Gauche slowly opened his eye before looking at the ceiling above him in confusion. The lack of a picture with his little sister in a gymnast uniform made him feel discombobulated for a moment. Then, he noticed that the ceiling above him wasn’t as close as what he was used to and the bed he was in wasn’t surrounded by little figurines of his sister, nor did he have the pillow with the life-sized picture of Marie on it that he usually slept with actually in his bed.
All of these things led him to one conclusion: Gauche wasn’t in his normal bed.
What was I doing-wait! he thought as he realized something and sat straight up. It had been Marie’s birthday and he had…
He had…
He had lost too much blood thinking about her to remember what he had been doing prior to passing out.
Thinking back to what he could remember, Gauche could see himself going into the local toy store and then…
Then…
He must have gotten Marie something so amazing that her love for him had become so overwhelming after Gauche gave it to her, that it had completely knocked him unconscious!
While Gauche was happy that his little sister had been so affectionate, the fact that he had missed out on what was supposed to be a full day of them spending some private time together was soul-crushing.
Looking around to see where he was, Gauche winked when he noticed that he seemed to be in the room that the nuns usually brought people to wait for healing when that old crone Theresa was off doing something else. All in all, the room wasn’t much. Just four walls with a curtain blocking the entrance instead of an actual door, with four beds shoved into the four corners and enough room between them for a single person to bring in supplies for treating wounds.
Which meant...he was still in the church! If Gauche was quiet, he could take Marie out for a late-night date with her dashing big brother.
He could see it now…
“Oh big brother, the moon is so lovely tonight,” the young girl said as they stood out under the stars.
“Not as lovely as you, my angel,” Gauche replied as he picked the girl up to hold her in his arms.
And then…
“DAMMIT! WHY ARE YOU THE ONLY ONE THAT’S AWAKE?”
Gauche winked as his dream date shattered, only to be replaced by an angry bird that was glaring at him. “Ugh, it’s you. Go away, Marie didn’t like that pet bird I got her a few years ago, and your voice doesn’t sound half as good as anything it sang for her,” he said before swatting at the thing.
“The only thing your sister is going to be needing before long is a little casket. Because the mage who abducted her and every other child in this town led them towards the mountains without any protective gear,” Secre informed him evenly.
Despite the bird’s mouthy beak, Gauche kept himself from blowing her away when his mind seized on the important things she said. “MARIE’S BEEN KIDNAPPED?” he yelled at the feathered rodent. “WHY DIDN’T YOU DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT?”
Secre gave him an even look. “I came and got you after learning the direction the kids are going, didn’t I?” she asked. “Or would you rather have had me get myself killed and not be able to point out which direction she was taken? That way, you could have wasted precious time running around like a chicken with his head cut off, looking for her!”
As much as he hated to admit it, the bird had a point. Although, since he had been about to spirit Marie away for a special midnight date, Gauche would have noticed her missing and...he still wouldn’t have been able to get a general direction of where she went. “Okay then let’s-wait, what the hell are you doing here, anyway?” Gauche demanded. The only people that damn bird hung out with was...
The pounding in her ears drew Sunset out of her slumber, but the sudden influx of cold air that registered in her conscious mind made her groan before she reached out and pulled the other warm body that was sharing the mattress with her close. Then, she did her best to cover everything with the thin blanket Sister Theresa had given her and Noelle. Unnatural cold was countered by the warm body of her best friend, and Sunset reached over to wrap her arms around the girl with the silver hair as Noelle gave a moan in response.
The pounding continued, and even Noelle voiced her verbal disagreement before snuggling deeper into Sunset’s embrace. The contours of their body practically became one, with the redhead surrounding the royal as they snuggled together in an effort to keep away the cold.
The pounding became a crash, and Sunset opened one of her eyes to see Gauche standing outside a broken door that was the exit of the tiny bedroom the nuns had loaned them for the night. “DAMMIT! I SAID WAKE UP, YOU IDIOTS!”
As Noelle raised her head before letting out a scream and grabbing the blanket to cover her naked breasts, Sunset simply stood up and glared at the bloody-nosed sister lover while she stood in nothing but her panties. “What do you wa-gaaah! WHY IS IT SO COLD IN HERE?” she demanded before covering herself as much as she could with her arms and dancing on her feet to keep them from touching the freezing stone for too long.
“QUIT LOOKING AT US YOU WEIRDO!” Noelle shouted before she sent a blast of water at the man, who ducked out of the doorway to avoid it.
From his place in the hallway, Gauche let out a snort. “As if I’d care about the fat butts and saggy breasts the two of you are sporting!” he said, increasing Noelle’s anger to the point she looked ready to blow a hole in the wall as to knock Gauche on his rear.
Which she would have done promptly, had Secre not flown into the room and hovered right in front of her. “The two of you need to hurry and get dressed, then meet us at the entrance to the church. We’ll go wake the boys.”
After fighting off the confusion of seeing Secre just appear, Noelle looked back at the broken door before rushing over to stick her head out of it. “MY BREASTS AREN’T SAGGY!”
Neige stood on his broom as his magic guided the children beneath him through his snow. They were all good little boys and girls, walking in a single file line up the mountain towards his new home. “How exciting,” he said with a cheerful smile. “I just love making new friends!”
Soon, he would take them all back home, and once Baro got done with them, they would be all his to play with. For as long as they lasted, at any rate. His friends never seemed to stick around very long once the job was completed.
But it was okay, he could always get more. That was what his magic was for.
Yuno did his best not to look like he was barely able to stand upright as he made his way out of the church where the rest of the knights he had seen in the village were waiting. He had never really been a morning person, even with Klaus getting it into his head that they needed to get up early to train their bodies much in the same way Asta did.
Not that he minded running a few laps without mana enhancing his limbs to keep in shape, but some of the ideas that man had when it came to training were a little out there. Yuno could only guess what he had Mimosa doing for their special training day…
“Yes! Keep it up Mimosa! You have to have a strong mind on top of a strong body!” the leader of their team said as he stood away from the river that was being fed by a waterfall.
At the foot of the waterfall, Mimosa sat with her legs crossed and hands clasped together, the water hitting her head as it soaked her clothes to the point where the white robe she had on might as well have not existed.
