[Author's Note: I already had this episode almost fully planned out and halfway written when Chompy posted her own take, so I figured, fuck it, might as well finish and post.]
Helen's chest had been hurting ever since she had her crying fit in the church. At first, she had just put it down to extreme stress and ignored it, going about a day as normal as she could make it, considering the circumstances. She wrote that letter to that Stella's school, wrote another letter to her precious baby Zarala, wrote another letter basically begging Zair's father for something even vaguely resembling help raising their child (knowing damn well he'd probably never read it), and all that time, the pain in her chest just wouldn't go away. It was peculiar; a tightness, sort of, like a squeezing, like she'd just put on an invisible version of the world's tightest corset. That made sense, though. She was having to face head on the fact that her child had run away and probably hated her now; of course a little bit of a stress ache wouldn't be amiss. Never mind that it had started to kinda really hurt.
The chest pains didn't really start seeming weird to her until she tried doing all her other errands for today. This was a precious day off she'd had to call in after Zair went missing, after all; she wasn't going to miss an opportunity to get her usual heckin' long list of things to do chipped away at when a free moment finally came. So she powered through, getting her errands for the day done despite the growing uneasy feeling she had that her chest pain might actually mean something serious.
At any rate, it didn't seem any less noticeably weird than coming home to an apartment with no Zarala around. She sighed heavily, unloading groceries for two despite there no longer being two. "Do I just... get used to this, from here?" Helen wondered. "Zarala's gone off on her big adventure, probably not coming back anytime except maybe holidays, if I'm lucky. I suppose I always knew this day would come... that one day she'd be all grown up, leave the nest and go live her own life, but... I never imagined it'd be like this." Helen's chest pounded her in pain, but she was too wrapped up in her own reflections to care. "She was the center of my world for almost 20 years now... Every waking moment, it was about Zarala. How do I raise Zarala? How do I feed Zarala? Who do I get to look after Zarala when I'm not around? What does the school have to say about Zarala? How do I secure the best future for Zarala? Eh... do all parents have to go through this, or am I just the unlucky one with a deadbeat demon fathering her? I... God, it hurts!"
Suddenly, Helen found she had collapsed, to the floor of her own kitchen. She was light-headed and sweating profusely, and her entire torso felt like it was caught in a vice. Finally, she was forced to the realization that whatever was going with her, it wasn't normal, and she hastily found herself grabbing out her phone to dial 911.
The operator enlightened her to the fact that she was having a heart attack. Helen fainted from shock at the revelation.
The funny thing about it was that, when the paramedics got there, there was no body to be found anywhere.
Mara (not Martin) and Tahera (not Terry) watched the strange kaleidoscopic shimmering of the Well of Power with a rapt, almost fearful awe. There was something about the strange crackling optics of the dome that might have reminded them of the portal from the human world to this one, if it weren't for the fact that the Well seemed so much more... alive, in a way. Fluid, flowing and churning like clouds in a thunderstorm, and refusing to keep to a neat shape with its plumes of magic blooming out and then fading away, over and over, eternally. It stayed well within the hemisphere the automatons assured them would keep the Well's power contained, but all the same, with there being no physical boundary between them and the well besides a glassy stone ring maybe a foot tall, it was hard not to be at least a little unnerved. It was like they were being asked to stand right next to a huge, blazing hot bonfire, and almost, but not quite, close enough to be burned by said flames. The fact that the physical structure around the "well" only seemed to be about as deep as a fire pit and was built just like one only made the analogy all the more dangerous-feeling.
The reverie the two not-boys were in was broken, quite suddenly, by the energy within the Well seeming to abruptly die down and recede, allowing the mystical thing to shrink and dissipate until there was nothing in the dragonglass firepit but Sarah, who was proudly holding aloft her new companion. Or at least, what should have been her companion; to the not-girls, it appeared mostly to be a very large, slightly reddish stone. Sarah seemed plenty happy with it, though.
"Oh man, girls, you've gotta check this out!" the fox-girl exclaimed with joy as she hopped out of the pit so she could better thrust her new mineral "companion" into her friends' faces. "Pretty cool, huh?" she said smugly.
Mara faked a smile even as she examined it more closely, but Tahera was much more plainly unimpressed. "I don't get it... that's just a rock," she said after a while. "What's so special about a rock?"
"It's not just a rock, silly!" Sarah said with a chuckle. "It's only a rock when it wants to be! Watch this: I think I need, let's say, a staff to lean on right now, hm? Can I get a good walking stick?"
Suddenly, the rock seemed to melt in her hands, drooping down in a long, gelatinous mass, before shaping itself into a rod, changing color, and at last stiffening into a gnarled oak staff. Both the secretly-boys were taken aback, and Sarah grinned.
"Or, maybe, a nice, cute jacket? I can keep you close and carry you everywhere if you're my jacket!"
Martin had it figured out by the time the staff had twisted itself around Sarah's arm and started its fabric to crawling around Sarah's torso. "You got a Mimic!" he said in now-genuine excitement to match Sarah's own. "I didn't know Mimics could be people's familiars!"
"They sure can!" Sarah said while admiring just how well the little pink blazer her Mimic had become complimented the rest of her green dress. "And I'm really, really happy to have gotten it; it's like having basically every non-magical tool, item, weapon, piece of clothing, anything you can imagine with you, all the time! What do you think I should name it?"
"Why, um... do you keep calling them an 'it'?" Tahera asked, clopping back away and keeping a nervous, suspicious eye on the possessed jacket. "Do you not know if it's a boy or a girl?"
Both Mara and Sarah gave Tahera a curious look. "Mimics are inherently genderless. They reproduce asexually, and, uh, aren't exactly known for their higher brain functions," Sarah explained. "Plus, it's just a word choice; why do you ask?"
A sad look came over Tahera for a flash, but she just shrugged it off. "No reason," she replied eventually. "Just curious."
The ensuing silence would've gotten awkward quickly if it weren't for Uni (it was her shift to keep watch over the Well of Power for now); the clockwork girl hastily stepped in to interrupt with "Begging your pardon, my ladies, but I must remind you we have rituals to complete today, and all the time we could wish for to admire our new companions tomorrow. Would the Magical Girl Mara please step into the center of the well?"
"Oh, absolutely!" Doubts about the legitimacy of it all aside, Martin found himself thrilled by the possibility of getting his very own magical companion and coming one step closer to channeling magic of his own, and it was exactly that thrill that sent him bounding over the little obsidian step and into the lightly curved basin where the Well had been just a moment ago. Once in the center, where Sarah just was, there came a humming, some slight rumblings, and little bits of the odd shimmerings of before as the Well began to reawaken, but it was not alive yet. Martin shuddered; there was something about the place he was standing that made his hairs stand on end and his breath come a bit deeper, something he couldn't quite place yet. "What, um... what do I do, again? What happens now?"
