Part 1

"[No, I'm serious!]"

A gruff, rumbling voice reminiscent of the groan of bending metal brayed inside the Faun barracks. Its owner looked as nervous as he sounded, though inexperienced ears might not have picked up on that right away. The long ears of his goatish visage kept turning and swivelling around like tiny radar dishes looking for low-flying enemy planes. Or, in this case…

"[Ghosts?]"

His companion, a more common Faun of the ram phenotype, responded with eminent skepticism, much to the first guy's thinly veiled annoyance.

"[Yes. Or rather, just one.]" He glanced around, not like there was anyone else nearby, and gestured for the other Faun to lean closer so he could whisper the rest. "[They say the castles of the Lords often have ghosts, right? Resentful spirits and wraiths. It's not strange that one would wander around the Chasm of Desolation.]"

"[I'm not sure those are real either,]" the second one mused. "[I've never seen one.]"

"[That's because your squad just came back from a mission. That's why I'm telling you about it, so you know what to look out for.]"

"[What are you two whispering about?]" a third Faun entered the conversation as soon as he came into the building. This one was also the common ram-type, though he had a long beard and was wearing his armour.

"[He's telling me about the ghost.]"

"[Not so loud!]" the goatish Faun hissed and gestured for the newcomer to come closer. "[I told you the Warmaster doesn't like to even hear the word.]"

"[Right. He's been a bit irritable ever since he failed to capture General Brang.]"

"[Ex-geneal,]" the second Faun corrected the newcomer, then turned to the one with the goat-features. "[Not that it matters. So? What am I supposed to look out for again?]"

The first guy gulped hard and leaned in, lowering his voice like a kid telling a scary story around a campfire at night.

"[It is said that it's the ghost of a long-deceased noble of House Inanna whose spirit was roused from the dead by the war. People call him… the Hoar Hatter!]"

"[… Hoar?]" asked the newcomer with considerable apprehension.

"[As in old. Ancient. Antediluvial, even.]"

The first Faun's explanation only made his companions look even more confounded.

"[They why aren't you calling him the 'Old Hatter'?]"

"[Don't look at me like that! I didn't come up with the name!]" he protested, but quickly quieted down to continue in a low voice. "[That's not important though. What you have to remember is that, like all ghosts, the Hoar Hatter also follows certain rules.]"

The newcomer grumbled something along the lines of 'Since when do ghosts follow rules?' under his breath, but the goatish Faun kept talking.

"[If you ever encounter the Hoar Hatter, you must pretend that you haven't seen him. However, if your eyes meet, one of two things will happen: he'll either use the Rites of Dominance to overwhelm you and knock you unconscious…]"

"[Wait, what? He can do that?]" the second Faun blurted out, sounding mildly alarmed for the first time.

"[Yes. Just ask Hraskl if you don't believe me. Poor bastard encountered the Hoar Hatter three times already…]" The goatish Faun shook his head in a show of sympathy. "[But listen, because this is the important part: if you meet the Hoar Hatter, he might not attack you right away. Instead, he might ask you a question. If he asks, 'Is my hat too big?', you must never respond to him! No matter what you say, he'll attack your mind with the Rites of Dominance, so you must never, ever say a single word to him. Don't look him in the eye either, and just pretend he's not there until he goes away.]"

"[That… is a little spooky,]" the newcomer admitted, and it was at this point that I exhaled a long breath and got out of Far Sight.

"Great. Now I'm creating straight-up urban legends.

Exhaling hard, I got up from my bed and was about to reach for the water bottle on the nightstand when I noticed some movement in the corner of my vision.

"Uncleee?" Ollie, dressed in his usual pyjamas, was peeking into my cell with a colourful box in his hands. "Can you help me?"

"With what?" I asked back, and the kid skipped over to my side and presented the box to me.

On closer inspection, it was one of those really big LAGO sets; a pirate-themed one, from the looks of it. The kind that wasn't really made for kids to play with, but for adults to display on a big cabinet or something, and…

"Holy-moly! That's almost two-and-a-half thousand pieces!" Ollie was taken aback by my sudden outcry, so I hurriedly added, "Building that may take a while."

"So… you can't help?"

He was giving me the patented puppy-dog eyes, so I hastily raised my hands in surrender.

"No, it's just… Uncle has something else to take care of first, so how about we do it after dinner?"

"Promise?"

"Of course." I rubbed his noggin a bit and gestured towards his cell. "It'll take some room to lay out all the pieces, so can you clean up the carpet?"

"Yes!"

The tiny Abyssal beamed at me and scurried back. As soon as he returned to his cell, he started piling his toys, crayons, and other miscellaneous stuff on the floor into his toy box. In the meantime, I drank some water (my tea reserves were vast, but not infinite, so I was holding onto my flask for later) and wondered why he was so hyped about this. I was pretty sure that they didn't have LAGOs in the Abyss, so… maybe it was because I promised I'd help him build it.

Yeah, that made some sense. Considering how much time I'd spent outside lately, maybe the kid was getting lonely without me around. If my hunch was right, that was pretty cute. No, scratch that; Ollie was pretty cute, period. He was in that perfect Goldilocks zone, where he was just young enough to be precious, but he was already old enough that he didn't require constant supervision. Was it all downhill from here, I wondered as I picked up two frozen ready meals and threw them into the microwave.

But putting all that aside, what was I doing before Ollie interrupted me? I already hydrated myself, and before that, I was looking at the Fauns, and I was Far Sighting them because…

"Ah, right."

I sat down on the edge of my bed again and closed my eyes. A moment later, I was staring down at the Matron from above. She was currently impatiently waiting for someone inside a rather inconspicuous room inside Castle Inanna. Now I remembered; I Far Glanced at the Fauns because the last time I checked, she was discussing the recent reports about the 'ghost sightings' around the Chasm of Desolation with the young man from the salon. I got curious, so I shifted my point of view over, and while looking around, I got distracted by the Fauns' discussion.

At least I was back on track now, and the first thing I noted was that she was alone this time. She wasn't doing anything either, only standing by the window of the empty room and impatiently tapping her foot, so I figured she was waiting for someone. I was tempted to Far Glance away again and come back later, but I had already been diverted once, and I didn't want it to happen again, so I patiently waited for some kind of development.

I didn't have to wait for too long, fortunately, as the only door leading into the chamber soon opened and a short old man walked in. He was wearing the popular gothic-style men's ensemble decorated with rows of medals and other rank insignias, and despite being almost completely bald, he had a bushy beard that put Lord Ambrose to shame. In his youth, he might've had a robust physique, but it was clear that the only things he'd been lifting as of late were pens and wine glasses.

His dull green eyes lit up the moment he noticed the elderly woman by the window, and he cleared his throat.

"Good evening, Matron. May I ask why you called for me? My heart isn't what it used to be, so these kinds of clandestine meetings are a little…"

"Stop fooling around, Marshal. I don't have the patience for this."

The old man gulped hard and quickly closed the door behind himself.

"Is there… a problem?"

"Potentially, yes." The Matron sounded even more exasperated than she looked, and she levelled a dispassionate gaze at the old man. "I'm afraid I have to request a favor from you."

"Oh?" The man perked up and stood just a little straighter. "Of course, Matron. You know that I'm always at your service."

"Quite," she spoke laconically and glanced outside the window again at the darkening red skies. "My request requires tact and meticulousness, so while you normally wouldn't have been my first choice, our Spymaster is still missing in action, so I have no choice but to work with what I have."

The old man completely ignored the shade she was throwing his way and attentively nodded along. At last, she turned to face him again.

"Do you remember the adornment around the neck of Neige?"

"Hm? No, I don't recall…" he started, but then his eyes opened wide and he beamed a smile. "Oh! Do you mean that black thing? Forgive me, Matron; I'm unfamiliar with fashion."