After a second, an amber unicorn with a blazing sun on her butt walked up to the river and looked at Yuno, despite him not even being there. “Awwwww! Come on baby brother,” Sunset spoke before giving him a pair of bedroom eyes. “Don’t you want to have naughy fantasies about your big, sexy sister instead?”
His out of control imagination made Yuno flinch. He reached up and rubbed his nose. I really need to get back to bed, the young man told himself before looking around the snow covered town. Thanks to the sudden drop in the temperature, there were plenty of people awake that had probably just had a few summer sheets on their beds. All of whom were outside calling for their children, probably after going to check on them in the middle of the freezing night.
“MARCO? LUCCA?” A redheaded woman with freckles called out frantically.
“Alan! Where are you?” another woman yelled on top of dozens of other parents.
Yuno blinked when a woman who looked on the verge of becoming hysterical ran up to him. “You! You’re a magic knight, right?” What’s going on, where are our children?”
Put off by the stranger’s look of panic, Yuno took a step back as several of the other townspeople began to turn and look at him in particular. Why is everyone looking like they’re wanting to ask me? he wondered before looking down at his clothes, then over to everyone else’s. Right, Golden Dawn get a whole uniform...Black Bulls...well...they’re the last place squad.
“What in the world is going on out here?” Theresa asked as she stepped out of the church in her black and white robe to look around. “All this screaming, can’t an old woman get some sleep?”
The Black Bull named Gauche rounded on the woman and glared at her. “YOU!” he yelled before rugging up the stairs and grabbing into her by the scruff of her neck. “Hey hag! I thought you were supposed to keep Marie safe in this stupid town!”
While Sunset looked up from the snowflake in her hand that she was examining and Noelle stood there with her arms crossed and chattering teeth, Asta moved towards the stairs. “HEY! WHAT’RE YOU DOING?” he shouted before stumbling a little on the packed snow that covered the steps.
“So quick to resort to violence,” the old woman replied to Gauche’s comment. “You really are nothing but a hopeless brute. Well, go ahead and hit me if you want. But it isn’t going to help Marie any.”
Gauche made his hand into a fist. “Yeah, but it will make me feel better!”
Looks like the Golden Dawn isn’t the only squad with members who don’t care much about anyone else besides themselves, Yuno said before pulling out his grimoire. Sylph was still asleep, or disconnected, as she liked to call it. But his magic was more than enough to deal with one irate knight.
Before Yuno could start to cast, Gauche disappeared in a flash of light, then fell down onto the ground from perhaps ten feet up not a second later. “Cut that out, we don’t have time for you to throw a temper tantrum,” Sunset said to him as she continued to study the snowflake in her hand.
“Why you-urk!” Gauche replied before he slipped in the snow while trying to get up as the side effects of Sunset’s spatial magic overtook him.
Sunset snorted. “Now behave, or the next fall will be from a hundred feet up,” she told him evenly before looking back to the others. “From the looks of things, this snow carries a spell that puts anyone with a certain amount of mental development in a daze.”
Right after she finished speaking, Sylph poked her head out of Yuno’s hood, where he had stored her unconscious body. “Hmm? What’s happening? Are those little kids gone?” she asked while looking around.
“You could say that,” Yuno told her before filling her in on what he had learned in the past few minutes.
Having long since regained his footing, Asta looked around. “Okay, so...does anyone have a plan for locating the missing children?”
Gauche groaned and sat up. “That stupid bird told me the direction they were all sent off, but-wait,” he said as he slowly got to his feet. “Marie has a magic mirror I created for her and told her to always keep with her. If she still has it, then I can find her with that once I get a little closer. The magic in the snow may keep me from making a stable connection to it, but I can at least get a general sense of her location and hone in on that.”
“Okay then, let’s get going!” Noelle told them as she rubbed her arms furiously.
Yuno raised his grimoire, but before he could cast, the old nun came out with a trio of brooms in her hands to toss one to Gauche, then looked around at the others. “Hmm, we seem to be a bit short.”
“I can take care of it,” Yuno told her as he drew in his mana. “Wind Creation Magic: Heavenly Wind Ark!” A few seconds later, the wind swirling around him pushed Yuno up as it solidified, and he was standing on top of a trio of tornadoes that made a stable platform for him to fly through the air on.
Theresa frowned when everyone but Gauche got on the transport. “Now hold on a minute. Someone needs to stay here and get in contact with the Magic Knights. Even if we defeat the kidnappers, we’ll need an investigative team to go over their hideout at the very least,” she said.
“Great idea!” Sunset said as she pulled Noelle onto Yuno’s traveling spell and began generating a field of heat that quickly stopped the Silva from shivering. “I nominate you. Get on, Asta.”
The older woman frowned. “Well, those children are my responsibility...but, I suppose if it’s me, then I could go and see if-”
Gauche didn’t let her finish before he tossed her an oversized communicator from his satchel. “Good. Now, if that spell of yours can’t keep up with me, I’m leaving you behind,” he said before racing off into the night.
“HA!” Sylph shouted after the man on the broom. “You’ll be lucky if my Yuno doesn’t leave you in the dust!”
Well, maybe it is a good thing she runs her mouth sometimes, Yuno thought to himself as he saw Secre land on his little brother’s head out of the corner of his eye. Then, after shivering a little, she flew over to Yuno to take cover from the cold inside his thicker hood as he mentally commanded his arc to rise into the air and follow the older knight. “So, anyone have any ideas about what we’re going to be up against?”
The taller magic expert of their group made a noise that told everyone she was thinking as she brought Asta in close to her fiery aura. “Well, this weather looks like it is more natural than conjured, especially considering how the snow stuck around after our kidnapper left. If I had to guess, he guided a storm down from the mountains and used it as a medium to transfer the control spell to the children.”
Yuno gave Sunset a groan. “That doesn’t really tell us anything.”
“WHO CARES HOW STRONG HE IS?” Asta yelled. “I’LL STILL KICK HIS BUTT!”
“Oh Wow! I can’t believe how many new friends I’ve made. Now, let’s all play nice, okay?”
The strange voice brought Marie out of the dream she had been having, which made her blink in confusion and almost fall over backwards when she realized that she wasn’t in her normal bed at the church.
In fact, she wasn’t at the church at all.