"You will first begin to make your Promise," Uni explained matter-of-factly, "the Vow which will hereafter be the source of your magic power. I'm afraid I cannot give you precise instruction, as there exists no exact, transmittable algorithm to initiate such a vow: each person's Promise is uniquely theirs, and therefore, you must search your own feelings and open your own mind to the Great Mystery that we call Magic, by your own self. I can, however, make certain recommendations that may help to clear your thoughts, and open your mind to magic and the spirit world. Take a seat; shut your eyes; begin taking deep breaths; and count the inhales and the exhales as you go. For the first 10 breaths, you will focus on nothing at all, save clearing your mind of worries and distractions. For the next 10 breaths, you will call to mind the things in your life which are most important to you: your greatest hopes and greatest fears, your deepest friendships and bitterest rivalries, your loyalties and your responsibilities, the world in which you live as opposed to the world in which you want to live. Let your mind wander, for the next 10 breaths after that; it will find itself dwelling on magic, whether you know it or not. Once that happens, you'll be in the spirit world; and what happens then is up to you."
Martin looked skeptical, but reluctantly, he did as he was told. The boy sat down on the cold obsidian floor, now crackling from magic of some kind, shut his eyes, and started to breathe.
Inhale.
His heart was fluttering and his pose was uncomfortable. Martin couldn't help shifting where he sat a bit.
Exhale.
One.
Inhale.
Around him were all the Well's crackling noises.
Exhale.
Two.
Inhale.
Martin reminded himself that he wasn't supposed to be listening to them.
Exhale.
Three.
Inhale.
The crackling sounds around him were only getting louder, but somehow Martin no longer heard them.
Exhale.
Four.
Inhale.
Martin could no longer hear Uni's ticking or Tahera's muttering either.
Exhale.
Five.
Inhale.
Martin could no longer hear anything besides the sound of his own breath and the beat of his own heart.
Exhale.
Six.
Inhale.
At the seventh breath, Martin's head was empty.
Exhale.
Seven.
Inhale.
...
Exhale.
Eight.
Inhale.
.....
Exhale.
Nine.
Inhale.
...........
Exhale.
Ten.
Inhale.
Why was he doing this, again?
Exhale.
11.
Inhale.
Was it all just to learn a bunch of silly magic tricks so he could have his silly fun?
Exhale.
12.
Inhale.
Was it all because he just so happened to bump into a magical girl years ago, or because he apparently made some demon contract he didn't even remember making?
Exhale.
13.
Inhale.
That didn't sound right. It couldn't be anything so light. After all, Martin was just about throwing away everything he'd ever had to do with his old life in the human world to get this chance, wasn't he?
Exhale.
14.
Inhale.
At this rate he'd never be going home. Never going back to boring old human school. Not wasting away the days with his video games or his fantasy novels or those forums speculating about magic in the other world. No more parents banning him from travel to the other side. No more uninteresting humanity for him.
Exhale.
15.
Inhale.
Thinking of leaving it all behind felt... kinda nice.
Exhale.
16.
Inhale.
But he couldn't have been that unhappy with life on Earth, could he? He had friends and family, right? He had hobbies and a future ahead of him and everything, right?
Exhale.
17.
Inhale.
... No, he didn't. He had acquaintances like Terry who patiently put up with him, he had emphatically unreal escapist fantasies, he had no real goals for life beyond high school, and he had parents who knew damn well he would "lose himself" if he ever got a taste of real life, over here, as an elven magical girl or whatever it was he was becoming. They were absolutely right.
Exhale.
18.
Inhale.
Who was he kidding? All he'd ever wanted to be before was anyone but himself. Maybe he didn't hate humans and the world they lived in in quite the same way Zair did, but he ran away from home just like she did, and it wasn't until she suggested that he might be stuck this way that he'd even considered going back.
Exhale.
19.
Inhale.
This was his chance! This was the golden opportunity to throw out the old and usher in the new! He had no real idea where this road might take him, but was there ever an adventure where the hero did? No more dreaming about magic, no more reading about magic, no more waiting for life to happen to him; it was time to start doing!
Exhale.
20.
Martin had just begun to make the Promise, and in doing so entered the Spirit World.
Later on, in hindsight, Zarala might've reflected humorously on how bad things had to have gotten, that being seen shirtless by the rest of the students filtering through the halls was the least troublesome thing on her mind right then. As a matter of fact, at the time, she was actually grateful they were seeing her mostly topless normal form, because it meant they weren't seeing The Wings yet. "No, no no, breathe!" Zarala desperately tried to calm herself down, wringing the lightly charred shirt in her hands and trying to shut everything out to stop The Wings before they happened. "I can't freak out here! Not again, not when I'm finally in a school I actually kinda like; they'll get mad and they'll hate me and they'll expel me to those disciplinary programs for sure!" The dangerous part was just how stealthily it had crept up on her; how she hadn't even realized how upset she was getting until she finally had to stop in one of the hallways to look over a posted map of the school to actually find the Well of Power. It was looking over the map when she realized her shirt had started smoking, and was close to catching fire. She took it off near-instinctively.
"Don't worry about that now," she tried to tell herself, futilely. "Don't worry at all, if you can help it. Just bottle it and explode later. Right now, just focus on the objective: Get to the Well, warn Martin, sneak him out, get away clean. He's probably not even started the ritual. It's going to be alright." Once she'd gotten Denial and Repression and Lies-to-Herself firmly in place, Zarala could finally get back to the primary action, that being to haul ass through the hallways and burst into the courtyard where the Well was built as soon as was allowed by the laws of physics, if not sooner. And she did, much to the surprise of Uni, Sarah, and that one new demon-girl, Tahera.
Tahera, meanwhile, had a sudden and awful guess as to why Zarala seemed so much less intimidating than he remembered earlier. Earlier, she had been calm, at peace; just hanging out with a fellow demon without a care in the world, nor a trace of the rage she remembered on her face just before Halloween became traumatic. Now, though... Tahera was suddenly shaken with flashbacks to the precursors before it all went wrong. The overly animated wild hair, the strange fire sparking all over her, the fanned-out wings, the shirtlessness, the hate... Tahera just knew she was about to watch history repeat itself, and had jumped to cower behind Uni for protection before she even knew why she was doing it.