"That's not important. Do you remember when she started wearing it?"

"Hmmm…" The man thought long and hard about it, going as far as to scratch the top of his bald head in the process. "I think it was a gift from the Liege? For her birthday, I think. No, it must've been!" He let out a soft chuckle, and his lips bent into a grin. "She was quite attached to that silly little thing! She wore it all the time!"

"She did, didn't she…?"

The old geezer waited for the Matron while she sank into deep thought, but when she didn't say anything else and the atmosphere was turning awkward, he cleared his throat and said, "I do miss Lady Neige. I still can't believe that she turned her back on our Liege. That bastard Dunning, or Polemos, or whatever he's calling himself now, must've done something to her, I'm sure of it!"

"That's…" The Matron considered her words carefully, but whatever she wanted to say at this point, she kept it to herself and steered the conversation back to its roots instead. "This is not the time for idle chatter. As I said, I'd like to ask for a favor: I'd like you to ask the Fauns if they know about the origins of that choker necklace."

"The Fauns? Why would they?"

"Because if he was indeed the one who gifted it to Neige, he had to commission or procure it from somewhere outside of House Inanna. Knowing Noir, while he might have covered his tracks, his disregard for the Fauns might have left a few loose threads hanging in the process."

"Excuse me, Matron, but if you want to find out where the Liege got that piece of jewellery, why don't you ask him? He should be returning to the castle in a couple of days' time."

"No." Her response was sharp as a knife, and she glared at the man. "As a matter of fact, I ask you to conduct this investigation before he returns, and you have to make sure that he never learns about it. The same goes for Ekhtear and… I shouldn't need to say this, but ensure that the 'Emperor' is none the wiser about it as well."

"I… can try." Seeing the elderly woman's palpable disapproval, the old man sucked in a sharp breath and tried again. "What I meant to say was that I'll strive not to disappoint you, Matron!" His declaration was followed by a short pause and a considerably less confident, "So… is this for a gift, or…?"

"Don't concern yourself with that, Marshal. It's…" This time she was the one who paused for a beat. She raised a hand to massage her eyes, and ultimately concluded her explanation with a laconic, "I was made aware of a troubling possibility, and so I simply wish to make sure there's no stone left unturned."

"Oh, I understand perfectly!" the bald man declared, even though it was clear as day that he had no earthly clue about what she was talking about.

The conversation didn't end there, but the rest of it wasn't very riveting. It was mostly just setting up some protocols and the Matron repeatedly insisting on how important it was that their investigation would never reach the ears of Crowy's inner circle. Or, considering that was them, the 'innest circle'?

Whatever. The point was that, despite my initial reservations, the old woman was willing to perform at least due diligence. Whether she would uncover anything or what she would do about it were, frankly, unimportant. I triple-checked future-me's notebook, and there wasn't a single mention of her in there, which meant she probably wasn't going to be relevant to our main plot, so I let her do as she pleased.

Or rather, even if I wanted to do anything about her, it wasn't like I could, because my Phasing was still restricted. At this point, all I could do was sit tight and watch things unfold.

What happened to my communicator-plan? Well… Let's just put it this way: I severely underestimated the difficulty of the task at hand. Yes, the hologram-orb (or 'Spirit Pearl', as the old woman called it; maybe because the holograms looked like spooky ghosts) had the kind of functions I was looking for, and yes, the enchantment arrays could be jury-rigged and transplanted into my Leoformer, but… How should I explain this?

Okay, so let's use mobile phones for an example. If you had a smartphone, it would let you talk to people, send text messages, e-mails, and even use chat apps. All of those were forms of electronic communications sent through radio waves, but they were using different technologies to operate. To translate that back into my current conundrum, I had the 'address' of Judy's funky glasses that transmitted audio at long range, and I had an orb that was designed to transmit video across sub-spaces.

To simplify even further, it was like trying to send an e-mail to someone's voicemail using a camera. It wasn't entirely impossible, but it required waaay more work, reverse-engineering, and rule-breaking than planned. Story of my life, really.

At least it wasn't hopeless, and I was sure that with enough phantom-elbow grease, I would figure out a way to get it working, but then the microwave pinged and I got up again.

"Dinner?" Ollie asked from his room, so I raised my voice to respond.

"In a minute!"

"Okay!"

Meanwhile, I took out the food boxes and picked up a pair of plates. Today's menu was 'stuffed chicken-drumsticks á la Bugac', and while I had no earthly clue about what a 'Bugac' was, there was lots of meat and cheese there, so it couldn't be that bad. Once I was out of here, I had to make sure to look these up and maybe ask the princess about them. She liked these kinds of things; both the cooking and the eating part. Judy might be interested as well, and…

"Damn, I'm getting homesick again," I grumbled as I emptied the boxes onto the plates. "Maybe distance does make the heart grow fonder, after all…"

In fact, since Ollie still wasn't here yet, I figured I'd give my girlfriends a Far Peek. Just to see how they were doing. What I absolutely didn't expect was to find Judy on a rooftop in the downtown area of Timaeus and already wearing the aforementioned funky party glasses.

"Boogies are approaching, roger." I couldn't hear the response on the other side, but after a long beat, she let out a soft, "Mmm."

On closer look, she was being flanked by Penny and Snowy, and I could feel a whole lot of other marks in the vicinity, so… wow. It seemed that Lord Marzanna bit the bait they threw out hook, line, and sinker, and pretty damn quickly too. The exam period ended just the other day, and the whole gang was already doing the operation they planned.

Well, crap. I resolved myself to finish my meal quickly, no matter how piping hot it was, so that I could give my whole attention to the show unfolding in front of my ethereal eyes. It's a good thing I Far Glanced over at this time; they were apparently still in the setup phase, so I still had time.

Of course, I would've preferred if they chose to do this after I hammered the whole communicator-thing together, so that I could say hello to Judy and tell her I was all right, but I doubt the timing was up to them. Anyhow, there was quite a crowd here. I already mentioned my sisters standing guard over my girlfriend, but they were far from alone, and I quickly pinpointed the location of the childhood friend couple on the street, accompanied by Zihao Feilong of all people.

A quick shift of my perspective, and I found them sitting around a table at a local café, and they were clearly disguised. Not in big brown trench coats, thankfully, but wearing artifacts that distorted their hair and skin colour a bit to make them less easily recognisable. It was the same thing I used for my original Bel disguise, and I left some of the prototypes to Galatea. By the looks of it, they made good use of them.

The trio acted naturally, but I noticed that the Draconian was paying lots of attention to something across the street. There, next to the large fountain in the middle of the crossing of this pedestrian zone, a conspicuous couple was playing out a very stereotypical date scenario. Or, considering it was Ammy and Mike, maybe they weren't pretending at all, and they just enjoyed the opportunity to hang out like this. Across the fountain, I also found the princess' mark, and she was sitting on the public bench along with Sahi and Pascal. Only she had a disguise artifact that turned her hair a dark shade of green and… huh. It didn't look half bad.

Anyhow, the other two had to settle on hiding their faces behind open newspapers. That wasn't exactly high-tech, but it was better than trench coats and fedoras, so it was fine. With that, we had the whole gang accounted for, but they weren't the only marks in the neighbourhood. At a glance, most of the Praetorian Guards were present, though they remained on the outskirts of the city centre. I could also feel a couple of other marks in the vicinity, and it took me a while to recognise them: they were Squires. I didn't have all of them marked, but just working in the same underground base (plus a few training sessions here and there) let me bump into enough of them anyway.

Of course, those were only the relevant marks I had. By this point, I had literal thousands of them, because any skin-on-skin physical contact was enough to mark someone. Just in the school alone, I had over a hundred of them due to daily life shenanigans, and then there were all the placeholders I poked on purpose, or people I bumped into on the street or in a crowd. Due to that, even when I excluded all the important people, there was something like half a dozen other marks just in this pedestrian zone alone, and…

"… Wait a second."