Where am I? What’s going on? Marie asked herself as she looked around in worry.
She was in a dark place, surrounded by a bunch of other children. Some were from the church where she lived, but a lot others were from all around town. She recognized Rebecca’s younger brother Marco, and there was another one of his siblings not too far away. But, there was something off about everyone. They were all sitting on their legs, with their heads downcast and blank looks in their eyes. Why does everyone look so strange?
The only other point of light in the cave was on a table full of strange-looking bottles with big bottoms and long necks. It sat next to an odd machine that looked like a chair set up against a giant water tank with a copper base at its back.
“You all look so sweet. You’ll be good little children, now.”
The words drew Marie’s attention to a tall, scrawny young man standing at the center of the group, dressed all in white and wearing a blue scarf that helped his very long gray hair stand out against the color of his clothes. Did he make us all like this with a spell? Then why am I-oh right, Marie remembered as she looked down at herself.
She didn’t really understand it, but when Big Brother’s mirror wasn’t in use, it hugged itself to her body and became like it wasn’t really there. In-tan-gentle...or, something like that. But, he had said that it would help protect her if she ever got in trouble.
“Just think of it as your big brother when I’m not there,” a mental image of Big Brother said from its place in her mind as blood ran down his nose.
Oh, that’s why I’m awake, Marie realized as the tall young man in the white closed in on where she was sitting.
He took one look at her and frowned. “Oh dear, my spell’s worn off on you,” he said as his grimoire glowed in front of him with a pale white light. The man leaned down to loom over the children in front of him. “If I can’t use my magic on you, we can’t be friends. You want to be my friend, right?”
Marie didn’t even need to look at the crowd of hypnotized children to think it over. They were sitting in a cave and most of her body was numb from the cold. The only thing she wanted was to get out of the creepy place she was in and back home to her bed. “No way! I don’t want to be friends with you,” she told the stranger. “You’re a creepy weirdo!
The stranger flinched as if struck before he stormed over to her. “Shut your mouth you little brat!” he yelled before kicking her in the mouth hard enough to knock her back onto the ground. “NO FRIEND OF MINE WOULD EVER SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT!”
Pain erupted in Marie’s mouth as her tongue tasted something like copper even before she hit the ground. It hurt. It hurt so bad! She curled up on herself and held the hurting cheek as tears rolled down her cheek.
“I’LL TEACH YOU NOT TO BE MY FRIEND!” the young man with the high-pitched voice shouted at her.
Marie whined in both pain and fear as the stranger started coming closer to her, only to be stopped by another man who came out of the darkness of the cave to grab him by the hair and lift the first stranger off the ground until the younger man’s feet were barely touching it with the tips of his toes. “Hey Neige, what did I tell you about damaging the merchandise?”
The other man was much more fat and older than the first, wearing a dark black coat and a white scarf. His big puffy lips were surrounded by some poorly cut whiskers while long black hair touched his shoulders. Although, the oddest thing about him were his glasses. One of the lenses looked normal, but the one on the left was red, and had some extra decoration on the frame. “DO I GOTTA DO ALL YOUR THINKING FOR YA?”
“N-No! Please, Baro!” Neige cried. “I’m sorry!”
Baro looked over to Marie with a frown before he reached up and touched the fancier side of his glasses. “Hmm, let’s see here,” he mumbled before the red lens lit up with magical power, showing itself to be a magic item of some sort. “Oh wow! We hit the jackpot with this one. She’s gotta have a mana level of over a hundred!”
After throwing his head back to laugh for a few seconds, Baro looked over to the shorter kidnapper. “Neige, hurry up and hook some of these runts up to the machine so we can make sure it’s running good. I don’t want to lose a single drop of this girl’s magic power when we suck it out of her.”
The realization about what was going on made Marie even more afraid as the man looked around the room. “Let’s see...any more like her and-what the?” Baro grumbled before frowning at one of the children in the crowd. Then, he walked through them, knocking children to the side as he went until coming upon Marco, the small redhead boy a few years younger than Marie that she played with sometimes. “This little brat barely has any mana at all! He’s not even worth draining! I told you to bring the good ones, what is this, huh?”
Neige flinched. “I’m sorry, Baro.”
“Worthless little piece of crap!” the big man yelled as he grabbed Marco by the scruff of his neck and carried him over to a nearby wall, where there was a hole too dark for Marie to see into. Then, the big man threw the little boy into the hole, and Marie could hear his dazed body tuble along for a few seconds before the sound became too distant. “Now, let’s get to work extracting some magic.”
Because they were having to let Gauche hone in on a specific signal, the four knights had to fly through the snow at a much slower pace than what was possible as not to overshoot and spend all their time flying in circles as they headed over the increasingly hilly terrain with its dozens of dips and rises, all covered in a layer of snow that looked to be natural. Judging by the lack of vegetation or trees, at any rate.
With Asta having a jacket on and Yuno’s uniform obviously being made with cold weather in mind, Sunset spent the flight generating heat to keep Noelle and herself warm as she thought about their current situation. Try as she might though, there just wasn’t any reason as to why someone would abduct an entire town of children that she could think of. “So uh...anyone have any idea as to why someone would snatch a bunch of kids like this?”
And she knew a single person was behind it, based on the spell.
“You’d be horrified at what some humans do to the young of their species,” Sylph told her in a glum tone. “There’s not many of them overall, but it only takes one monster in a crowd of one-hundred to cause a tragedy.”
Asta looked up from the ground he was watching. “Um, has anybody thought about how we’re going to get all these kids back to their homes?” he asked. “I’m pretty sure Yuno’s wind thingy can’t carry that many. Sunset, can you do like…”
A bit of annoyance made its way into Sunset’s mind, causing her to groan. “No, I haven’t quite figured out spatial magic, yet.” It was a long distance from simple elemental manipulation.
And even if they managed to get a spatial mage from headquarters, there was the question of whether he could handle the load of people. Spatial magic wasn’t teleportation. The mages who used that kind of magic tunneled through a kind of sub-dimension that they themselves created, like a wormhole. Meaning that they had to keep everything together long enough to go from one point to the next, which meant the longer the distance, the more energy it took to create and maintain the tunnel.
“We’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it,” Noelle told him.
