A Space Oddity

by J. J. Pavlov

  Vitalis is coming to my aid even though doing that will get her more than expelled. I can see her mouth forming the word Chloe, but I can't hear it through the field of gravity surrounding me. The smaller figure next to her has two curved horns growing from near the top of her head, and there's only one person who looks like that in the academy: Lenoly.

  "Stop!" I try to shout, but my voice doesn't leave the circle's area of effect.

  Stretching my arm along the ground like an ameba, I put as much thought into maintaining its form as possible. If I don't get out of here right now, there's no telling what will happen to those two. I just need a part of me to leave this circle, then I can pull my entire mass out through it just as I have done earlier with my severed head. They only need to hold out until then.

  Slowly moving toward the edge of the circle, I watch as Astrid's clothes light on fire from Lenoly's spell. The latter's clothes are also ablaze, and for a moment, I'm led to think that they hit each other at the same time. But when I see that the tips of her two horns burn like torches, I realize that it's the bakari tribal magic that allows her to clad herself in flames. Each step of hers leaves a burning footprint as she swings her staff around to send out a wave of heat toward Bjorndal.

  But even as the earth professor's entire body catches on fire, he doesn't stop his incantation and stomps his foot forward one after the other. This is most definitely a spell that could destroy me, but I'm so close to reaching the edge.

  Just as he's about to activate it, an icicle pierces his arm from the side. It was shot by Vitalis again, but it's not a fatal hit. But that moment of delay is enough for my tentacle to finally escape the gravity well. In an instant, I pull my entire mass through that little thread of hope and reform my body outside the circle, leaving behind an empty shell. It crumples under the gravity before the earth cracks into countless rock shards that churn like hot water. They cut the shell into tiny pieces and swallow it into the earth's embrace.

  Bjorndal turns toward me with an expression of disbelief, which quickly makes way for regret from knowing that, in his condition, he can't cast another spell. The effect of the flames he's engulfed in finally catch up to him, and he screams as his body convulses from the heat and pain.

  From the corner of my eyes, I see Astrid turning around and unleashing her spell that was meant for me at Vitalis. The latter raises both her hands to create a barrier of water in the last moment. Still, the implosion of heat evaporates it in an instant. Then the resulting explosion hits her at full force and scatters her body across the field.

  I stare at the blobs that remain of her in disbelief, finding that none of them are moving. Then something inside me snaps.

  Charging forward, I swing my arm at Astrid in an arc, a blade forming all along its length. She notices my assault too late to cast a barrier and lifts her cane to try and block it instead. But wood can't stop the sharp edge of dragon armor, which cuts through both the cane and her torso, sending her upper body flying.

  I look over at Lenoly, who has been flung through the air by the earlier explosion. She labors to get back up again, and a part of me breathes a sigh of relief. I don't know what I would have done if she had died as well. Just to be sure, I'll go over and heal her.

  That's when gravity hits me again and forces me down. It's nowhere near as strong as what was inside the magic circle behind me, so I can force myself to remain on my feet. When I look up, I find Thorvald floating down from a window of the academy building, his wand pointed at me with a grim expression.

  "Even if it kills me, you are going to die tonight, Miss Marcott." He states, revealing that he's willing to go to any length to kill me. Then he gestures at Dregana to attack me. She carefully approaches me while visibly gathering flames in her throat.

  I cover my body in dragon armor, which is impervious to most magic, and step outside the effect of his gravity spell just as the breath of fire hits me.

  "Pilum Gradum!" I throw my leg around and stomp on the ground as if preparing myself for sumo, raising a pillar from the ground right under Dregana's jaw. The impact forces her mouth closed, resulting in the fire being pressed out through her nostrils instead. She shakes her head in a daze, giving me time to refocus myself.

  As I do that, I notice that Lenoly has raised her staff toward Thorvald and now shoots out a stream of flames at him. But the principal turns his head slightly and utters the counter spell incantation, causing the fire to disappear into thin air. Then he swings his wand, speaks two words for a simple gravity spell.