I almost skipped over them, but there was a cluster of 'fuzzy' red dots at the edge of my vision. That usually represented people who were in pocket spaces like the Abyss, Elysium, or a Purple Zone. Suspicious (and maybe a little worried), I shifted my point of view over to these fuzzy marks, and as expected, my vision was immediately tinted violet, and…

"Oh. This isn't good."

"Hm? But it's tasty."

Ollie's response jolted me out of both my Far Sight and my shock, and as soon as I snapped back to my body, I had one of those 'and then I had five minutes' worth of thoughts in five seconds' kind of moments. My eyes darted around the cell and ultimately landed on the small wooden box on the table.

"Ollie?"

"Yes?"

"Uncle has to go upstairs for a moment. We might have to build that LAGO set tomorrow…"

Part 2

Running up the stairs, I silently cursed future-me again. This whole thing could've been resolved sooo much faster if I could still Phase, but nooo...

I practically leapt out of the gaping cave entrance of the prison and paid little attention to the Fauns loitering in the distance. One of them noticed me when I was halfway out of the compound surrounding the Chasm, but after a short beat, he suddenly looked to the side as if he found the most interesting leaf in the whole world on a nearby shrub, so I ignored him in turn and used my usual spot to climb over the walls and out into the town.

While I was doing all that, I didn't forget to periodically check on Judy and her surroundings. Not just to make sure the action hadn't started yet, but because I needed to find a location that corresponded with hers in Timaeus. Both the Elysium and the Abyss were copies of the real Critias that were 'overlaid' on the real world, retaining much of the geographical features, and whether due to those, sheer coincidence, or lazy worldbuilding, the Inanna's capital of Eanna was more or less on the same spot as Timaeus, relatively speaking.

It didn't take long to arrive at a fairly rundown district of the town, and after double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking using Judy's Far Sight red dot as the reference, I found the right place. Of course, I couldn't just start working in the open, but after a minute or two, I found a nice, secluded spot in the attic of a seemingly abandoned building. After gracefully jumping through the missing window like some kind of predatory eight-legged silk-producing arthropod man, I settled down and got ready to work.

First things first, I plunged a phantom limb into my Leoformer and checked the enchantment arrays. The disruptive effect of the Chasm of Desolation got exponentially stronger the deeper one descended into the prison facility. Normally I didn't care about such things, because my gear was specifically reinforced against such disruptions. I usually only went up to the top floor when I as experimenting with the transmitter arrays, but if I wanted to make this dumb communicator work in a hurry, I needed as few interferences as possible.

Once I finished checking the Leoformer, it was the orb's turn. As the Matron told me, this thing was supposed to be paired with an identical magic glass orb to allow clandestine communications across dimensional barriers. She also spoke the truth when she told me it no longer had its twin, making it useless for her, but that was only a small hindrance to me.

I had already made a few prior changes to the arrays, so I only needed to complete those, which I did in record time (if records for such things even existed, that is). Not that it mattered, as going into the 'enchantment space' to manually tweak things always had at least some time-dilation involved. After rearranging a whole lot of magical doohickies my brain interpreted as giant transparent gears and levers, I managed to 'spoof' an incoming signal.

When the communicator orb detected that, it attempted to make a connection. Since these things were designed to facilitate correspondence between agents in the outside world and their superiors in the Elysium, they could naturally pierce through the threshold separating the pocket space from 'normal reality'.

This time there was nothing to connect to though, but I only wanted to make sure that the system was working before I shut it down and flexed my phantom limbs again. This time, I kept alternating between the orb and my Leoformer, gradually porting the enchantment arrays and emulating them on my own gear. It all sounded so simple when I put it like that, but it was an absolute bloody pain in the neck to do it manually, and it took me subjective hours to do. Oh, and my headache was back too, probably because I was rushing too much. Lovely.

"Bah…"

I closed my eyes and massaged my temple with a low grunt. That was annoying. I was planning to get all of it done over the span of a few nights, but I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Now, I just needed to see if my idea worked.

But before that, I swept the dust off the floor in the corner of the attic and sat down cross-legged there. It would've been better if a stray chair or stool were lying around, but beggars couldn't be choosers, and I had a feeling that finding one would take a while, so I made myself as comfortable as possible under the circumstances.

I inhaled deeply to steel my nerves (which, in retrospect, wasn't a great idea due to all the dust I just kicked up), closed my eyes, and activated the newly installed modifications on my Leoformer. There was a soft buzz in the air and loud static noise in my ears, but that much was to be expected. Then came some popping and screeching noises that definitely weren't like old-school dial-up modem noises, at all, followed by more static noise underscored by a low hum.

Hopefully, that meant the procedure was a success, but I couldn't be sure until I gave it a try, so I flung my point of view to Judy's side. She was still on a nondescript flat rooftop belonging to some local establishment, and she was still flanked by my sisters, so nothing changed on that front.

"Dormouse? Can you hear me?"

I waited with bated breath, but there didn't seem to be any reaction to my words. The fact that there was no response on the communications was to be expected; technically speaking, I wasn't connected to her artifact. It was more of a broadcast than anything else, and she had no way to send any signals back to me, so the only way we could talk was if I was simultaneously observing her with my Far Sight for responses.

She didn't respond, so I increased the power output of the enchantment and tried again.

"Testing, testing. One, two, three. Dormouse, are you there?"

This time, there was a small reaction. My dear assistant twitched, and Snowy didn't miss it.

"Is there a problem?"

"No. There's just some static noise in the communications."

My other sister's eyes opened with anxiety.

"Are we being jammed?"

"No, I don't think so." Judy tapped her funky party glasses a few times and shook her head. "It might be just some malfunction."

Okay, so that was both good news and bad news. On one hand, it meant my idea was working, or it was at least in the right ball-park. On the other hand, Judy still couldn't hear me. It was better than nothing, so I increased the power output again. I could feel mana being drained from my body through the Leoformer. It was different from when I was using my gear normally; less of a smooth flow and more of a prickly, uncomfortable sensation, as if my whole body was slowly being smushed to squeeze out all my delicious juices.

Disturbing analogy aside, I tried a few more times, but got the same result. If anything, it just made Judy worried that her artifact might be broken just before the big operation, and while I didn't want to confuse her, I wasn't exactly spoiled with choices either.

"Why isn't it working…?"

My whispers echoed dully in the empty roof space. As Judy's reaction already showed, getting through wasn't the problem. To simplify things, my jury-rigged inter-space-pocket communicator worked like this: Instead of connecting directly to the receiver, which was impossible due to the different 'protocols' in question, I used the bits borrowed from the Celestial orb to 'tunnel' through the dimension barrier and deposit the signal outside.

In theory, it was similar to how the Abyssals' tunnelling worked whenever they wanted to leave this place, except because I only wanted to send a small amount of magical communication wave stuff over, I didn't require a whole-ass portal to do it. The principle was still the same, I came to the place that matched Judy's location on Critias to reduce the metaphysical distance the signal needed to tunnel through, just like how we travelled to the middle of nowhere to be 'closer' to Castle Nergal.

Yet, even after stacking everything in my favour like this, Judy's artifact still didn't manage to pick up my signal. Was it distorted in transit? Or maybe it just wasn't strong enough? Maybe I made a mistake somewhere when merging the two enchantment arrays?

There were many possible issues to troubleshoot, but I had no time to go through the whole checklist. Or even a single one of them, really, as Judy abruptly perked up.

"Eagle's Nest to Western Barn Owl. The Hamsters are in the net. I repeat: the Hamsters are in the net. Prepare to swoop, over."

