he simply told her to give her whole body a proper wash and said he’d be sitting outside so she wouldn’t have to be alone. It took a bit of convincing, it took a bit of squabbling, but he eventually got her to go into the girl’s bathroom alone—and once he did, he collapsed against the doorway with one knee drawn up to his chest, putting his face in his hands.
She hadn’t seemed to notice it herself, but not only had she ripped so many threads from her nails that they weren’t regenerating as fast as they used to, there were also black chitin plates growing across her cheek that hadn’t been there before.
The more she used her moth abilities—whatever ‘moth’ could produce threads—the faster her mutations would take over.
After tonight, she’d only have ten days left as a human.
… But children like her and Titus were all too common across the world.
Sixty-one years ago—Year Zero—the Swarm descended from the sky and took humanity by complete surprise. Giant moths tore through the far eastern continent. Armies of ants claimed the far southern continent. Titanic crustaceans sank the far western continent, and many, many more bugs of all shapes and sizes conquered the rest of the world. By Year Fifty, humanity had been pushed to one final continent in the centre of the world, surrounded on all sides by the Swarm… and although humanity had finally figured out how to mass-produce insect system classes by Year Fifty-One to achieve a strenuous stalemate, the war was still very much leaning in the bugs’ favour.
While the borders of the continent were currently being guarded by the Six Swarmsteel Fronts—humanity’s six strongest militaries—plenty of giant bugs could still slip through the cracks in the walls and ravage the rest of the continent. Soldiers in the Swarmsteel Fronts may all have insect classes, but most humans trying to live quiet lives wouldn’t, and as such, infestations were deadly beyond belief. Giant bugs could pop out of the ground without warning, and within a single week, they could infest an entire region with poisonous spores in the air and pinkish-purplish flesh crawling across the lands. The chances of an average adult surviving a spontaneous infestation was incredibly low. For a child… even lower. Most would choose to die alongside their friends and family. Some would resort to eating bugs even without a system just to gain a little bit of strength, praying they wouldn’t mutate any undesirable traits or lose their sanity in the process.
And Amadeus Academy was a refuge for pitiful children who were all victims of the Swarm, one way or another.
“… Are you still there, Mister Zora?”
“I’m there.”
“How about now?”
“Still there.”
His eyes were dark and half-lidded as he listened to the sound of running water inside the bathroom, the katydid’s last words still echoing inside his eardrums.
After all, he’d once been a child of the academy, too.
“... Nona, youngest of the three Magicicada Witches,” he whispered, his voice muffled in his hands, “it just has to be you again, huh?”