  The little bakari girl is flung through the air and into the wall of the academy. Her left horn breaks from the impact, and she drops to the ground, slumping into a lifeless pile.

  I burst out into the dragon form once again and snap my jaw at Thorvald with a roar of anger. Not only Vitalis but Lenoly too!

  "Hasta de Lumin!" A voice I haven't heard in a long time echoes through the night. At the incantation, a gigantic spear of light pierces my back, burns a hole right through my torso, and dissipates into the ground underneath me. It ignored the magical resistance of dragon armor and was even more powerful than Hestia's black version.

  I turn my gaze up toward the roof of the academy and find Arcelia standing there. Her eyes are wide-open for the first time since I met her, a radiant light emerging from them as if the midday sun is inside her head. She glares at me in righteous fury, her arms raised to summon another spear.

  "Damn you!" I pull my body together to my regular size and try something I had never thought about until seeing Hestia do it earlier. My back opens like a flower, creating a funnel-shaped growth, and my feet turn into something akin to ice skating blades. "Ventus Fortior!"

  The burst of air in my back is focused on the funnel, propelling me forward at an incredible speed - toward Thorvald, my main target right now. Arcelia throws another massive spirit spear at me, but I dodge it by twisting my body and changing my trajectory. This causes my feet to leave the ground for a moment. And when they come back down, I flip over and very nearly fall onto my face due to my momentum.

  But I transform mid-flip and invert my body, connecting my feet into a new head and splitting my head into feet. With a stomp that would break a human's kneecap, I reduce the momentum of my vertical spin, then use what remains to sprint forward.

  Dregana charges at me from the side, but I concentrate all the mass from within my body into my small form and catch her paw with my hands. My feet sink into the ground from the impact, and my back bends at an angle it should never reach. But I'm not a human right now, and that doesn't bother me at all. Pulling with all my strength and weight, I throw her off-balance and continue on my path toward the principal.

  Of course, there's one more obstacle; Ninlil jumps between me and my target and swings her heavy hammer at me from the side. I draw back my arm and turn my fist into a club made of dragon armor, into which I concentrate more than half my body's mass. Then I throw a punch at her weapon, upon which both repel each other. I utilize the backward momentum to make my entire upper body spin on top of my abdomen in a move that would have completely destroyed a human's spine.

  My other arm extends into a club and swats the small catgirl out of the air. I focus my eyes on Thorvald but notice that the delay caused by the two just now was enough time for him to finish an incantation.

  Gravity forces me back, but I anchor my feet into the ground with spikes, causing the principal's eyes to widen in surprise when I don't budge. He quickly opens his mouth to cast a barrier spell as I thrust my arm forward to run him through with a tentacle spike.

  However, in the last moment, Basarab steps between me and my target with his misty black shield active. Even then, my attack pierces through it and hits him in the chest, gouging out a fist-sized hole near his heart. He looks at me with an expression of regret, a silent apology on his lips as I draw my arm back.

  It gives me pause, as I remember the times he poured his heart into helping the demons at the academy. He treated
Kamii no differently from a human student. If not for his advice to keep her and Hestia away from the champion selection, who knows what would have happened to them?

  I won't forget that fateful day he stood against me in the transportation room, using strange magic to erase my memory of the circle so that I couldn't return. But he wasn't a bad person.

  A spirit spear severs my legs, and Thorvald finishes a gravity spell, pushing me backward and away from the professor of dark magic as he falls over lifelessly. I fly past Ninlil and Dregana before the spell loses its effect, and I can catch myself again.

  No, I can't let this get to me. Basarab is dead now, but Thorvald is still alive. Without regard for whether or not she would die, I've attacked Ninlil, the dorm mother I came to respect despite, or maybe exactly because of her quirks. And I killed several other professors I studied under, who looked beyond my race and saw me as a student.