“The signal just got a lot stronger,” Gauche called out before stopping and looking around. “Wherever Marie is, the amount of snow between her and here is considerably less than it was a second ago.”
Yuno looked around and frowned at something off to their left. “Down there, it looks like a system of caves and...is that a child?”
Turning her head to see what they had found, Sunset frowned at the image in front of her. The mountain began a sharp incline a few feet away from where there were a dozen smaller holes, with a single large opening around it. If she had to guess, a man made system of tunnels existed inside the mountain for mining purposes. Which meant they would be climbing up through them, or flying via magic.
“Whatever, I don’t care about anyone except Marie!” Gauche told them before speeding off towards the largest opening on his own.
“HEY YOU IDIOT! WE WON’T BE ABLE TO FOLLOW YOU IF YOU GET TOO FAR AWAY!” Noelle shouted at the fleeing man.
Sunset grit her teeth and looked at her companions. They couldn’t just lose Gauche, but leaving a little kid to die in the snow, if he wasn’t gone already, didn’t sit well with her either. Since they would be getting out of the cold and any children inside the cave would need someone to defend them, Sunset stepped to the edge of the wind ark. “Make sure you don’t lose that idiot. I’ll see if the kid is okay, then catch up to you as fast as I can.”
Noelle looked over to the redhead, then to Asta. “Take him with you,” she said before pushing him on Sunset.
“What?” Asta asked as he looked back at the girl. “WHY?”
“BECAUSE I SAID TO!” Noelle shouted before pushing Asta off the edge of the ark, making Sunset reach down with her magic to catch him, then jump off while magically slowing down her own fall.
Although she didn’t know what had crawled up Noelle’s butt, Sunset didn’t have time to argue. Plus, Asta might actually come in handy for some reason she didn’t see at the moment, but Noelle did.
Yuno sped off after Gauche and was gone before the two of them hit the snow. While Asta grumbled about being pushed around, Sunset made for the child that was face down in the snow to roll him over for a quick inspection. The boy with red hair looked to be about seven or eight years old and had a dazed look in his eyes. There were shallow cuts and bruises all over his body, but he was breathing...if slowly.
Sunset’s mind worked hard to try and remember what Sister Lilly had taught her to check and see if a human child was hurt to the point of needing to see her, but the not-unicorn knew right off that the little boy’s body was far too cold. She picked him up and put the child on her lap after finding a place to sit, then made to check his feet. The things humans stood on were far too fragile, and Sunset wouldn’t have been surprised to find that he was suffering from frostbite after having walked through the snow, barefoot.
“Uh...can I do anything?” Asta asked.
Looking up from rubbing the little boy’s feet to check if there was any blackness or warmth, Sunset blinked when she saw Asta’s jacket. It was very thin, but it was better than nothing. “Give me your coat, we’re going to have to do something to keep him warm.”
Asta blinked. “Can’t you just use your fire magic?”
“Yes,” Sunset told him before she adjusted her magic in preparation to cast a fire-based healing spell. “But I can’t stay here while Yuno and the others are moving deeper into the mine to keep him warm. Fire Recovery Magic: Phoenix Robe.”
As the flames surrounded the boy, healing his wounds and bringing some color back to his cheeks that had gone almost blue from the cold, Asta spoke up again. “Well, yeah. It’s better than leaving him out here in the freezing cold.”
“You do know I intend to be flying through that cave, right?” Sunset deadpanned. “Like in the dungeon, that one time? I can’t carry you and a kid that’s so out of it, he doesn’t even know where he is.”
Asta continued to stare at Sunset with a confused expression. “Sure you can.”
“And where am I supposed to put him? In my pocket?” Sunset demanded.
After thinking about it for a second, Asta looked back to the little knapsack he used to store the herbs he said had recovery properties and the occasional snack hanging on his belt, next to his grimoire. “Well, this would probably be safer for him. Less chance to fall out. Hey! We could probably take all the kids back to town like you did with me and Noelle!”
Sunset blinked. “Oh...right...that’s...actually not a bad idea,” she said, slightly dazed that Asta had managed to out-think her.
Noelle could just barely make out Gauche on the edge of her vision, but it looked like Asta’s brother didn’t have any trouble keeping up with him. Then again, with that little fairy telling him to fly a bit lower in the cave, she was probably the one who could see the best out of the three of them. Yuno was probably just following the other man’s mana.
Even though it wasn’t the proper time for such things, Noelle had to take the chance she created for herself when she got Asta to stay with Sunset. However, if she made the fairy angry...she knew it would probably just clam up. “Hey Sylph...can I ask you a question?”
“Hm?” the fairy replied before she looked back at Noelle. “Wow, someone’s actually showing some manners. No wonder Sunset and you are friends!”
Noelle gave the creature a nervous laugh and took her response as a yes. But, just to be sure, she kept going. “Listen, I know you don’t like spilling secrets, but...we, as in me, Sunset, Asta, and probably Yuno are all wondering something. And...I was thinking you could answer it for me.”
After blinking a few times, Sylph let out a tiny sigh. “Well...since you’re being so polite about it. Sure, ask away.”
“Do you know why Asta can’t use magic?”
The sprite’s body went absolutely rigid at the question, and she grabbed onto Yuno’s robe even harder than she had been before. “That’s um…” she said uneasily. “You really don’t want me to answer that.”
Secre’s head popped out of the hood of Yuno’s robe. “You mean you actually know?”
“Sylph, what’s going on?” Yuno asked as he turned his eyes over to her.
Curling up on herself even more, Sylph let out a tiny whine. “Look, I like you guys. A lot more than the past few partners I’ve had. Don’t make me ruin what little happiness you have left.”
With the Wind Spirit being so despondent, Noelle felt a shiver run down her back. “What do you mean, left?”
“Is Asta dying?” Yuno said, his voice troubled since the first time Noelle had met him.
Sylph flinched. “It’s...complicated,” she said after a few seconds, refusing to meet Yuno’s eyes. “He’s….infected with something. Something very bad. It’s benign for the moment, I don’t think it can spread through his body in its current condition. But if things change...it will move to consume him completely. And if it does, then there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
The taller magic knight on the ark grit his teeth. “You can’t just tell me something like that and expect me not to do anything about it!”
