The Headmaster knew very well, as she swept her kids out the side of the northern building, that it would be the last time she’d ever see their cheeky faces.

She wished she had more time with them. She wished she could’ve explained what was going on to them. She wished she could’ve protected them properly like the teacher she was—but, knowing them, they’d probably figured out everything they needed to know about the Magicicada Witch that’d barged into their academy already.

If nobody else, Zora had noticed. Her staying behind wasn’t meaningless. Even if she died here, Nona wouldn’t get the wand back, and every minute she could buy those stupid kids to get as far away as possible would be more years drawn out in this game of cat and mouse. No matter how many mages and children she had to sacrifice, she couldn’t let the Magicicada Witches get their wands back. Amadeus Academy was created for the sole purpose of preventing them from becoming truly invincible, because as long as one of those wands were still out there, humanity could defeat them.

Her children who’d survived the magicicada system integrations could defeat them.

She just wouldn’t get to see it.

…

But she couldn’t deny, as she gasped and heaved for breath, that she did hate the bug fluttering down from the hole in the ceiling with every fibre of her being.

For the longest time, she’d wanted to be the one to kill the Witches.

Now the Witch was meandering towards her, from the very end of the chamber, and they were only twenty strides apart.

The Witch’s Swarmblood Aura—her killing pressure—was quite palpable.

“... Where’s my wand that’s worth more than a thousand human lives, old lady?” Nona said, her voice sulky and petulant. The Headmaster was still leaning against the wall, clutching her bloody stomach—she’d sustained more than her fair share of injuries fighting the Witch earlier—but still she managed to groan and stand up straight. So what if blood was trickling down her sides, down her throat, down her right eye?

She had nothing left to lose, so she began meandering forward as well, dragging her sword behind her.

One stride at a time for the two of them—contact in ten.

She began counting.

“Some things don’t belong in childish hands,” she whispered. “I would say that you, too, certainly don’t belong here.”

One. The cobbled walls shivered and began folding inwards, stone grinding against stone, closing around Nona.

“Why not?” Nona replied, planting all four hands on her hips. “I’m already here, though?”

Two. The moving walls froze as if in waiting.

“Because this is a castle of learning,” the Headmaster said, “and you’ve never ‘learned’ a thing from all the children you’ve devoured. You don’t belong anywhere but in places of ruin.”

Three. She wasn’t focusing her spell on a wand, so it went wherever which way, sound waves turning into invisible lashing blades that sliced through the air. Walls cracked. The floor splintered. A hundred wind blades turned the chamber into a ‘place of ruin’, but Nona simply scratched the back of her head and pouted, kicking at the floor.

“That’s not true! They’re never ruined when I first get there!” Nona said, sticking out a tongue to jeer at her. The cracks halted. The wind blades were dispelled. The dust settled. “And I do like this castle! Really! I want to live here! I wanna turn this place into a bouncy castle! My older sisters are gonna love it so much, they’ll beg me to let them live here with me!”

Four. A counterattack. Nona’s spell washed over the floor, softening it, stretching it, the wood twisting and rising and threatening to throw the Headmaster off her feet.

But the Headmaster’s voice cut through. “Wanting does not make it so,” she said. The bouncy floor froze mid-motion, then flattened back in place. “And do be careful, bug. You’re still in my academy. The only person allowed to wreck the place is me… and maybe my kids. Sometimes. But certainly not you.”

Five. Nona paused for a moment, humming as she looked around at the chamber. The Headmaster had casted a spell to keep the walls and floor as rigid as possible so neither of them could change the terrain anymore. Of course, Nona could probably overwhelm the spell with one of her own, but if she had one weakness, it was the fact that she herself embodied the voices she liked to mimic—she was a child in heart and mind, and that meant, of the three Magicicada Witches, she was the easiest to distract and deceive.

Six.

Before Nona could do anything rash, the Headmaster spoke again.

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“Do you remember me, Nona?”

The Witch lifted her head, eyes tinged with pity. “Yes? You’re the old lady! You know where my wand is–”

“Twenty-one years ago,” the Headmaster interrupted. “When the three of you struck the town and wiped out all of our research. Do you know what I was doing back then?”

Seven.

“Researching? Duh! Why else would you have my wand–”

“I was an eighteen-year-old carpenter,” she said, her tone even, “and I’d just given birth to my daughter back then, so when you eventually chanced upon my home—and didn’t find my daughter—you spared me. You didn’t kill me.”

Nona curled her lips, smiling with a flicker of doubt. “Why’d I do that? Damnit! I should’ve just killed you back then! I wouldn’t have had to spend the next twenty years running around–”

“Because you are ‘Fate Spinner’ Nona, she who devours only the voices of children,” she whispered. “And in your eyes, a mother is a child no longer. Though I was only eighteen back then, and I’m barely forty now. I’m not quite sure why the kids in the academy call me ‘old lady’ or ‘grandma’, but I thought you’d be able to explain that to me.”

