“What the fuck just happened?” Ami yelled.
Adah jumped up from her seat, and the other girls were quick to follow. They all looked toward the agency doors in sync, but all of their feet refused to move. Rika and the twins turned their gazes to Adah, and all she could do was stand in place with her mouth agape. They couldn’t run through those doors, but what were they supposed to do instead? While they stood here, that Cruelty was still out there, still summoning those portals.
The television screen stayed black, telling nothing about the status of Desiire’s battle. The broadcast had likely been cut entirely after Oren was killed to avoid showing any further carnage on national TV. Until the news station could figure out what to say about what had unfolded, this screen would likely stay black. The broadcast might not even resume until the Cruelty was destroyed. If Desiire and the reserve teams couldn’t destroy it, maybe that screen would stay black forever.
No one in the agency lobby answered Ami’s question. After all, the question she was really asking had no answer.
How did this happen?
Ami wasn’t the only one who wanted answers, though. After staring at the blank screen for a moment, Grace turned around and set her sights on Adah. Her manager strode straight toward her, walking up close enough that their heads nearly bumped together. Adah fell backward onto the lobby’s couch, overwhelmed by Grace’s intensity.
Grace stood over Adah, who had nowhere left to retreat.
“What do you know about that Cruelty, Adah?” her manager demanded.
Grace had been suspicious of Adah earlier as well. If Ketzia had told her the truth, then it was possible she thought Adah was keeping even more secrets from her, but that wasn’t the case. Not really…
“I don’t know anything, honestly,” Adah said, with no fight in her voice. “This is the first time I’ve seen it.”
“Then what did you want to warn those boys about?” Grace asked, almost like she was scolding Adah.
“I don’t know.”
What was she doing, even at a time like this? She could keep repeating herself, telling Grace and the others that she didn’t know, or she could tell them what she did know. At least then, they could share in what she was feeling. They could feel as scared as she was.
“It’s just these visions,” Adah said quietly. “They’re like flashes of images, but it’s like someone else is putting them into my head.”
“Images of what?” Rika asked. She put a hand on Adah’s shoulder—a connection Adah was grateful for.
“Cruelties, I think,” Adah said. “That’s why when I saw all those eyes… that was something I’d seen before. That was the only reason I was worried about it. I didn’t actually know what would happen! I just knew it couldn’t be good.”
Grace slipped off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms. With a deep breath, she took a step back from Adah and glanced over her shoulder at the television. There was still nothing to see.
“Tell me the truth,” Grace said, her voice softer now than it had been. “That thing that came out of those portals—you’ve seen that before, too, haven’t you? All of you.”
Adah’s teammates all nodded silently, so she put the truth into words for them.
“A Cruelty based on a human,” she said. “But what we saw… it wasn’t like that.”
“Based on a human?” Seb asked. “What do you mean?”
He and Michel looked as confused as they did worried. If Ketzia had explained the truth to Grace, then the two men were the only ones who didn’t understand what had just played out on that television screen.
There was no point in treating the humanoids as a secret now. The whole world had seen one. Worse, the whole world had seen what they were capable of. Until today, even Adah could only have speculated on the threat they posed. Now, the truth was reality.
Adah explained it all to Seb and Michel, as well as filled in any gaps that Ketzia hadn’t mentioned to Grace. She told everyone how she had been tracking the appearances of the humanoids, how she and Rika had encountered another Cruelty that had created portals, and anything else she knew. She confessed the full extent of her recent nightmare, though she could do little more than describe it. Whatever meaning it may have held, and whatever its relation to her visions were, remained a mystery to her.
However, Ekki’s appearance in her dream did lead her teammates to the same conclusion she had drawn.
“That Cruelty didn’t just take a human’s form,” Rika said, “it took Ekki’s spell, too.”
“That’s what it looked like,” Adah agreed.
By using human essence, the Cruelties could create the humanoids. The one that the girls had encountered near Ketzia’s cabin could speak—or mimic speaking—as a result of utilizing that essence, just like other Cruelties took on the qualities of certain animals. If the Cruelties created humanoids out of a particular magic user’s essence, then maybe it was possible that those variants could mimic that person’s spells.
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Though, it couldn’t be that simple. A normal human couldn’t cast spells, and the only reason a magic user could was because they were connected with a mascot. That mascot inscribed magic essence with the “instructions” for spellcasting, which the human then catalyzed. For this humanoid Cruelty to do the same, did that mean some collective force had inscribed essence for its own use? Or had that power come along with Ekki’s base energy?
Adah couldn’t possibly guess at the answers herself, so she called upon Izzy to share what he knew. Unfortunately, today was also the first time her mascot had observed such a phenomenon.
“I can only speak to our kind’s process,” Izzy said after materializing. “For us, such a thing would be impossible.”
“And yet it happened,” Adah said.
“Indeed,” Izzy said. “The Cruelties utilize and process essence differently than our kind. We must make it into something new before it is of use to us, but they almost seem able to extract the past from essence. They can turn essence into what it was, in a manner of speaking. As for whether a human’s spells would linger in their own essence, it is a question we can investigate, but I cannot promise a satisfying answer.”
Regardless, the mechanics of how the humanoid had casted Ekki’s spell were less important than the mere fact that it had. Whether it was mimicking him or genuinely using magic didn’t matter at this point. Humanity needed to be prepared for this new threat either way.