  Why do I feel so different about him, though?

  "Where is my doll?" I calm down and ask. If not for the existence of Senka, this question would have sounded like a bad joke. After all, it makes me look like a psychopath who would kill dozens of people just to get a doll back. "And where is Kamii?"

  "Safe." A familiar muffled voice whispers behind me, and I spin around to find Mithra floating a few inches off the ground with his blue cloak fluttering in the breeze. For a moment, I grow hopeful after learning that the little dark elf is alright.

  But then I remember that he shouldn't be showing himself in front of people with me, and alarm bells ring in my head even though he should be here to help me.

  "What are you doing here?" I ask carefully, but instead of answering, he touches the ground near me with the bottom end of his staff. The upturned earth - the remnant of Bjorndal's final spell - lights up in the form of the earlier magic circle, and realization dawns on me.

  A terrifying thought enters my mind; I remember the history class when Snorri told us about how the first Crawling Chaos, my grandmother, was dispatched. And it was by Mithra no less.

  In the next moment, I feel an incredible pushing force from below, and my feet leave the ground. I watch in horror as the whole grassy field enters my vision. Then I can see the entire citadel, which shrinks away to reveal the illuminated city of Kongenssoevn before I break through the clouds. My night vision is unable to keep up with the distance, and soon, everything goes dark in front of me.

  When the light of the sun appears on the decidedly curved horizon and illuminates the outline of the planet before me, I understand that this is really happening.

  I'm in space.

  Chapter 74 - Splinter Cells

  The sounds of explosions and magical combat reach all the way to the cells. They're underground, but a tiny window right under the ceiling several meters up lets in the night air and some light. Even though she's a priority prisoner, they didn't consider to put her into a maximum-security room without a window. There's only one guard stationed at the end of the corridor, too.

  "Should we escape?" Asoko whispers into Senka's ear directly. They are far enough away from the guard to be able to hold an open conversation, but there could be other means to monitor them.

  "Makoto is in a battle right now, so I can't reach her." The doll girl replies with an anguished expression. She woke up from head trauma-induced unconsciousness a few minutes ago, but at that time, the sounds of battle had already started. "My ability doesn't work when either of us is fighting."

  "All the more reason to break out and go help her." Asoko suddenly begins to slither off Senka's forearm in support of her point, but the latter grabs her sleeve and keeps her in place.

  "Wait, the sounds have stopped." Senka tilts her head to direct her ears toward the small window.

  "What does that mean?" Makoto's other half asks with a concerned expression. Then she thinks of something. "Can you reach her?"

  "I just tried, but no response." Furrowing her brow, the doll girl considers all the possibilities. There were no more sounds of battle, but she still couldn't reach Makoto. The fight turned from one of magic to a purely physical exchange, she was knocked unconscious, teleported away once again, or dead. "Let's wait for a bit. Maybe the battle is still ongoing, but we just can't hear it."

  "I have a bad feeling about this." Muttering more to herself than to Senka, Asoko expresses her misgivings about the situation outside.

  The silence lasts until there's movement at the entrance to the cells. It seems to be bigger than guards changing shifts, as several more voices grow louder. Senka remains sitting unmoving on the wooden bench - a sorry excuse for a bed - and keeps listening carefully to discern what may be causing the commotion. There are no signs of battle, so this is not Makoto coming to save them.

  Footsteps herald the approach of several people before the warm light of lamp crystals fills the corridor. Three girls come into sight, driven forward by several guards, each carrying a glowing gem on a torch-like stick. They are closely followed by two professors from the academy pointing their staves at the prisoners' backs.

  They are Daica, Hestia, and Lenoly, all three of them with dirty and torn clothes. The big dark elf has a few bruises and otherwise looks unhurt, but her hands are locked inside steel mitts to prevent her from touching anybody. Besides her regular shackles, the angel girl's mouth is gagged so that she cannot cast light magic, and her left wing is dangling down, obviously broken. Lenoly is unsteady on her feet, and she is missing her left horn while bleeding from her temple.