"Where's Mara!?" Zarala demanded, looking around the courtyard for her pink-haired friend and not seeing anything.
"Lady Zarala?" Uni asked with the detachment only a machine could have had right then. "What is the meaning of this?"
"The meaning of 'Where's Mara?' is 'Where the hell is Mara!?' dumbass!" Zarala fumed impatiently. "I need to talk to him-" reality shuddered for a moment, unbeknownst to any of them. "I need to talk to her right freaking now, robot, it's important!" Zarala continued, no longer capable of thinking of Martin with anything other than feminine pronouns.
"Lady Mara is not available right now, madame," Uni explained patiently. "She has entered the Well of Power and is in the middle of the Binding Ritual as we speak."
"She WHAT!?" Zarala thundered. The shirt in her hand burst into flames, and Tahera could have sworn Zarala had grown several inches taller and far more intimidating for a brief moment; but with a look of something like shame on her face at what had just become of her clothes, she seemed steadily to make herself smaller again.
"...-has entered the Well of Power and is in the-"
"Yeah, I heard what you said, robot, stop it!" Zarala cut her off. "The ritual, I mean, stop it! Stop it right now!"
"The Binding Ritual is not to be interrupted, madame."
"Bullshit, it isn't! She's in trouble, goddammit, let me at her!"
"What trouble, madame?"
"I can't tell you, she just is! Now let me at her!"
Tahera, cowering behind Uni, was trembling violently in a panic that was creating sparks of its own. "She's going to eat her!" Tahera thought, in a growing frenzy of her own. "Mara made Zair mad somehow, and now she's going to be ripped to pieces and eaten by that demon because of it! Or WORSE! I gotta do something; I gotta run, I gotta get Mara and get out of here!" Zarala and Uni were still arguing when Tahera made her play, dashing straight for the Well of Power as fast as her hooves could carry her, and diving in.
Zarala was stunned at first, but that stun quickly turned into fury. "YOU COULD JUMP IN AFTER MARA THE WHOLE TIME!?" No holding back anymore; now Zair was a foot taller, huge, and showing off an 18-foot batlike wingspan, complete with a longer, more draconic tail, and the most hideously contorted expression imaginable.
"My Lady, please!" Uni pleaded, trying to calm down the flaming monstrosity in front of her. "If you pass through that portal after Mara-"
And all Zair heard of that sentence was the subtext confirming that jumping in to reach Mara was possible. She dashed to do exactly that without hesitation.
Sarah, the fox girl, seemed tempted to jump in after them as well, but Uni, at this point, reached over to grab an arm and physically restrain her from doing as much. Sarah protested, "But we ought to help them, shouldn't we?"
"Following them in now would be of no assistance, Lady Sarah!" Uni replied in the closest tone she'd heard one of the automatons get to exasperation. "Once through the portal in this circumstance, you wouldn't be able to leave until the ritual is complete; a ritual which your classmates have just gravely interrupted! None of us here have the magic capabilities to stop it prematurely. If you wish to be of assistance, please, go find Principal Yuanshi, explain the situation, and request he abort the ritual early to safely evacuate the students from the Spirit World. He and a few of his colleagues should be capable of that. I'll enter the portal and see to the safety of the students meanwhile." Uni took a key to a lockbox nearby, withdrawing from it a short sword and a magic wand with a small mana bead reserved for emergencies.
"Wait a minute, then why are you going in?" Sarah asked.
"I am a disposable, replaceable asset for the school, Lady Sarah," Uni explained as she readied her stance, sword in one hand, wand in the other. "There need be no concern for my safety except as it benefits our students." And with that, the clockwork girl stepped through the portal and into the battle that was brewing on the other side.
"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"
Martin shrunk back, utterly at a loss for words. All around him were... were beings... beings that weren't merely animal in the way most of the peoples of the other world were, but beings with what could only be described as a certain, powerful aura: that indescribable quality of presence which makes one stop and stare, and sets his stomach to tightening. And aaaall those spirits -- for spirits they were, they had to be -- all of them were sizing up Martin like tigers sizing up prey.
"What's the matter, pretty boy? Cat got your tongue?" a Yuki-onna teased, gliding circles around Martin on her ice skates. She was freezing the ground in front of said skates with an almost effortless exertion of magic, and, stranger than that, appeared to have been made entirely out of snow judging by the shiny sparkles of her ultra-white flesh, entirely snow save for her piercingly blue eyes, lips, and hair.
"I-... I'm here, t-..." Martin tried to start, but couldn't, stopping himself with a gulp. They were all just watching him, like vultures: nine-tailed kitsunes, fairies, possessed sets of samurai armor, gorgons, vampires, genies, shadowmen, wendigos, jackal-headed humanoids, half-skeletal women, nuckelavees, alicorns, atronachs, drakaina, things Martin wouldn't even find a name for; all these surreal things just hanging on his words.
"I'm here to get a companion," Martin quickly spat out, at last.
And then almost the whole congregation erupted in laughter. "You think to challenge us, mortal!? You look like you barely know the right way to hold your wand, let alone use it! What makes you think you're worthy to test our power!?"
"Is, is that not how it works?" Martin asked, steadily finding his voice and his courage. "I've come here because I understand I need a companion to continue learning magic, and I made a Promise to someone that I would do just that! I can't go back on that, not even if I wanted to. There's no way to go but forward, so, here I am!"
The spirits' mirth was dying down to a general mixture of pity, genuine confusion, and exasperation. "Look, little boy, you seem nice, if naïve, so we'll give you this chance to reconsider exactly what it is you're doing here. If you wish, you can quit this silly dream right now, go on back to the human world, forget all of this ever happened, and go on with your life. We can do that for you. If instead you persist, you will lose this challenge, you will be hurt in doing so, and we will have to strip of what powers you do have, restoring you to a mere base state. There is simply no way that you, alone and unaided, can withstand all of us. If you have any amount of reason here, you'll take us up on our offer and get out of here."
"Like I said, I am going to learn magic if it kills me!" Martin insisted stubbornly, finally properly finding his feet. "I am NOT 'getting out of here'!"
"MARA! MARA! You have to get out of here!" Out of nowhere, Tahera came sprinting in, flailing her arms about and shouting hysterically for her new friend. "It's, she's, MONSTER! Monster, coming here, RUN!" Tahera desperately urged in sentences as coherent as her panic would allow.
Martin, needless to say, was deeply confused, but the spirits, at this point, were just rolling their eyes. "We don't have time for this. Let's get this fight won, and fast."
