Magic warps reality, bending and reshaping the world into something new, or sometimes, returning it to what it was. Blood returns to the veins and arteries, and flesh that was scattered and split binds itself back together again, not glued as a shattered cup, but remade as if it were never broken in the first place.

Eshya’s head, a mess of blood and bits, is now the same as it was, the same as I remember her. Not a single blood stain remains to tell of what was, just a second ago, our reality.

“Is she…?”

“There will be lasting damage,” Arduelle says, cutting me off. “Her memories and Skills will likely be gone, though perhaps your new devices can help with the latter…”

Her expression turns thoughtful as she considers Eshya’s sleeping body on the ground before her. Focusing all my senses, each one adapted to be stronger, I can feel the warmth radiating from her body and the shallow breathing from her chest.

“She’s alive?” Vii asks, swooping in low to join us.

“She’s alive,” Arduelle says, “but she’ll need time to recover. She will have lost her memories, possibly all of them.”

“You said that you’d protect us…” I say.

“I have, she’d be dead if I hadn’t come,” Arduelle says. “You should appreciate the risks I’ve taken in coming here at all. The welfare officers cannot know that I’m at all involved in the corruption of one of their own, what you’ve done to Adler is… quite the issue and I cannot be seen as party to it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Adler asks, stepping up to us and checking on Eshya.

“It means that I’m not willing to teleport you away as things are,” Arduelle replies. “You need to make your own escape and make it as obvious as possible that I’m uninvolved.”

“Eshya is hurt and you’re…” I grit my teeth and push down the emotions raging inside. This is not the time for an emotional outburst. “Do we have time to recover?”

“No.”

“Eshya?”

“I’ll take her, but only so long as you agree to this plan,” She says. “The officers need to see you escape without my support. In other words, you’ll be making a fuss and stealing a ship.”

“Fine, just take her somewhere safe.”

Arduelle waits for not a moment longer, taking Eshya away and leaving the rest of us in the bloodied training grounds. Our teacher still lies here as chunks of flesh and fur and scattered ash, there is no reason to check if he still lives the magic in him dead and gone. The welfare officer, still unconscious, is slowly drowning in the puddle of blood left behind.

“Kyra…” Adler whispers, her hands trembling as she touches the spot where Eshya was lying. The spike that killed her is gone, the blood that was spilt is gone, and Eshya is now… she’s safe.

“She’s fine,” I reply. “She has to be.”

“Arduelle said that there will be memory loss,” Vii squeaks. “Not may be, or could have, will be. She’s not okay.”

“She’s okay!” I shout, turning on Vii. “We need to focus. Apparently, our divine backer needs us to run some interference, or else that god-king will find us and crush us. We need to protect this hiding spot for all of our sakes.”

I clench my hands into fists, burying my worries. She’s alive, whatever else has happened, we’ll figure it out between us. So long as we’re all alive, everything else can be sorted out with time.

I just need to make sure that we have that time.

“Adler, how will the welfare officers respond?” I ask, getting her attention and gripping her shoulder hard. She shudders but turns to address me, her eyes watering but her vision focused.

“Wild beasts on the loose…” Adler says, taking a deep breath and focusing. “They’ll gather soldiers and hunters to subdue us and kill us. The welfare officers themselves will become involved in the violence if they must, but it isn’t their primary duty. This takes priority, so we can expect them to gather some decent forces even if they’re short on hands, but… but there’s a good chance we can handle it.”

“How do you mean?” I ask.

“You know that the Unified States are losing worlds to wild beasts, right?” she says, her breathing controlled as she holds back her surging emotions. The mess that writhes inside of her is somewhat different to my own, but a twisted reflection of the same worry and pain. We both suffer quietly and focus on our work.

“I know,” I say. “Like the world that we crashed into, before coming here.”

“Yes, the wild beasts become too much to handle and the world decays. This happens because there are too few combat experts capable of dealing with such a situation. The people living there, as a result, take to violence in order to survive against the beasts and get labelled beasts themselves.

“The higher-ranking welfare officers eventually dictate that the world is lost, and we pull out our resources. Now we know, through Arduelle, that these worlds are marked for destruction. That god-king will sweep through and deal with it himself.”

“One of our goals is to avoid that,” I say, nodding to her thoughts. “The other is to leave without implicating the dungeons in any of this, otherwise it’ll end the same, with this world abandoned and marked for destruction.”

“We’ll have to fight back the army that the welfare officers gather, but not too successfully,” Adler says, sniffling a little as she wipes her eyes, struggling to maintain her focus.

“We… we fight off the army and steal a ship while leaving the welfare officers confident that there is no more significant threat left in this world,” I say.

“I might be able to help with the ship,” Vii says, waving a wing uncertainly. “My magic will be useful for it, right? I can’t do much with it yet, but maybe it’ll be enough?”

“We need to know the enchantments,” I say. “Vii, contact Ria. We’ll need her help getting the enchantments on the ship working right. Adler, contact the people here on the surface that we’re wanting to evacuate. We’ll take them with us, relying on Arduelle will only end in more trouble for us all.

“I’ll find us a place to hide out for a few hours while we locate a ship, figure out where our enemy is and what forces they’ve got. We can make a better plan once we know that much. Do you have any thoughts?”

“Where do I put everyone?” Adler asks. “With the kids, we just recruited there’s more than a few dozen. Are they joining us at the port, or what?”

“No, that’s too dangerous and too obvious,” I say, running through places we could hide them. “Bring them to the second floor of the main building. We can board them from the rooftop quickly enough, and it’s central enough that they can move somewhere else if they must.”

“The ship?” Adler asks.

