• Published 16th May 2020
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A Unicorn in the Clover Kingdom - LordBrony2040



Sunset lands in the Clover Kingdom instead of Canterlot High

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Page 15: Riot

The wedding reception was in full swing as Cadance rested her hooves and her husband shared a dance with his little sister, since she had managed to chase off every stallion that looked ready to jump on the well-connected mare with her style of dance. Still recovering from her ordeal, Cadance didn’t think she would be doing much other than sitting during the wedding that had been rushed into correction to avoid making all the ponies that had come to Canterlot for the event go home to simply come back at a later date. She could understand Celestia not wanting to inconvenience them, but barely being able to manage two dances thanks to nearly three days of starvation and thirst wasn’t how Cadance imagined her wedding party going when she was a filly.

Cadance blinked as she saw the mare coming over to her table. Speak of the centaur and it shall appear, the pink princess recited. “Auntie, how good to see you,” she said with a big smile when the horse sat down next to her.

“Yes,” Celestia replied before looking around at all the guests. “It would seem that Pinkie did a wonderful job with your wedding plans, wouldn’t you agree?”

After stopping her left eye from twitching, Cadance showed her teeth. Is she seriously bringing something like that up? “Yes,” she replied, reluctantly agreeing with the statement. The pink pony did a good job, but that wasn’t the point of contention Cadance had with Celestia’s decision. “Pity I wasn’t given enough time to recover to actually enjoy it. But, who cares about the bride’s feelings when it comes to her wedding, am I right?”

Celestia took a piece of fruit from a tray one of the servers had with them and popped it into her mouth. There was a very small flash of her horn, so tiny that Cadance almost missed it, but a quick check of the surrounding air showed that they were behind a privacy spell. Their conversation would be muted, and anypony looking at them wouldn’t see anything but two princesses having a friendly chat. “By the way, the guard finished its count of ponies that turned up missing after Shining Armor banished the changelings from the city,” the mare went on. “Three of the five guards that traveled with you were changelings. I’m not sure if they were put in with the last rotation, or if they simply took the identities of whatever ponies were sent in to replace the old guards and had different changelings return to Canterlot in their place. But it looks like that was both the intelligence leak and how Chrysalis was able to build her profile of you.”

“One that fooled even you, right?” Cadance replied evenly. Not that Celestia really knew enough about her to tell the difference between Cadance and a cardboard cutout.

The sharp comment actually made Celestia flinch. “No. The reason I couldn’t tell the difference is because I’ve held you at forearms length since…” she trailed off and sighed before hanging her head. “I passed you off to another for magical training.”

Celestia actually admitting a fault made Cadance blink. For a second, she actually thought the big pony might have been replaced by a changeling, but that was just recent experiences poisoning her thinking. Still, a single sentence wasn’t going to undo years of resentment, or erase the reasons for it. “Well, maybe if I had actually known about shape-shifting monsters, then I would have had security precautions taken to deal with them. Code words, passphrases, some kind of secret hoofshake...”

“You don’t want to know what kind of path that leads ponies down, Cadance,” Celestia told her as she picked herself back up and sucked in a deep breath through her nose. “The paranoia it creates has nearly destroyed Equestria several times in the past. Ponies accuse their neighbors for the smallest things and a black spot on the horizon becomes reason for mass panic. I do not look forward to the next few years that all the phantom sightings and hysteria this one incident will cause.”

“That doesn’t mean you should leave ponies in ignorance!” Cadance told her with a frown. “I had some time to read while Pinkie was fixing the party, so I took a look in the restricted section of the library.” She knew about the towns that had disappeared overnight because changelings had snuck in and slowly stolen away the populace until they could carry off everypony still living there.

Celestia frowned at her. “Those books are for-”

Princess eyes only?” Cadance finished with a glare of her own. “Did you miss the crown on my head, or was it the horn?” She tilted her head to the side. “You really hate the fact that there’s somepony else like you in Equestria now, don’t you?”

The look on Celestia’s face became even more hostile. “Watch your words, Cadance.”

After a second, the smaller princess got what Celestia was alluding to and rolled her eyes. “I’m not talking about Luna. She’s a thousand years out of date and will be needing years more time getting used to things before she could hope to make a proper decision as a ruler. But me? I spent the most formative years of my life in Canterlot, spent the last nine traveling around the world, but you don’t even think I should be able to plan my own bucking wedding!”

“The wedding I had made is perfectly fine!” Celestia countered. “You said so yourself.”

“THAT’S NOT THE POINT!” Cadance yelled back at Celestia while spreading her wings. “You see, this is why nopony can stand you! All you care about is the end, the destination. It doesn’t matter how many ponies you throw away on the journey, how many you step on, as long as you find that one that can save your sister from your screw up. It doesn’t matter that the pony you got to do the job is a neurotic mess afterwards-”

Celestia snorted and rolled her eyes. “Twilight was like that when she came to me.”

“She was six!” Cadance snapped back at her before taking a deep breath and pushing her anger away. “Okay, her parents and their stupid competition with that crown she and Shiny obsessed over set the groundwork, I’ll give you that. But you could have corrected it! She spent more time at your school than she did at home, she moved into the dorms at the age of seven for crying out loud!”

This time, it was Celestia needing to take a breath. “Twilight was my student, Cadance.”

“And here we are again,” the pink princess said with venom in her voice as they trotted on very familiar ground.

Celestia frowned down at her. “Yes, and am in no mood to listen to tantrums after everything that has happened!” she shot back. “You talk about the path to get here, but when it comes down to it, results are the only things that matter! If I had obsessed over that fool errand to track down a dead pony that turned against my teachings rather than spend my time on Twilight, then Nightmare Moon would have never been removed from my sister and Discord would have destroyed Equestria with his insanity. Destiny needed Sunset gone so that Twilight could rise. Because Sunset was corrupt, manipulative and vain to the point of outright evil! She refused to listen to me! The Ruler of Equestria! And if she hadn’t run away, then all of Equestria would now be in darkness! She was a failure that Destiny wanted gone, and it is time for you to accept that!”

With Celestia listing her recent successes, Cadance sucked in a breath. While she had long given up on making Celestia admit that she had made a mistake and sticking to that admission, it was a long way from swallowing the load of horseapples she told herself these days to rationalize her failures as something positive. While Cadance believed in Destiny as much as the next pony with a mark on her flank, that didn’t make everypony a mindless doll, or their failures just part of a greater success story.

“I think I need some air,” Cadance told her before trotting outside of the privacy bubble before looking back to see a false image of Celestia giving her a bright smile, rather than the disapproving frown she had been wearing at the time of Cadance’s departure.

When she had gotten away from the other mare, Cadance headed straight for the dark blue pony standing at the bar, chugging down cider from one of the pitchers that was supposed to be used to fill the champagne flutes. All of the high society mares and stallions that had come over to schmooze with Luna looked upon the display wore nervous expressions than anything else while the blue pony smashed her glass against the ground.

“ANOTHER!”

Her ears ringing from the order, Cadance approached Celestia’s little sister, “Luna, I’m so glad you could make it,” she said before clearing away some of the glass so she could sit down next to her fellow princess. “After that happened with the changelings, there was some concern over what might have happened to you.”

Luna held up a hoof and waved it in front of her own face. “Strange. Two of these pitchers, and yet, I still feel nothing,” she mumbled before looking over to Cadance. “Yes, a pity that I ward my rooms with protections to keep light and sound from awakening me. Perhaps I should lead a war band to the badlands and hunt down Chrysalis while she is weakened to truly give her what for!”

As Cadance tried to think how best to approach the subject of Chrysalis with such a lead in, Luna moved closer. “Do ponies still say that? What for?” she asked. “Sister insists that We-or I should have full use of the modern vernacular before making my return to center stage as to help ponies not worry so much in my presence. Till then, I am to perform my nightly duties only.”

“I think they may still have that phrase in Trottingham, but Equestria at large doesn’t use it,” she told the mare.

“Nuts,” Luna grumbled before looking at the latest pitcher that was put in front of her at the bar before the pony tending it took off as fast as he could. “I tell you, young Cadance, things were different in my day. Ponies had spines and a dialect did not matter to anypony, save the kind that could simply not be understood.” She tinked the large glass with her hoof. “The drinks were stronger as well.”

Since the conversation was drifting away from what she really wanted to talk about, Cadance took it by the reins. “By the way, about Chrysalis...did you know her?”

The question got a long snort from Luna. “Of course, the vile temptress. We, that is, my sister and I, not the royal We, did battle her and her brood several times before Nightmare came to offer her own temptations,” she said before sighing. “Many did fall to her machinations before her plots were uncovered and the creature removed from pony society.”

“So...why didn’t you two ever...well, pardon my bluntness, but why wasn’t she dealt with in a more permanent manner?” Cadance finally asked. “While you were still here, I mean.”

Luna turned her full attention to the mare, leaving her drink on the counter. “Tis a worthy question, but one you will have to ask Celestia when it comes to being past the first hundred years of our rule...if what we had could even be called such a thing,” the dark princess muttered.

“And the first hundred years?” Cadance asked, her patience growing thin. Luna liked to talk, and if given an inch, she would take a mile.

After taking her cider and gulping down a good deal of it, Luna set the pitcher down and sighed. “Well, only the last twenty were we actual rulers. Before then, my sister and I were more akin to popinjays that Starswirl had the other tribal leaders stick crowns on to prance about. We showed up, looked pretty, and did an impressive magic trick every dawn, followed by another at dusk,” she explained before snorting. “After the Crystal Empire debacle, I’m surprised we were allowed to keep our crowns. But then, we were the eldest ponies by that point so...mayhap our positions had become too entrenched in the minds of the plebeians.”

Cadance cleared her throat. “But...Chrysalis…”

“Right,” Luna said with a nod before thinking about it for a moment, then shrugging. “I know not why we never hunted down the vile queen. While I suppose that after Nightmare came and I was imprisoned, Celestia had not the military strength. The ponies of today seem much too weak to topple a changeling citadel as we did back in the day with soaring wing and stomping hoof. As for before I left...I know not. With our apparent agelessness, we thought that we would have all the time in the world to deal with such things. Foalish us.”

The explanation left Cadance feeling...disappointed. A little petty thought had hoped to uncover some dark secret of Celestia’s like she was purposely allowing Chrysalis to run rampant so that ponies would have something to be afraid of, thus justifying her presence. She didn’t like thinking such things, but that didn’t make the thoughts go away.

