Seliah pointed her rapier straight at Adah. At this distance, with several hundred feet of snow-covered flatland separating them, this gesture was nothing more than a declaration of her intent. She’d was about to go on the offensive. Given the circumstances, the witch should have been focused on protecting herself, but even when outnumbered, she continued to look for her own opportunity to strike.
“Whatever she does,” Adah said to Rika through a magic channel, “the plan is to look for the kill.”
“Don’t get caught in the crossfire,” Rika said.
Rika positioned herself in the air to Adah’s right. She floated farther forward than her captain, but gave Seliah a wide berth such that Adah was still her nearest target. If the witch wanted to attack either of them, she’d have to choose Adah. In doing so, she’d open herself up to attacks from Rika along the whole stretch of her approach. This was the best formation Adah could come up with for defeating the witch.
Adah’s spells were most effective at shorter ranges. Even if her whip and stars could hit targets at a medium distance, any opponent who knew what to expect would have little trouble dodging at that range. Rika could outrange any opponent, but Seliah had already shown that her reactions could outpace any of Rika’s projectiles. Firing shots at the witch from more than a hundred yards was a waste of time. Compared to Adah and Rika, Seliah could be considered a midrange combatant. She didn’t mind getting close enough to exploit Rika’s lack of speed and defense, and could just as easily space herself beyond Adah’s optimal range without sacrificing her own potential.
By arranging themselves in this way, Adah and Rika could force a confrontation between Adah and Seliah. Even with all her speed, the witch couldn’t approach Rika fast enough to avoid an interception by Adah, so she’d be forced to make Heartbreak her primary target. This would free Rika up to attack from a distance that might be close enough to land a hit without consequently exposing herself to Seliah’s counterattack. Meanwhile, Adah could focus on her own defenses. If Rika’s barrage created an opening for Adah to make a move on Seliah, then she’d also be ready for that.
Of course, taking out Seliah wouldn’t be so easy.
The girl had a well-honed strategic mind and a level of speed that Adah had no hope of matching. This formation was Adah’s best attempt at neutralizing the latter, but no doubt Seliah would put the former to work to devise a plan of her own.
Snowflakes fell from the sky while the three magical girls stood their ground. With most of the accumulation from the smothering snowstorm of a couple of weeks ago still on the ground, today’s precipitation was hardly worth mentioning. The snow drifted down lazily, at the pace of leaves falling from the trees in late autumn. Adah could almost count the individual flakes one by one. Eventually, there was even a complete break in the snowfall.
Seliah must have figured something out at that moment, for she immediately bolted toward Adah. Her approach was head-on and at the same altitude as Adah. She must have come to the conclusion that Adah had planned for: she’d be blocked if she made a move for Rika first.
Seliah would have a long stretch of open air to traverse before she could attack Adah, though, throughout which Rika would rain fire upon her. Rika opted to put her [Renova Railgun] to work, making use of the quick-fire technique she’d been practicing against weaker Cruelties the past couple of months. The railgun was the speedier projectile, and Rika had learned how to charge and aim it almost as quickly as her normal laser shots. These short-charge shots didn’t pack the same punch as a fully powered blast, but a weaker attack was preferable in today’s battle.
However, Seliah expected Rika’s interference, as well. As she flew, she cast her [Lunar Laceration], which formed a circle of white light in front of her. When Adah had seen this spell during their collaboration mission with Seliah, the girl had used it as a direct attack. Today, Seliah had something else in mind. She didn’t snap her fingers to shatter the circle, as she had on that mission, but rather held her magic in front of her similar to how Ami maintained her shield of water.
It was a creative use of the spell, but Adah suspected the moonlight circle wouldn’t make for as effective a shield as it appeared. Throughout her approach, Seliah still made efforts to dodge Rika’s railgun shots. The circle of light was intended to shatter, after all. It could probably only protect Seliah from a single hit. She was giving herself an extra layer of defense, but she’d still need to rely on dodging most of Rika’s shots.
Thus far, she wasn’t having much trouble doing so. Seliah moved as though she could read Rika’s mind, dodging each cast of the railgun the exact moment Rika unleashed one. Her movements were effective, too. Her dodges not only moved her out of the way of danger, but also put her closer to Adah. She never scrambled backward or some other off-angle—she maintained a constant forward pressure.
Adah and Rika didn’t intend to let her get away with such a simple strategy, though. Once Seliah reached her preferred distance from Adah, where she could attack without worrying much about Adah’s counters, Adah made a move of her own.
