Yuki, fully kitted in lamellar armor, squeezed the hilt of her ko-naginata, glaring through the protective force dome over the flying disk that she and all the Mistridge classmates that had joined her were now riding, more than a few shivering from fear, far more than wonder as they gazed out at the scene of horror in the distance.

  “This is why I held back, Jack. Even though I knew I was being an idiot, missing out on what you and Marsha will be getting… There’s no such thing as a perfect fresh start where life becomes rosy slice-of-life.” She chuckled bitterly. “After enduring all the shit that went down in New York, even before the world fucking ended, I just couldn’t trust that things wouldn’t go wrong!”

  Jack flashed an anxious grimace, gazing with consternation and wonder at the silver ruby tipped wand in his hand, identical to the wands held by over twenty fellow students who had accepted Headmaster Wyrmwood’s invitation to witness the perilous fusion of conflicting fates that would play out for their edification.

  “I know. You’re so right. If even one of these hundredth level bugs with near indestructible shells that we were told will be testing the barrier between territories can force itself through the arcane resistance between wild spicy chaos and the slow meandering currents of orderly peace, then it’s technically a monster surge. Earth will actually be suffering its first Black-Territory break, decades before it’s supposed to be a risk at all!”

  Yuki snorted. “Seriously, Jack? You think it’s the first break?”

  “Well of course it is!” His eyes were wide with wonder. “We get to experience history, to live it, to have it resonate with our budding magical cores… hell, Yuki, as terrified as I am, and I’m about to shit bricks, I can’t get over the fact that I can actually feel a connection to the wand in my hand!” He swallowed the lump in his throat. “From the moment the headmaster gazed into my eyes and smiled at me like I was more than just a pathetic dreamer, like I actually mattered, like I was a hero in my own fucking tale… I just… it’s like I woke up to sights and sounds and colors I’ve never experienced before. Like I’m actually real, now! Does that even make sense?”

  “It does,” whispered a most unexpected voice. “You’ve dared to step in wild, perilous currents, boy, and the currents will shape you in turn.” said the absolute last person Yuki would have expected to see imperiling herself under any circumstances, looking just too precious in her tightly bound silken blouse and hose, with her silvery blue hair bound in ribbons and ponytails, even wearing a pink choker that coordinated with her lipstick and eye shadow, and even if Yuki could sense the multiple protective wards in her attire, she looked more like a girl going clubbing than someone prepared to witness the most perilous battle of their lives.

  “In terms you might understand,” the exquisitely dolled-up Senren continued, “even I feel the difference. After a century of enduring trials a boy like you could never understand… I feel my perceptions, insights, and potential expanding so fast that it absolutely terrifies me.”

  Marsha, also there and shivering in the rain despite her thick woolen cloak, warmed by the ruby tipped wand in her hand as well that glowed with a brilliant spark of heat, whimpered in dismay. “Oh no… why do I suddenly feel so scared?”

  Senren flashed a bleak smile. “Because you sense it to. The System has seen fit to forge us into characters worthy of this tale, which can only mean one thing!”

  Jack gazed nonplussed at the beautiful girl who had blown them off so casually in the academy hallways, not that long ago. Her formerly aloof demeanor of a century old player wearing a student’s mantel had been replaced by the excited countenance of a girl about to experience revelations and wonder that would catapult her progression like nothing else possibly could.

  Yuki cursed softly under her breath. “It means that it doesn’t fucking matter that we’re floating over a massive field of fallow grain without a single threat in sight. This areas about to get hot as hell… because we’re idiot kids laughing at the rush of how fast the raft of our potential is carrying us along fate’s river, and we’re about to hit some major fucking rapids!”

  She dared to glare at the coolly smiling Headmaster Wyrmwood who was even now gently levitating the massive disk of force they all stood upon.

  “Hold steady, children, and fear not. Our queen and our paladins are arriving on a second disk, just a short distance away. Should any beast manage to break free of the realm barrier that sapient natives alone can freely pas through, you will witness firsthand what our paladins are capable of.”

  He then gestured to the priceless treasures that all except Yuki held. “So too, with the wands of your reforged souls, which I have revealed to the chosen among you this night alone, you shall strike with the goddess’s wrath and the might of your resolve to save our school, our queen, and our land from all who trespass against us!”

  Yuki felt a shiver equal parts exhilaration and dismay. For the fiery gaze of their headmaster was that of a commander, a champion well used to the crimson fields of war. The farthest thing from the soft-spoken indulgent grandfatherly headmaster who had previously gifted her with a sense of ease that she hadn’t experienced since her own grandfather had passed on, leaving her in the care of the monster who had shaped her til the world’s end.

  “Can you feel it, Yuki? We’re exactly where we need to be!”