Still, there were other questions to be asked. “When I was down in the catacombs, Chrysalis told me something, or...read it to me,” Cadance began. “And I don’t know if she was telling the truth, or just lying.” It had certainly sounded like she was reading something out of a book, rather than talking naturally.

“And you are trying to discern whether what she said was truth, or lie, correct? What does Sister think of this?” Luna asked.

Cadance frowned. “There’s no need to ask somepony a question when you already know the answer she will give.” Celestia would reiterate that Sunset was dead because of her own mistakes and the advent of Destiny, though no fault of the white alicorn. Since Twilight had brought Luna back, the nag had become insufferable with the way she spoke of such things.

After a few seconds of tapping her hoof on the counter, Luna spoke. “Was what she said disturbing to you?”

“No!” Cadance told her before reviewing the memory in her mind. But, when she thought of Sunset, trapped on another world, her gut did feel uneasy. “And...yes,” she admitted before letting out a sigh. “It’s complicated. But the thing is, I don’t think she meant to tell me what she told me...if you get my meaning.”

Luna gave her a thoughtful frown. “Might I know the details of this information?”

Not seeing the harm, Cadance nodded. “She told me that a mare I love very much is alive when most thought her dead. Not outright, but...she gloated and accidentally revealed it while trying to taunt me.”

“And what will you do with this information? Go to her?” Luna asked before turning her attention to the white unicorn with the blue mane that was still on the dance floor after the song stopped playing.

The question made Cadance shake her head. “No.” Sunset was out of reach. As much as she wanted to bring her big sister home, Cadance knew that was impossible. “But…” She couldn’t think of what to say.

And that was the problem.

Sunset was alive, or had been at some point in the past.

What did that mean for Cadance?

With the journal destroyed, Cadance couldn’t get a powerful unicorn to open the mirror for her. Cadance was stuck in her inaction.

But...

“I can’t just do nothing...can I?” she asked miserably.

Luna sighed and looked back across the party to where Celestia was, for some reason before turning her head to Cadance again. “My dear, sometimes doing nothing is the hardest choice to make.”


Rades sat on a log next to one of his meat puppets and licked his lips at the thought of what was about to go down. Once those stupid losers in the Magic Knights got done patting themselves on the back, he would show them all how pathetic they were! Then, as they begged him for mercy, he’d slit their throats one by one and turn them all into material for his craft!

“Look at them up there,” he grumbled as his puppet stood next to him, moaning despite not needing to actually breath. That nutcase Sally said it was because of some leftover piece of what his puppet had been before Rades turned it into something useful, but what did that stupid salamander girl know about his magic?

“Sitting in their palaces and mansions, thinking they’re so great,” he went on while the puppet of dead meat listened intently to his every word. “I have more magic power than any noble, more power than the royals! But do they give me my due? NO!”

The meat puppet groaned some more, making Rades glare at it before realizing what he was trying to say. “Exactly. You know the score!” the mage went on before standing up. “But today, I’ll show them, I’LL SHOW THEM ALL!”

A spatial portal opened right above the ground in front of him and a mage rose out of it. Rather than the robes of any of the four countries, the man’s garments were white, with a large amount of black going down the center to help the three golden eyes that ran down the man’s chest stand out even more. “Are you done ranting to your zombie?”

“THIS ISN’T A ZOMBIE!” Rades yelled at the spatial mage in defense of the walking corpse.

Zombies ate brains! His meat puppets didn’t eat brains. They didn’t eat anything! They just did as he commanded and would be what brought the Clover Kingdom to its knees!

“Everything is ready,” the hooded spatial mage told him. “After the ceremony is completed, we’ll begin the attack. Just remember what our true objective is and the backup plan, should you be captured.”

Rades let out a snort. “You won’t even be needing the plan! I’ll get the stone and destroy the capital all by myself!” he declared before looking back up at the mountain of a city that was just begging to be knocked down. “Just you wait, Magic Knights! After what you did to me, I’LL KILL YOU ALL!”


It looked almost as if every street that could be seen from the windows was covered in flames, with dozens of smaller fires usually surrounding a much larger one. However, details beyond that were hard to make out from as high as they all were without some kind of scrying magic.

With the fires burning down below them, Nozel turned away from the window and swept his gaze over the knights assembled in the room with him. Only two of them were in his squad, but with everything going on, they would have to do with what they had. Still, considering the sheer size of the attack, they needed backup to at least form a defensive wall around the more important areas.

After reaching into a satchel next to his grimoire, Nozel pulled out one of the three magical items he always had on him: a communication device that was connected to the larger magical network. It wouldn’t display a magical hologram like the larger boxes, but it fit just fine in the palm of his hand and had been made to look much like a pocket watch. After pressing the activation switch, he brought the device up to his mouth. “This is Captain Nozel of the Silver Eagles. The Noble Realm is currently under assault by an unknown army, numbering several thousand strong. All members of the squad currently on standby are to head to the capital as fast as possible to assist in its defense.”

His orders given, Nozel switched the device to receiver mode and waited to hear confirmation.

And waited.

And waited some more.

“Hey, you sure you’re using that thing right?” the stupid foreigner asked before pulling out his own communication device. It was a lesser model that looked like a tiny golden rod with several gems on it. After activating it, he raised the thing to his mouth. “Hey Finral, you there?”

When nothing happened, Yami cursed at the thing before shaking it several times and trying again. “Stupid piece of junk! How come you always run out of batteries when I need to make an important call?”

A quick check proved Captain Charlotte’s magical item for getting in touch with her headquarters was equally useless. “I think we can rule out random equipment failure at a bad time,” she said before looking around the room. “Does anyone here have any other means of contacting their squad?”

When the rest of the magic knights shook their heads, Sunset snapped her fingers. “What about Marx? Didn’t he use some kind of communication magic?”

Nozel turned his attention to the outsider. “Yes, but it taps into the communication network as well. If our items are being blocked, his magic will be experiencing the same problem,” he explained before looking around. “Considering that the promotion ceremony is happening today...how many knights do each of you have in the capital?”

“You’re looking at them,” Yami replied simply.

For her part, Charlotte groaned and got a distasteful look on her face. “We were all going to a spa after the promotion to celebrate. Everyone in my squad is miles away from here.”

“The Crimson Lions are all on deployment as well,” Leopold said.

“And Vangeance didn’t even bother showing up for the ceremony,” Nozel grumbled as he scowled at the Golden Dawn. There was no use dwelling on such things now, though. “Very well, as the captain of the most decorated company that is present, I am taking over the operation to defend the capital!”

Yami frowned. “Hey, who put you in charge, bird boy?”

Not wanting to waste time arguing with the lowest among the captains, Nozel glared at the man. “The fact that I acted first did,” he told the man before looking around the room. “Mimosa, you have scrying magic, correct? Can you give us a proper picture of the city to better plan our defense?”

The girl behind Klaus pulled out her book hesitantly. “I’m sorry sir, but I don’t think that my magic can cover a region as large as the Noble Realm.”

“Mine can,” the Golden Dawn member Shiren Tium said before he called up his grimoire with his checkered cover. “Stone Creation Magic: Stone Model of the World.” An instant later, a model of the entire upper class city, complete with the castle at the center of its rear formed in the center of the room, pushing the tables out of the way as it did.

The level of detail made it an almost perfect replica, if not for the lack of color. Sounds were also generated by the model, replicating the voices of the people that were in his detection rage along with little bits of magic that obviously showed their location based on their mana.

“Cool,” the outsider said before she examined the spell. “What’s the lag time? Do you use some sort of mana detection to reproduce the sounds, or are they-wait, not the time...sorry.”

As the girl stepped away, Nozel rubbed his chin as sixteen little fires suddenly sprang up in the model, clustered in five different groups. The three closest to the castle were obviously the ones they had seen from the window and the smallest of the five. “Did the attack start all at once in five different locations, or spread across the city?” he mumbled to himself.

“WHAT’S EVERYONE WAITING FOR?” that Black Bull boy Yami had brought with him shouted. “People are getting killed, we need to get moving right now!” Then, the idiot actually turned to run towards the door, only to be snatched up by some kind of blue magic that surrounded his body.

Sunset, whose hands were glowing the same color as the magic, let out a groan. “Asta, sometimes you can save time by waiting and finding out all there is to know,” she told him.

“Indeed!” Klaus added as he pushed his glasses up on his face. “A magic knight must use his brain before he even opens his grimoire. You can’t even detect magic Asta, how will you find your targets?”

Instead of seeing reason, the boy just kicked around in the air. “I’ll just go where it’s the loudest!”

Mereoleona groaned. “Half the city is on fire, brat! Just because people are screaming doesn’t mean the people causing the destruction are still there.”

Before the situation could devolve further, Nozel turned his attention back to the map. “Yami, you, the outsider and the boy will head to the fires closest to the castle. Since your magic type doesn’t allow flight even with a mana zone, it’s the most effective place for the three of you to go,” he said, immediately moving on to the next group. “The Silver Eagles will head to the central district. Blue Rose will deal with the easternmost location. The Golden Dawn will take the northwest. Mereoleona and her brother will take the western trouble zone.”

Despite having just given out orders, Noelle actually took a step towards him. “Uh...big brother…”

“You seem to have forgotten about one of my squad, birdbrain,” Yami told him.

The insult racked Nozel, but he didn’t let it show. “No, I have not. Noelle will remain here.”

As Sunset raised an eyebrow, Noelle gave him a hurt expression, as if he had betrayed her for some reason. “What? What for? I can-”

Before she could cut at him any more with her eyes, Nozel tossed the girl his communicator, then pulled out the spare he always kept with him to show it to her. “Because, multiple points of attack are a basic tactic when you want to draw out large numbers of defenders,” he explained. “While the castle always has a small contingent of magic knights to stand guard, the position is little more than ceremonial. A place to stick layabouts and fools that don’t mesh well with others. Since we are dealing with an enemy that can pull off an attack like this, it’s reasonable to assume that they have someone at the helm capable of dealing with them. If the castle’s defenses are breached, call me for help. The network may be down, but as long as we’re within ten miles of each other, these will still be able to send and receive transmissions.”

Noelle blinked, then clasped the communicator as if it was the most precious thing in the world to her. “Right! You can count on me!” she said with determination in her eyes.

The job was pure busy work, of course. But he couldn’t tell Noelle the real reason that he wanted her out of the way of danger.

“Once you finish with your area, link up with the closest group and continue to battle the invaders,” Nozel finished as his sister summoned up a watery eagle to transport his group on while most of the other mages summoned their own magical transportation, with the exception of Yami’s group, before heading out as fast as magically possible.