Adah reached toward the coffee table to pick up the TV’s remote, hoping to see if any other stations had resumed their broadcasts and could provide any update on the state of the S-Rank battle. No new alerts had been issued in Region 4, and the Last Light hadn’t been called upon to destroy any new Cruelties, but that only made her feel blind to the truth of the situation. What exactly was going on throughout the country?
Just then, Adah’s phone rang. It buzzed against the wood of the coffee table like the sounding off of another alarm, and caused Adah to shake in her skin again. She took a deep breath to calm herself, then looked at the screen. Elise was finally returning her calls.
As soon as Adah answered the call, Elise spoke in a far calmer voice than Adah had expected to hear.
“Adah, please listen carefully,” Elise said. “Gather your team and patrol the perimeter of your designated protection zone. Fly low and slow, and maintain a calm demeanor. Please reach out to the other teams assigned protection zones and instruct them to do the same.”
Adah didn’t respond right away, mostly because she wasn’t sure she understood what Elise had just asked of her.
“Shouldn’t we stay put?” Adah said. “After what just happened, we need to be on high alert. If more Cruelties show up right now—”
“There will be no more Cruelties today,” Elise said.
She said it like it was obvious, like she had no doubt.
“The reserve teams have moved in on the S-Rank,” Elise continued. “The conflict has stabilized. It appears the Cruelty was only able to sustain its main attack for a brief period, and is now mostly passive. I am watching the battle now; it will only be a matter of time until the teams break past its barrier.”
“Hold on,” Adah said. “You’re talking about everything at once. Start with Desiire—what happened to them?”
“They fell before the Cruelty ran out of energy,” Elise said, her tone as steady as ever. “All of them except for the boy we met.”
All of them except Locke? Three magic users had been wiped out by one Cruelty, in a matter of minutes? Though, it hadn’t been only one Cruelty. That humanoid—surely it was a separate being. Unfortunately, that wasn’t a fact to take solace in. One ultra-dangerous S-Rank would have been preferable to whatever the world had seen today.
And yet, Elise seemed unaffected by the whole disaster.
“Adah,” she said, “do you understand what I’ve asked you to do?”
“Yeah, I understand. I just don’t fucking get it!” Adah shouted back.
Everyone in the agency lobby, including Seb and Michel, was staring at Adah as she yelled into her phone. They could probably make out half of what Elise was saying, and this wasn’t the time for private conversations anyway, so Adah put the call on speaker phone before continuing.
“Why are we supposed to fly around aimlessly when another Cruelty could show up anywhere?” she said.
“I told you,” Elise’s voice came through her phone’s speaker, “there will be no more Cruelties today.”
“How do you know?” Grace spoke up. If Elise hadn’t already assumed Adah was right next to her team, now she’d know.
There was a pause on Elise’s end of the line before her reply.
“Analysis,” Elise said. “I can demonstrate our method when this is over, but I am completely confident in the results.”
Our method. Surely she wasn’t referring to the Department of Magic with that. The Magedars were the Department’s best method of predicting Cruelty activity, and that detection system was more of a measurement tool than anything else. It couldn’t give you enough evidence to draw a conclusion like Elise’s. If it could, then all these teams like the Last Light wouldn’t have been put on alert today.
So, was this a system Elise had developed herself? With someone else?
“But your job is not done, Adah,” Elise continued. “It is imperative you and the other teams make an appearance. You need to show the people of our region that you are here to protect them. That they do not need to be afraid. Give them faith in magic users.”
“Make an appearance,” Adah repeated. “Like this is another chance for us to gain some FP. Those boys might have died, but we’re not scared. Is that your idea?”
It was something Sirk would think up. Every opportunity had to be capitalized on. Adah had to admit she’d thought like that herself before, but not every opening was an opportunity. Sometimes a chance could be created out of the wrong reasons.
“This is about not losing FP,” Elise replied. “About not losing faith. We cannot allow the last image of a magic user our people see today be that of a young man dying. You need to make your presence known. People need to look out of their windows, see you flying above, and know that they are safe where they are. They need to believe that magic is still the answer to the Cruelties.”
“Or else it won’t be,” Grace said. She shared a look with Adah and the other girls, and the same realization struck all of them in turn.
Adah’s original understanding of why the humanoid Cruelties had to be kept secret had been vague at best. She’d taken Ketzia’s words at face value. The existence of the humanoids would scare the public, and the Department of Magic didn’t have a thorough enough understanding of the monsters to quell that fear. Adah had assumed the real issue came down to some politicians not wanting to deal with a difficult problem.
But not having an answer to the public’s fears was the problem.
If the politicians in power didn’t understand these new Cruelties, and the magic users at the top of the industry couldn’t defeat them, then how could people put their faith in magic?
The greatest achievement of the first magical girls—those like Auroral Aino—wasn’t any of the battles they won. It was inspiring humanity. By making people believe that humanity could win against the Cruelties, they gained the power to turn that belief into reality.
That was what FP was. That was the will of humanity.
If the humanoids wielded magic against humanity, what would happen to that belief?
Adah grabbed her phone again and spoke one last sentence to Elise before hanging up and setting up a message to the coalition teams.
“I understand.”