  She blinked, meeting the gaze of none other than Richard Li, bubbling with a wild wonderful presence that melted her heart and left her flustered and awkward and unable to string a coherent sentence together when he captured her with those beautiful amber brown eyes of his.

  Her smile was both reflexive and one of kinship. Of all the reborn youths on that force disk, she and Richard alone hadn’t partaken the boon the academy offered, not yet accepting that chrysalis transformation. And they weren’t planning to until the final hour.

  Just in case shit went down.

  Like it was going down right now.

  She then allowed her gaze to drift to the woman she had dared to swear her allegiance to, elevated on a force disk a short distance away with a dozen mithril-plated paladins surrounding her, and scores more at the ready below.

  A woman no older than Yuki, who, far from hiding in her palace, had raced to the front lines to repel the invaders that would imperil them all. It was that beautiful starlet that she had crushed on so hard as a teenager over half a dozen movies ago, in far more innocent times, that Yuki had dared to bind her destiny to. And far from feeling like an animal trapped in a cage, never had Yuki felt so light, so free, so cherished and valued as when she had sworn her service to Elonia Silver, leader of the Sylvan faction and Queen of New Arcadia.

  A land filled with noble elves who knew what the words honor and virtue actually meant. Idealists. Lovers of nature, beauty, and chivalrous ideals. A whimsical, beautiful land that reminded Yuki of the absolute best parts of Skydragon with its endless forests and bounty-filled fields, magnificent blue skies and Zimmerman’s glorious soundtrack thrumming through her soul and bringing tears to her eyes.

  And somehow, as she blinked a tear from her eye, Richard knew.

  “It really is just like losing ourselves in our favorite game, isn’t it?” He blinked away a tear it awed Yuki to see, nodding his head solemnly. “We’re going to make out like heroes, Yuki. But if there was ever a cause worth sacrificing ourselves for… it would be for all the precious lives that call New Arcadia home. So many innocent families that Queen Elonia’s grace and blessing keep safe and secure in a perilous word. People who are in desperate need of heroes. Heroes like us, to see this dread night through, so that they might wake up to a peaceful dawn, free of tragedy and horror.”

  Yuki swallowed. “You’re right, Rich. You really are.”

  That was when she heard it, as the excited whispers washing over them and occasional anxious scowl like Senrens’ own peered into the distant gloom gave way to a distant rumble.

  Yuki frowned. “Earth tremors?”

  Richard suddenly paled. Eyes so filled with excitement and absolute cocky confidence that he and Eric Silver both exuded had morphed to unmistakable fear.

  Fear in a Contender who had enthusiastically charmed a half dozen Bronze-Tier killers.

  Fear in the eyes of a young man filled with such confidence and moxie that over seven hundred orcs, elves, humans, and fairy maidens had forsaken their perpetual battles to abase themselves before him and be reforged anew as cultivators.

  The sweet taste of exhilaration and distant peril that Yuki had savored for half an hour instantly morphed into existential dread.

  Because Richard Li, a boy who walked a path charmed with such fearsomely potent blessings that only a fool would think he had anything in common with the average survivor, was gazing at the horizon like a confused private about to be thrust in front of a firing squad, wondering how the hell it had ever come to this.

  Which meant that Yuki had every right to whimper when the slight tremor of restless earth became a fierce roaring rumble abruptly pierced by the screech of what sounded like nails against a chalkboard. Only this was the sound of a poorly made airplane screeching with twisted, tortured steel as it crashed against a basalt ledge and even Headmaster Wyrmwood’s eyes widened with something that looked surprisingly like…

  No, Yuki thought. He was the fucking headmaster! A Silver tier giant that everyone knew was hiding terrible strength, and he was in control of a freakin’ Legendary Academy! He had no fucking right to be afraid!

  “Headmaster! It’s not one or two!” Richard screamed, voice breaking in a way that froze Yuki’s heart, the boy’s innocent dreams of a perfect run, an innocent story of a golden life, shattered as the peaceful lake he sailed across abruptly dumped him into the basin of the Atlantic, minutes before a hurricane struck.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “It’s a fucking swarm!”

  Headmaster Wyrmwood’s neck snapped around in serpentine fashion that chilled Yuki to the quick. She actually whimpered!

  But all he said was, “Our scrying pools show only darkness, boy. What do you see? Tell us what you sense, Richard Li, scion of Evelyn The Unbroken!”

  Richard’s eyes widened with shock. He seemed almost to glow as Yuki sensed a seal break and ancient eyes peer their way.

  Ancient, terrible eyes that could obliterate even Headmaster Wyrmwood with a single surge of its terrible alien—

  “Hundreds… No, NO! Thousands of Bronze-Tier abominations are heading our way!” Richard said in a broken whisper. “For a fallen monster’s Malice knows no bounds. A deep Silver has Broken all covenant as the Emperor himself countenances a final purge! Our queen’s sire would sear to ash the cords of blood that bind his broken clan to this existence, for he shall never forgive those that dared to escape him!”