A baby doesn’t kill anyone, you idiot!” Mereoleona had shouted.

I put her in the Black Bulls...so that she would not be put in any real dangerous situations,” Nozell explained to Sunset.

The conversations repeated in her mind as Noelle stood in the dining hall, alone and looking at the communicator in her hand. For the first time in her life, her brother was trusting her with something and she wouldn’t let him down.

“Nom nom nom nom.”

Noelle blinked at the strange noise coming from beneath the table.

Had whatever planned for the attack also done something to the room the knights had all just been in?

“Nom nom nom nom.”

Was it the sound of some kind of trap spell, building up mana?

“Nom nom nom nom.”

A spatial magic spell of some kind? But, the Noble Realm had defenses that kept people from just dropping in! There was a spatial magic barrier that was constantly maintained by a special corps of mages underneath Clover Castle.

“Nom nom nom nom.”

Noelle looked at her communicator. Should I call brother?

“Nom nom nom nom.”

She looked back at the table. Should I run?

Turning around to look at the doors, the Silva girl realized something. It didn’t start hearing this whatever it is until after everyone left. Why would a trap begin to detonate after everyone left?

“Nom nom nom nom.”

After taking out her wand, Noelle pointed the weapon that actually decreased the damage she did with her magic at the table. “Okay! Whoever’s there, come on out!” she shouted.

“Nom nom-wha?” something underneath the table said before it crawled out.

Charmy, her face covered in crumbs from the cake she had in her hand, poked half of her body out from under the table cloth and looked around. “Oh, hey Noelle! Isn’t this food just the best?”

Fighting off her confusion of the girl’s sudden appearance, Noelle put her want away as well as the communicator her brother had given her. “C-Charmy? WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING HERE?” she demanded before pointing at the tiny mage. “And for that matter, how?”

After rubbing her nose with a smirk, Charmy pulled out her grimoire. “Cotton Magic: Cotton Binding Ball,” the little girl cast before a cloud of cotton came up from behind her and enveloped her body, then actually compacted in size until it was smaller than Noelle’s palm before it floated over to land on her hand and turn around to show Charmy’s face. “See, I compacted myself, then just hid in one of the robe-”

Noelle let out a scream at the extremely weird display and tossed the little mage out of her hand. While she was still in the air, the spell released and Charmy landed on her feet. Only, she looked...wrong.

Wrong for Charmy at any rate, who usually stood less than three feet tall with an enlarged head and eyes that looked almost closed. Noelle had even wondered if the girl had even been able to see when they first met.

The girl in front of her stood four and a half feet tall, with big green eyes and completely normal proportions. She was even wearing Charmy’s clothes, only...they actually fit her at this new size, including the Black Bulls robe.

“C-Charmy?” Noelle asked in worry.

The girl looked over to her and blinked. “What?”

Noelle pointed an accusatory finger at the girl. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WHAT? YOU’RE A FOOT AND A HALF TALLER THAN YOU WERE A MINUTE AGO!” she yelled at what her eyes said was a total stranger.

After giving her a confused look, Charmy examined herself. “Well, yeah. I had to release my spell, including the compression part,” she told Noelle after looking back at her to wave away her concerns. “Don’t worry, I’ll change back to normal in a second. Once I get my magic going again.”

“Charmy...if you don’t have any magic being used on you right now, this is your normal,” Noelle pointed out as she slumped a bit.

The facts didn’t seem to stop the girl. “But if I don’t compact myself, there’s no way that I’ll be able to eat all this delicious food!” she exclaimed before pointing to the table full of delectable delights.

Noelle’s eye twitched. “Hey, wait a second! There’s a battle going on right now. You need to get out there and go fight!”

“Well...since you can’t fight on an empty stomach…” Charmy began before she started moving towards the buffet.

With her teammate being so...her, Noelle sighed and rubbed her head. At times like this, it was no wonder that everyone thought the Black Bulls were a terrible squad. Noelle had an actual job to do, but Charmy…

Noelle looked at the girl and groaned. It was weird to see her looking so normal. And the fact that she had ridden along in Noelle’s robe...wait a second, she thought to herself as she looked at the short girl that was licking her lips while examining the buffet. “Hey Charmy...how long were you in my robe?”

“I jumped out when you left the table,” she said before gasping at the deserts. “Oh my gosh! They’ve got fudge brownies!”

For some reason, she found herself actually a little disappointed that Charmy hadn’t been there when she had been alone in the bathroom. Before she had pulled herself together just in time for Sunny to barge in on her. “...oh,” she mumbled.

Charmy’s ear twitched. She spun around a second later and frowned at Noelle. “I don’t like the sound of that oh,” she said before walking up on Noelle and standing on her toes to look the royal in the eye. “What’s wrong?”

With the person she had considered little more than the clownish cook of the Black Bulls getting serious on her, Noelle took a step back. “It’s...nothing,” she told the girl. “Just something I’m working through at the moment.”

Charmy continued to frown at her before she dropped back onto her heels and sighed. “Hey, just because I like comfort food doesn’t mean I think it’s the be all, end all of everything you know,” she told Noelle before crossing her arms and staring at Noelle. “If you’ve got something on your mind, spit it out. I’m your senior after all, you can lean on me too if you want.”

“Come on, you’re barely a year older than me,” Noelle replied.

The expression on Charmy’s face became an even stare. “I’m nineteen.”

Noelle’s mouth dropped. SERIOUSLY? she thought to herself in shock as she looked at the girl who Noelle only thought was older than her due to the woman being at the hideout when she arrived. “But...but you...you...small...with the shortness.”

“Uh yeah. I told you, I use my magic to compact myself,” she said before crossing her arms and tapping a finger on her elbow. “Well, if you want a full explanation, I compact the food I eat more than myself, my body just gets a little of the magic. That’s how I can eat so much and still keep my girlish figure!”

As Charmy struck a pose in front of her to show off her slim body, Noelle found it hard to concentrate on anything but the insanity of what was going on. “I am just so confused right now,” she said before sitting on the floor to lean up against one of the table’s legs.

“How? I just explained why my height changed-”

“NOT ABOUT THAT!” she yelled at the woman. “I...my brother, he…”

Noelle took a deep breath to gather her thoughts. She never thought it would be Charmy of all people that she would be talking about this to, but the explosions outside the window reminded her about what else was going on in the world. People to talk to were in short supply at the moment. “I killed my mother.”

“SAY WHAT?” Charmy replied as she had an emotional reaction of her own at Noelle’s confessed sin.

The look of utter shock her teammate was giving her made Noelle pull her legs up to her chest and wrap her arms around them. “In childbirth. Mother died when I was born. Maybe that’s why I can’t control my magic too,” she moaned. “And...all my life, my brothers and sister have been quick to remind me of that little fact, that Momma died because of me.”

For a moment, she thought about going into details about all those reminders, but thought better of it. The actions of her younger siblings weren’t what confused her. “But today, Mereoleona. The uh, really loud woman with the orange-red hair, she said something that turned the who thing on its head. That I wasn’t responsible and Mother decided to have me, knowing that she was going to die. Then...Nozel...my big brother, he said that he put me on the Black Bulls because he didn’t want me to get hurt.”

“Oh-kay,” Charmy drawled out before motioning for her to continue.

Noelle blinked when Charmy didn’t give her anything. “Uh...that’s it. I’m done.”

The short mage stood there for a minute, then gave a start before snapping her fingers and turning to skip over to the desert tray. Once there, she loaded a plate up on brownies before coming back to the confused girl, much shorter than she had been when she left. “Eat,” the ‘normal’ sized Charmy told Noelle as she offered her the brown square.

This is your solution?” she asked in disbelief. After putting all her hopes in Charmy, all she got was the usual from the little glutton.

Not taking no for an answer, Charmy shoved the food into Noelle’s mouth, despite the royal’s protest. Once she was unable to talk back, the little chef began speaking. “What you’re going through, it’s like when you hear something tastes really, really bad for so long, but when you try it with a special sauce, it’s really super yummy,” she told the girl. “And your brain doesn’t want to believe it, but your body is saying it’s good. So, it’s like they’re arguing, and you just need to sit back and let the argument finish.”

Finishing her food, Noelle blinked. “I think I’ll ask Vanessa for some advice when we get home.”


As the three Black Bulls made their way through the castle towards a side entrance that Yami knew Julius liked to sneak out of from time to time, the girl with a brain and mouth too big for her head half of the time decided to start talking. “Does this not make sense to anyone else other than me?” Sunset asked while she chased after the man who was taking a cigarette out of his pocket. “Aren’t the nobles supposed to be the kingdom’s most powerful magic users? Why in the hell is somebody picking a fight with Clover’s most powerful group of mages?”

Yami snorted. “You know Finral’s a noble, right?” he asked without looking back while searching for his lighter as they ran along. “Just because somebody’s from a powerful family doesn’t mean their magic is suitable for combat. People have to want to develop attack spells to get them. Most of the people living in the noble realm, the ones that don’t join the Magic Knights, they just have spells to help them make money and jack off.”

Once the three Black Bulls got out of the castle, Yami looked around in disbelief at the level of destruction he could see going on in the streets below the dropoff that separated the royals from the nobles. It was chaos everywhere, not just in some little isolated zones where things were burning. People were running from a mob that just shuffled along, breaking things and knocking down everything in their way from carts to statues as they slowly caught up to the Clover citizens when there was some kind of bottleneck that all the nobles thought they should be allowed to go through first. Then, there were the idiots moving whole wagons of possessions through the street while trying to get away from the fires.

Yami looked over at the resident magical prodigy. “Hey, can you whip up a rainstorm or something to take care of all the flames?” It wouldn’t matter if they stopped the attack if the city burned down on top of everyone.

And since it didn’t look like any of the nobles were bothering to put out the fires while saving their own sorry asses, the Magic Knights would have to clean up that mess too.

“Uh…” Sunset looked around and crossed her arms, like she usually did when she was thinking. “Maybe? There were plenty of farmers in Hage that could create minor, localized rainfalls to water their crops. But for something as big as this place, I’d need a natural source of water.”

Yami nodded. “There’s an underground lake fed by two rivers beneath the mountain,” he told her. “We’ll take care of the problem areas Birdbrain pointed us towards, then head for the nearest river so you can work your mojo.”