For her part, Noelle could only stand there, speechless after hearing the news. Asta was dying?
The fairy sounded like he had some kind of disease!
Is that why he doesn’t have any mana? Noelle asked herself. Was it just a symptom of something much worse? Was it contagious? Did she already have it, somehow?
Wait, the Silva told herself. If it was some kind of anti-magic plague, then there would have been a lot more people around Asta without magic. She had lived with him for two months and Yuno had been with the boy since day one. If anyone would have caught something from Asta by now, it would have been him.
“What if we separated him from his grimoire?” Secre suddenly asked. “Would that stop the d-infection?”
Sylph looked over at the bird for a moment and Noelle could swear the little girl was staring as Secre’s horns. “Why would his grimoire-oh! You think...you’re putting the cart before the horse, birdy,” she said in a cryptic tone. “It’s not the grimoire that’s causing the infection. It’s the infection that’s letting him use the grimoire. And the cause of his inability to use magic.”
Noelle blinked as Secre’s eyes became very worried. “But...that’s…he’s never been able to use magic,” she said. “Are you telling me that he’s been...infected since he was a baby?”
“It’s the first time I’ve heard of it,” Sylph replied dejectedly. “And I mean, ever. Across all the worlds that exist. Everything I know says it shouldn’t have even been possible for someone that young to become a carrier. Although, maybe that’s why it can’t spread through his body.”
Yuno cut into the conversation. “So, is Asta in danger, or not?”
After letting out a sigh, Sylph looked back to her partner. “At the moment? No,” she told him.
“If that changes, you can tell us then,” he said before looking forward and increasing the speed of the ark until they were right behind Gauche. “I can feel a good number of mana sources up ahead.”
Noelle did her best to clear her mind and prep herself for battle. Since they were dealing with hostages, the best thing she could do is gather them up and raise a defensive shield while letting Yuno and Gauche take out the kidnapper without having to worry about hurting bystanders.
Not that Gauche seemed all that worried about hurting innocent bystanders.
The sound of a child screaming reached her ears, and Noelle narrowed her eyes as they came into a large cavern that was big enough to hold something as large as the church in Nairn. A large machine at the back with a tank of glowing liquid was giving off enough light for her to see the entire cave as the stolen children were sitting in front of it in two large groups right next to each other, as if it was a Sunday service. There was also a third pile of unconscious kids, who were laying off to the side of the strange device.
The girl Noelle knew to be Gauche’s little sister was being dragged by a young man dressed in white down the space between the two groups, pleading with him. “No! Stop it! Please don’t take my magic!” she begged as he pulled her along by the arm.
What? Noelle thought to herself as she looked to the machine in the back of the room. She had heard horror stories about such things, but as most of them had come from Solid about how he could put her magic to good use, Noelle had thought them as just that: stories.
But the magic coming from the container filled with glowing water and the kids laying on the ground with next to no mana whatsoever said differently.
“MARIE!” Gauche shouted before his grimoire flew up next to him and a mirror appeared in front of him.
The little girl let out a gasp. “Big Brother! I knew you would come!” she shouted before turning towards Gauche and trying to get away from her captor, who reached forward to slap her upside the head and yank her arm so hard, Noelle was surprised it was still in its socket.
“YOU’RE GOING TO DIE FOR THAT!” Gauche yelled at the man before the mirror began glowing. “Mirror Magic: Reflect Ray!” As he finished casting, a beam of bright purple light shot out of his mirror to strike the man in white’s shoulder, causing him to release the girl as he was knocked to the ground.
Another man, larger than the first and dressed mostly in dark colors let out a cry. “What the hell are the magic knights doing in a place like this?” he yelled before looking at his partner. “Neige, hurry up and take care of them already!”
Yuno looked back at Noelle. “You’re a defensive mage, right?”
“I know the drill. But can you get them all together so I can take care of everyone with a single spell?” Noelle asked before she jumped off the ark and landed behind the children, pulling out her wand as she did so. There was a large gust of wind, and several of the children to her left were moved closer to the group on her right before the same thing happened to the ones laying on the ground. A few of the kids suffered some minor bruising, but it was nothing compared to what they would have gotten from a stray magical blast. Once they were grouped up, Noelle raised her grimoire to cast a spell around them while leaving herself on the edge of it. “Water Creation Magic: Sea Dragon’s Cradle.”
In the moment that she jumped down and got her spell ready, the smaller kidnapper managed to get up and call up his grimoire again as he threw hand hands out towards the people in question. “Snow Magic: Snow Cry!” the mage yelled before a large amount of white filled the room and rushed in the direction of the two knights in the air.
Yuno didn’t even bother dodging the attack. “Wind Magic: Towering Tornado!” he quickly cast before a pillar of wind formed in front of him to block the attack head on, sucking in the snow that tried to get around it and scattering it out the top of his funnel. After the snow had been thrown from his wind, it disappeared before it could even touch the ground.
“Just die already!” Gauche shouted before his mirror let out another purple beam, taking the young man square in the chest and knocking him prone and leaving a large burn on his chest.
The man on the ground moaned. “H-He sucked up my magic. This isn’t fair Baro,” the kidnapper whined, sounding more like a child than anything else. “How can anyone’s magic overpower mine like that?”
Baro, who Noelle guessed was the man with the oddly colored glasses, reached up and pressed the side of his eyewear before his expression became one of terror. “T-That’s not possible!”
“What, what is it, Baro?” the smaller criminal asked. “What does the scouting lens say about his magical power?”
“It-it…” he stuttered before taking a step back. “IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAND!”
“WHAT?” the smaller man replied. “Nine thousand? There no way-”
“SHUT UP ALREADY!” Gauche yelled before blasting the smaller man a third time while he was still prone before the magic knight dropped off of his broom while moving quickly towards his little sister. “Come here Marie, your big brother has come to rescue you!”
With the man in white silenced completely, the girl ran towards her older brother as blood erupted from his nose. Yuno dispelled his ark while using nothing but wind to remain floating in the air. Once Marie was out of harm’s way, he pointed a hand towards the larger kidnapper. “Sylph, help me aim, I don’t want to hit anything important. Wind Magic: Swift White Bow,” he cast before a white bow made from solid wind formed in front of him, with six arrows that had heads more akin to drills made of tornadoes than arrowheads. “Surrender, or I start blowing off pieces of your body.”
