Six Magicicada Mages held the gates of the auditorium in the prayer building, and Nona inhaled deeply, savouring the air that was thick with fresh blood.
Sharp and metallic.
Mingling with the more subtle scents of sweat and skin.
She could practically see the humans’ wounds through the barricaded steel gate in front of her, their fresh cuts and bruises making her antennae pulsate in anticipation—so she placed all four palms flat against the gate and laughed giddily, whipping her head downwards.
“Open the dooooooor!”
Her voice rippled out as a directionless spell, and maybe she should’ve concentrated it instead; the windows behind her shattered, the small doors around her burst outwards, and the giant gate in front of her crumpled like a wad of paper as it flew in. One of the cornered mages immediately threw up a ‘block’ spell, but there was no use. The gate flew too fast, too suddenly, and the auditorium shuddered as he smashed into the wall.
Immediately, the five remaining mages threw all manners of strange, strange words at her. There were… ‘tears’ and ‘cuts’ and ‘slow’ and lots of physical spells, but they were all so, so boring. She stood her ground. She barely budged an inch. She wasn’t tall compared to her sisters, standing at only two metres tall even on two legs, but she was still clad in chitin from head to toe; the mages were old. Their physical spells may once have been able to stop entire hordes of giant bugs, but they bounced off her chitin like rubber balls instead, and it was just sad to see. So, so sad to see.
She should end this now!
“Is that alllll you’ve got?” she drawled, swinging her head left and right as she sucked in another deep breath, throwing her head back—and then she clamped all four hands over her mouth, screaming out the muffled words. “Whirly! Spinny! Squishy! Booooom!”
Her spells would’ve diffused everywhere had she not caught each one with her hand and chucked them at the mages, first summoning a tornado that ripped through the wooden benches in the hall, then hitting one of the mages torso with the ‘spinny’ spell. The man barely managed to even scream as his upper and lower body twisted in opposite directions. Then the third spell hit another mage, and that man’s bones turned into jelly in an instant, his body falling apart in an instant. The last spell, well… she kinda missed, but she wasn’t trying to hit anything specific in the first place. It just hit the end of the auditorium centre mass and decimated the altar, sending shrapnel flying everywhere, taking out the lanterns, the chandeliers, and opening a hole in the ceiling for moonlight to pour through.
She blinked, shying away from the moonlight for a brief second, before groaning and scratching her face and biting her own claws off. Why was she afraid of a little moonlight?
“... Hey, hey everyone!” she said, skipping through the shafts of moonlight, through the rubble, towards three of the surviving mages. They were all sprawled out across the broken hall, bleeding from every orifice, struggling to even point their wands at her. “I have a question! Just one! If you answer me, I’ll–”
A ‘cut’ spell bounced off her head, and she snarled, swiping her hand in the mage’s general direction as she cast ‘go away’. A wave of sound swept the debris in the entire left half of the hall into the wall with a violent force, crushing the man to pulp.
The remaining two kept their wands trained at her, but didn’t fire; they were both old men, and their eyes must’ve been gouged by the shrapnel from her ‘boom’, because neither of them were even pointing their wands directly at her. They were blind.
Perfect!
“Still… as despicable as ever,” one of the men breathed, rasping with every word. “Nona, youngest of the Magicicada Witches, devours only the voices of children… and the spells of children are the only ones you can cast.”
She whipped her head towards the man, darting over to where he sat against a chunk of stone. He immediately tried to whip his wand at her general location, so she grabbed his arm with two hands and twisted it off, grinning in delight.
“Yes!” she said, clapping with her other hands. “Boring adults and boring old people have boring spells! I dunno why my older sisters bother with your spells! Spinny and whirly are much funner!”
The man gritted his teeth so hard, she could hear them cracking. “You… how many children’s voice have you stolen–”
“Nuh-uh! I’m talking, so if you wanna talk, you have to raise your hand!” she said, kicking his shoulder to break his other arm as well, making him shout in pain. “One question! Just one question! Where’s that thing all of you are protecting and hiding from me?”
The other man laughed, saying he had no idea what she was talking about, so she jumped over and threw him out a hole in the ceiling. A horde of giant moths immediately swooped down and tore him to shreds, his screams riding the winds of the night; she laughed again and kicked the last mage’s chest into the stone, leaning into his body, hunching so they were looking at each other face-to-face.
“... Older sister and elder sister told me about the history of you Magicicada Mages, you know?” she chirped. “Twenty-one years ago, on the far eastern continent! All of you were from the same research town trying to create an insect class system that mimicked the abilities of us Magicicada Witches, and you guys succeeded! You managed to copy our abilities! You could do the voice… thing… and your wands, you made them out of giant cicada parts so you can ‘charge’ them with spells and throw them in specific directions! Super cool! Super smart!”
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“...”
“Back then, your town also had three research leaders, and… you know, it’s not nice to steal!” she harrumphed, crossing three of her arms as she wagged a finger with her fourth. “You knew the three of us were helping annihilate the eastern continent, and that we all got hurt in a particularly fiery battle, so your leaders snuck onto the battlefield to steal a few chunks of chitin we left behind! And then you made three weapons out of them! Weapons made out of Magicicada parts, wow! They must be really powerful weapons, huh?”