That’s one problem down, but still… Yami looked back to the mass of enemy troops. They were too far away to make out much detail, but the fact there were so many of them was extremely disturbing. After seeing Stone Boy’s little diorama, he had thought a few powerful mages had just shown up to cause trouble, blowing up a few buildings before moving on to cause chaos elsewhere.

But, what Yami was seeing was an army. That meant spatial magic, which should have been impossible. While people could come and go from the castle town at the base of the mountain as they pleased, everything above the first level had a barrier of protection that stopped spatial magic from coming into the capital in much the same way Sunset’s little jamming spell had kept that Diamond mage from running away last week.

There were ways around it, of course. But if the guys below had used a spatial mage to get into the capital, that meant that they had developed a way to circumvent the defenses on their own. Which would have to be countered by making a change in the barrier. The other possibility was that one of the mage’s responsible for maintaining the barrier had gone rogue, which was much more disturbing since it didn’t matter what changes they made if one of the guys responsible for maintaining the barrier just gave an enemy the new settings to bypass it all over again.

“CAPTAIN YAMI, WHAT’RE WE DOING JUST STANDING AROUND HERE FOR?” the annoying twerp with a mouth twice as big as his body shouted.

Not liking the way his ears were feeling thanks to Asta, Yami glared down at the pipsqueak. “I was just looking for a nice spot to land,” he said after lighting his cigarette and emptying his hands so he could grab the boy under his arm.

Then, he snatched up the magic nerd under his other arm. “Uh, what’re you doing?” she asked while her legs kicked in the air.

“Jumping!” Yami told them before doing just that.

With mana increasing the power of his legs, Yami leaped into the air as the two people he was carrying screamed in terror while they sort of flew across the sky. Then, gravity began to have its way with the three of them, and Yami descended right in the middle of one of the enemy mobs, landing on one of the guys to soften the impact.

There was a loud crunch of bone under his boots and the kids made stupid little noises to tell him that their stomachs probably hadn’t taken things well. But he had gotten them where they needed to go and promptly dropped the two of them onto the ground before blinking at the group of people in front of him. “Holy crap! You guys are ugly!”

Which they were, with really blotchy skin and glazed over eyes that were more white than anything else. Pieces of their skin were falling off with rot and not a single one of them seemed to have a full set of teeth. Some barely had what would have been considered clothes, more like dirty rags that just managed to cover up their dicks. Most of the girls weren’t so lucky, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to be grabbing the saggy things they had.

With the two brats still recovering, it looked like Yami would have to do everything himself. So he grabbed his sword and got ready to draw it while bringing up his grimoire to cast a spell. “Dark Magic: Dark Cloak,” he recited before drawing his blade just as his magic coiled around it to enhance the expensive weapon’s power. “Dark Cloaked Lightless Slash!”

A wave of dark magic shot out from Yami’s blade as he stuck out while drawing the sword in an imitation of a fighting style his homeland used. An imitation, because he was never actually taught the sword when he was a kid, what with him just being a simple fisherman’s son that got lost at sea instead of a member of the warrior caste. Still, it was an effective technique. The magic dark magic shot out of his blade, taking its shape as the magic sailed forward, slicing through many of the dirty mob that tried to grab onto him.

With his single attack mowing down about twenty guys to give them some breathing room, Yami looked back to the babies that were still clutching their stomachs as they laid on the ground. “Hey, you two getting up any time this week?” he asked before taking a long drag on his cigarette.

“Shut up you idiot!” Sunset yelled before she slowly got to her feet to glare at the bigger man. “I’m pretty sure your little stunt dislocated my spleen or something!”

“Yeah ye-oh crap!” he cursed when one of the little bastards that had been cut in half managed to crawl up to him and bit his boot. Rotten teeth broke before his footwear did and Yami kicked at the damn thing. “Get off me you damn bastard!”

Hiding his surprise at being surprised in the first place, Yami looked back to the mob. I don’t sense ki coming from any of them. What is this crap? he wondered before cutting another two down, then slicing off their arms when they didn’t stop coming after him before also removing their heads when even that didn’t make them lay down and die.

Asta groaned as he finally got to his feet with the help of his big sword that he was using as a crutch. Two of the undying things came at him and he smashed them both with a single swing that didn’t do much of anything aside from knock them down. “GAAAAH! Zombies!”

“Zom-what?” Yami asked before getting ready to slice up the two Asta had knocked down, only...both of them had stopped moving. And started to stink like rotting corpses were supposed to do.

Sunset cringed at the sight of the bodies while before dry heaving from the smell. “You mean, there’s actually magic here that can make something like those things?” she asked after recovering. Although, the sight of the dead still looked to be disturbing the hell out of her.

After taking another drag on his cigarette to blow out his nose, Yami looked back to the kids. “Anyone mind telling me what’s going on?” he asked before cutting another one of the creatures off at the legs, then removing its arms with a second swipe before the third took its head.

“ZOMBIES!” Asta shouted in a panic. “IT’S JUST LIKE FATHER ORSI SAID! THE DEAD HAVE RISEN AND HAVE COME BACK TO-OW!”

Sunset removed her hand from the boy’s skull to turn and look at the slowly approaching horde of walking corpses. Her face went all green and she shivered. “It may be different in Clover, but where I come from, I read a book describing a type of magic that enslaves a person’s soul and binds it to their dead body. There’s a dozen different ways to do it, but it all revolves around bringing the dead back to a semi-lifelike state and controlling them like puppets that have a very limited form of intelligence for carrying out basic commands.”

The disturbing news made Yami give the creepy redhead a frown while she held her stomach and shivered from the sight of walking dead people. “This was the kind of crap you learned in your magical rainbow land?” he asked before snorting. “And you call us savage barbarians.”

Sunset’s face turned red and her cheeks puffed out a little. “Oh, for the love of-JUST BECAUSE I SKIMMED THROUGH A BOOK DOESN’T MEAN I LEARNED ANY OF THE SPELLS OR EVEN WANTED TO USE THEM!” Sunset shouted at the man in such a rage that Yami was taken aback by her anger. “God! You’re just like everyone else! You go, ‘Eeek, you looked at something scary, that must mean that you’re evil!” she said in an overly girly voice. “Because you’re just soooo great, and everyone else is secretly a monster just waiting to turn on you!”

Before the girl could keep going, Yami reached out and dropped a hand on the top of her head before clamping down on it. “Okay, simmer down there, little pony-girl,” he ordered. “Now, any idea on how to stop these things? Because if we have to slash everything into little pieces, it’s going to take too long to deal with the threat, and we’ve still got to get these fires out.”

Sunset looked over to a new street, where another herd of the things was moving along. The anger on her face was quickly replaced by revulsion that she reluctantly gulped down. “Get me one that’s mostly intact. Then...I can examine it,” she told him reluctantly.

“I’M ON IT!” Asta yelled before he took off at his normal inhuman speed to smack one of the zombies with his sword, then take out a few others that had noticed his presence.

After watching the display, Yami sighed when he caught sight of Sunset’s eye twitching. “Let me guess, you need a live zombie to examine?” he asked evenly.

“Yeah,” she replied before they headed after Asta.

With the mob still having plenty of walking corpses to deal with, Yami let Asta do his thing before he came up on a trio of the dead. It didn’t take long to hack two of them apart after cloaking his blade in dark mana, then he called up his grimoire to cast an actual spell. “Dark Magic: Dark Binding.”

Black tendrils of black energy shot out from his grimoire to wrap around the dead thing and lift it off the ground. The corpse struggled, but with all the magical power inside of it only able to make it move with little more than the average strength of a normal human that wasn’t using enhancement magic, the zombie had little chance of escaping.

Sunset took a step back at the display with a disturbed expression on her face. “You use dark magic?”

The question made Yami raise an eyebrow. “You’re just now noticing that?” he asked before taking a drag on his cigarette and blowing it out his nose to help with the corpse smell. Whatever was keeping the bodies fresh wore off when their limbs hit the floor. “What’s the big deal, anyway?”

“DARK MAGIC IS EVIL!” Sunset yelled at him.

Yami snorted. “Now who’s making stupid judgement calls based on an open book I got in front of me that I haven’t really read much of?” he asked. “Magic isn’t good or evil, idiot. It’s just magic. The person using it is the one who decides what to do with it.”

After standing frozen for several seconds, Sunset blinked. “But, but that’s dark magic!” she exclaimed, as if that explained anything.

“The opposite of light magic,” Yami said, coming at the conversation from a different angle instead of just saying the same thing over and over again. “Which you use. So, you some kinda saint just because you use flashy magic?”

Sunset pressed her lips together in a tight line. “Gimme that book!” she yelled before snatching Yami’s grimoire out of the air and turning to the first page that had his most basic spell on it.

“Hey!” Yami yelled at her while the girl skimmed over the open pages. When he approached her, a shield of force popped up between them, testing Yami’s patience. “Give me back my grimoire you little magic hog!”

Ignoring him for a moment, Sunset skimmed over the spell, her expression becoming more and more disbelieving as she did. “This...this...there’s nothing evil about this! I spent months getting lectured and having to recite the fact that dark magic is bad a hundred times as it gets drilled into me and….agh!” she exclaimed before frowning and taking a closer look at the second page. “Hmmm, that wavelength looks kind of familiar. Almost like what I picked up from that rock.”

His patience wearing thin, Yami concentrated some magic to enhance his strength, then pounded his fist against the girl’s magical dome. “Open up, right now!” he yelled as cracks appeared in the shield. Which was a pretty lousy defense if he could stress it with nothing but enhancement magic.

Sunset looked up and frowned. “Interesting,” she mumbled. “There is a definite antithetical reaction to harmonic magic...but no backlash.” Then, before Yami could break the damn thing standing in his way, Sunset dropped her little magic bubble and turned around to toss his grimoire over her shoulder to take a look at the dead body hanging in Yami’s binding spell as her ki screamed that she wanted to do anything else. “Okay so...l-let’s see what we-” she paused to gulp. “What we got here.”

Despite wanting to smack the brat, Yami had better things to do. So, while the nerd girl was doing her nerdy things, he moved to back the boy up and cut down a few more of the corpses with his sword, simply wrapping it in dark mana instead of using a full spell. By the time they were done with the latest bunch of corpses, he saw Sunset looking back at them with a little frown. “What is it now?”

“It’s um...well, they’re not zombies as I know them,” she replied before looking back at the moaning dead guy with a grimace. “There’s definite potential for binding a soul, but from the looks of things, this magic is more of an animation spell using dead bodies than any actual zombie creation magic. Maybe the corpse has been dead for too long and the caster needed fresh...bodies, ugh!”