  Yuki was screaming. She didn’t even know why as her fingernails cut bloody furrows into her cheeks, blood pouring from her ears as her naginata, and why the hell was she even holding it? Slipped right back into it’s arcane sheath. Yet even as she sobbed, ears burning with words she KNEW she shouldn’t hear… she noted that half the class had collapsed in a dead faint, even as children with the eyes of centenarians gazed with dismay into the darkness now filled with the awful shrieks of chalkboards and exploding fighter jets shrieking as they tore into mountain ridges keening with twisted metal and the souls of the damned.

  Or perhaps… keening like a million giant locusts that would devour the world.

  Senren laughed as the headmaster roared orders to the queen and her Paladins.

  “I knew it was too good to be true. A legendary academy here on this backwater… to feel my soul sparkle with new wild life… my hands tingle with an understanding of magic that made all my earlier efforts no more relevant than a worm nudging the pages of a scholarly tome. And our formal classes where we alone are permitted to glimpse the secrets of the multiverse haven’t even started!”

  Senren’s eyes filled with tears and laughter. “I was reborn into a fairy tale and I was such a FOOL to not sense the terrible currents that had churned waters so fiercely that such glimmers of Gold-Tier revelations could actually rise to the surface! That I could claim a single one without being shredded by rapids that no one below a Sovereign’s Rank could hope to endure!”

  “It is time, Elonia Silver!” The headmaster roared. “Recall that which you have dared to forget. For the sleeper must awaken once more!”

  Elonia’s exquisite countenance shifted from alarm to wide-eyed dismay as she collapsed on the neighboring floating disk, instantly surrounded by her paladins as she screamed like a girl forced to endure the horrid death of innocence forever lost, such that it was all Yuki could do not to tear her own ears off before Elonia lurched back to her feet.

  Her expression of absolute despair abruptly twisted into a wild fiery smile equal parts bitterness and resolved glared back at their headmaster. A smile eerily similar to her twin brother’s.

  A boy who constantly teased that Yuki had known him quite well… in a life she knew damn well had never happened.

  Yet the look in Elonia’s eyes. Wild with shame. Despair. Yet Yuki saw something else as well. A fighting spirit that had been tempered in the most bitter of crucibles. A spirit that crackled with POWER. A wild warrior who was the farthest thing from an innocent maiden, yet still hungered for battle.

  The farthest thing from what she had ever seen in her queen’s eyes ever before.

  “I want to crumple into a fucking ball and scream my heart out. I need a smoke so fucking bad, and now I remember. You absolute FUCK of a headmaster, I remember EVERYTHING!”

  Wyrmwood's blood-flecked lips gave rise to a bleak smile. “And I remember the hot sands of the desert and the cool susurrations of the nighttime breeze. I remember the joy of teaching countless thousands of students... and the agony of a knife in my back from the lover I would have given my life to save. And none of that matters now, Elonia Silver. Are you ready to save our kingdom, or is this the end of our shared tale?”

  Elonia’s eyes flashed. “Hell no! You buy me ten minutes and get everyone fucking back!” She glared at the distant bulge in the barrier between regions that promised a flood of monstrous abominations that would wash over them all. “Get everyone back, and I’ll do what needs to be done!”

  The air grew thick with the cloying weight of dread and unfathomable pressure as their disks of force moved back. As nearly a hundred Paladins glittering with holy light actually retreated, by their queen’s order, a good mile back from the border between paradise and purgatory that now crackled with fog and lightning as the air rang with words that sent shivers of awe down Yuki’s spine.

  “I beseech Summer’s Wrath to heed my call!

  Bind to Winter’s Fury so that our enemies may fall!

  Retribution’s union upon which the world turns!

  Doomtwister, I SUMMON THEE!

  Lightning’s Grace, I BESEECH THEE!

  Winters Sacrifice, I GRANT THEE!

  Feast upon Autumn’s Harvest,

  For your SACRIFICE COMES!”

  Yuki fell to her knees, mouth agape with awe.

  “She did it, Yuki!” Richard’s excited, once-more boyish voice, no longer laden with Prophecy, washed over her. “Look at that! That tornado… it’s a mile wide. At least!” He said as the paladins roared for their steady retreat as their Queen, eyes closed, propped up by her most devoted guardians, had actually managed to summon forth a shockingly massive tornado crackling with crimson lightning in its center.

  Her ears rang and her bones shivered as it simultaneously rumbled and shrieked like a banshees wail. The light had turned an odd shade of green and every last hair on her body stood on end, even her scalp was tingling like mad under her helmet. The mega tornado, far beyond anything she had ever seen in Nature documentaries or storm chasing idiots, was now howling like the final days.

