Chapter Twelve

The first thing Amber felt was the wave of pressure shoving her back. She flinched, eyes closing, arms coming up to protect her head.

Before she had taken so much as a step, the heat reached her. Broiling and impossibly hot.

At first it felt like looking into an oven, vague memories of checking on the state of cookies flashed by. Then the heat intensified and that warmth turned to scalding pain.

She gasped, but that air was robbed from her.

The sound registered next, a bang so loud and powerful that it felt as if someone had just kicked her in the side of the head.

For a moment, everything held, painful, and jarring, but stable. That moment only lasted the barest fragment of a second before she was thrown back and the heat was replaced by a wall of roaring flames.

Amber gasped and stumbled back.

She was outside, standing on the bottom-most step leading into the Administration building. Her internal clock ticked, announcing the time again. Her magic, that weird limb, felt empty.

“Did you miss a step?” Morgan asked.

Amber looked around, reorienting herself. “Oh, shit,” she said.

One of Morgan’s eyebrows rose. “Are you alright?”

Amber nodded, then shook her head. “There’s an explosion,” she said. “The building, that one, it exploded.” She pointed to the building just in front of them.

“It exploded?” Morgan repeated, she looked back and the perfectly intact building. “Do you have visions of the past or something?”

“What? No, I mean, it will have exploded? Uh.” She rubbed at her temples. “I can time travel. We were in there, getting some papers and then it exploded. There’s a girl. Pink hair, I think she might know something?”

Morgan looked between Amber and the building, then back again. “You’re serious?” she asked.

“Yes!” Amber said.

“Just a little far fetched, even for a magical girl.”

Amber wanted to move, to do something, but at that moment she didn’t know what to do. I can’t prove something that hasn’t happened yet.

“I... can you trust me?” she asked.

Morgan stared for a moment that felt like it took forever. “Alright,” she said.

Amber nodded and ran past her. She burst through the doors at the front of the Admin building, Morgan right behind her, took a huge gulp of breath, and screamed. “There’s a bomb!” Amber screamed.

The man behind the counter jumped in his seat. “What?”

A few heads rose in the offices on the sides of the room. Amber ignored them, looking for the pink-haired girl. “There’s a bomb,” she repeated. “In this building. You need to get out, now!”

The secretary looked part confused, part angry and only some of those in the offices were moving. “Miss, what are you--”

A burst of green light flashed next to Amber. Morgan. The tall girl now stood in a stately outfit, deep green and beige, with golden highlights. She looked like some sort of prince or princess out of a fairy-tale. “You heard her,” Morgan snapped. She pointed to the offices with the end of a long rapier. “All of you, move! Now!”

They started to move. Amber stepped back as people surged by, some carrying laptops, others empty-handed. They didn’t all look very happy with things, and she felt some nasty glares directed her way, but she ignored those.

Then a flash of pink. Amber saw someone jumping from the side to the balcony on the second floor.

“There!” she said, pointing. “Did you see?” Amber asked.

Her new friend looked, but by then the girl was long gone. “No? What was I supp--”

Morgan flung her sword to the side and lunged at Amber.

The air was punched out of her lungs and they both went flying out of the building and crashed into the grass below. “Oof,” Amber breathed. “What?”

The building exploded.

Amber buried her face into the nock of Morgan’s neck and screamed as a wave of pressure washed over them, followed by a glowing warmth. It was nowhere near as strong as it had been the first time she was in the building.

Glass and bits of stone started to rain down around then, adding a layer of noise to the screams from the office workers around them.

Amber cut off her own screams and let go of Morgan, who she had been hugging close.

“Are you okay?” Morgan asked as she looked down at Amber.

Amber nodded, a bit of a blush climbing to her cheeks. I didn’t need to scream that much.

Morgan moved off of her, then stood, one arm held down for Amber even as she looked up to the Administration building. There was a column of smoke pouring out of the far side, just around the corner, though that hadn’t stopped the glass at the front from bursting.

“So, you were rig--”

Another explosion. Weaker, and further back. Amber felt the ground trembling, and saw the wash of flames escaping above the building. Somewhere near the back?

Morgan glared up at the clouds of black smoke rising around the building, then she started to walk towards it.

“Wait, where are you going?” Amber asked.

“Not everyone got out,” Morgan said. “Can you help people over to the clinic?”

Amber finally noticed the office workers. A lot of them had fallen with the explosion, and despite some of them being farther away from the explosion, they had taken it worse than her. Because of Morgan? Or just because I’m a magical girl? “Right, sorry,” Amber said. “Be careful, okay?”

Morgan nodded, then burst past the front doors.

Amber moved over to the nearest of the injured and tried to help them to their feet. Some looked a little singed, others just lost and confused. None of those that had come out of the building were dead, at least. “Okay! Those of you that can move, help those who can’t. We need to get people to the clinic!” she shouted.

One or two heeded her words, and that, in turn, prompted others to move. The office workers weren’t just normal civilians, they looked like people that had at least some military training. Once she had some going in the right direction, others started to help.