Adah charged up her [Nightwind Whip] as she flew toward the witch. She’d tried this tactic in their previous engagement today with little success. She couldn’t charge the whip as quickly as Rika could prepare her railgun, and she always flew slower while doing so. This had given Seliah plenty of time to either fly out of the whip’s effective angles of attack or to close the distance to Adah entirely, getting near enough that the whip was useless.
This time, Adah and Rika would coordinate a mix-up.
Adah’s prior whip attacks had all used straightforward, predictable angles. Seliah had a knack for finding positions just beyond where such angles could strike, like hiding in a truck’s blind spots. But Adah remembered another option available to her. She had some control of the whip’s physics, and had exercised that control against the very first D-Rank Cruelty she’d ever fought alone: the teleporting whale Cruelty. It was possible to alter the whip’s trajectory with the rotation of her body, and that was a trick Adah planned to use against Seliah today.
Once Adah got within range of Seliah, she called out to Rika through their channel. Faking out Seliah by altering the whip’s angle was only the first layer of their plan; Rika had a mix-up of her own prepared.
Rika suddenly switched her spell of choice from her railgun to her [Shining Shot]. Her basic bullets of light weren’t quite as fast or destructive as her railgun, but she could fire them at a much more rapid pace. The projectiles themselves didn’t need to be difficult to dodge—not if the cadence of Rika’s attacks threw off Seliah’s dodging rhythm. Between the sudden switch-up in Rika’s crossfire and the deceptive angle of Adah’s whip, they hoped to knock the witch out of the sky.
And their plan seemed to be working.
Seliah’s eyes tracked Adah’s whip as she crossed her arm overhead to prep the spell’s curving strike. This new windup loaded Seliah’s brain up with just enough new data to distract her from immediately responding to the change in Rika’s projectiles. She must have gotten into the habit of waiting to see Rika’s body glow in her peripheral vision, then using that as her cue to prepare to dodge. Now that Rika had swapped spells, Seliah couldn’t rely on that indication.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
It only took Seliah a single spellcast to react to Rika’s mix-up, but that was enough for a bullet to hit its mark. The red bolt of light struck Seliah’s moonlight shield, shattering the circle into dozens of tiny shards. Rather than stabbing toward a target of Seliah’s choosing, these shards split off in every direction, blown away by the force of Rika’s bullet. Although the circle of magic had absorbed Rika’s projectile, Seliah didn’t escape unscathed. One of these shards ricocheted toward Seliah herself, slicing open her left shoulder with a spray of blood.
With that damage inflicted, and some signs of their plan’s success, Adah thought she and Rika had finally found a way to defeat the witch. However, Seliah didn’t let her injury slow her down. She dodged Rika’s next bullet with ease, all the while shifting her eyes down toward Adah’s hips.
The distance between Adah and Seliah was shrinking, leaving Adah with little space left to swing her whip. She thrust her right leg forward, mimicking the steps she had taken against the whale Cruelty, and cracked her whip at a diagonal angle across her body. The whip curved through the air, its eventual striking point covering a lateral area that left Seliah few options for escape. The whip’s path through the air would belie its actual ending point, making Seliah’s dodge even more difficult.
And yet, the girl found a pocket of safety. Adah saw the girl move right at the start of her swing. Seliah darted up and to the left, into a space that should have appeared to be the whip’s destination, as if she knew ahead of time how Adah planned to shift her attack. The witch was safe from the whip’s impact and, hidden within the black smoke that filled the air afterward, she advanced on Adah.
At this point, there was nothing either Adah or Rika could do. They had spent their strategy. With Seliah’s speed, she could strike at Adah however she pleased.
Seliah seemed to emerge from the black cloud at the same moment she appeared in Adah’s face. She closed a distance of some fifty feet in a blink.
Her rapier moved as swiftly as she did. Seliah held its tip against Adah’s chest and flicked upward. The weapon’s blade sliced open the top of Adah’s bodice and snapped the silver chain of her shawl, which slipped off her shoulders and fluttered to the ground. Although the slice had exposed Adah’s skin, it hadn’t yet pierced her flesh. Seliah possessed that degree of precision, as well.
Adah held up her arms. There was nothing else to do.
“Good game,” she said.
☆☆☆
“You’re a menace, Selichi,” Ami said in between bites of her sandwich. “You get double-teamed twice in a row and win both of ‘em? Humanity’s got nothing to worry about.”
“To be fair,” Adah said, “we called our match off before she actually won. Rika could have blasted us both away with a big enough railgun shot.”
After a lengthy yawn, Rika said, “That’d be a little much for a sparring match, I think.”