“...”
“Well, that’s why we came for your town twenty-one years ago!” she snapped, kicking his chest and smashing his ribs. The man could barely grunt at this point. “We! Destroyed! You! We destroyed your research papers on how to reproduce the magicicada system classes! We destroyed the machines and forges you used to make those systems! We slaughtered your children, your parents, and we stole all their voices—but some of you still managed to escape and crawl away with our weapons, huh? You ran to this continent and tried to hide them from us, thinking you can one day make a new generation of Magicicada Mages, huh?”
Admittedly, she lost herself in the rage. Just a little bit. Just a teensy, tiny little bit. The old man was practically sinking into the chunk of stone with how hard she was kicking him, so she clapped and pulled him back out by the shoulders; he deserved a congratulations for being so much tougher than the other mages she had to kill to get here.
“It’s sooo unfair, you know?” she growled, grabbing his hair and yanking it forward so she could slam her forehead against his. “All three of us hunted all of you across the sea, and older sister and eldest sister found their weapons in, like, a year or two… but what about mine? Where is it? I slaughtered your friends in the south, I ate your children in the north, I destroyed every household that tried to harbour a Magicicada Mage, and I! Was! Patient! But where? Where’s my weapon?”
“...”
“I know. I know this school you built fourteen years ago is the last place in the world where there are still Magicicada Mages,” she cooed, softening her voice, lowering her volume. Even she was getting tired of her own incessant screeching. “Your Headmaster… is the last of the three research leaders, right? She has my weapon, right? And do you wanna know how I found you guys even though you put up a pretty glass dome, camouflaging this entire school in the mountains?”
She unhinged her jaw, stuck a hand down her throat, and retched and choked as she regurgitated the hand of a little girl she’d slain just outside the auditorium. The old man was blind, but even he flinched; she started munching on the girl’s slimy fingers, razor-sharp teeth and mandibles rending flesh and bone.
“I mhean, like, what wer ye guys thenking?” she said, mumbling through her chewing and swallowing. “If you were gonna hide, then just hide! Why go around the continent collecting orphans? Why turn this castle into a school? You must’ve known one of you were going to be tracked down eventually. I found you guys because I caught one of your messengers trying to leave the dome looking for new orphans to bring in—why not just hide and pray I can’t find you guys? Why do all this unnecessary school stuff?”
“...”
The old man coughed a mouthful of blood at her face, and she licked all of it off her lips, shivering as she did. Old people blood was no good after all. So bitter and rustic.
“... Because our Headmaster is too kind a lady,” he whispered, “and neither could the rest of us old geezers pretend like the rest of humanity outside the dome isn’t fighting a losing war against your kind. We couldn’t just sit under a dome trying to figure out how to reproduce the magicicada system class for a few decades. We had to go outside and help however we can… and you know, taking in a few kids and giving them proper education isn’t such an insignificant thing. We even slipped medicine in their cafeteria food to alter their immune systems bit by bit, year by year, so they’d eventually grow into strong adults capable of inheriting our classes without dying. I’d say it was all worth it.”
She tilted her head quizzically. “But I only found you guys because people kept coming in and out of your dome. You guys just doomed your own school, and the rest of humanity if I get my weapon back. Don’t you regret picking up those kids?”
“What does a child know about regret?” he chortled, shaking his head in dismay. “I may not have taught any one of them, but I love every last one of them. They call me ‘grandpa’, you know? And when they grow up and leave the academy eventually, either to join humanity on the frontlines or retreat deeper into the continent for a more peaceful life, I know that I have done my part.”
“...”
She twisted her lips. His tone tickled her antennae and made her chest hurt for some reason, so she flicked his head into the stone and clicked her tongue, growling quietly.
“Where’s my weapon, grandpa?” she snarled. “Where’s the weapon worth more than a thousand human lives?”
Somehow, the man still managed to chuckle. “We spent decades running and hiding it from you. What makes you think any one of us will give it up to you? What makes you even think this old geezer here knows where it is?” He shook his head slowly again, sighing in disappointment. “None of us know where it is. Maybe it’s here in this academy. Maybe the Headmaster had it sent off to some godforsaken corner of the continent. This way, none of us can leak the information—you think we’ll let the only weapon that can kill ‘Fate Spinner’ Nona, youngest of the Magicicada Witches, fall back into your hands?”
A pause.
Then he looked up at her and smiled for the first time, a dark, triumphant grin.
“Think again, bug. We forged that weapon out of your flesh, and you will die by it–”
“Die.”
Her spell travelled quickly, quietly—the sound waves entered his eardrums and travelled down into his chest, crushing his heart instantly.
“... Boring.”
Shrugging nonchalantly, she picked up the old man and tossed him out another hole in the ceiling before skipping out the auditorium with a cheery hum, setting her sights on the giant building in the northern end of the school.
She didn’t think the man was lying, after all. The rabble Magicicada Mages probably really, really didn’t know where the weapon made from her own flesh was, so if there was one person in the castle who would know, it’d be the Headmaster.
Surely the old lady had what she wanted—the weapon that could kill a lesser insect god.