Before the man could respond, there was a loud explosion from the side of the cave, drawing Noelle’s attention. When the smoke cleared, she could see Sunset standing there with Asta handing off her back while the girl’s eyes glowed white and her hair waved around while sparkling, despite there being a complete lack of wind inside the cave. “Alright punks, now you’re going to-oh,” the woman that looked a lot more like her angelic origins said she should spoke before she let Asta drop from her back and looked around. “You guys have taken care of them already.”
With everyone looking at Sunset’s entrance, Baro let out a scream and ran back towards the table sitting next to the machine that had been created to extract magic. “Oh man, I didn’t sign up for this!”
“I CALL DIBS!” Asta shouted as he charged forward, summoning his grimoire to pull out his larger sword a few steps away from the other man to swing it with the help of his momentum and hit Baro right in the side of the body with his blade. The man went from grabbing something on the table to flying through the air, until he crashed into the side of the cave with a loud bang.
He didn’t get up from the ground.
Theresa found the opening in the mountain where some of the magic knights that had come into town for supplies said it would be. The fact that they had talked so openly about what was obviously supposed to be a secret base was disgraceful to the old nun. If she has still been in the magic knights, the whole lot of them would have been taken to task!
Right as she flew up to the entrance to the cave on her broom, a pair of men in red robes that were more like cloaks and blue tunics rushed out. “Halt, who goes there? Declare yourself!” the Crimson Lion on the right of the entrance demanded.
Well, at least they’re not leaving anything unguarded, she thought with a frown. “My name is Theresa Rapual. I have business with your captain. Take me to him at once!”
“You’re giving me orders, old woman?” the magic knight questioned.
Theresa glared at the young knight. “Yes! And if you don’t take me to him, I’ll have orders for him too. After which, he’ll be ordering you to clean the camp’s latrines for the next week!” she yelled. “Now stand aside and let me in, or have the Crimson Lions become so timid, they cower in a cave from the appearance of a single old woman?”
After a few moments, the knight let out a growl. “Hold while we call for a messenger and see if Captain Fuegoleon will take you.”
Once she gave her name again, Theresa subjected herself to a magical scan from an item one of the guards had on him to prove she wasn’t under some kind of disguise magic. Then, a much younger knight finally came out of the cave and waved her in. “This way, Sister.”
Theresa looked around the dark cave as she made her way through the hidden encampment, her old bones glad to be out of the cold. Curiously, it looked to her as if some of the men were being roused from their beds just on her presence, but none of them did anything. Had the Magic Knights truly become so timid in recent years that one old woman was cause for concern?
The command tent for the Crimson Lions when they were on campaign looked as it ever did. Although they had probably replaced the one she had seen during the war several decades ago, they were all the same. The Vermillion family was nothing, if not traditional. She went inside and was surprised to find another captain sitting in one of the chairs.
“Hn. So your old babysitter really does come and check to see if you still need her services,” Nozel Silva commented as he sat close to the floating fire in the center of the room.
Theresa was quick to recover. “You hold your tongue, Nozel. I warmed your bottom plenty of times when your mother brought you over to the Vermillion estate,” she told the royal with a snort as the grown man let out a groan, but let the embarrassing comment pass. It was an unwritten rule among the higher ups that anyone who had played nanny to you as a younger child was immune to the deference demanded by status.
The comment got an agitated growl from the head of House Silva before he rose to his feet. “Well, seeing that Fuegoleon won’t be getting any more work done tonight, I’ll be taking my leave with what I can get,” he said before moving to take a large stack of documents into a satchel and after working them in, headed for the exit.
“What’s he doing here?” Theresa asked.
Fuegoleon took the seat opposite of the one Nozel had just vacated. “I’m afraid that I can’t discuss matters of kingdom security,” the man told her before offering her the seat Nozel had just vacated. “Now, what can I do for you, Sister Theresa? It must be something important to bring you out here at this time of night.”
“Less than an hour ago, several children were abducted from the village I was in,” she told him. “A group of magic knights that were in town have gone after them, but most of them are so green that I wouldn’t trust them to hunt down wild animals without proper supervision. And the only one of their number with any real experience is a Black Bull that does nothing but cause trouble.”
“You know, something tells me that bringing all of us along for something like this was pretty overkill,” Sylph muttered from her place on Yuno’s shoulder as he kept his eyes on the two prisoners they had managed to grab. Sunset had put their grimoires behind a force field, but it wasn’t the first time that someone had gotten up after Yuno had thought they were beaten.
Yuno resisted offering to leave Sylph behind next time as he looked out over the cavern, illuminated by the light of the creepy machine. Just looking at the thing sent a chill down his spine. Father Orsi said that men out there tried to kidnap little kids and steal their magic, but he had never taken the man seriously.
Although, now that some new evidence had come to light, it looked like he owed the old man an apology.
“Cotton Creation Magic: Cotton Ball Binding.”
He looked over to the redhead as she finished reducing the last of the healthier children in size before wrapping him in a cotton ball for transport while the conscious little girl looked on. “Are they going to be okay?” Marie asked in worry.
Sunset gave her a little smile before getting down on her knees to pat the girl on the head. “Don’t worry, Marie. The spell will keep them nice and warm until we’re ready to take everyone home,” she said with a reassuring smile.
“Don’t you try and use any of that crap on Marie, I’ll be taking her back myself,” Gauche told the woman in a threatening manner as Sunset handed the last child to Noelle for safekeeping. They had determined that a single person in the group shouldn’t carry too many of them, and they all had small packs for hauling around essentials.
The redhead looked over to the man with only a single visible eye. “You probably shouldn’t talk that way around your little sister. She’ll pick up your bad habits.”
Gauche got even more aggravated. “Who asked you?”
Before a fight could form, Yuno turned his attention over to the children that had been thrown to the side. “What about them?” he asked. While the rest of the kids had been a little bruised, all of the kids next to the machine looked worn and sick.
The question got Sunset up and moving before she leaned down to run a glowing hand over a young girl with a blank look on her face. “There’s something wrong. These kids have next to no mana at all.”