“...”

“So you left me alive, and you devoured my younger siblings,” she continued. “All six of them. But you don’t remember even a single one of their names, do you?”

Eight.

“For all you bugs do to become more and more human-like—dressing up like us, talking like us, acting like us—I have yet to meet a single bug to whom acts of pleasure are not the passion to which all others are subordinates,” she finished, and now they were in melee distance of each other. She could skip and hop forward, bop Nona on the nose, and bounce right back in a single stride. “Which is why all you do is say the same drivel over and over again. ‘Where is my wand, Headmistress Sarius’? ‘I want my wand back, Headmistress Sarius’? If you understand what being human is really about, then you wouldn’t even have bothered trying to talk from the moment I set Yanli upon you.”

Nine.

“Do you even think I would relinquish you the pleasure of forcing the words out of my mouth?” she sneered, unfazed by the amber glow in Nona’s eyes. “Think and think again, bug. From nothing comes nothing, and the Swarm will never have anything.

“This isn’t my story, or the story of the Magicicada Mages. We’re old. We’re relegated to the background.

“This is their story.”

Then she tightened every muscle in her body, whipping her sword forward with a ‘strike’ cast onto the blade—and Nona caught it in one hand, snapping the blade in one swift motion and then stabbing it back through her gut in another.

There was no pain.

The temperature in the chamber plummeted. Her own breaths became visible in ghostly puffs. The floor and walls turned slick with a glassy sheen, ice crystals began to form, and the biting chill spread into every corner of the fourth floor, enveloping her like a blizzard shroud.

Slowly, tentatively, Nona stood on her tiptoes and leaned forward, wrapping all four arms around the Headmaster in a tight hug.

“... It’s cold, Headmaster,” she whispered, and it was ten, twenty, a hundred voices overlapping in one. The Headmaster bit her tongue and tried to resist lunging for Nona’s neck. “Why’s it so cold in here? Can we close the windows? Can we burn the gas lanterns again? Just for a few minutes?”

“You… You would–”

“Curly brown hair, two moles under her left eye, didn’t want to let go of her teddy bear even while she pleaded for her older sister to help her,” Nona said, tearing away momentarily to grin at her, arms still wrapped around her neck. “That was your youngest sibling. Braided brown hair, didn’t want to share the same hairstyle as the youngest, and talks with a slight lisp on the ‘ar’ sound. That was your second youngest sibling. In ascending order, their names were Annelise, Evelyn, Sophie, Greta, Wilheim, Lukas, and–”

“So you do remember–”

“I remember every child whose voice I’ve stolen,” Nona breathed, her laughter ringing like the chime of frost, a child’s delight in the chaos she created. “And they all say the same thing when they die: it’s cold. It’s so, so cold. Can you even imagine how cold they felt, old lady?

“Because I can.

“And I will have my wand back.

“It’s with that girl, isn’t it? That… ‘Cecilia’? With ‘Julius’ and ‘Marcus’ and ‘Zora’?”

The Headmaster’s face turned from a still mirror to a dark, fiery grimace.

“Oh, I got it, didn’t I?” Nona clapped, pushing her back and shoving her to the ground; she wouldn’t be getting back up. “You never had the wand! You always made your daughter hold onto it for you, because… you thought I’d go straight for you! And you thought she’d run away! But then the five of them came looking for you, and now I know where it is– ah, I win! Yes! Haha!”

Without another word, the Witch started skipping towards the shattered window she’d thrown the kids out of, humming cheerily.

If there was any time to die peacefully, it would be now—but something she thought she’d abandoned flared up inside her, and she raised her sword in the Witch’s direction without looking, parting her lips.

“Come back here, kid.”

Her final spell rippled out, slammed into Nona’s back, and held the Witch still for five seconds. It was a weak spell, a dying old lady’s spell, but five seconds wasn’t just more time bought for her kids. It was a message, and when Nona whirled to snarl at her like the bug it really was, she allowed herself to let out a soft breath of relief.

She was too young to die—she wasn’t even an old lady, for Great Maker’s sake—but somehow, someway, she felt all was going to be right.

The wand worth a thousand human lives was still in a human’s hands, and as long as her kids could keep it out of Nona’s, her legacy and that of the Magicicada Mages would never be extinguished.

So as she breathed her last and Nona tore free from her spell, charging towards and leaping up onto the window frame, a regretful smile bloomed on her bloody lips.

She wished she could see Cecilia and her kids one last time, after all.