And just like that, before Tahera had even registered the sentence, some strong hands had grabbed her by the horns and yanked her back, stopping her momentum and nearly throwing her to the ground. Nearly, because the gorgon was not done with her yet: a flurry of tails and flying scales later, it had wrapped most of the long, snakelike lower body it had around Tahera and begun to squeeze the life from her with such strength that Tahera felt as if her eyes might pop out of their sockets. Only then was she allowed to fall in a heap to the floor. The humanoid upper half was working on something more sinister: gripping one horn in each hand, the gorgon was forcibly turning Tahera's head to look directly into her huge, iridescent, almost glowing snakelike eyes, framed by her writhing, hissing serpent hair. Immediately, every muscle in the demon-girl's body seemed to cramp, stiffen, and freeze. Tahera couldn't move at all, no matter how hard she tried.
Martin saw it and tried to rush to Tahera's aid. He made it all of 2 steps before each of his feet were frozen to the ground, and steadily being encased by ice from the Yuki-onna, who hadn't even really bothered to stop her playful figure skating. Futilely, he tried to raise his wand to do-... well, something, but it turned out he couldn't even do that much, since some telekinetic force had yanked it out of his hand with just a flick of one of the kitsune's tails. He tried summoning it back, but with another flick of the kitsune tails, that same telekinetic force had forced both his hands closed into fists that could grip nothing. The kitsune smirked, sauntering up to the helpless pretend magical girl.
"WHAT IS THIS!?" Martin screamed, flailing about, trying to do anything at all to get out of this situation. That abruptly stopped with some more wagging of the nine smug tails, soon practically chaining him down in their iron invisible grip.
"It's magical combat, silly. You should know, you challenged us to it," boasted the ninetails. While Martin was, slowly and horrifiedly, starting to connect the dots about just what the spirits had been saying, she continued "Honestly... this is just so pathetic it's not even fun. Perhaps we should turn you into a toad or some such, just to make things more interesting?"
Things did indeed get more interesting just then, as with no warning all nine of the kitsune's fluffy fox tails suddenly burst into flame, along with the rest of her fur, her kimono, the outer layers of her flesh, and all the air within a few feet of her. In the blink of an eye her telekinetic hold on Martin was gone, and she was running away, screaming in pain. The Yuki-onna caught it worse; where the kitsune had been burned in a sudden flash, the flames raged long and continuously in an attempt to actually melt her until she finally skated frantically away, leaving the area only about half as big as she was before and dripping puddles of what used to be herself behind her as she went. The gorgon looked up at the commotion, just in time to make eye contact with the hoof that was about to slam into her face. She yowled and her hands leapt from Tahera's horns to cover one of her now badly damaged eyes, and another vicious stomp onto her tail by one of those damned hooves got her to scrambling off of Tahera and away from the danger. The rest of the spirits were kept away and at bay by the sudden appearance of a great and wild wall of flame, keeping them from seeing anything and threatening to burn badly if they came any closer to Tahera and Mara.
Tahera, still lying paralyzed on the ground, could just see his nightmare made flesh out the corner of her eyes. Zarala was every horrible thing he remembered her as: an enormous, hateful, batwinged snaketailed clawfingered abomination wreathed in flame, whose expression wanted nothing more than to break a man in half. She was standing over her, to... protect her?
"GET BEHIND ME, MARA!" Zarala roared. "AND THE REST OF YOU, BACK THE FUCK OFF! IF YOU SO MUCH AS THINK OF HURTING MY FRIEND, I WILL BURN YOU TO ASHES!"
Martin was mortified. It took him a long second to realize he had just been saved by what was in fact his friend; he actually didn't recognize Zarala at first, so different was her appearance now. Eventually, he did huddle up by Tahera to let Zarala do her thing, but there was a hesitation there, a sort of slow horror to it, that just made Zair sad. She really, really hadn't wanted Mara to see this side of her.
The spirits were much less impressed. "Your 'friend' was the one to challenge us, half-demoness. Do not intervene. We have no quarrel with you, and will not, if you allow the ritual to proceed as it must."
"SHE DIDN'T CHALLENGE YOU TO JACK SHIT! MARA JUST WANTED A COMPANION, SHE DIDN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR DAMNED SEXIST COMBAT BULLSHIT!"
"Your friend vehemently rejected an opportunity to rescind his challenge and go home, and would do so again even so close to failure as he is now. He's quite power-hungry, we're afraid."
Zarala growled menacingly at them, but made no overt reply, instead turning a curious eye on the pink-haired boy behind her. Martin gulped, and guiltily nodded his head. "I-I... I can't leave here without a companion, Zair."
In the blink of an eye, first confusion, then disappointment, then something deeply sad all flashed across Zarala's hideous face, and the dancing flames that warned the spirits away seemed to wane for a moment. Then she shook it off, and returned her attention to the spirits, trying once again to burn as brightly as she had a moment ago. "THAT DOESN'T MATTER!" She barked at them eventually. "I'M GOING TO DEFEND MY FRIEND, AND NOBODY CAN TELL ME NOT TO!"
"As much as I condemn the rude manner in which Lady Zarala has said it, I must agree with her." Uni had joined the fray, making her tick-tock-walk to the huddle that was forming around Tahera's immobile form, and covered the half of the perimeter opposite to Zair. "Deliberate harm to students is never permissible while under school supervision. If you proceed, I'm afraid I will be forced to respond with deadly force." With one hand, Uni brandished the sword, and with the other, runes of some sort had started to be scattered around the huddled group with her wand. They didn't seem to be doing anything, at least not yet.
"As calculating as you are, you must realize your odds of success in this contest are astronomically small," the spirits replied to the automaton. "Even if you were fully wound and your friends were far more experienced here, you simply cannot defeat all of us."
"Defeat is not necessary," Uni explained as the circle of runes on the ground about the group was just about finished. "Master Yuanshi and the rest of the school's more powerful faculty are on their way to shut down the well and stop the ritual even as we speak. We simply need to hold together our defense for the 5 plus-minus 1 minutes until that happens. May I see your wand, Magical Girl Mara?"
The spirits chuckled. "Your odds are slim even there! What defense could withstand the might of thousands of spirits, all at once!?" Many of the spirits were preparing magic of their own to fire back at Zarala and the group, and with hundreds of shooters, from every angle they could be coming at, it might have been the end of the fight right there, if Uni didn't have a trick up her sleeve. The key jutting out from her back, normally rotating at a slow turn-per-minute pace, suddenly whirred to life like someone had attached a power drill, and with it came an almost blurring burst of speed from the clockwork girl. Letting her sword hang in the air under the almost time-stopping effect Overclocking had on her perception, she snatched Mara's wand with the freed hand and cast a spell with it. Only then did the purpose of the circle of runes become clear: once activated by Mara's spell, not a single one of the spells prepared by the surrounding spirits found their mark inside the circle. Uni returned Mara's wand and grabbed back her sword before it had fallen so much as 3 inches.