First off, I was happy to see that my girlfriend's penchant for silly code-words remained unchanged whether I was around or not. More importantly though, as soon as she finished speaking, the whole neighbourhood flashed into inverted colours before settling into the usual, creepy purple hues.

"Oh, goddamit!" I cursed under my breath, only to be startled when my girlfriend also got startled, if only after a few seconds of delay.

"Chief?"

"What? Dormouse? Can you hear me now?"

Once again, there was a solid five-second delay between my words and her response, but then her face lit up in that curious mixture of relief and outrage that, for anyone else, would've probably looked like her nose was itchy.

"What's going on? Where are you?"

"Still in the Abyss, and—"

"Why didn't you call until now?"

Because of the delay, she kept on pestering me, and her reaction also worked up my sisters a bit.

"Hold on! Are you talking to Brother? Is he all right?"

"Is he back? If he appeared right now, wouldn't it throw the whole plan astray?"

"Hold on." Judy raised a palm, probably because my previous words had just reached her. "He says he's still in the Abyss."

"Listen, there's a lag in the communications, but that's not important. I'll explain everything later, but I need to tell you something very important right now! Are you listening?"

I rattled all of that off in one breath and waited for her to respond. Each passing second felt longer than the last, but when she didn't say a word, it was Penny who lost her patience first, and she let out a high-pitched groan.

"Aaagh! You can't just keep us in suspense like this! What is he saying?!"

"I don't know," my dear assistant responded in an extra-deadpan voice, her expression also looking the part. "He said the communications are lagging and that he'll explain everything, and then he didn't."

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"Did the line get cut?" Snowy spoke a tad hesitantly, and after some consideration, Judy shook her head.

"I don't know. I'm not hearing any static either, and—" Before she could finish the sentence, the whole building shook under their feet, so she turned her attention towards the pedestrian square with a fountain and readjusted her glasses. "Let's focus on the operation now. Eurasian Kestrel has already engaged the Hamsters."

"Who was 'Kestrel' again?" Penny, still visibly agitated, blurted out the question on her mind, and my other sister looked just as stumped.

"I think it's Josh. I'm not sure…"

Putting the codenames aside, I returned to my body, only to find myself drenched in cold sweat. It didn't take long to realise why Judy couldn't hear the end of my last message; I was completely out of mana!

"Goddamit…"

Without further ado, I slapped my belt buckle (though it was mostly just to relieve some tension), and out popped Cal from the storage enchantment. I also switched over to my Lion Knight armour replica, as it had the most robust physical enhancement suite and, by consequence, the firmest connection to my Oaths.

"{What happened, you knight? Where are we? Why did you leave Teeny behind?}"

Now that he mentioned it, in my hurry to get outside, I only grabbed Cal and the box containing the communications orb from the table in my cell before making a rush for the surface. Hopefully Teeny won't hold a grudge over this, but that was the least of my problems at the moment.

"No time to explain. Start accumulating mana. Also, start the usual circulation."

"{But young knight…}"

"Now!"

I could hear Cal quietly grumble in my head, but at the same time, he also started doing the meditative mana circulation that Naoren taught me a while back. While it only had a mild calming effect on me, since I didn't have Draconian lineage, the flow helped distribute mana in my body and it allowed faster recovery through the magical equivalent of osmosis. With Cal's help, I calculated that I would only need a few minutes before I could open the communications channel again. Not a long time, but in a battle, not a short one by any means either.

Speaking of battles, since Cal was manually directing the circulation and my recovery, I could spare the mental effort to Far Glance at the unfolding situation, so that I'd be on top of things as soon as I could contact Judy again.

Since they mentioned Josh, I focused on him first, and I found him in the middle of the square, shield raised. A moment later, a series of wicked fast magical arrows exploded against it, but he remained rooted in place and even parried one, sending the bright red projectile careening into a purple-tinted building at the other side of the street.

"Keep it up! Don't let him close the distance!" a conspicuously robed man yelled nearby. He was surrounded by half a dozen similarly dressed Magi, and they all raised their staves in unison. "Loose the next volley!"

Their weapons flared with magical light, both the colourless and the more perceptible variety, but before they could fire off their magical payload…

"Look out!"

The mages scattered as a freaking moped plummeted into the middle of their group. It didn't directly hit anyone, but it certainly disturbed their formation and staggered them all. They weren't the only ones.

"Hey! That was my ride!" Josh yelled from the top of his lungs, causing my Draconian girlfriend to freeze up for a moment.

"S-Sorry! That was the only thing in reach I could grab!"

Elly's disguise was undone by her transformation, and she was standing at the other end of the square, her golden locks billowing and her red scales glinting in the light show generated by the Magi in the Purple Zone.

"Don't get distracted, fool! It's not the real one!" Zihao yelled as he literally jumped over Josh and did a full somersault for no discernible reason whatsoever.

While in mid-air, he let out a deep roar and his hair flared up with a fiery crimson glow. Hand raised high, the same red light swirled and coalesced around him into a huge, three-clawed reptilian paw that he immediately slammed into the ground between Josh and the magi-group, sending a series of cascading waves across the pavement. That wasn't the end of it, as he repeated the process two more times, and on the last strike, the dragon paw somehow gained an extra clawed finger, and its impact not only destroyed the nearby fountain, spreading water everywhere, but it also sent Zihao flying back and behind Josh.

The Magi group, scattered and disoriented, should've made for easy pickings, but they weren't the only ones present at the scene. There were about twenty of them in total, give or take a few, spread all around the square and the nearby streets, and actively covering for each other. This meant that while the biggest group was dispersed, the close combatants couldn't just rush them down without worrying about being hit in the back with a magic missile.

Or rather, by birds made of fire. Or watery serpents. Plus, the occasional wind blades or stone spikes. Lord Grandpa had already demonstrated it to me once, but the offensive repertoire of the average Magi was rather diverse, and they weren't shy about going full throttle in this situation.

Looking at it objectively, there was a reason why Marzanna and their cronies chose to use this spot for their ambush; Magi held a huge advantage at range, and as long as there were Ley Lines to tap into, they could spam their spells without discretion. An open space like this meant they could take full advantage of their strength while surrounding a single target.

The only reason why they were in so much trouble was due to being counter-ambushed by a bunch of main- and side-characters, each of them some of the most powerful members of their respective factions. Because of this, Josh and Zihao were pushing back a whole group of mages, Elly was dashing around the square and picking off individual stragglers, while Sahi and Pascal were working in tandem to cordon off a whole street by themselves to stop the enemies from regrouping.

While the gang definitely had the upper hand, and the Magi ambushers' performance was less than stellar, it was more of a stalemate than anything else. Half of it was because of the Restoration School mages mixed in with the more offensive spell-slingers patching them right away, keeping casualties to effectively zero, but our side wasn't pushing things as hard as they could either. Case in point:

"Can I join?"

The class rep's question was met by disapproving looks from both Angie and Mike. The three of them were hiding inside a Purple Zonified café, and the two Celestials were clearly in charge of keeping her safe.

"I want to join too, but we have to stick to the plan!" Angie told her with a pout, and the guy next to them also insisted.

"You heard her, honeybunch. Just stay calm and wait for Judy's signal."

So yeah. That exchange pretty much confirmed my hunch; they weren't going all out because they were buying time. Maybe for the local authorities (read: the School and the Draconic Federation) to notice the commotion and intervene, maybe because they were hoping that Marzanna would lose patience and would show up in person, so that they could beat her up and resolve this whole dilemma in one go. Heck, maybe it was both.

That wasn't a terrible plan in and of itself, but at this moment, it was bound to fail, or at the very least lead to an extremely dangerous kerfuffle, and I had to warn them.

Speaking of which, I got out of Far Sight and checked my body's condition. Thanks to Cal, I had enough mana in my system to attempt another contact, so I fired up the modified communications arrays again and then immediately Far Glanced at Judy.