  That is the very picture of defeat, and the fact that Makoto is not among them tells volumes.

  "I'm going to check." Asoko suddenly says when she witnesses this procession of shame and slips off Senka's skin while gathering all her mass near the doll girl's lower back. The Crawling Chaos turns into a rat and crawls through her clothes, causing her to hold herself back from wiggling at the ticklish sensation. Then Asoko exits from one of Senka's pant legs.

  "You could have done this in a better way." The tone of Senka's telepathic transmission is sour.

  Not answering, Asoko scurries over to the wall and runs along it toward the steel bars. Daica and the others are brought deeper into the dungeon, where they will doubtlessly each receive a solitary cell so that they cannot take off each other's restraints.

  "Do not speak with those three prisoners." One of the professors insists with urgency in his voice, addressing the guards that are with them. "They have all been corrupted by that creature, so you never know what they may be capable of."

  Senka knows for a fact that Lenoly is a regular demon and should not have had enough contact with Makoto to have been corrupted. But for simplicity's sake, the professor included her with the other two cursed girls. It was a warning not to give them any kind of opening through which they could escape, be it information or sympathy.

  When the professors and guards leave the corridor, and the door closes behind them, Asoko walks out of the cell and looks both ways. She first checks whether or not the guard at the start of the corridor is paying attention. It is late at night, and only a small lamp illuminates his table, so even if he were looking her way, he would not be able to see her black body on the soot-covered stone floor.

  She quickly runs down to the three separate cells and chooses Hestia's first. Among those that were brought in, she only knows the angel girl in person, after all. Unlike the doll girl's, these cells do not have an open front blocked by steel bars. Instead, they have heavy steel doors with only a small slit for people to peer inside, and a little sliding door at the bottom to push in food trays.

  Deciding that sliding it open may create noise, Asoko instead turns her body amorphous and climbs to the window slit, through which she squeezes herself. On the other side, Hestia is sitting on the ground, breathing hard with the gag in her mouth while trying to find a resting position so that her broken wing doesn't hurt. The room is entirely dark, and only her night-vision allows her to see anything at all. This is an isolation cell.

  The
Crawling Chaos begins to reform her body as if rising out of a puddle. Once her hand is formed, she quickly brings a finger to her lips to signal that the angel girl should remain silent. Hestia nods, but then her expression fills with pain. Even that little movement was enough to stir her broken wing.

  "Hold on, I'm getting that gag off you." Asoko whispers and moves forward but then stops dead in her tracks as the sound of footsteps approaches. There are two people; one is accompanied by the rattling of armor, and the other wears wooden heels that echo on the stone floor.

  Her first instinct is to turn into a rat and hide in a corner, but this entire room appears seamless. There is no time to turn into a bodysuit on Hestia, and with her ripped clothes, they would surely notice if she were to attach to her skin.

  The key is inserted into the lock and turned, and Asoko shrinks herself down before clinging to the back of the steel door as a formless blob, right as it opens. The owner of the wooden heels steps inside with a lamp crystal before the door closes again.

  "Lady Hestia." The woman with the flaming red hair mutters the angel girl's name in an anguished tone. She then moves forward, but the guard outside calls out to her.

  "Don't remove the gag. Strict orders." The man says with a firm voice, implying that whoever gave those orders outranks this woman.

  "But she's in pain!" The latter spins around and glares at the man with her intense yellow eyes, which are half-hidden by her tapering bangs. They lend even more intensity to her glare. "Let her heal herself at least!"

  Asoko's figurative heart beats out of her figurative throat. She just decided to move away from the door and camouflage her surface as that of the wall in case the woman turned around, and it promptly happened. It was pure luck that she was not caught in the middle of it.

  Her other half told her the episode when she had to turn into a wallpaper to avoid being caught by a group of professors. This is a replay of that time, although it's only one professor now.