"That will keep us safe from magic cast outside the circle until Lady Mara passes out from the Mana Drain, but spells cast within won't affect anything outside," Uni explained to the students when her ticking had once again become ticking, and not one long, continuous noise. The key had turned nearly 2 full rotations in what was maybe a single second while she was Overclocked. "The spirits are going to have to come to us and into the circle to do their magic. Punish spirits that try to do that, but don't step outside the circle yourself, Lady Zarala."
Uni didn't have to tell her that; some of the more aggressive spirits were already rushing down Zair by the time Uni had finished talking, and Zarala met them head-on. She had been in fights before; had just enough experience not to be the fresh-faced novice they were expecting, and drove them back quickly because of that. An arrogant attempt to grab at her horns was rewarded with badly burned hands and a punch to the gut, an even greedier near-attempt to try and wrestle with her was thought better of the moment she threatened flames, and one spirit that got too close had the privilege of demonstrating to the rest just how sharp her claws were and just how much more deadly a slap from a hand that had them was. Overconfidence punished, they backed out and away from the circle to think, and cycle back to the jackal-head with the Ankh Charm for healing. Zair, meanwhile, massaged a sore knuckle; the pain was there as evidence that these opponents were not simple human bullies and could in fact take a punch from her, which both scared her more than she let show, and made her angrier in a way she definitely let show.
The spirits had no such delusions regarding Uni; none came too close, and those that did approach did so more to play mind games with the automaton than to attack. With a sword and the ability to Overclock, everyone knew that getting too close meant being stabbed or slashed in the blink of an eye, to say nothing of the mix-ups she might be capable of with the wand in the other hand. That said, there was a reason Uni couldn't just stop time and make mincemeat of them all, and those that knew exactly what it was were actually trying to bait out the Overclock.
"My Lady Mara, if you would please wind me up any moment when it is safe to do so?" Uni asked just as if this were some formal ballroom and not a battlefield. "If I run out of Winding here in the heat of battle I will lose the ability to move or think, which I'm afraid may have dire ramifications for us here. Further, you may have noticed how much Winding is lost during the earlier burst of speed; I would very much like the resources to freely use such an ability, thank you."
"Mara" felt light-headed and dazed by the time Uni spoke to him about winding her key. He'd been getting sleepier, more lethargic, and generally just more sluggish since Uni had cast the Sanctuary spell with his wand; "she really wasn't kidding about passing out thanks to Mana Drain or whatever," he thought. "I might not make it the full 5 minutes. How the heck am I supposed to get a companion at this rate?" Heavy and leaden were the steps he took towards Uni's big brass key. "Just, turn this, to energize you, right?"
"Yes, please. Give me a moment, I'll create the space for you to do it." Once again, the key abruptly started turning like mad, and Uni turned into a flash for a few seconds, flying about the area to viciously cut away at the enemies nearest to her and drive away with the threat of injury those just a bit further than that. With that done, she pulled back in front of Martin again, and this time, there was no ticking, no motion, no key turning, no anything. She just stood there like a statue, key jutting out of her back towards Martin. He had only a few moments to make a few turns, and that turned out to be complicated by the key putting up much more resistance than he might've thought; but still, he managed to get a few turns in before enemy encroachment finally forced him to stop. Uni sprang back into warding away the enemy, and Mara, exhausted, just hung back with the effective statue that was Tahera afterward, where Zair and Uni could protect them both.
"Y'know ya don't have the resources to win a war of attrition here, right, fellas?" one of the spirits, a fairy fluttering above and away from the action, jeered. "Your utility caster's bouta run out of mana, your only experienced fighter is about to lose the only other party with hands free to wind her, one a ya is straight up incapacitated, and the last fighter... well, I don't think she's gonna last too long now, huh, is she?"
The spirits that had decided to engage Zarala had gotten smarter about their approach. Steadily, they were picking up on the fact that she'd never really fought magical creatures before and didn't really know how to handle their more unique capabilities, and more than that, they'd deduced that her wings, while they could allow her to jump higher and stay in the air longer, weren't actually capable of flight. Spirits which could fly, on the other hand, had thus started to congregate in the air above Zarala and rain attacks down from there. She'd punish those that came within the circle with fire, but evading that by leaving the circle quickly after making the attack was easy. A thunder nimbus charged up bolts outside the circle, floated in, shocked her, and floated out; a drakaina was sending her own flame breath right back down at Zarala when she strafed in; an alicorn similarly returned to sender her hoof kicks; even the little six-inch tall fairy herself seemed to have all kinds of tricky magic in store for when it was safe to cast. At first, all this pestering just made Zair angrier, which just made her magic all the more powerful; but by now it had started to really hurt, wearing her down and out steadily and painfully despite her increasingly desperate counterattacks. Almost none of said counterattacks were finding their mark, since the spirits hardly needed put themselves at risk to attack; with so many spirits cycling in for their turn to attack and literally hundreds more just watching and waiting for the defense to crumble, all even the most aggressive spirits had to do was chip in a little damage and watch it add up on Zair's face. Zarala, in other words, was losing.
"Lady Mara! I need winding again, and a lot this time!" Uni called out, when she noticed just how desperate Zarala's situation was getting. Mara struggled to her feet, barely able to keep her eyes open, and started to wind, one agonizingly slow turn after the next. Many of the spirits knew what it meant and cleared out, and were right to do so: once Mara had done enough to collapse back onto the ground by Tahera, exhausted, Uni started Overclocking in Zarala's defense almost immediately, throwing both sword slashes and spells around at a furious pace to bring a quickly defeat to Zair's current opponents, and give her a little respite. That turned out to be a mistake, since it left Uni's half of the circle, now at her back, unguarded, and one of the Nuckelavee seized the advantage. It galloped in as fast as its hooves could carry it, and the long arms of the human half fused to the horseback reached out to grab at Uni's key. Once it did, Uni, forced to face the other way, was just about helpless to fight it, and didn't have the strength or weight to stop the thing as it tried galloping out of the circle, dragging her behind. Zarala, however, did, and grabbed Uni's torso as soon as she saw what was happening, yanking to keep Uni back in the circle.
The net effect was that Uni's key popped right out of its socket with a high-pitched metal-on-metal screeching sound.