"Dormouse? Can you hear me again?"

Once more, there were several seconds of lag, but my busy girlfriend imperceptibly twitched and put her hand on the rim of her glasses.

"I have an incoming call, European Honey Buzzard. Eagle's Nest is hanging up, over." Her words were followed by a long beat, then she tapped on her artifact again. "I can hear you, Chief."

"Good. Listen! This is a trap!"

"Yes, we know," she responded calmly. "You said you'll tell me what happened to you. Are you all right?"

"There's no time for this! You need to tell everyone to get out of the square, or even the Purple Zone, if possible!"

My tone must've finally gotten through to her, because she dropped the issue and her eyes snapped over to the square.

"Is Lord Marzanna coming?"

"I have no bloody idea, but that's the least of your problems! Listen to me!" Even as I was saying that, I could see the pavement crack and down there, so I hurriedly yelled, "They smuggled in half the bloody School of Ottawa! They've got golems in the sewers!"

Part 3

"Literally?"

Judy's stumped question made the tension deflate a tad. It also made me want to facepalm, but that would've interrupted the mana-circulation, so I only balled up my fist and responded as calmly as I could.

"How could that even be metaphorical?!"

The lag in the communications wasn't getting any better, and it took her a while to let out a hum and tap her party glasses.

"Eagle's Nest to Eurasian Kestrel. We have reports of golems in the sewers, over."

Since she was talking to Josh, I Far Glanced at the battlefield down in the square, and I couldn't help but wonder what the point of that was when said golems were already digging their way out of the pavement.

"Chief? Eurasian Kestrel is asking how many are there?"

"Is that Josh?" That was a pointless question, so I quickly amended my response, "Six or seven. I didn't have the time to count them, but that's just the tip of the iceberg!"

"Six or seven, and also an iceberg," Judy relayed my words, only to catch herself and flatly add, "Strike out the last bit, Eurasian Kestrel. That one was metaphorical. Eagle's Nest, out."

While she was briefing the group, I continued to rapidly switch my point of view around. Using a combination of magic and brute force, the golems broke through to the surface, and right behind them, I could see an assortment of familiar muscle-magi joining the fray. Their brawny upper bodies were only covered in black tank tops at most, while others opted to go entirely shirtless, yet for some reason, all of them wore short white capes, cowls, and cloth face masks that not only hid their identities but also gave them a rather striking silhouette. Surrounded by floating debris crackling with eldritch energies in the aftermath of whatever spell they used to bore the yawning hole, their entrance was surprisingly dramatic.

"For Restoration!"

Their war-cry, on the other hand, was pretty lame, so things balanced out. There were about a dozen of them, and as they advanced past the comparatively lumbering golems, the magi in the square rallied at once. While they were pressed hard by Josh and the others, as soon as the tide turned in their favour, they raised their staves, wands, and other assorted casting implements in defiance.

"For Sophia!"

Their battle-cry was a little better, though considering that said 'Sophia' was just a different name for the ancient Celestial AI inside the class rep's head, their enthusiasm was still a bit misplaced. But speaking of her, the sudden appearance of the reinforcements forced Josh, Elly, and Zihao to fall back towards the café where Ammy was taking shelter along with Michael and Angie, and despite the dire situation, she didn't seem particularly panicked. If anything…

"Can I start casting spells now?"

"Honey-bunch, please. I understand you're impatient, but wait for the signal," Mike chided her while holding her hand.

"You guys are cute, but I could really use some help here!" Angie called out from the front, and as soon as she turned around, a stray magic missile flew past their heads and hit the coffee press in the back of the establishment. "Ah, that's not good!"

The Celestial girl started frantically humming again, and the broken windows were covered in a wavering, semi-transparent film that deflected the thin yellow magical beam attack coming their way.

"I-I'm here! I'll help!" Mike dashed over and slid to a halt next to Angie, and the two of them began to sing in tandem, reinforcing the makeshift ward protecting the insides of the café against magical projectiles, which… actually made me pause.

I didn't have the time to think it through before, but back in Ottawa, the muscle-mages were the only offensive combatants we ran into, so where did all of these spell-slingers come from? Or rather, 'were coming from', as more and more magi emerged from the sewers through the hole in the pavement. The golems were also starting to move in earnest, but…

"Haha! Like, come and get some!"

Just as I was starting to get worried, Sahi burst into the scene. She was flying (or at the very least leaping) through the air, fist raised high before she decked the nearest golem in its head-equivalent with a haymaker punch. Of course, the one doing the clobbering wasn't her, but one of the transparent magical hand constructs mimicking her actions.

The golem staggered back, but didn't fall, and this intermezzo also drew the attention of the spell-slinging mages. In the blink of an eye, she was suddenly in the crossfire of a smorgasbord of mystical projectiles. Wind blades from the left, fire bolt from the right, and there was even a strangely pink lightning bolt thrown into the mix.

She wasn't alone though, and before any of them could reach her, Pascal burst into the scene with a collection of individually controlled hexagonal barrier plates. They looked like a smaller version of the spell used by Lord Gulliver, but before I could take a closer look, the flash of magic impacting on magic forced me to avert my eyes, just in time to catch Elly literally picking up one of the muscle magi and throwing him against a group of ranged spellcasters.

She was immediately beset by two golems after that, forcing her to retreat and regroup with Josh and Zihao, who were also being pushed back towards the café where Ammy and company were hiding.

That didn't look good, but I couldn't help but have this nagging feeling that something was off. Following my gut, I returned to Judy's side.

"Chief, are you still here?"

Either my timing was great, or she kept asking that while I was away. In either case, I hurriedly told her, "Yes, I'm here. I just checked on the others."

Five or so seconds later, my girlfriend let out a soft breath.

"Good. The golems weren't part of the plan, but it's not the end of the world. Have you found anything else?"

"No, I haven't, but whatever your plan is, you should tell the guys to stop holding back."

"Not yet," came the belated answer.

Ha! I knew it! The reason this whole situation felt off was because Josh and the others weren't going all out. Except maybe for Zihao, considering he blew up the fountain and everything, but the rest were definitely pulling their punches and fighting rather conservatively.

"Are you waiting for the Ordo Draconis and the Praetorian Guards to break up the fight?"

"I see you've been keeping tabs on us," Judy noted a tad grumpily and glared to her left. I wasn't there, but it was certainly meant for me all the same. "You should've contacted us earlier."

"I would've, if I could, but that's not important. Listen, I'm not one hundred percent up to date with your plan, but those muscle mages are bad news. Either take them down ASAP, or avoid them at all costs."

"Don't worry, Chief. Draconians are inherently resistant to getting their Astral Bodies affected by outside forces, so they should be able to handle them."

"Was that also part of the plan…? Never mind. Listen, you've seen what getting hit by those guys did to Ambrose. We're in the finale; we can't have any of our main characters end up bedridden for the final stretch!"

Judy eventually nodded along and put a hand on the frame of her glasses again.

"Fine. I'll tell them to focus on the Magi from the Ottawa School of Restoration and be careful, and—"

Before she could finish what she was saying, there was a sudden flash of light down in the square, and my dear assistant focused all her attention there.

"Eagle's Nest to Birds of Prey. Stay alert. The Sparrows flew in earlier than expected. I repeat, the Sparrows are here already. Eagle's Nest, over."

"Sparrows? What the heck are…?"

My words trailed off when I inspected the battlefield and noticed a bunch of small, oval portals hovering mid-air over the ruined fountain. From those emerged dozens upon dozens of winged soldiers wearing the familiar hoplite-adjacent gear of the Celestial military.