“It’s worse than that,” Sylph spoke up, getting Yuno’s attention while she looked over to the machine. “This thing looks a bit different than the last model I saw, but if it really does forcibly extract mana...then I doubt these children are going to survive more than a few days.”
Sunset looked over to the fairy as Sylph came to hover next to her. “Wait a minute. Mana exhaustion can wear you out, but I’ve never heard of it killing anyone!”
The fairy sighed and hung her head. “That’s because you’re exhausting your mana in natural ways. Even natural mana drains aren’t as cold and brutal as ones done by machines. But this… Creatures that have magic running through them need it to survive, and the body makes sure that there’s always enough left to keep going. Your mouth can go dry, but there’s still plenty of water in your body. However, these idiots might as well have sucked all the water out of the children’s bodies and are leaving them to die of dehydration.”
“And you wanted to do that to Marie?” Gauche asked as he turned his attention to the prisoners before a mirror flew over to hover in front of them. “For that, you can both die.”
Yuno put a hand on the older man’s shoulder to stop him. “That can wait until after we’ve had them undo what’s happened to the kids.”
The action made the man spin around and try to backhand Yuno, who leaned back to get out of the way. “Shut your mouth! If you get in the way of me punishing those two, I’ll put you down too.”
“Perhaps you should say that when you don’t have a child in your arms to hide behind,” Yuno told the unstable man.
“Stop it Big Brother!” Marie scolded the man before kicking him in the side with her little feet. It looked like the fact that she was siding against him more than anything else distressed the man enough to drop her, letting the girl run over to Sunset and look up at her with big, sparkling eyes. “But, you can fix it, right Sunset?”
Sunset sucked in a deep breath. “Um...maybe,” she said before looking over to the machine. “Messing with foreign magic is hard enough, adding technology I’ve never seen the level of in Clover…” She turned her attention to the prisoners to loom over them. “Okay losers, you either tell me how to reverse the flow of mana in that machine of yours, or we hook you up to it and see how much magic I can squeeze out of the two of you before you die.”
The threat made the little kidnapper scream and cower, while Baro sputtered. “W-What? No! You can’t do that to us! You’re the Magic Knights. You’re supposed to take us in or something!”
“Why?” Yuno asked them evenly. “So you can waste everyone’s time on a trial? Or are you secretly working for someone in the nobility with connections? Better to just get rid of you now, if that’s the case.”
Noelle, who had been off on the side of the cave opposite of the hole Sunset had busted in on, came forward to cross her arms and gesture to the pins on her white dress. “In case you’re blind, this is the crest of House Silva. That makes me a royal, with the authority to hand out judgments on the spot for things I deem criminal.”
Behind her, Asta gave the woman a cautious look. “Seriously?”
“Look!” Baro said loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “I’d like to help you. Seriously, I would. But we don’t know enough about that thing to throw it in reverse. The chick who hired us had the thing portled in and just told us how to turn it on.”
Gauche forced his way through the growing crowd and kicked the man in the gut. “Quit lying to try and save your fat ass!” he yelled before kicking the big man again. As he did, Baro doubled over and dropped a small, cylindrical object with a blinking red light at the top.
“What’s this?” Sunset asked as the magic item floated up to her hand.
The question made Baro grit his teeth. “Oh, that? That’s just-”
There was a surge in magical energy from behind them and Yuno turned around to frown as a spatial portal opened up in one of the tunnels leading to the chamber they were in that didn’t make it to the ground. Although he didn’t know if the designs of spatial portals were specific to the creators, the one that opened looked just like the one he had seen swallow the members of the Golden Dawn back in the capital.
“Well it’s about time you showed up!” the bigger criminal shouted. “For someone with access to spatial magic, you sure are slow!”
“Oh wow! What’s going on down here?” a girl in a white robe asked as she rose out of the portal to adjust her glasses and look around. “Hey, you don’t have the delivery ready! And what are all these people doing down there?”
Next to her, another woman rose out of the portal. The newcomer, Yuno recognized as the witch they had spotted and tried to intercept back over the capital nearly a month ago. “They’re members of the Midnight Sun,” he told them.
The woman with the glasses looked over to Yuno. “Um, that’s Eye of the-” POP!
The strange woman blinked out of reality for a second, then reappeared in front of Sunset as the redhead finished turning towards her before she made a fist and reached out to grab the stumbling woman’s hair with a free hand. “Fire Magic: Calidus Brachium!” she cast before ramming her fist into the other woman’s chest before the four-eyed girl was caught up in the fiery explosion.
“SALLY!” the witch shouted before the smoke cleared to reveal the woman’s burnt and blackened chest and empty look in her eyes.
The remains of Sally’s clothes dropped to the ground, followed by the woman herself before Sunset turned her attention on the witch and frowned. “She’s channeling mana. One of you guys take out the portal before she gets away.”
The witch let out a scream as Yuno flew up towards her while Asta ran after him. “Hey! I’m the one with the swords that stop that stuff!”
However, Yuno was a room away from the woman, while the spatial portal was still right beneath her. She dove her broom back into it while shouting. “Master! We need hel-” was all she got out before disappearing through the portal.
Not quite sure what might happen if he flew in after her, Yuno stopped on the edge of the portal before it closed in front of him.
“So you do have some information that might be worth your life,” Noelle said as she stood over their two male prisoners they had collected. “Start talking about your employers, and I might just let you live through the night.”
The bluff, if it was a bluff, worked. Baro took one look at the unconscious woman as Sunset collected her grimoire in a bubble and tried to push himself into the wall. “T-That woman is the one who hired us and brought me the machine. If anyone knows how to put the magic those kids had back where it belongs, it’s her!”
Sunset reached down and grabbed the unconscious woman by the hair before dragging her over towards the machine along the floor. “This will just take a second,” she said as she came to the machine and pulled out the device that had fallen out of Baro’s pocket. “And make sure nobody looks at what I’m doing.”
“I really don’t like the sound of that,” Asta said hesitantly.
Never in her life had Sunset known the kind of anger she was experiencing as she picked up the nearly naked woman and dragged her over towards the wall. It wasn’t like when she had been angry at Asta and Yuno for doing stupid things that made her smile whenever she looked back on them, that had just been childish annoyance. The memories of Celestia she still carried made her upset more than anything else. What she had inside her now was something cold and black, something that Sunset had managed to push to the back of her mind since...her family was killed.