Freed of the Nuckelavee's leverage on her, Uni flipped around and dispatched the horse-rider fusion with a swift stab at the horse neck, but took no solace in that victory. Her usual inhumanly calm demeanor had broken for the first time any of the exchange students had ever seen, and in its place instead was genuine, near-panicked fear. She could still move, but none of them could wind her anymore than they had. Overclocking was no longer safe. All it took was a little time and she'd be out of the fight, too.
"I'm tired..." Martin complained. By now he couldn't lift himself off the ground even if he tried. "I think I might go to sleep now."
Martin was fading out of consciousness fast, and with him was going the warding magic of the Sanctuary spell Uni had cast using his wand. "No, no, no, no!" Zair cried out; almost all the spirits saw it, and were readying the spells as they had before, to blow them all to smithereens the moment the circle was lost completely. Uni tried to take up a stance to defend them, but it was obvious now she couldn't keep them all safe by herself. Zair did the only thing she could think of, spreading her wings wide enough to try and cover Martin and the still paralyzed, still utterly shocked to see his living nightmare trying to protect her, Tahera. All the emotion, all the hate, all the everything he remembered was still there, and not an ounce of it was directed at her.
Zarala knew the wing cover was going to be useless. There were too many spells to stop even if the thin skin of the wings had any durability, and one of the more powerful-seeming spirits, some pearly white multiwinged thing, was rushing into the circle with a possessed, frantic fervor, no doubt straight for their defenseless selves. In utter despair, Zarala started crying out for her mother.
"What... What is this..."
Helen ran a few fingers through the fluffy white feathers of one of her wings. It and its mirrored twin were the largest pair she had, which was saying something since her lowermost pair of wings could be, and currently were, folded up around her legs to cover them entirely, like a long feathery skirt. This largest pair sprouted from the space underneath her shoulder blades, and were so huge they honestly could have functioned as an entire outfit all by themselves if the lower wings constituted "only" a "skirt". Both former pairs dwarfed the entirely superfluous wings that sprouted from her head and folded back in the same manner demon horns sprouted from demon's head and curled back.
"They're angel wings, obviously," replied a voice Helen knew far too well. "You said you wanted to be your daughter's 'guardian angel', right? Well, some cheeky fellow out there saw fit to grant that wish, apparently. He didn't hold back either; you seem to be a Seraph, one of the higher tiers of Angel in their little hierarchy, judging by the wing count."
"Where am I...?" Helen muttered, dazed. "Am I dead?"
"Eh... 'Dead' is a very relative, fluid term where we are, darlin'. You're in the Spirit World, and you're about to be Reincarnated at the Well of Power."
"Okay... and..." At last, Helen worked up the sense to look her daughter's father right in the eye. "Why are you here? You didn't do this, did you?"
Lucifer sighed heavily. "Darlin', trust me, I'm definitely not thrilled about having to handle your case here, but Cerberus called in sick today and asked me to cover for him. Don't look at me like that; we're all just glorified lawyers in my line of work, and not all lawyers are evil, you know."
"No. Neither are all demons. You, on the other hand?"
"Hey, I was an angel too, once." In a flash, Lucifer's whole appearance seemed to change, and suddenly he was flapping great, black-feathered wings behind a mostly normal but piercingly red-eyed human form. "I just fell."
"I don't give a flying fuck what you were. What you are is the father our daughter's never even met. I was only 19 years old when our little accident happened, for crying out loud! I didn't know how to raise a child then, I wasn't ready! You could have been such a positive influence on your daughter's life, but Zair and I have never heard so much as a token to prove that you even cared!"
"Darlin', we've been over this. You're mortal, she's mortal, I'm immortal. Simple as that. Getting invested in the life of a being whose entire lifetime is maybe a single blink compared to age of the Universe is a mistake, always."
"Even if it's your own child!?"
"Especially if it's your own child! Do you know how many great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren and their stupid problems my old buddy Zeus has to put up with just because he got a little too free with the fatherly love a few thousand years ago? It's insane!"
"You're just too selfish."
"You're just too selfless. Nobody said you had to keep the child way back when, least of all me. You knew you weren't ready, and I made clear from the beginning I was not going to be a part of her life, but you kept her anyway."
"I kept her because it was the right thing to do, Damien. And you know what? I can't even imagine life without Zarala, at this point. She's a really special kid, and there's so much good in her, no matter what anyone else says. She just needs the right care, in the right place, and given that, she'll be one of the greats one day! I just know it!"
"You are such a typical mortal mom. Ugh... We're wasting time here. Do you want to be your daughter's guardian angel or not?"
"Do you even have to ask?"
"I figured. Well, you should know your lost your nonspiritual body at the same time our daughter entered the Well of Power, and thereby started the binding ritual to get herself a Magic Companion. That'll be the major source through which the magic powers she uses will be channeled, among other things. And now, since you're her guardian angel, you are slated to become your daughter's magic companion. If you're about to complain that you don't know anything about being a magic companion, don't, because trust me, you'll figure it out as it goes. You may wanna hurry there; I believe she's rather foolishly challenged all the thousands of the spirits there to a round of magic combat, and is likely to perish here very soon."
When Zarala felt a hand suddenly grip her shoulder, she was sure it was the end. The multiwinged thing had to have gotten past Uni somehow, and now it was going to pull apart their little huddle and slaughter them all, send Mara, herself, and Tahera back home with no magic and no memories. Zair tried to spring into action again, but she knew that after the beating she'd taken earlier, she'd have no strength left to fight this last opponent effectively.
...except she did? Spreading from the Seraph's grip, a peculiar vitality was spreading through Zarala, like the sort of oddly refreshing goosebumps one might get from a particularly relaxing hot spring's bath. Pain and fatigue disappeared where it went, and when she looked down she'd notice any wounds she'd taken were closing and healing fast, thanks to the Seraph's vitality. It was strange; at a moment's pause, it became clear this new angel didn't mean to fight Zarala at all. It was fretting over her, looking her over to make sure she was alright, make sure she was safe... almost like...
"MOM!?"
"Zair, sweetie, you're hurt!" Helen said, hovering over her daughter in both the literal and the figurative sense while trying to heal her. "Are you alright!? What happened!? I thought I told you no more fighting!"
Zair was stunned speechless, and for a moment her rage form had disappeared entirely. No flames, no wings, it was just a teenager, utterly shocked to see her mother there. Uni was the one to snap them back to reality, barking at them what she calculated was the optimal way to handle the situation.
"Never mind Zair, companion, heal Mara! Heal the pink-haired one! If she goes, we all go!"