Eminently stumped by this development, I shifted my Far Sight over to take a closer look, just in time to hear the helmeted man in the lead roaring, "True Sons and Daughters of Elysium! We must aid Deus, hallowed be his name, in his true resurrection today! Show no mercy to these fools and their false idol!"

"Betrayal!" A magi boomed back from the ground and levelled his staff at the Celestials emerging from their portals. "We expected nothing less for your wretched kind! Magi of the Assembly, attack!"

For the next minute or so, I couldn't help but gawk at the rapidly developing Mêlée à Trois between the Celestials, the Magi, and our group trying their best to navigate the mess. It was only when I saw Josh tank a hit from one of the golems and then yell, "Hold tight! It isn't time yet!" that I was jolted out of my stupor, and I returned my point of view to Judy's side.

"Dormouse? Care to explain what the hell is going on down there?"

"I'd love to, but this is a crucial part of the operation and I must focus." She paused for a second and suddenly barked, "European Honey Buzzard, this is Eagle's Nest. A golem is approaching the Secretary Bird from the west. Intercept it, and then continue to reduce the effective combat power of the Hamsters by twenty percent, over." She cut the connection with a grunt and glanced to the side as she said, "I can't pay attention to two things at once. Penelope, Neige? Can you explain the plan to the Chief?"

"W-Wait! Brother can hear us?" Penny exclaimed in shock, while Snowy only nodded and glanced around.

"Um… Should we talk to your artifact?"

"No, the Chief can understand you if you just…"

"Tell them to talk in the direction of that chimney over there," I chimed in, and after the obligatory lag, Judy let out another soft hum.

"If you speak in that direction, then he can hear you."

"Really?" My knightly sister immediately turned towards the nearest chimney, where my point of view was hovering, and words started gushing from her like a river. "Brother! Are you all right? Are you eating well? Did you really get captured on purpose? You shouldn't have scared us like that! Did you at least get in a good hit on that Bel bastard? When are you coming back? And…"

"Penny…" Snowy put a hand on her shoulder and shook her a bit. "Leo can hear us, but he can't answer."

"Ah… R-Right. So…" She glanced left and right, and then by complete coincidence, she looked right at my disembodied POV. "Are we… supposed to explain the plan?"

"That's what Judy said, so… um… I think we should start at the beginning." Snowy took a deep breath and also looked in my direction, her lips set in a thin line and her eyes focused on… the air between her and the chimney, I suppose? Anyhow, she began her explanation with, "We came up with the plan together with Sir Percival. It's based on manipulating and exploiting the mutual antipathy between our enemies to draw them into a ploy and allow them to destroy themselves."

"I-I don't get all the small details, but…" Penny showed three fingers and waved them in my direction. "You see, we had arch-mage Marzanna and her people. They reeeally hate Celestials, but some of the other Magi on the island hate them too." She bent a finger and pointed at the second one. "They were unhappy about the truce you arranged with Elysium, but they couldn't speak up because of the teachers… I-I mean, the other arch-mages here, so they've been just scheming in the shadows like knaves!"

"There's also a radical group of Celestials who don't like you," Snowy added on, and Penny repeatedly gestured towards her last extended finger. "Um… I mean, they don't like 'Polemos', and they want to have Deus back in Elysium, and they've also been causing trouble lately."

"And then Uncle Percy gave us a big advice!" My other sister balled up her fists and grinned in my direction. "He said a good plan never just accomplishes one thing, so we put our heads together and came up with this idea!"

She spread her arms to the sides as if presenting the whole scenery, and her act was punctuated by a loud explosion and the façade of one of the buildings by the square crumbling apart. Holy crap, that looked dangerous. My sisters didn't find it alarming and continued with the one-sided conversation without sparing it a single glance.

"Tajana helped us too, and Penny was crucial to discovering Lord Marzanna's plans." Snowy pointed at my (currently quite smug) other sister and told me about her escapades, and their meeting afterwards. Skipping that, we soon reached the meat of the explanation. "Following that, we faked correspondence between the three factions and convinced them that the others were reaching out to them, looking to cooperate."

"Setting up the dissenter magi with that Marzanna woman was the easy part, but getting them involved with the Celestials was trickier," Penny chimed. She crossed her arms and exhaled a shallow sigh. "When Uncle Percy first told me the plan, I thought it would never in a million years work, but it somehow did!"

"He said that Marzanna's hatred for the Celestials makes her predictable, so we sent her a letter in the name of the Celestial dissidents."

"Sir Arpachshad wrote it," Penny noted on the side, with Snowy nodding along.

"Marzanna would normally never work with them, but we fed them information to make her believe that she could take advantage of them and then discard them and have them take the blame. We did the same with those Celestials as well."

"Originally, we also wanted to bait some of the Draconian families who were against the formation of the Draconic Federation into the conflict, and hit four birds with one stone… but we didn't have the time to get them involved."

Penny sounded rather crestfallen about that, while my Abyssal sister remained professional. As for me, I was mostly just flabbergasted by the scale of this whole thing.

"So, to summarize, we tricked the Magi in the School sympathizing with Lord Marzanna to show their teeth, we tricked Lord Marzanna into believing that she could take advantage of the desperate Celestials and then stab them in the back later, while at the same time we tricked the Celestials into believing that they could exploit the desperate Magi and then stab them in the back instead."

"But that's not all!" Penny exclaimed with glee, practically hopping in place. "There's still the last part! You see, we need that Marzanna woman to show up in person, so that she can incriminate herself! Uncle Percy said the easiest way to do that is by preparing a stalemate like this! If it looked like the Celestials had the advantage, she would cut her losses, and if it looked like the Magi had the advantage, she would have no reason to appear, but if things got dragged out, she would inevitably get impatient and show herself to tip the scale!"

"Of course, we didn't expect the golems, b-but Judy said it's fine, so… it should be fine?" That last bit didn't sound too convincing, and it was followed up by a long and strained silence that only popped when Snowy turned to my girlfriend at the edge of the roof. "Did… Leo hear everything?"

"Please tell them I did, and that I'm not happy that you're just straight up following Percival's lead like that."

A few seconds later, Judy turned to the girls and flatly stated, "He says he heard you loud and clear, and that he's very impressed and proud of you."

"Really?"

Penny's face lit up, Snowy became bashful, and as for me, I could feel the corner of my eye twitch.

"That wasn't what I said, but…" A soft grunt escaped my lips, and I chose to pick my battles wisely. "Never mind. If I get this right, your plan is to pull Marzanna into the open, and then what?"

Instead of answering, Judy kept focusing on the chaotic battle on the ground. When she remained silent, I was almost starting to be worried that the connection was cut again, but then she stated, "Don't worry, Chief. We've got this," before tapping on her artifact again and shifting into a more professional tone. "Eagle's Nest to the Birds of Prey. The Moose is on the way. I repeat, the Moose entered the operation zone. ETA is ten seconds. Prepare for impact, over."

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that 'Moose' in this case wasn't referring to our metalhead Celestial Hub moderator, but by then, the question became moot when a blinding flash erupted from the center of the square and a familiar old lady shifted into the Purple Zone, holding her staff high over her head.

"I'll take a closer look. I'll be right back," I told Judy as I shifted my point of view over, just in time to catch Marzanna shooting a Celestial right out of the sky.

The man plummeted to the ground like a sack of potatoes, but while he fell from something like four storeys high, he groggily got back to his feet… only to be then backhanded by a passing golem. And yet, despite all that, he was still on one piece. I was glad to see that a certain Abyssal noble's death didn't suddenly make every battle visceral and gory, but damn, that should've killed a person three times over. Yay for innate Barriers, I suppose?

Meanwhile, the dishevelled arch-mage twirled her staff over her head and roared, "Ignore the wretched Elysian scum! Secure the girl and get back in the tunnels!"