Yami groaned at her. “So you’re saying, what? This has all been a big waste of time?”

Giving the dead guy another disgusted look, Sunset took a moment before shaking her head. “No...I think...after seeing how Mimosa and that stone guy do their detection magic, I can rig up a spell that lets us locate magic like what’s animating this dead...thing,” she said before shivering. “Oh, this is so gross!”

“So, you can locate all the zombies for us?” Asta asked as he walked up behind Yami with his sword on his shoulder.

Yami snorted. He could detect the nearest group of walking corpses just fine with his mana sense. Seeing that Sunset was just wasting his time, he moved to grab her, only to stop when she projected a magical image of a spherical blue grid, displaying several points of light. With the image matching up with what his mana sense was telling him, Yami started walking again, until he noticed a light in the far left corner of Sunset’s crappy featureless map that was a hell of a lot bigger than the others.

If her map was showing him corpses moving around through the power of someone else’s magic…

“Hey...is that supposed to be the guy making all of these things?”

After taking a closer look at the image, Sunset looked back at him. “Probably.”

“Change of plans, then,” he said before striking out with his sword to slash the zombie that was in his Dark Binding into two equal halves.


Dressed in ratty clothes and wearing makeup to appear more like a dead person, Valtos hid among the corpses as he watched his comrade revel in the glory of the destruction he was causing. What little glory there was to see through all the flames and smoke, that is. The disheveled man with the long purple hair laughed as he watched the city burn from the army of animated corpses Valtos had gathered for him under orders of their master, ranting about the Magic Knights between laughs as the flames reflected off of the silver eye symbol Rades used to cover his real left eye, on top of the bandages.

Taking his eyes off the other man for a moment, Valtos reached into his robes to grab a bit of ointment and reapplied it underneath his nose. Without it, the pile of corpses that Rades was stocking up to create more wraiths with would have overwhelmed his sense of smell.

While he knew the man Rades was integral to the master’s plans, he didn’t see why the man got his way like this. Having the whole organization throwing away its resources in a blatant attack on the Clover Kingdom that would strip them of their last shreds of anonymity was a foolish decision, even if it would snag them one of the magic stones in the end. They had gotten as far as they were through secrecy. Coming out into the light before they were ready could destroy everything they had worked for so far.

A high-pitched scream made Valtos look up to see that Rades had cornered a little girl in an expensive yellow dress, her curly hair done up in buns on the side of her head. The stupid little brat had probably taken a wrong turn while trying to run away from the monsters and ended up running into the biggest one of all.

Rades looked down at the girl with a frown. “Tell me girl, do you like it here, in the Clover Kingdom?”

The little noble trembled as she found herself up against the wall before falling on her little butt. “Y-Yes. I love it here. S-So please, mister, don’t hurt me!” she begged.

“WELL I HATE THE CLOVER KINGDOM!” Rades screamed at the little brat. “Privileged little pieces of shit like you, looking down on your betters like me! So I’m going to kill you! I’M GOING TO KILL EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE OF YOU!”

“W-What? Why? I didn’t do anything to you!” the little girl cried as tears streamed down her face.

Rades let out a scream before he reached down and picked her up by the neck. “I DON’T CARE!” he yelled as his fingers tightened around the child’s throat while he continued to talk. “EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU DESERVES TO DIE! DIE, DIE! DIE DIEEEEEEEEEEE!”

Then, there was a loud popping sound, and the girl just disappeared in a flash of light.

“W-What the?” Rades mumbled as he looked at his empty hands before a pair of mana sources made their presence known and Valtos had to turn around to get a look at them.

The redheaded girl in the green blouse and tight pants combo underneath her black robe, Valtos didn’t know, but Yami Sukehiro was easily recognizable by the Black Bulls robe that barely covered just one of his shoulders and facial features that weren’t found anywhere on the continent. However, the little girl in the redheads arms that had nearly had her neck snapped by Rades a moment ago said the girl was a spatial magic user.

Then, just to mock his theory, the redhead cradled the crying young girl that looked like she had trouble breathing in her arms. “Shhh, it’s going to be okay now, sweetie,” she said before holding up her hand to the child’s throat. “Flame Recovery Magic: Phoenix Robe.”

After a few seconds, the redness around the girl’s neck completely disappeared and she opened her mouth as if to talk, only for her body to shudder before something that might once have been stew came out of her mouth to cover the redhead’s squad insignia.

The redhead let out an angry groan, but stayed silent as she switched her girl over to lean against her clean shoulder. “Sorry,” the girl apologized.

“Takes a real big man to beat up a little girl,” Yami said before tossing his cigarette to the side.

Rades blinked. “A couple of Black Bulls, really?” he asked. “Here I was, hoping for something really interesting to show up since I’m so close to the palace. Don’t you got a Silver Eagle or two you can go fetch or something? I was hoping to get rid of someone a little worthwhile during my big debut.”

As the standoff occurred, Valtos found himself focusing on the redhead. She hadn’t even bothered pulling out her grimoire before casting that spell of hers.

“You know what?” Yami asked as he took his curved sword in both of his hands. “Screw the plan, let’s just kill him now.”

The redhead sighed and pressed the girl’s face down onto her clean shoulder. “Don’t look sweetie.”

Yami’s grimoire raised up to float beside him, out of the way for combat. “Dark Magic: Dark Cloak,” the big man grunted before raising his sword for a strike.

“I don’t think so!” Rades shouted right back before he activated his magic. While not a spatial magic user, Rades could summon his undead minions to him as long as they were in some kind of storage space that his magic let him call on. As such, a dark portal opened up in front of him and a specialized corpse floated out of the hole to take its place in front of the mage. “I choose you! Carl, My number one!”

The zombie that appeared was very different from the ones Rades had roaming around the city. Created with the help of their organization’s magic item expert from a magic knight they had killed and turned into a wraith right at the moment of death, the creature retained its ability to produce mana and limited spellcasting ability. Because of its special status, Rades had dressed the abomination up in clerical robes and wrapped every piece of his skin that would have been on display with bandages.

“The hell?” the redhead mumbled before frowning. “Hey Captain, that this is a lot different than the other ones roaming around.”

Yami snorted. “Like I couldn’t tell that from what it was wearing. Now, DARK SLASH!”

Although the captain cut downward with his sword, a crescent blade of dark energy flew out in front of him, towards Rades.

However, it wasn’t very fast, and gave the wraith mage plenty of time to respond. “Quickly Carl, use your defensive screen!” Rades ordered before his magical zombie raised a barrier that blocked the captain’s attack.

“More like, that zombie still has its soul attached and can wield magic,” the redhead deadpanned.

Predictably, Rades took offense at his creation being called what it was and stomped his foot. “HEY! This is a FLESH GOLEM! Get the name right you stupid bitch!” he yelled at the redhead.

The redhead frowned at the man. “While you might be able to say that about all the other crap you’ve animated, that thing still has its soul, which is enslaved to you, unless I miss my guess,” she said. “So...zombie with magic. Although, can it only use the one spell, or-”

Whatever she was going to say got cut off when Rades had Carl launch one of its magically created blades towards her head. Yami quickly moved in to block the attack. “Little less talk, more walk,” Yami ordered. “Get that kid out of here before she does more than pee her pants.”

The girl in the redhead’s arms let out an embarrassed squeak and reached back around to try and vainly herself while the woman holding her sighed. “I was trying to let her have a bit of dignity.”

“WELL TOO BAD!” Rades shouted. “BECAUSE NONE OF YOU ARE GOING ANYWHERE! Now, come out Alfred, David, Jimmy! Let’s hurry up and kill these sorry bastards, then we can find someone worth our time!” A second later, four more special ghouls rose out of dark portals created by Rades’s magic, outside of his first zombie’s shield.

The second of the corpses, named Alfred, was floating in the air and without any legs as they had been cut off above the knees. A black straight jacket restrained its arms, while bandages of the same color covered his face, aside from a patch of hair that poked out of the back, giving him the appearance of a balding mummy.

David was a fat zombie, dressed in an orange and dark blue patchwork of baggy clothes that formed not only his chest and leg coverings, but a hood that completely covered his face, save for the three eye broaches of their organization where his eyes and mouth should be.

As for Jimmy, it was a tall zombie that was covered head to toe in bandages, with belts wrapped around his overly long arms as it slouched down to where it’s knuckles were touching the ground, like some kind of evil giant monkey mummy. Just like David, he sported a golden eye as well, in the center of his head.

“Now Alfred, fry that little girl with your shocking thunderbolts!” the undead commander yelled as he pointed towards the girl in the redhead’s arms.

The floating zombie in the straight jacket lit up with an aura of lighting before sending it towards the redhead, who raised her open palm as a dome appeared around her and the Black Bulls captain to take the hit.

“What the-HEY! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!” Rades shouted at the girl from behind his shield. “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE A FIRE MAGE! WHAT GIVES?”

After a second, the redhead looked up at the building above Rades, then down at the mage himself before smirking. “Don’t you know? It’s magic,” she said before someone let out a loud yell from above.

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!” A boy in gray hair and wearing a Black Bulls robe on top of a blue jacket and matching pants shouted before he jumped off the roof with a giant black sword pointing down. The weapon tore through the shield that Rades’s ghoul had erected like it wasn’t even there before the corpse itself became struck by the blade, making it drop like a log.

A second later, the field around the two Black Bulls disappeared, but three more sprung up around the three zombies Rades had, stopping their attacks as Yami rushed through all of them a second later at breakneck speed before Rades could react properly. The captain struck the necromancer with the wrong end of his sword in the back of the neck.

The man didn’t die, but he did drop onto the ground, unconscious. Not long after, all of his zombies joined him.

“Oh, and in case you didn’t know,” the redhead said as she strolled up to him with the girl still in her arms. “Since it’s magic, I don’t have to explain shit.”

Yami looked at the newcomer with a frown. “What the hell took you so long, Shorty?”

The boy called Shorty glared up at Yami. “You said to sneak up behind him and attack while you guys had him distracted,” he replied before gesturing to the wall Rades had been up against with his sword. “But there is no behind him! I had to climb a building to get the drop on him!”

“Quit making excuses,” Yami told him as he took out a cigarette and turned his attention to Rades. “Now, what shall we do with you, zombie lord?”

Getting nervous from his hiding place, Valtos was going to have to try making a move before the three knights either killed the man or took him into custody. Both of which were not an option for the master’s plans. However, right as he was about to act, the small magical device in his ear activated. “I’ve located the target. He’s with another Crimson Lion at the third bait point.”