"Companion?" Zarala's mind was set spinning, to watch what seemed to be an angelic version of her mother turn, take notice of the barely-conscious magical "girl" with them, and start healing her as if she'd been practicing the art all her life. "She's supposed to be my magic companion!?" Zair almost didn't notice the fact that Uni was still yelling at her, while dueling with a suit of possessed samurai armor she was no longer capable of safely outspeeding.
"My Lady Zarala!? I still need you back in the fight here!" she called out desperately, conceding more and more ground to the more skillful warrior's spirit before her. It was wielding a strange, white-bladed katana that Uni seemed to regard with some fear, and never parried with her own sword: she only used shield spells to block the furious strikes when they came, when not using her wand to threaten the samurai back if he came within the circle. Not that that worked; within moments of Uni calling out for Zair, he lurched forward, made a quick slash, and took off Uni's head. Zair finally woke back up to the situation and set every last flammable bit of his armor to blazing for that, before he could step back out of the circle.
That gave Uni the advantage, whom the students were very surprised to see was still mobile: after her still live head fell off and cracked against the ground with a disturbing THUD, Uni's body quickly set it to levitating and facing the opponent with her wand, whom she rushed at with a slice aimed for the leather armor of its elbows. She got one, and a parry from the Katana cut her sword in two before she could slash the other (making Zair realize just why she was hesitant to parry it), but it was enough; Uni's body could then rush outside the circle, yank the katana from its still attached hand using telekinesis with the wand, and step back before taking any return fire. The samurai spirit was forced to retreat, and Uni had its strange katana with her as a prize.
"What. The. Fuck." Tahera had been healed by Helen by then, removing paralysis, and one of the first things she did with her newly returned mobility was stare in awe at the now headless, keyless, katana-and-wand-armed clockwork automaton the still seemed determined to fight despite the fact that its head was literally floating beside it, watching everyone and everything with that same look of steady descent from detachment to desperation that had characterized her through the whole fight.
"Magic can't kill, remember? If you get dismembered by a magic weapon, keep fighting!" Uni's floating head explained, her body now scaring off the spirits off a lot more now that she had her own magic weapon instead of the plain emergency sword she'd taken there. "My big problem currently is that I'm still low on winding; I have an idea to deal with that, for which I'm going to need your help, Lady Tahera."
"M-my...?" Tahera could hardly believe what was going on. His old night terror, Zarala, had gotten back into the fight with a vengeance, lurching and threatening to eviscerate the campy, flying enemies that had been pestering her earlier now that she could fly herself, and that was thanks to the six-winged angel currently in the middle of the circle, which had come out of nowhere to provide much-needed healing and support magic to their group. And Uni wanted her help!?
"Correct. I need you to remove my soul crystal, get a chain I'll detach near it, and make a necklace of them as quickly as you're capable here in a moment," Uni's head elaborated while watching her body do all the hard work of fighting. "Once I'm out of winding, my mechanical body will be effectively useless without the key here, but if my soul crystal remains in play I can still be of some assistance here. It's located where my heart would be in an organic. Do you understand, Lady Tahera?"
"Uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh...." Tahera stammered.
"Good enough. Get ready!" And with that, Uni started overclocking for the last time, to give Tahera the needed space, as she had before with Mara. This time, it was the katana's magic white blade that blurred around the battlefield, and this time it was magic dismemberment that had the spirits quite literally falling to pieces in the few seconds of superspeed Uni still had left. Well, by the end calling it "superspeed" may have been an exaggeration; Uni was slowing down constantly throughout this last instance of overclocking, gradually descending from "blur" to "fast" to "quicker than usual" to "normal", and by the time Uni had come back to Tahera for the extraction, she seemed even slower than she usually did. It was with that exaggerated slowness that she brought the katana up to her chest, used her floating head to properly position the blade for the slice, and pulled. A second later, the upper half of her torso fell off, and Tahera found herself looking at a cross section of the automaton. A mechanism, now made visible, reconnected the mainspring to the escapement and disconnected the mainspring from the gear train, apparently to stop the overclocking Uni had been doing. And then, the thunking of her head to her floor signalled the stopping of the clockwork entirely.
There was a rouge, roughly heart-shaped crystal about where Uni had said it would be, though a bit more central to the chest than an organic heart, located just in front of her mainspring, and connected to some assembly of control mechanisms Tahera could hardly begin to understand. Hesitantly, she reached in to grab it.
"Alright, now don't drop me, but we do need to be a little faster here, my lady," Tahera heard in her head. With that, her hands ended up moving faster, and much more instinctively; it was as if she somehow knew the whole assembly here with a much greater familiarity than it was possible for a human to have. She also reflexively grabbed one of the cut wires and threaded it through a hole attached to the soul crystal, a hole which she hadn't really known was there until she threaded the wire through it.
"This is spooky," Tahera thought in worry, as she tied the makeshift necklace around her throat, to let the soul crystal hang in her cleavage, and not quite voluntarily. "Uni...?"
"I can do this to some people who make direct skin contact with my soul crystal, yes," Uni explained, stooping Tahera down to pick up the wand and the katana she'd had had to drop. "I'm sorry if this is sudden and unwanted to you, Tahera, but for the sake of winning this battle I must ask you not to resist my control much. Meaning no offense, I have much more experience in magic combat than you do."
By now the spirits were getting frustrated. Between Mara's Sanctuary spell, the effective area denial that was Zarala's flames, Uni's skill in single-target combat, and now effective healing support from this Seraph, it was starting to look like the students had a defense that might actually withstand the spirit's belligerence as long as they needed it to. One of them, the fairy that had been taunting them earlier, was scowling in disappointment.
"Okay, fellas, this is gettin' to be real freakin' embarrassing here!" the fairy complained. "These guys obviously don't know freakin' anything about how you're supposed to fight a spirit, let alone a bigass horde of us, and yet, we've been in this battle for how long now? Get in there and freakin' win this thing ya wimps!"
"I don't think anyone really wants to risk the burns," a half-skeletal woman said with a shrug. She was one of the spirit's own healers, and apart from the circumference of the Sanctuary circle, the area around said healers had become the places where the spirits congregated most densely. "Seems like most of us are just circling and peeking in for a little harassment every so often rather than really committing to it. Honestly, I don't think that's so bad; it's not like we're losing if the boy among them doesn't get a companion."
"Well, not technically, but that's super freakin' lame though!" the fairy whined. "If some snot-nosed know-nothing little boy gets himself such a big head that he thinks he can challenge us on our own turf, that boy ought to get freakin' curbstomped for it! That's how it works!"