Oh? So the reinforcements from the Ottawa school didn't just pop out of the sewers for the sake of a dynamic entry, but because it was supposed to be their escape route? Made sense, I supposed. If they entered the sewers in the Purple Zone, and then shifted back to realspace, where the street wasn't gouged out, it would've let them easily get away. Unless someone did the same to follow after them, of course, but I guess they planned to nab Ammy and beat up the Celestial 'reinforcements', and they weren't expecting a drawn-out battle.

Actually, on second thought, what was the contribution of these 'Celestial dissenters' again? Maybe they were the ones who smuggled the Golems onto the island, I reckoned, but before I could get lost in theorising, Marzanna was forced to retreat a few steps back by the gang, fittingly, ganging up on her. Not all of them; only Josh, Angie, Elly, and, surprisingly enough, Ammy joined the fray.

At a glance, Sahi and Pascal were still hunting golems, while Zihao was locked in battle with a group of muscle-magi. Maybe Judy sent him there, deeming that it wouldn't be that big of a deal if he got hit by one of those disabling Restoration spells, I wondered. As for Mike, he… was still hiding in the café. Figures.

"Imbeciles!" Marzanna boomed and tapped the end of her staff against the ground. "Don't you understand the situation you're in?!" She pointed at Ammy with her free hand. "You, girl! You're Endymonion's granddaughter, aren't you? Come with me, and your foolish companions may yet be spared!"

"Excuse me, lady, but you're the one who doesn't seem to grasp the situation yet," Josh responded first, and with an unusually cocky grin plastered on his face. He tapped the flat of his sword against his shield and declared, "We've got you right where we want you!"

"Such insolence!" Marzanna pointed her staff at the group and bellowed, "Do you not understand who you're facing right now?!"

"Do you?" Josh asked back, still sounding just a tad overconfident, but then he blinked and glanced over his shoulder. "Hey, Ammy? Judy says the cavalry's on the way. We can go all out now."

"Finally!"

As giddy as I'd ever heard her, the class rep's face lit up with glee, and she clapped her hands in front of her chest. The golden eye symbol on her forehead sprang to life at once, and with a flash of brilliant light, it disintegrated her clothes. It was the world's shortest magical girl transformation, because a blink of an eye later, Ammy was standing there in the same pose, except this time wearing a billowing green robe and a fancy wizard hat with a huge brim. Which, in retrospect, explained why she wasn't wearing her Magiformer.

Mana surged around them, and the combatants on the square retreated away from the epicenter. Some did so calmly. Others ran like they were chased by the devil. I didn't know if it was some mystical pressure, instinct, or some mild narrative influence at play, but the result was the same: with the small fry out of the way, nothing was stopping the gang from challenging the arch-mage in a straightforward battle. There was only one question remaining…

"… Goddammit. How come my plans never go this smoothly?"

Part 4

Watching the preambles of the battle unfold, I couldn't help but feel a bitter taste in my mouth. Not because of that whole plan-success-thing, but because I worked myself into a frenzy over warning the guys about the unforeseen threat of the sewer-golems, only for it to turn out to be not a big deal at all. It made me feel a bit silly, but also self-conscious.

After all, I have caught bits and pieces of their plan, yet I somehow missed the whole multi-faction gambit pileup they orchestrated between the Celestials and the Magi. Heck, I didn't even know that there were dissenters in Elysium! In my defence, I wasn't exactly paying a lot of attention to Celestial affairs, only keeping tabs on the ex-Directors from time to time, but it made perfect sense, and I should've seen it coming anyway.

In any case, as dumb as I felt at the moment, I couldn't exactly wallow in self-depreciation when we had a big battle shounen style clash on our hands. Even at a glance, it was clearly a thematic one too; the original core of our little posse consisting of Josh and his initial entourage versus an arch-mage. The latter part might not have been that intuitive, but looking back, Lord Grandpa was our first exposure to one of the major powers of the World of Mystics (I didn't count Crowy, because he's a git, and also because the team never properly fought him back at the school), and Josh's first outright defeat was at the hands of Sahi.

Thematically speaking, it made perfect sense for an arch-mage to serve as the last big hurdle to overcome before jumping headlong into the finale of the scenario, to showcase the main character's growth and whatnot. So much so that I was wondering whether it was another of those things future-me cheekily orchestrated from the background without telling me. Or maybe I was just getting paranoid.

Whatever the case, things were about to get spicy, so I focused half my attention on the two sides facing off in the middle of the ruined square. Only half though, because I was still convinced that there's no such thing as a situation going one hundred percent according to plan, so I kept scanning the perimeter for potential scene-breakers I could warn Judy about.

Meanwhile, the first skirmish between Marzanna and Josh's group was initiated by Ammy. The Purple Zonified streets and building facades were illuminated by a bright star of shifting colours hovering over the class rep's hand held high over her head. Her feet left the ground and she steadily ascended higher and higher into the air, even as her spell was sucking in the ambient mana that she expelled during her transformation. As soon as it finished condensing, the infinitesimally tiny point of light suddenly expanded into a giant ball of fire that filled up the sky over the square.

"Hey! That's too big! You're going to blow up the whole Restricted Space!"

The gleeful grin on Ammy's face fell away as soon as she heard Josh's yell, and she glared at the guy still on the ground.

"I know what I'm doing! Just watch!"

She began reciting more faux-Latin words and raised her other hand over her head as well, nearly knocking off her hat. More importantly, the humongous ball of flames began to divide like a giant cell. One became two, two became four, and before long, there were hundreds of considerably less humongous but still pretty freaking large fireballs hanging over the purple sky.

With a battle-cry of, "Take this! The culmination of my whole life! Unlimited Fireball Raaain!" Ammy swung her hands down, and the globes of flame began to drop from the sky one by one like shooting stars.

Now, I could've pointed out that those fireballs weren't unlimited, or that they were far from accurate, but Josh was my spirit animal today, because he conveyed my sentiments with a perfectly timed, "What the heck, Ammy!?"

The class rep didn't seem to care, and she was simply revelling in the pyrotechnics, throwing the hapless Celestials and Magi around like ragdolls. Marzanna also had a few of them falling towards her, but she just waved her gnarled wooden staff, its bulbous end flaring with an invisible glow, and any fireballs that would've impacted her either exploded mid-air or went wildly off their trajectory, further adding to the grief of the other combatants in the Purple Zone.

"That should've worked…" Ammy mused, her floating form framed by the red light of the explosions all around the square. "Let's try again! Double-strength this time!"

However, before she could even start casting a spell, the eye-symbol on her forehead lit up and she tumbled back in the air as a thin white beam of light broke through her emergency wards. The ray originated from the arch-mage, and while the ward deflected it and so it didn't inflict any real damage, the class rep was still flustered and unable to defend herself for a second.

Fortunately, the rest of the gang didn't allow Marzanna to capitalise on that, as Josh was already dashing towards her. The arch-mage glared daggers at him, but her hands and mouth never stopped moving, and she released a shower of homing magical projectiles his way. Startled but undeterred, he let out a throaty roar and held his shield out.

He dodged what he could, letting the magic missiles harmlessly pass him by or hit the already ruined pavement. What he couldn't avoid, he blocked, his shield making a sound like nails on a chalkboard from every impact. What he couldn't block, he parried, his sword lashing out so fast it was difficult to follow with the naked eye.

It was only when he was just a few steps away from the arch-mage that she finished her next spell, and she leapt back while simultaneously drawing a curved line onto the ground with the butt end of her staff. A bright flash erupted from the mark, and a semi-solid wave of mana erupted like a tsunami. Josh first tried to push through, but the force of the wave was too much, and he had to brace his feet and raise his shield to stop himself from being swept away.

"Hyaaah!"