Despite Valtos being perfectly hidden, the Black Bull captain actually turned to face in his direction with a frown on his face just as the spatial magic user opened his grimoire to use a more powerful spell than he normally employed. “Spatial Magic: Blackout.”

All around the city, he could feel the spatial magic spells that had been previously set up being activated, just like the one beneath him. A dark portal large enough to cover the entire city block spread out to cover the ground beneath them and-“Asta quick! Hit the trap with your sword before it activates!” the redhead yelled as the darkness covered the ground beneath her.

“ON IT!” A second later, the boy with the large black weapon that had cut through Rades’s barrier stabbed the portal that was still forming with his weapon, completely stuttering the magic before it had a chance to consume the three of them.

What in the world? Valtos wondered while Yami frowned right at him.

“Thought I felt some ki over there,” the man said before casting a spell. “Dark Magic: Black Cloak. And now, Lightless Slash!”

With the delay between the man covering his sword in dark magic and actually being able to attack, Valtos opened a spatial portal underneath himself to avoid the blow and relocate to a nearby rooftop. Once he was out from underneath the corpses, the man looked down at the three with a frown.

“How is one of the zombies still awake?” the redhead asked while she continued to hold the child in her arms.

Yami let out a puff of smoke. “Because, that guy’s not dead. He just looks real ugly.”

Valtos’s eye twitched. His face was covered in makeup! “You’re one to talk,” the fake corpse replied before turning his gaze to the boy in the blue jacket and focusing on his sword. “A weapon that can cancel out spells. We were briefed on the anti-magic boy, but didn’t expect to see you here today.”

“Well, sucks to be you, then!” Asta shouted at the man.

With things quickly turning sour, Valtos opened a portal a few feet in front of the anti-magic boy. “No matter, once my reinforcements come in through that portal, you will all be-” Before he could finish, Asta charged the portal that led to the middle of nowhere and sliced at it.

Which meant he was too far away to stop the portal under Rades from forming before it swallowed the unconscious necromancer.

“Suckers,” Valtos told them before creating another portal underneath himself.

“HEY!” Yami yelled before looking back at the redhead while Valtos made his escape. “Quick! Do your anti-portal thingy!”

The redhead flinched. “Uh...that kills people who try to go through those things,” she replied. “Why do you think I didn’t use it when we were about to be sucked in?”

“DAMNIT!” Yami cursed before he leaped up to the top of the building.

But by the time he got there, Valtos had already begun to close the portal that led to the space between locations behind him.


“Gaaa, this is so boring!”

Yuno did his best to ignore Sylph’s complaints as he blew away another group of dead things with his Towering Tornado spell. Because the creatures didn’t stop from any amount of pain and only a few broken bones were nothing but a mild inconvenience, he had to toss them into the nearby walls hard enough to turn the creatures to paste. Although, a few of them ended up going through said walls when it put too much power into the spell. So it was a delicate balance.

Flying out of reach of the zombies, something that really unnerved him after all of Father’s stories about how the world was supposed to end, Yuno didn’t have to worry about counterattacks from the creatures that couldn’t get off the ground. “What happened to you being more helpful?”

The wind goddess turned to look at Yuno with a half-lidded expression. “I said I’d tone down my throbbing urges to declare my love for you, that’s nowhere near the same thing,” she told him before looking out at the devastation. “I’m just disappointed your world’s zombie apocalypse is so lame! They don’t even carry a plague or anything! There’s no way this is going to end the human race!”

Yuno groaned before clearing another street of walking corpses with a single spell. “Well, I’m sorry that the death and destruction currently surrounding us isn’t more enjoyable for you.”

“...okay,” Sylph replied with a little flinch. “I guess that is pretty insensitive of me. But you got to admit, this is a pretty lousy way for someone to attack the Clover Kingdom. If it wasn’t for half the people in the area being complete pansies, they’d have figured out these things go down with enough damage. Two or three nobles hitting them with bursts of raw mana would tear the things apart.”

With things taken care of in his immediate area, Yuno flew up into the air and looked around for more trouble spots. Only, the scene that greeted him was much calmer than expected. Most of the fires in his area had been put out. With the large number of Golden Dawn troops to deal with the undead hordes, the mages that were assigned to basic defense of the city were able to focus on putting out fires and help clear away the rubble. On top of which, the mages from the surrounding areas were showing up to reinforce the rest of the knights.

While the sudden advent of the attack had caused a good deal of damage, now that the shock had faded, things looked to be quickly turning in Clover’s favor. It took a few minutes of looking around to even find a group of zombies that were still left for Yuno to take down.

Then, before he could even move in and destroy them, they all suddenly dropped in the middle of the street.”What the?” he mumbled.

“Hm?” Sylph hummed before frowning at the sight. “Huh...looks like the animation spell causing them to get up and walk around ran out of juice, or the person controlling them just got clipped. Either way, I think the battle just ended.”

Yuno looked over to the fairy. “There was someone controlling them?” he asked with a frown. “Don’t you think you could have told me this sooner?” With his mana sense being as developed as it was, it wouldn’t have been hard to find the person in charge of the horde and taken him out.

Once again, the fairy winced. “Yeah...you got a point there…” Sylph sighed and hung her head. “Sorry, it’s just...I don’t usually do that sort of thing when I partner up with a human, okay?”

“You mean, be helpful?” Yuno deadpanned.

Sylph groaned and rolled her eyes. “Ugh, no! I mean, volunteer information. The contract between us states that I provide you with power, and you make things fun for me. Information is given out sparingly so I don’t shatter your tiny little mind. I came here to have fun, and explaining things to guys like you isn’t fun, okay?”

The comment about the size of his brain got a groan from Yuno. “You’re one to talk about being tiny.”

“You do remember me talking to your little brother about this body you’re seeing being a doll that I’m controlling from my home dimension, right?” she asked before floating over to land on the boy’s shoulder. “If I was my actual size and looked like this, your whole kingdom wouldn’t be big enough to contain my footprint.” She sighed and kicked her legs in the air. “You can be a little put off by me now, if you want.”

Despite a good part of his mind saying that what he was about to do was a stupid idea, Yuno reached over and tapped the fairy upside her head. “And you need to stop underestimating humans,” he told her before looking around for something to do. Now that the threat had been taken care of, they had to start cleaning up.

Something he didn’t think many of the Golden Dawn would bother with.

But, before Yuno could start his descent, there was a surge of magical power that brought Sylph to attention. “Yuno, get as many people off the ground as you can, NOW!”

With the warning the fairy gave him, Yuno started flying down a second before the ground suddenly turned into a black distortion that had the look of spatial magic. No time to make any rational decisions on what to do, Yuno grabbed onto the only person in the area that meant anything to him and dug his fingers in for a firm grip before looking over to Klaus and called up his grimoire to cast a spell while the spatial magic crept up on the man. “Wind Magic: Towering Tornado!”

As his senior squad member let out a scream from being ripped away from the translocation spell, the rest of the Golden Dawn members attempted to escape from the magic on their own, with varying degrees of failure that only prolonged the time it took for them to sink into the black magic.

“HEY! GET DOWN HERE AND SAVE ME YOU WORTHLESS PEASANT!” Sandlar screamed as the sand golem that looked like a giant suit of armor sunk into the ground.

Yuno groaned before pulling Mimosa closer to him. “Sorry but, I can only carry one person at a time,” he half-lied. While carrying around another person with his magic was possible without casting a spell, that spot was reserved for Klaus.

“I’LL KILL YOU! YOU FUCKING PIECE OF-” the man shouted before he was consumed by the spatial magic pit.

With the annoying man gone, Yuno looked back to the girl in his arms. For some reason, Mimosa’s face was bright red. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Mimosa’s cheeks reddened even further as the blackness beneath them began to recede. “Um...Y-Yuno...y-you’re hand...it’s...um…”

Sylph floated down to frown at him. “How long are you going to sink your fingers into her butt, ladies man?”

The comment made Yuno look down to where he had grabbed the girl. It was a bit off from the small of her back, and much softer. “Oh!” he exclaimed before quickly pulling out his grimoire again to cast a spell. “Wind Creation Magic: Heavenly Wind Arc.” As the trio of tornadoes formed around him to create something that could be stood on despite being air, Mimosa dropped her feet onto the magic before Yuno moved it to catch Klaus.

After picking himself up from the arc’s floor, the man looked around. “Are we the only ones that made it?”

“At least in this area,” Yuno told him before looking around. “I thought spatial magic wasn’t possible inside the Noble Realm.”

Klaus groaned and pushed his glasses up on his face. “Well, our opponents have found a way around that limitation,” he said before looking around, stopping and peering off to the left. “Hmm, it would seem that we weren’t the only knights to avoid the attack.”

As everyone in the group turned to look at what he found Sylph let out a groan. “That’s not a magic knight,” she said, getting everyone’s attention. When all of the human’s looked at her, the fairy frowned right back. “Hey, I made this body to catch all the action. Meaning that my eyes are better than a hawk’s.”


Mereoleona finished off the last of the zombies in the final group that was in her section of the city, blowing it apart with a single flaming punch before looking back to her stupid baby brother. “So, you just stood there like an idiot in front of the girl?” she asked in a rage, carrying on the conversation they had begun after learning the attack on Clover was little more than a bunch of disposable bodies that the civic guard should have been able to deal with on their own.

“W-Well,” Leopold stuttered. “We didn’t really have anything to talk about.”

“MORON!” Mereoleona shouted. “Noelle was obviously confused about something. If her best friend was standing right next to her, you’re supposed to show concern. WHY THE HELL DO YOU THINK I TOLD YOU TO ESCORT HER TO THE BATHROOM?”

Leopold gulped. “Uh...to be nice?” he asked before the idiocy of his own statement came through. “Wait, you’re never nice.”

The insult had Mereoleona in the boy’s face before he could blink. “I’M THE KINDEST THING ON TWO LEGS IN THE CLOVER KINGDOM!” she yelled at him. “Just look how I’m not beating you half to death for screwing up our family’s chances of producing an outsider offspring! SEE HOW CONSIDERATE I’M BEING?”

“Um...Sis, don’t you think that...you know...the guy that she gets together with should be someone that actually likes her?” Leo asked nervously. “I don’t even know the girl!”

Despite the genuine argument that her baby brother had, Mereoleona smacked him upside the head. “Idiot! People like us don’t have the luxury of liking who we make babies with!” she shouted at him. “Do you honestly think Mother and Father started out liking each other? If you don’t work fast, that Yuno boy is going to swoop in and grab her up before you even take her on a date!”