That’s when the magicals arrived. First one or two, then by the dozen. A couple of them moved to Amber, but the rest dove into the building. Jets of water appeared out of thin air and splashed against the sides of the stonework and reality warped to open up the doors and windows even more.

A few of the girls disappeared with pops or hisses, then reappeared cradling the injured and lost.

Still more, some in doctor’s jackets, moved to the injured and started healing with a word or a touch.

“You,” a girl that stopped in front of Amber said. She had piercing eyes, blue and glowing. “You know what happened here,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“I, yeah, a little,” Amber said. There were three girls before her. One looked like she might have been a preteen of all things, and she had a Seelie with a deerstalker riding on her shoulder.

She’s the one that addressed Amber next. “It’s alright, just tell me what you know,” the youngest asked.

Amber licked her lips and looked to the others. They were being moved away, and the smoke was clearing out. She even caught a glimpse of Morgan talking to someone and pointing at the building.

Things had gone from calm to chaotic and back again so fast that she was suffering some whiplash. “My power,” she said. “It, uh, let me know that there would be an explosion here. So Morgan and I, we ran in and told people. Got some of them out before everything exploded.”

“You didn’t contact the staff first?” the girl asked.

Amber shrugged. “I’ve been here less than a day.”

The girl nodded. “Fair enough. What’s your name?”

“I’m Amber. I arrived last night, with team, uh, Glasir?”

There was a flash of recognition in the girl’s eyes. “The girl that contracted yesterday?”

“Yeah,” Amber said.

The girl looked at the others. “Make sure she’s safe,” she said.

“Wait,” Amber said. “I saw someone, in there, uh, before the bombs went off. She was a girl, maybe my height? Pink hair. Bright pink hair.”

The girl nodded. “Gwen, check that out. I’m going to talk to the staff, see what’s going on. Someone hit Amber here with some healing too, just in case.”

Amber was ushered to the side, where she had to stand there and wait while more and more magicals ran around and tried to help. Eventually, some semblance of order was brought to the situation and a lot of the boys and girls moving around were pushed back behind a line of glowing ribbons that floated in the air.

Teachers and what looked like older magicals entered the building and left it a few times, then they questioned a few people, Morgan included.

By the time the army arrived, the show was over, though not conclusively.

Amber did get some free healing out of it. A girl in a doctor’s coat that looked a bit ragged moved over to her, poked her shoulder and declared her alive.

Morgan was eventually released and came over to Amber’s side. “You alright?” she asked.

Amber blinked, then nodded. “Yeah? Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “A bit, uh, shocked? Surprised?”

“Buildings don’t have the habit of exploding here, don’t worry,” Morgan said. “Speaking of which, they have a few older girls checking every corner of the academy for explosives, things should be safe.”

“Right,” Amber said. “Did they find who did it?”

Morgan shook her head. “Don’t think so. Want to head back to the dorm? I think we can put training off for a day.”

“Yeah,” Amber said. “Sure.”

Morgan led the way back, Amber keeping pace. The moment they were out of the crowd Morgan’s body glowed and her costume disappeared, leaving her in her academy uniform once more. “They mentioned that pink haired girl,” Morgan said.

“Do you know her?” Amber asked.

“Nah. I know a few girls with pink highlights though. None that I’d suspect of being able to do that kind of thing.”

“Oh,” Amber said. “No, it wasn’t highlights, it was all pink.”

“Hmm,” Morgan hummed. “We’ll have to see.”

“Why did they do that?” Amber asked. I’ve only been here for a day, but this place looks nice, peaceful. The forest was... terrifying, but the Academy feels different. Why the attack? Even now, as she walked next to Morgan, she couldn’t help but feel like the Academy wasn’t a violent place. There were beautiful gardens tucked away in every corner, and serene statues here and there. Even the buildings had a sort of Anne-of-Green-Gables look to them.

The bomb had felt alien to a place so quiet.

“I don’t know,” Morgan said.

“Has that happened before?” Amber asked.

Morgan was quiet for a while until Amber looked up to her. “It’s... you hear rumours.”

“Rumours of buildings exploding?”

Morgan shook her head. “No, about, you know, the enemy.”

“The enemy?”

“The nightmares, the enemy of the Seelie. The things outside of the big cities. You know, the monsters. Sometimes they have abilities and powers, and sometimes they’re clever. Some can take people over. Others can sing these songs and convince you of all sorts of things. Usually when you return from a mission you need to stop by the clinic, and someone will look you over for influences and things of the sort.”

“So you think that pink-haired girl was... someone influenced by a monster?” Amber asked.

“Doesn’t that sound likely?” Morgan asked. “More so than some girl decided she really didn’t want her school records from last year to survive?”

“I don’t think I’m in a position to say what is or isn’t likely here,” Amber said. “I think I need to sit down for a while.’

Morgan patted her back. “Come on, we get decent wifi in the dorms. You can watch the news or whatever to calm down.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Amber said.

***