  Their well warded and retreating disc filled with the soft curses and cries of kids, either naturally or reforged, all sharing equally fragile and equally mortal bodies, no matter how shockingly strong their aptitudes for magic now might be… were forced to see firsthand just how tiny and insignificant they were in the face of nature’s raw, primal fury. No doubt half of them would become absolutely devastating nature mages if the way their eyes lit up with awed revelation, shaking in their friends arms, was anything to go by.

  It was a horrifying sight that filled Yuki with wonder and dread in equal measure, having absolutely no doubt that if a storm like that had ever hit New York…

  The entire city would have been swept away.

  “She’s doing it, Yuki!” Richard crowed. “She’s going to—”

  Before he could finish, Yuki’s hand covered his mouth. With speed so blinding his hand was suddenly atop hers… chilling her, reminding her that this was a Bronze-Tier monster of a boy who’s Quickness was at least 300!! But all he did was give her a puzzled look. “Yuki?”

  “Don’t raise any black flags, you fucking idiot! We’re in the middle of a fucking end-of-world story! Rule one. It’s not fucking easy! And if you say it is…”

  Richard actually paled, lowering his gaze. “I’m sorry. You’re right. Forgive me.”

  She snorted. “Shut up and go back to being the Bronze-Tier hero that will probably save us all before this night is done.”

  He snorted, giving her a pained look. “Okay, now your painting a flag on my sorry soon-to-expire ass.”

  Yuki winced. “Sorry. I take that back. You’re as much of a smug, overconfident idiot as Elonia’s brother. Here’s to hoping we all make it out of here alive.”

  Richard frowned. “Speaking of which, where is Eric? I know he’s strong… even stronger than me.” He winced apologetically, as if embarrassed that such an aberration would occur in his storybook life before shaking it away with a chuckle. “Shouldn’t he be here in our final hour, fighting by his sister’s side?”

  Yuki furrowed her brow. “That’s actually a very good—” Her eyes bulged. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck. We are so utterly fucked…” She turned to Richard, choking back a scream.

  “Yuki?”

  All she could do was point and whimper.

  For the white fog that now demarcated the barrier between realms was parting to reveal not hundreds of massive locusts radiating Bronze-Tier potential that would have chilled her to face, even on an individual basis… no. What she saw was so much worse.

  “A fucking sea of locusts! There’s no end to them! No end!” Senren screamed, now looking the last thing from the perfectly dolled-up supermodel with the world in the palm of her hand. Now she looked like exactly what she was, a frightened girl in way over her head.

  And she was right.

  They were facing a sea of locusts pressing against the shockingly thin barrier between realms, between black and extremely cultivated, tamed, storybook lands… where even a naive native like Yuki just KNEW the barriers between slice-of-life wonder and world-ending horror should be STRONGEST! There should be no way at all that the barriers should be so weak that she could actually taste the deadly spicy wild peril in the air.

  But she did.

  She and the twenty shaken students beside her on their classroom-sized disk, most certainly did.

  Yuki crumpled to the floor of the force disk, thankfully a hundred feet above the ground.

  Because there was a tidal wave of endless locusts pouring over the baron and lifeless hills where before there had been lush, primeval jungle, and they were heading their way.

  And just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, Richard, gently squeezing her shoulder, said words she absolutely did not want to hear.

  “The barrier’s about to rupture. I sense… our stories are melding! Something awful is FORCING a fusion, DECADES before Terra herself would! And those things have wings. We’re not safe up here.”

  “No. They must be vestigial! It doesn’t make sense, otherwise! They’re too massive!” Insisted a panicked Senren. “I’ve fought worse, far worse! But all beasts still have a theme they must follow, natural laws they must obey!”

  “Not on an ascending world, obviously,” Richard said, before flinching and clapping his ears, blood spurting from them just as badly as everyone else as all their ears did worse than pop. The dream of wonder they had all so deliciously embraced since daring to believe in the academy and happy endings were suddenly tainted with the wild despair of cackling probability that could shoot in odd bizarre directions, assuring the most chaotic, absurd, and horrific of outcomes. Shockingly potent too, for a wildcard few… but for the great majority… uncontrolled chaos meant certain death.

  The awful moment of reality-warping screaming silence was burst with the sudden awful buzzing drone of thousands upon thousands of locusts taking flight, banging against the now visible barrier that had somehow been warped into the visible realm. Even now they could all see the dozens of odd cracks of eldritch blazing light where the locust’s struck. Richard’s look of dismay earned a despairing cry from Senren as he stated what was now obvious to them all as the air filled with death.

  “It was the fog that kept them close to the ground. That, and their endless hunger. Nothing else. If we don’t get back before the barrier ruptures… we’re all dead.”

  Yuki shivered, gazing down at hands stained only with fear sweat. The blood that had been pouring from all their ears was gone. Somehow.

  But the nightmare of swarming, world-ending locusts was just a single rupture away.