The half-skeletal woman shrugged again. "If you feel like executing the heretics, nobody's stopping you over here. Be careful though, I think one of them might have brought a flyswatter," she teased, with a smirk.
That little insult struck a nerve with the fairy. "Alright, you listen here, fellas! You wanna see a six-inch tall force of freakin' nature rip up 4 or 5 morons all at once? Then watch, learn, and hold in your freakin' jizz when it happens, folks!" The fairy whipped out her own wand, worked up a nice supply of fairy dust to fuel her own magic, prepped a few bombs of the stuff throw with her other hand and flew off into the fray.
Or, rather, under the fray, at first: with Helen giving Zarala the ability to fly again and plenty of floatier spirits still presenting a unique challenge for her to fight, the fairy knew right away she wouldn't have to worry about any hooves stepping on her if she just went low on Zair's side of the circle. All she had to do was wait for another nice, blinding burst of flame, and then sneaking underneath the fieriest fighter would come easy. Not that she imagined said stealth could last long without detection, but she had an idea for that.
"ZAIR, FAIRY BEHIND YOU!" Helen called out almost as soon as she'd got under, and of course Zarala whipped about, flames at the ready, to deal with the enemy her mother had called out. She did not, however, see anything. But she did feel an odd new weight on her tail as it pulled behind her, and then an odd poof against the back of her head.
"Back here, slowpoke!" the fairy called out from where she'd grabbed Zair's tail, just before throwing a second bomb of fairy dust at Zair's head. It had the desired effect; turning Zair's head got her inhaling the dust right away, and that got her drowsy almost instantly. A second more, and she was asleep. Of course, Helen immediately dashed in to try and wake Zair up from the magic nap, but the fairy dashed right back to meet her. And won, actually: it knew wind magic, and when you have six wings, a magic, powerful gust of the wind isn't something you can ignore. On the second gust of wind, the fairy had Helen pushed outside the circle. It was a death sentence for both her and Zair: spells cast by the eagerly awaiting spirits outside the circle had Helen down and out in a matter of milliseconds, and when Zair woke up from her brief moment of defenselessness, she found herself wrapped up and staring into the healed-up, revenge-hungry eyes of the Gorgon that had Tahera in a bind earlier.
"HA! Not so tough now, are ya, big guys!?" The fairy buzzed for Tahera next, and the demon-girl tried slicing at her with the katana, but the tiny little fairy was zipping around as fast and unpredictably as a housefly; of course the blade didn't catch anything. The fairy wasn't really afraid of Tahera nearly so much as the skills she knew Tahera was inheriting, and because of that, she first zapped the chain of her makeshift "necklace" to break it, and then caught Uni's soul crystal telekinetically with her wand. "How bout I smash your new friend to shards, huh!?" She taunted with the crystal, keeping it out of reach even as Tahera tried to grab it. "Or I try to toss it to my friends outside the circ-"
The sentence was cut short by the fairy nearly being squeezed to death, her wings crushed in the relatively gigantic hands of some snot-nosed, know-nothing little boy. Martin had caught her, snatched the fairy right out of the air. Of course she nearly dropped Uni's soul crystal, but Tahera dived to catch that, just before it suffered any damage.
"GAH, hey! Let go!" The fairy yell at Martin. She couldn't do anything in his grip besides kick her legs at whip her head around to scream. "Free up your hands, ya moron, you're gonna need 'em for the other spirits!"
Martin did not let go, but the fairy was right: with Zair and Helen down, and Tahera/Uni having to hesitate, the other spirits finally saw their opportunity to rush in and end things. Tahera had dropped the katana to catch Uni, and because of that, she didn't really have much to defend herself with when a Chimera came rushing in to pin her down, nor could she free up the hand when Uni was forcing her to hold onto the crystal for dear life. Martin was squeezing the fairy just as hard, though, and continued to do so even as the spirits started to swarm him.
The fairy continued to protest even as Martin was forced to the ground. "You're crushing me! Let me go!"
"I can't!" Martin protested. "I need a companion!"
"I'M not gonna be that companion, dumbass, look at yourself! You're LOSING!"
Martin had been frozen to the ground again, and this time across the entire length of his body where it contacted the floor. It wasn't strictly necessary, since a frankly enormous Minotaur had him pinned down anyway, but the Yuki-onna, fully healed at last from the scuffle earlier, seemed thirsty for some revenge of her own. It skated up to Martin's head where it lay, and placed a skate on his forehead, as if to tease him about just how easy, and painful, it would be to stomp the life out of him with those ice skater blades. Still, Martin refused to let go, and vocally.
"What the FUCK is WRONG with you!?" The fairy screamed in desperation. "Who cares about some dumbass magic tricks!? Just back out of the fucking fight before they REALLY hurt you!"
"I CAN'T!" The Yuki-onna kicked Martin's head savagely with the skate blades. In pain, and with the world spinning around him, he yelled out "I PROMISED!"
"You promised what?" Principal Yuanshi asked. Martin blinked. One moment, it had been the Yuki-onna leaning over him, and the next, it was the familiar sphinx-woman. "Are you talking about the Promise? Have you made it successfully?"
Slowly, the world around Martin was returning to something resembling form. He, Tahera, Zarala, and Helen were all scattered about the cold dragonglass floor of the firepit that normally housed the Well of Power; a Well that, ironically, seemed de-powered at the moment. No doubt, that was the doing of Principal Yuanshi, along with Sarah, Ms. Lalira, and the rest of the faculty that had gathered around in response to the emergency.
"Um... well... yes, I think so." Martin was shaking violently from the remaining adrenaline, steadily finding his way onto legs that felt an awful lot like jelly at the moment. "Did... did I get a companion?"
"NO!" The fairy screamed. "NO NO NO NO NO, NO FUCKING WAY SOME NOBODY OF A NOVICE COULD BEAT ME IN A CHALLENGE FOR COMPANIONSHIP, NOT LIKE THAT! IT'S NOT FAIR!"
"I can sense that you have," Principal Yuanshi explained, ignoring the fairy for a moment. "It seems you and this curious new fairy were bonded as magic companions upon your exit from the Well. In fact, it seems like all 3 of you students managed to get your companions while in there! Good job, it must not have been easy!"
"All 3 of us?" Tahera replied, steadily finding his way to a very wobbly sitting position as well. "But I didn't get a companion in there."
"Yes, you did," came a voice in Tahera's head. There was an abrupt realization in her eyes that Uni's soul crystal was still in her hands. "I'm sorry; in the heat of the moment I didn't really have alternatives, Companion Tahera."