Before the arch-mage got any space to breathe, a sudden battle-cry forced her to look up, just in time to catch a red streak descending towards her. She hastily erected a ward, but it was too shabby, and she was sent tumbling back as Elly broke right through with a kick. My draconic princess lowered her center of gravity and got ready to lunge at her, but she was just a moment too slow, and before she could, her feet were grabbed by a pair of hands that seemingly grew out of the material of the pavement.

By the looks of it, it was some kind of magical booby-trap, and the arch-mage probably set it down in case Josh managed to push through that wave-spell. On closer look, I could see a couple more spots on the ground like that, so she must've set more snares, but I wasn't too worried, considering that Ammy could now see magic, and so she would be able to tell them how to avoid those spots.

"I'll cover you!" Josh yelled as he dashed in… only to fall over when his right leg was caught in another magical hand-trap.

…

Oh, right. Ammy wasn't wearing a Magiformer, so Judy couldn't talk with her, meaning that even if she did notice those traps, she couldn't share it with the others. That was a bit of an oversight, so I quickly flung my point of view over to Judy's side again.

"Hey, Dormouse? Tell Josh and Elly that there are three more traps around Marzanna. Two on her left, one right in front of her."

I didn't wait for her response and switched back to the heart of the action, where the arch-mage used the previous wave-spell again to blast the two back, breaking the stone hands holding onto them in the process. It wasn't a big deal for the princess, as she rolled with the impact and sprang to her feet right away, but Josh lost his sword in the tumble, so he had to recover his weapon first.

Seeing that, Elly was just about to lunge at Marzanna again, but Josh yelled, "Hold on! There are more traps on her left! Approach her from the other direction!"

That must've been the result of Judy relaying the information, and the princess didn't second-guess the instructions. She changed her trajectory just as she was about to barrel into another trap, but that gave enough time for her opponent to erect another arched ward in front of her. She bounced off, looking rather startled by the sudden invisible wall she just hit, but it only lasted for a split-second before she stomped her feet so hard it made the ground crack, and she hit the barrier with her shoulder.

It wasn't a football tackle, but more of a martial arts move; she only moved a short distance, yet she hit the ward like a freight train, and it immediately shattered like a window pane. Meanwhile, Josh approached from the other side, using his Celestial wings to fly close to the ground (to avoid the traps, I reckoned), catching Marzanna in a pincer manoeuvre.

Despite that, the old arch-mage remained uncannily calm, and she forcefully planted her staff in front of her. There was another flash of light, followed by another intangible wave of mana that knocked Josh and Elly back. She was a surprisingly defensive fighter, all things considered. Despite the confined efforts of everyone, none of them could land a hit on her yet, and…

…

Wait. I said 'everyone', but Angie was conspicuously missing from the picture, wasn't she?

As if waiting for me to realise that, a harsh voice yelled out from the back.

"Stay clear!"

Glancing over, I could see Angie, currently controlled by Deus, making a few sweeping motions with her hands, like a grand conductor, before suddenly falling to one knee and planting her palms onto the cracked road. Her body, as well as the ground, flared up with a brilliant golden light, and before Marzanna could brace herself, dozens of thin yet dazzlingly bright golden chains erupted from the pavement of the square. They wrapped themselves around the arch-mage's arms, shoulders, and staff, locking her in place in the blink of an eye.

"What manner of…?!" she cried out in surprise and tried to break free, but the chains kept her anchored and unable to move.

"Good job, guys!" Angie beamed at Josh and Elly, but then her eyes shifted to a bright amber again, and she sneered at Marzanna. "Don't even dream about breaking out of my spell! I designed it to restrain Bel of the Abyss himself; someone like you has no chance of escaping it, so sit tight and accept your punishment!"

While she was gloating, Josh had already leapt away from the chained arch-mage and pointed his sword at her.

"Your turn, Ammy!"

"No need to say that twice!"

Realising that their arch-mage was in trouble, a few Magi were already trying to get close and interrupt the fight, but they all froze the moment a familiar sight blotted out the purple sky. Ammy's giant fireball, exactly the same as before, menacingly hovered over everyone, yet this time it didn't divide but shrank instead. In a matter of seconds, the humongous blazing sphere halved in size, then again, and before long, it was only the size of a large truck. Granted, that was still pretty freaking big, but it was all about the scale here.

It slowly descended until it settled over the outstretched hands of a grinning (and, admittedly, a little scary) class rep, and she announced, "This time, you can't escape! Unlimited Fireball Impaaact!"

For the record, I still had no idea what was so 'unlimited' about it, but that wasn't the most important thing right now. As soon as Ammy flung her arms down, the fireball began to accelerate at a painfully slow pace, as if to drive home the weight and inevitability of the attack. Marzanna glared at the incoming giant projectile and did her best to raise her staff, but to no avail. Her struggles became more frantic the closer the fireball got, and the moment she glanced up again, the whole square was blotted out by the light of an enormous explosion engulfing her form.

Flames spread in three hundred and sixty degrees like a wave, forcing Josh and Elly to take to the air, and any unfortunate Magi or Celestial caught in it was flung away like leaves in a storm. The sound, like the crack of thunder at one-tenth of the speed, was unnaturally deep and long, yet just a few seconds later, it all disappeared into distant echoes.

So did the wave of flames, and despite the apparent size of the explosion, the square remained… well, calling it 'intact' would've been a stretch, but it certainly was in better shape than expected. For one, there was no crater, only several concentric circles of red-hot burning stone and asphalt surrounding the epicenter of the impact. There, still restrained by Deus's golden chains, the charred body of an old woman was still standing upright, seemingly only held up by her bonds.

Most of her white outer robe was gone, and her hair and face were singed and blackened by the flames. More alarmingly, she wasn't moving a single muscle, standing there like some grotesque statue held in place by the chains surrounding her.

The silence left in the wake of Ammy's jumbo-fireball was already deafening, but the sight of Marzanna's body made everyone in the Purple Zone fall into stupefied shock. It wasn't until Josh landed not too far away from her that everyone seemed to come to their senses, and he exclaimed, "Wow! I can't believe everything went according to— Blegh?"

He probably couldn't even see what hit him. To be fair, even I could only catch a glimpse, but if I had to describe it, it was a giant chunk of concrete still attached to a thin golden chain.

"That… hurt…"

A gurgling voice pierced the second spell of shocked silence, followed by a series of loud popping sounds. Some of them came from the chains, weakened by the impact of the fireball, snapping one after the other. Much more disturbingly, others were emanating from inside the body of the arch-mage… and they were the louder ones.

"I do not take pleasure… in killing children…"

Marzanna's distorted voice continued as her body continued to twist. The charred outer layer of her face cracked and fell away, revealing a… not 'youthful', but at the very least 'slightly younger' visage. What remained of her greying hair began to fall out, only to be replaced by fresh new locks of shiny black strands, and as she tore the remains of her robes off her back, it revealed an exceedingly muscular torso. Not just that, but her arms were swelling at a visible rate, until she had biceps that gave freaking Duncan of all people a run for his money.

"I only wished to… take you into custody…"

Despite the changes to her constitution, her voice remained the same, and once she spat out a mouthful of blood, even the strange gurgling undertone disappeared.

As soon as she ripped out the last chain tethering her to the ground, she wrapped her enlarged fingers around the head of her mage's staff and, with seemingly no effort, snapped it off and threw it over her shoulder. At last, just as the blazing glow of magic around her subsided, she flourished her weapon like a bo staff and pointed it at the still floating class rep.

"You've brought this upon yourselves."

In other words, things were going off the rails, and her boss battle had a second phase. I would've felt vindicated…

"Elly, quick! We need to—!"

… but then she suddenly accelerated and, with a swing of her staff, sent Josh flying into a nearby building. The second floor of a building, that is.

…

I really hoped they had a Plan B for this, because if they didn't, then oh boy, this was going to be rough.

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