Leopold blinked. “Wait...aren’t they brother and sister? I’m pretty sure Sunset said something about her and him being-”

“They’re just from the same orphanage, and just talking about that girl when she’s not around gets that boy’s dick up!” Mereoleona told him. “So get your ass in gear before the two of them figure out there’s no blood relation and-” A sudden drop in the levels of mana around her made Mereoleona cut herself off.

While there were still plenty of people all around the city, the mana she had been feeling coming from the trouble spots where the flower girl and eagle brat had gone to suddenly dropped off the map. Yami was still there, and fairy boy was up in the air with two others, along with someone else floating above her own position that had been around since before the start of the fight that Mereoleona had written off as a noble on her broom too frightened to come down. But everyone else had just up and disappeared.

“The fuck just happened?” she wondered aloud.

The sudden appearance of another source of mana behind her and several feet up made Mereoleona spin around. The guy who had just portaled in, despite her being smack dab in the middle of the Noble Realm, was a freaky looking beanpole of a man with shady eyes and a pair of lines drawn on his face from his brows to his cheeks that had several little dots on them.

“Ah, the famed Fuegol-wait...you’re not the captain of the Crimson Lions,” he grumbled.

Mereoleona frowned. “Oh, you did not just mistake me for a man!”

Completely ignoring her, the spatial mage looked up into the sky as a woman in a black dress and witch’s hat descended on her broom from where Mereoleona had detected her when this whole mess started. “What is going on here, Catherine? You said that Fuegoleon was at this location!”

“I thought she was!” the witch replied. “Long orange hair and a red cape. She fits the description perfectly. The intel said that he would be here for the promotion ceremony-”

Leopold stepped forward. “Um...actually,” he spoke up, making the woman pause. “Brother is busy working, so he didn’t come to the ceremony.”

The spatial mage blinked and gave the boy a look of absolute disbelief. “Are you telling me this entire attack that we spent months setting up has all been for NOTHING?” he yelled.

Mereoleona crouched down and prepared to jump. “Oh, I don’t know. You’re about to get some shattered kneecaps out of it,” she yelled before launching herself at the mage.

Unfortunately, using the kind of magic that didn’t need to be recited before being cast meant he was able to open up a large spatial magic portal in front of himself before Mereoleona could close the distance. Not wanting to be dropped in a volcano or something, she called up her grimoire and punched forward while making a slight alteration to the spell. “Fire Magic: Calidus Brachidium!”

The resulting explosion killed her momentum and knocked the woman back as she focused her magic to create a mana zone and repositioned enough mana beneath her to keep in the air despite there being nothing beneath her feet.

Tch! We need to pull back,” the spatial mage said before a pair of portals opened up beneath him and beside the witch.

“You think I’m just going to let you get away?” Mereoleona yelled as she called up her grimoire again.

However, it was already too late. By the time she had finished casting and repositioned the attack to stop them from escaping, both of her opponents had already slipped through their portals. A second after they disappeared, Yuno arrived on the scene with Mimosa and that Golden Dawn guy she had hid behind during the banquet.

“Ms Mereoleona, are you alright?” Yuno called out from atop his wind transport before it descended to eye level with her.

The woman glared back at him, making Mimosa give out a startled cry before she ducked behind the boy again. “DO I LOOK OKAY?” she demanded before scanning the horizon of the city.

Most of the fires had been put out and casualties looked to have been at a minimum. There were probably more injuries caused by people running away in a panic than anything else. Had this whole thing really been a farce to lure her little brother into...what? Some kind of lame trap?

None of the idiots she had seen would have been able to take him.

Although, the two captains just up and disappearing on her made Mereoleona frown. Then she turned her attention back to Yuno. “What happened to the rest of the Golden Dawn that you were with?” she asked as another oddity stood out in her mind.

And where the hell is Julius?


The place that had been chosen as the standby position and fallback point for their attack on the Clover Kingdom was a fortified manor house made more for military action than comfort. With it, the noble family of the region watched over their people and made sure that nothing could hurt them. At least, that was what George’s parents had told him when he was little, before he met the master and learned just how evil people were.

After murdering his parents in their sleep, George had put it to a much better use: the command center for the first real strike against the Clover Kingdom. Unfortunately, while Rades had caused a good amount of property damage, the real objective of the operation had turned out to be missing from the capital.

Still, the fact that some of the people had died in the attack meant that the mission was a success to George. The people of Clover deserved to suffer, they were born to suffer for their sins. And he would be the swift wind of vengeance that brought justice to the world!

The thought had him reach up and touch the scar on the left side of his face. The gift from God he had received as a child that had let him see how evil the world truly was. All the years of mockery, all the girls laughing at him… WELL WHO’S LAUGHING NOW? George thought with glee as he pictured the Noble Realm on fire.

“You lost all your special zombies?” the girl in a white robe, with her messy short hair and glasses asked as they followed Rades back into the base with one of the assault party missing. Valtos had separated from the group after dropping them all off to go and fetch the master from the place that had been prepared for him to face the Crimson Lion Captain.

Rades glared at Sally with his one good eye. “I didn’t lose them! That girl cheated! She used more than one type of magic! If someone had told me they had a copy mage ahead of time, I would have been more than ready for her!”

Nodding in agreement at the assessment of the Clover Kingdom’s so-called champions, George joined in the conversation. “Yes, they’re all dirty cheaters that need to be killed in the most painful way possible,” he agreed. “But, you told them who we were, right?”

That was the real objective of the attack, as far as George was concerned. The attack on the capital was the first day that the Clover Kingdom would learn to fear the name of the Eye of the Midnight Sun!

“Uh...what?” Rades asked the former noble, since George had cast away his title and the privilege it entailed.

George frowned at the man. “Our name. You told them that we were called the Eye of the Midnight Sun, right?” he asked. “That was supposed to be the climax of the plan. After the master killed Fuegoleon, we would let them know who to fear! Our name was to strike terror into the hearts of every man, woman and child in the kingdom!”

Rades frowned back at him as the seven of them, most still in their robes, walked into the shade of the organization’s manor before the descended into the bottom floor, that was more of an entryway and choke point with two lines of pillars to provide some semblance of cover. It made no sense to Gerorge, but his parents had been the ones to have it built.

“What was that name again?” a cheery voice called out from the darkness of the long chamber.

George looked forward. “The Eye of the Midnight-SHIT!” he cried out as the speaker stepped into view.

Although George had only seen him in pictures, the image of the Wizard King was hard to mistake, with his tall statue, blonde hair and blue star mark on his forehead, not to mention the bright red robe he wore. “Huh, that doesn’t sound very terrifying,” Julius Novachrono commented before his mana flared. “Guess all the good ones were taken. Now, let me just-”

Taking command of the situation, George brought up his grimoire. “KILL HIM NOW!” he shouted right before the man disappeared from view.

He was behind them less than a second later, his hands holding a pair of blue orbs that were obviously a spell of some kind. Then, they disappeared in a blur of motion and two of the robed men that had been standing beside George disappeared with a loud pop before a squelching impact on opposite walls led him to seeing a pair of giant red splotches of blood with bits of bone sticking out of the stone.

Seeing two men killed so easily in front of him made George take a step back. “T-They...you killed them!” he shrieked in horror.

“Don’t you know the first rule of warfare?” Julius asked before his eyes became much more cold. “Don’t take someone’s life unless you’re ready to die as well.”

One of the other mages in their group brought up his grimoire and created roots that he sent towards the Wizard King. All they had to do was touch the man and all his magic would be sucked away.

They never even reached him before the tree withered and died as the Wizard King just casually stood there doing nothing!

“Now, I’ll make you all a deal,” he said, the happy facade returning. “The first one of you that drops to his knees and begs for his life, offering up all the information you have on your little group of terrorists, that one gets to live. Not that we can’t just rip the information from your minds, but my assistant Marx does have a full schedule these days.”

Before anyone could do anything, George called up his grimoire. “Wind Creation Magic: Tornado Needles!” he cast to send a dozen little tornadoes towards the blonde man. A second later, everyone that was still alive joined in the assault throwing everything they had at the man in a barrage of attacks that filled the room with a mass of power.

“Looks like it’s executions all around then!”

Behind us, AGAIN? George mentally screamed as he turned just in time to see the man ready his spell.

“Mana Zone Time Binding Magic: Chrono Stasis Grigora,” the Wizard King cast without a grimoire in sight. There was a flash of light, and before he even knew what was going on, George found himself floating inside a blue energy bubble with arcane runes spinning around it.

No! George thought as he found himself unable to move. Nothing was holding him, his body just wouldn’t respond to any mental commands. No, he can’t do this! THIS ISN’T FAIR!

Their revolution was just starting! He was going to kill them, all the people who needed to die, all the people who had ignored and refused to recognize his brilliance! THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE START OF HIS NEW LIFE!

“Well...that was rather...disappointing,” the Wizard King said with a sigh. “Well, my magic will hold you like that for some time. You won’t die of starvation in the coming days, although...I have seen plenty of people go insane from being stuck in a single position for a few weeks. Don’t worry though, after Marx picks through your brains, depending on how well you resist, you’ll be little more than vegetables.”

NO, THIS ISN’T FAIR! George mentally screamed. They were the heroes! They couldn’t all end up like this! THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO END THE LIVES OF EVERYONE IN THE CLOVER KINGDOM!

“Now, back to what I was doing before you all so rudely interrupted me,” he said before moving deeper into the chamber, the stasis orbs following him as he went until the Wizard King came upon a large stone slab at the back of the room with ten magical circles arranged in a pattern that had three on both sides, three in the middle, and one at the bottom, with the middle one at the top standing higher than the others. Lines connected any two circles that were close enough. In all but four of the magic circles, there was a slot that held a magic stone. “Do any of you know what this tablet is? What does it do? And the writing, what does it mean? I’ve never seen script like this.”

Then the man blinked. “Oh...wait, I guess Marx will just have to rip those answers from your minds as well back at the capital. Now, let’s get-hm?” he stopped, talked to frown and looked behind him as a bright light filled the chamber.

Although the light made it too bright to see, George knew what was going on.

It was the master! He had come to save them, like some kind of benevolent god!

Unable to close his eyes, George felt them begin to burn from the light, but he didn’t care! The master would save him. THE MASTER WAS ALL!

And then...the light was gone...along with the tablet.

Sally, Rades, Catherine, they had all been spirited away by the master.