Children from a church. Children that had nothing to do with anything. Children who were just...the similarities were just too many for her to count. Her mind tried to process what the woman in front of her had done, but the more she thought about it, the more numb Sunset felt.
The two men, she could understand. Even in Equestria, there had been those willing to step on others to get what they wanted. Sunset understood that thinking, it was weak and without much merit. After all, losers didn’t get very high on the ladder to success, so stepping on them wouldn’t make you rise very far either. Best to go it alone on your own merits, then nobody could hold you back. It also meant people seeking revenge were much fewer in number.
Sunset pressed Sally up against the stone and used earth magic to ‘grow’ the rock around her arms and legs until she was trapped. By the time she was done, Sally’s fingers were barely showing from where her arms and legs were being held. For a moment, she thought about healing the woman’s burns, but tossed that idea away. As long as she could talk, it was fine. Then, just to be sure the woman had a clear picture of what was going on, Sunset put her glasses back on and sent a small pulse of magic into her mind to wake her up.
“Huh? What’s going-”
“Eyes front, or I break your legs,” Sunset told her.
The woman blinked and looked down at her legs, then back up to Sunset. “Hey there, were you the one who used that freaky spell? I’ve never seen spatial magic like-” Sunset hit her in the gut with an enhanced punch. The woman’s head lurched forward and she threw up on herself. “Wha-what was that for?” she whined.
“Talking about something I didn’t want to talk about,” she said before pulling out the device that had fallen off of Baro before working a quick spell from Equestria on it. “Now, do you see this?” Sunset waved the magical item in front of the girl with red eyes and glasses.
The pupils of Sally’s eyes widened as she focused on the object in question. “Yes, I-I...I want it, I...I need it! GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE!” she shouted as she struggled against her bonds.
Sunset put the thing in the space between her breasts before looking back up to the woman as she struggled with her bonds. “Now now, if you try to break free, I’ll smash your thingy,” Sunset lied. The destruction of the item would break the spell, so she had every intention of keeping it around for as long as possible.
The threat had the desired effect, and Sally went as stiff as stone. Once the girl had responded to the threat, Sunset looked back to the chair. “Now, tell me how to reverse the magic drain on those children. If you don’t you’ll never see your little device again.”
“B-But I can’t!” Sally exclaimed. “There isn’t any way to reverse the magic drain!”
“WHAT?” Asta yelled before Sunset found him standing next to her, nearly shoving the redhead out of the way to get in the face of Female Four Eyes. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE ISN’T ANY WAY TO FIX THOSE KIDS?”
Sally snorted and rolled her eyes. “Well, I wouldn’t have built a magic draining machine if I wanted to give people their magic back. It takes it out and stores it so I can use it as material for my experiments,” she said before giggling. “Honestly, a machine being able to do the exact opposite task of what it was built to perform? You people are so stupid.”
“YOU BITCH!” Asta screamed before he rammed his face into her jaw. There was a loud crack as the woman’s head whipped back and hit the rock behind her, then her whole body went limp. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO THOSE CHILDREN? I’LL BREAK EVERY BONE IN YOUR DAMN BODY AND MAKE YOU BUILD A NEW MACHINE TO FIX THEM!”
Sunset sighed before she reached down between her breasts and took out the item in question to burn it, breaking the Want it Need it spell before she could reach over and smack her baby brother upside his head. “She’s going to need her brain intact to do that, genius,” Sunset told him before she grabbed his ear and began to pull Asta back towards the rest of the group. “Now, you say over here and guard the prisoners. I’ll handle the interrogation. We need to hurry before their backup arrives.”
Not that she was all that worried about whatever goons those sun guys sent at them next. So far, nothing they had looked all that special.
As soon as Sunset got done dragging Asta back over to the main group that was still watching over the hired goons and started back to the crazy lady, Yuno felt another surge of mana on the far side of the room, followed by a much larger source coming through the portal it made a second later. “YUNO! DEFENSE, NOW!”
Even before Sylph had called out to him, the young man raised his grimoire and had begun casting. “Wind Magic: Towering Tornado!” Not even a second after his spell took shape, there was a mass of flashes that lit up the cavern as a dozen shards of light with four lines each running through them collided with his spell and were thrown to the sides rather than sucked up.
It was the first time he had ever seen an attack be able to resist the power of his tornado even slightly. A quick glance out of the corner of his eye told him that Sunset had raised one of her shields, but the three blades that had flown at her actually made it halfway through before being stopped at the crosspoint where the larger spear of light was met by the first of the four other blades.
The entire cavern became illuminated by a light that was almost blinding before another spatial portal opened up above the man that was floating above the one that had obviously brought him into the cavern. The woman Sally fell forward into a portal that opened beneath her, the rock that had been holding her up destroyed by more attacks from the same barrage that had been fired previously.
As soon as the man caught her, he let the girl drop into the dark portal beneath him.
Then, there was a disturbance in the mana near Yuno and he saw Sunset’s hair start to glow again. “Are you a light mage?” she asked with a slightly giddy smile as her eyes glowed. “Oh, I’ve been wanting to run into one of you for awhile now. I didn’t know the Midnight Sun had goons like you in its roster.”
“Actually,” the man spoke as the light around him faded enough for Yuno to make out his features. He was a tall, slender man with white hair and golden eyes that were framed by a pair of crescent marks on the side of his face that matched the two dots around the center of his brow. His long white hair was done up in a series of braids that were held back by a brimless golden head covering that ended with a cross that reached down between the two dots and went with the large earrings that held red gems of some kind hanging from his ears. Unlike the other Sun terrorists Yuno had seen, he was wearing an open white robe with three golden eyes at the center beneath his neck, with a black background to the expensive decoration on top of a dark purple robe that was closed.
But, the thing that really drew Yuno’s attention was the golden glowing book in the man’s hand, and the four leaf clover on its cover.
“I am the leader of the Eye of the Midnight Sun. My name is Licht.”
There was a flutter of feathers and Yuno found Secre standing on his shoulder, opposite of Sylph. The bird threw out a wing, as if pointing to the floating mage to object to his statement. “BULLSHIT!”