“Already looking for one,” I reply. “Let’s get moving, we won’t have long before they start coming for us.”

“What about him?” Vii asks, waving at the unconscious welfare officer. I’m tempted to free him, but I hold myself back. They shouldn’t be aware of my abilities yet, not the specifics of how I pull collars off, and I can’t give that away just yet.

“Leave him, he’s not that dangerous to us anyway,” I say, stepping over the ashes of my past teacher. My guts twist, the memories of him as a decent person contrasting with the memory of what he just did to Eshya.

I’m just not ready to unpack it all.

Good thing I’m paying for a therapist, I’m going to make her work for her money.

The streets beyond the training grounds are unchanged. A few scattered combat students take notice of us and, most run for their lives at the very sight of us, but the girl who was about to be collared is here too and she rushes toward us, instead.

“Can I still…?”

“Come along, things are just about to get exciting, and you’ll be much safer with us,” I say. As someone marked as a beast, this entire world will soon turn against her the same as us, no matter what battles we’re about to leap into, she truly is safer with us.

Even though we’re splattered with blood and racing through the streets, the other students don’t treat us any different to how they would have before. It’s not to say that we don’t gather their attention, we do, but they just see us the same as they see the rest of the combat students. At least when they’re aware of that fact.

It’s a little surreal.

We just started a war with these people, and they don’t even see it, they can’t recognise it. Then again, I suppose we’re back to the point of cells in a body again. These students are just small cells growing to replace some of the exhausted workers in the various organs of this great beast. They don’t need to know about bacteria, viruses, or fangs and teeth. It’s not their role here.

They’ll learn and serve as part of this titanic beast that we call civilisation.

My own people aren’t any different. If we could offer the same safety and security, these people would accept just about any civilisation that claims them. They would bow when needed and keep working at their own careers, not because they cannot care, but because it’s simply the way civilisation works.

Most people aren’t rebels, they aren’t prepared to kill and die for the sake of freedom. Even Eshya was the same… Is the same!

I shake myself from the distracting thoughts and dive into the nearest shop filled to the brim with expensive enchanted items. There are no other customers, and the shopkeeper is surprised at our sudden entrance, I’m sure that there are few who consider themselves worthy of these rich items, few who would dare to claim them. Which means that the shelves are wonderfully full of dense mana.

Vii is deep in conversation with our enchanter while Adler is sending out messages to our recruits. Nothing ever works out easy for us, but at least we were largely prepared for this.

“Ria is coming now,” Vii says. “Eshya is with Nel, Arduelle has done what she can, but she’s not waking up.”

“Understood,” I say, grabbing a nearby staff and snapping it in two, draining the mana from it and moving on to the next piece of scrap.

While my body moves, my mind turns to the wider world looking for threats and boats that we might steal.

One small fraction of my mind turns towards my bed in the world below. Nel sits at the bedside holding Eshya’s hand, but our wounded soldier looks to be simply sleeping. I can feel no thoughts from her but that isn’t unusual in itself.

I have to focus. I have to see everyone through this disaster.

“There are countless boats moving around the world,” I say, looking through for one that stands out. “They move fast though; we’ll have to wait at the docks for one to arrive or fly in the moment we see it arrive and seize it quickly. We’ll have to take the flight controllers out.”

“Can we steer one of these ships?” Adler asks.

“…no. That’s how the other soldiers fucked up and crashed into a wild world,” I say. “We need the pilots alive but following our orders. Adler, can you get a collar working?”

“I thought you hated collars?”

“I do, but I love you all more than I hate collars,” I say. “We’ll move fast and collar one of the pilots, they should be able to get us out.”

“Understood,” Adler says, nodding slowly. “I can make it work.”

“Not against your morals?” I ask.

“No, we’re fighting an empire that routinely enslaves people. This is a temporary act of war, so long as we release the slave after we’re free from battle, I see no issue morally speaking.”

I let out a sigh, glad to have her support. Vii is over by the store attendant, talking to her to keep her from running out and calling for the officers, but she quickly turns back to us with a shout.

“There’s a bit of a problem,” Vii says, her eyes wide open. “People are getting messages from the welfare officers, telling them to gather together in the courtyards and public fields. Something is happening!”

“I’m not familiar with any protocol like that,” Adler says, her brow creasing.

I check in with Sedena and Gale, taking in the world around them and spying on my enemy. The officers are gathered together in the one room, their leader wearing a serious expression as he waits, for what I’m not sure.

At least, I’m not sure until the air above them warps. The air shimmers, giving way to the magic that changes reality bringing something over from another realm, something larger than any ship I’ve ever seen.

Reality changes as magic trembles in the skies above and in the place of empty air, now floats a city-sized crystalline tree. Its vast roots have taken the shape of a bowl, and the branches are wound together into a similar shape.

It looks something like an egg, filled with spires and buildings of all kinds. It shines brightly from the refracted lights.

Standing atop the vessel is an army, not nearly as large as such a city deserves, but large enough to be trouble. Thousands of warriors stand at the ready, and dozens of welfare officers beside them.

“Do you think they’re here for us?” I ask, peering at the same ship through the glass storefront.

“I found us a ship…” Vii says, her voice a trembling whisper and her smile warped by the difficult emotions flooding through her.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 24,824 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 12,340 / 30,271 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (Adapted)

-Nail Shifters (Adapted)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (Adapted)

-Layered Space Muscles (Adapted)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (Adapted)

-Repulsive Skin (Adapted)

-Prehensile hair (Adapted)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (Adapted)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

-Mana Drive (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Functional)

-Mana surge movement (Functional)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Functional)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)