But Gerorge still floated in the temporal cocoon, behind the Wizard King, unable to do anything aside from think. No, no! What did I do wrong? Come back, please! MASTER! SAVE ME! he screamed as the Wizard King turned to frown at him.

“Well, at least I’ve still got you to ask my questions to,” Julius said before a magical transmission spell broke into the room to display the face of a man with blue hair. “Ah, Marx! Got the communication grid up and running again, I see.”

The man in the display looked around. “Sir, where are you?”

“I was going after the lead you said the intelligence division sniffed out,” the Wizard King replied. “Unfortunately, while I was able to locate the staging area for their attack, it was only after all the culprits had left. So I stayed here to try and apprehend them when they returned. It...didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. How are things at the capital?”

We’re still counting the number of people missing and totaling the damages. Reports are coming in that after a spatial mage managed to remove the knights from their locations to a field three-hundred miles away, they pulled back their forces. From what I can gather, the target of their attack was Fuegoleon. Although, we still can’t ascertain why they would go to such lengths to target a single captain, they pulled out when they discovered he wasn’t in the city.”

Julius rubbed his chin. “I see,” he said before looking back to where the stone tablet had been for a moment. “Tell our foremost magical research expert that I need to talk to her immediately, and have some paper for me to write on. I need to jot as much of this down while it’s still fresh in my mind.”


Once again, Sunset found herself standing in the office of the Wizard King. However, unlike last time, she wasn’t nearly as nervous, and he didn’t look anything like the cheery man who had grilled her about everything magical until she could barely stand. This time, he had a deadly serious look on his face as she took the paper Marx offered her while the rest of the captains present for the invasion were also off to the side to be briefed on what the Wizard King had found inside the hideout.

All she really wanted to do was go home, wash off the soot clinging to her face, throw her clothes in the dirty laundry pile, and get some sleep after a nice bath. Instead, they had her looking at the recollection of something Julius had found.

Sunset frowned at the diagram in front of her. The man was no Poncasso, but any child with a few pencils could jot down a good representation of one of the most fundamental arrays in magic. “It’s the Tree of Life,” she said before looking back at the man sitting at his desk.

“So you do know of it,” Julius said while the other three mages in the room became more interested. “What is it supposed to do?”

The question had Sunset reaching up to rub the top of her head to help with the headache she knew was coming. Explaining magic to humans was like getting a wild animal to wait tables. It could be done, in Equestria at least, but it took forever to have them grasp the most basic concepts. “That’s like me asking what your grimoires do, and expecting to tell me they let you use the same type of magic,” Sunset replied before looking back to the diagram. “It all depends on what’s written down along the connections. Arrays made using the Tree of Life model usually pertain to healing, but that could also be twisted to cause uncontrolled growths in the body, creating a cancerous effect.”

Julius sighed and sat back in his chair. “Unfortunately, the arcane script they used wasn’t one I’m familiar with. All I could tell was that it wasn’t language of the grimoires,” he told her before focusing on Sunset again. “What about the stones in the holes?”

Although she did her best to hide her uncomfortable expression, Sunset knew the bad feelings in the pit of her stomach were showing on her face. “That...I can’t really help you with. If they’re magic items specific to this world…”

Ten holes...with some possessing magical gems inside of them. It couldn’t have been a coincidence.

“Your expertise wouldn’t pertain to them. Yes...I was hopeful, but…” The man let out another sigh. “Well, we do have one of their number, we’ll see what we can pry from his mind. Thank you for your assistance in this time of crisis.”

Sunset felt the proverbial knife twist in her gut. She did know something about the stone, but telling the man would be a betrayal of another friend. “Um...there might be...something I can offer,” she said before pausing when everyone looked back at her. “If these things are part of an array like this, and you haven’t ever heard of the Tree of Life, then...I doubt those magic stones are an ordinary power source for any old magic item. They’re probably old, maybe even the product of foreign magic. So, there might be some information on them in your archives or...something. Sorry, I know it’s a long shot, but...it’s all I got.”

Liar, Sunset told herself as she clenched her fist.

But, what she knew about the magic stones...Secre had told her to keep it secret. Maybe, if the bird gave her permission...

After second the Wizard King nodded. “Yes, I suppose it’s worth a look. Ten magical gems that are part of a set, perhaps of otherworldly origins. There wouldn’t be many things like that in the history of the kingdom,” he said before looking over to the three mages that were standing off to the side.

While Charlotte stood a bit more at attention, and Nozel hadn’t changed his posture since the start of the meeting, Yami leaned up against the wall and reached for a cigarette that wasn’t there before frowning at his hand to put it back down. As Sunset moved back to let them take the center of the floor, the Wizard King turned his attention to another paper on his desk. “We’re going to have to make a show of solidarity in the next few days to calm the populace. I’ll give a speech, the rest of you stand behind me, that sort of thing,” he told them before focusing on the man in the middle. “Nozel, I want you to pull the Silver Eagles back to the capital for the next month or so, Have them patrol the streets, let the citizens see your robes so they can feel a bit safer. The higher the rank of the squad we use, the better. I’ll have the Golden Dawn step up the border patrols with Diamond so they don’t see this as a moment of weakness.”

“What of Fuegoleon? Will you be recalling the Crimson Lions to the capital as well?” he asked evenly.

The question got a little groan from Charlotte. “Is this really the time to be concerned that your rival is going to outdo you?”

Julius crossed his arms and sighed. “Considering that this was all centered on an attempt to take his life, or perhaps take him captive, I’m tempted to just leave him out of the city. Leo and Mereoleona have already returned to the encampment that the Lions have set up to warn the man, but if this Eye of the Midnight Sun was willing to throw so many resources into an attack centered on him...Fuegoleon has been very active in the northern regions of the kingdom lately, it’s possible that he might have stumbled onto something vital to their plans and they decided to try and put a stop to it. If that’s the case, it would probably be best to have the Crimson Lions step up their operations in the north and review several of their older missions.

“There have been over a dozen minor incidents involving insurrectionists cropping over the year. At first, I had thought they were just halfheartedly related, things who all decided to wear the same set of colors as they try to tear the Clover Kingdom down because of one reason or another. But now, I have the sneaking suspicion that they were part of a larger movement, pawns with a backer that was slowly built his power base, weeding out the chaff until he had the fanatics he needed to indiscriminately burn down anything he wanted,” the Wizard King went on. “If that’s the case, then this attack on the capital was their declaration of war and sign that whatever they’re up to, the plan they’ve concocted is reaching its end stages. But I will not allow them to have their way. They have shown themselves too early. We will find them and we will crush them.”


Happy to be home...Noelle blinked at the thought as she walked into the Black Bull’s HQ to find Vanessa passed out drunk on the couch, Gauche carving a little doll that looked like that picture of his kid sister, Gray smoking in the corner, Gordon peeking around a corner at her, and… The royal blinked as she looked around the room, but didn’t even find the evidence of burn marks. Guess Magna and Luck are still off on their mission.

It was inconceivable. The whole building was a filthy mess of shoddy construction done by shady magic that nobody had an explanation for. Her room was too small, her bath too pedestrian, and the surrounding area much too wild for a girl that had grown up in the capital. But...despite the dusty, dingy and all around dank atmosphere, Noelle was more happy to be with the Black Bulls than she ever had been at her real one.

Although…

I put her in the Black Bulls, a squad of layabouts and misfits so that she would not be put in any real dangerous situations.”

Had Nozel known what would come of being put in the Black Bulls instead of the Silver Eagles? Even if they had kept her at the squad headquarters, doing paperwork or other such menial tasks, Nebra and Solid would have made her life there hell.

But...he had never done anything for her before!

Noelle reached up to rub her arms and stop the shiver that was threatening to overtake her body while the rest of the people that had come home with her went their separate ways. Charmy to cook her dinner, despite it being past eight at night, Yami to go to the bathroom, Asta to start his nightly workout routine, and Sunset…

The redhead poked the unconscious woman a few times before sighing and lifting Vanessa up in her magic, then putting her in a piggyback carry in what was almost a nightly ritual between the two. “I swear, sometimes, I wonder which one of us is the older one,” she grumbled without any fire in her words.

Putting the contradiction that had consumed her life on the back burner for the moment, Noelle moved after Sunset. “Hey, um...you want some help?” she asked. Not that Noelle enjoyed taking care of Vanessa when she got drunk, but...Sunset would probably need to take a bath after everything that happened.

That had become their thing, bathing together.

“Sure,” the redhead replied before Noelle grabbed a pair of empty bottles and followed them up the stairs.

After they had gotten the woman into her room, the two girls took off her clothes and slipped her into bed on the edge so that when they inevitably woke up in the middle of the night to throw up, it wouldn’t get anywhere but the bucket they had put there for her. Then, Sunset used a bit of her magic to secure the woman to keep her from rolling around in her sleep and bent down to kiss her on the side of the head.

Once she was taken care of, they finally headed to the bath and stripped down to wash off all of the soot and grime that clung to Sunny before finally getting in for a good soak. After sinking down into the water and taking a few minutes to just let the heat do it’s work, Noelle looked over to Sunset. “So...rough day?”

“You have no idea,” she groaned before leaning over to rest her head on the royal’s shoulder. “I just got used to seeing cooked meat, and now there’s walking human corpses? That’s just freaky. It took everything I had not to just teleport away...which...I guess your capital’s means of blocking spatial magic doesn’t stop. Really should have made sure of that before I rescued that little noble kid.”

Noelle smirked and reached around the other girl to hug her. “I’m just glad you’re all safe...I...should have gone with you guys,” she admitted in a soft voice.

Sunset tensed in her grip. Noelle knew what she was about to say, that Nozel was right to leave her behind because she was so useless in such a situation, but it was nice that Sunset didn’t just tell her outright. “Well, he wasn’t wrong to leave someone to watch the castle. Do you still have that communicator?”

“Yeah,” Noelle said with a little smirk before she pulled the redhead in closer to her. “Think I should call some of the Silver Eagles as a prank?”

The joke question got a smile from Sunset. “No. But hold onto the thing, who knows when you’ll need to call someone,” she said before going quiet for several seconds. “Hey Noelle, everything okay with you? Did you have another dizzy spell like at lunch.”

Noelle blinked. “I’m...just...processing something. It’ll be fine.”

Silence returned to the bath for several seconds before Sunset decided on another topic. “So...your family...they seem...dickish.”

A snort of a laugh came from Noelle at the descriptor. “Sunny, you have no idea.”