The four members of the Last Light and Seliah were seated in a booth at the tiny café near the Last Light’s agency office. They had stopped by the office first to undo their transformations, put on shoes, and make sure none of the injuries they’d suffered earlier were more serious than they’d thought. After that morning’s sparring session, they were all eager to eat.
Sparring magic user against magic user was an activity that Adah had asked all of the coalition teams to make part of their regular training. It was the first step their teams could take in preparation for what was yet to come. The Cruelties surely planned to spawn more humanoids in the future. If those humanoids all had access to magic of some kind, or could otherwise mimic magic users, then their teams needed to practice fighting against such an enemy.
Sparring one team against another would also build some additional comradery within the coalition, or so Adah hoped. If nothing else, it’d familiarize everyone with each other’s spells. When the time came to fight together against the Cruelties—humanoid or otherwise—they would have a baseline understanding of what tools their allies had at their disposal.
Thus, the Last Light and Seliah had spent the morning after Adah returned from Avepoir fighting two versus one. Seliah had dominated the one-on-one matches they’d started with, so these mismatched bouts were an attempt to even the playing field. Though, things hadn’t gone much better even when Adah and her teammates outnumbered the witch.
The girls put less power into their spells while sparring, such as Rika not charging up her railgun very much. Adah, likewise, held back on her whip’s energy. They also avoided dealing any serious direct hits, which was why Seliah had opted not to cut deep into Adah’s chest earlier. While every girl came out of their sparring with some scrapes, bruises, and soreness, their magic protected them from the worst of their injuries—just as it had when Adah and Iris had pummeled each other during the IndieMagie. The most serious injury of the day had been the laceration on Seliah’s shoulder, but even that had healed to nothing more than a faint papercut.
Luckily, when dealing with anything other than Cruelties, magical girls were fairly durable. Unless they were all deliberately trying to hurt each other, the damage of their sparring would vanish within a day or two.
Adah had invited Seliah to spar with the Last Light first since they were the team the solo magical girl was most familiar with. Yet, that wasn’t the only reason.
Today was also an opportunity to test the waters. Adah had more reasons to bring a witch into the Sisterhood of the Last Light than ever, and she wanted to know if Seliah had any interest in such a proposal.
“So, how was it?” Adah asked Seliah, who was sipping on a simple café au lait. “Better than training by yourself, I bet.”
Seliah set her cup down softly and nodded. “There’s a lot you can’t learn by watching footage,” she said. “I know that, of course, but I’m always surprised by what I notice in the moment.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ami said, her mouth still full of food. “Like what?”
Seliah tapped her finger against her cup as she thought about Ami’s question. Then, she said, “Like the railgun’s heat.”
“The heat?” Rika repeated.
“I had thought the best way to know when you’re going to shoot would be the light around you,” Seliah explained, “but it was actually the heat you give off. I could feel it building up from far away, and it was easier to pay attention to that than to try to watch both you and Adah.”
So Adah’s assumption had been wrong all along. She had noticed Seliah never glanced in Rika’s direction, so she had figured the girl could track the changes in light out of the corner of her eye. Adah hadn’t considered Seliah might be utilizing another sense entirely to keep tabs on Rika. In that case, it was no wonder Rika’s switch-up had caught Seliah by surprise. The basic bullets wouldn’t have given off any noticeable heat. If Adah had figured out Seliah’s method sooner, maybe she could have devised a more effective tactic.
“It helps us to practice with you, too,” Adah said. “We’re a better team with you around us.”
All three of her teammates’ heads turned toward Adah at the same time. They all gave her the same knowing look. Was she really being that obvious about it?
“I don’t know,” Seliah said, unaware of the seeds Adah was planting. “You all know a lot more about fighting Cruelties than I do. I can’t even compare to you when it comes to the rest of the job.”
“You’re selling yourself short,” Adah said. “We’d be glad to have someone like you on our team. With a little bit of help, I bet you’d be more popular than any of us within a month.”
Okay, so now she was being obvious about it. Heartbreak had no need for subtlety.
Seliah shook her head and said, “I’m going to get better at it, but I don’t think it’ll be that easy.
Apparently Adah wasn’t being obvious enough. Rather than planting seeds, she needed to stick a neon sign in the dirt.
“It’ll be easier if you do it as part of a team,” Adah said, staring into Seliah’s eyes. “And I know a team that wants to help you do it.”
Seliah would be safer if she was part of a larger agency—from the Cruelties, the Secretaries, and anyone else who might get in her way. But more importantly, she would grow faster as a magical girl. Adah was happy to support whatever personal ambitions the girl had—she didn’t seem like the wicked type—but she also needed Seliah to grow for her own purposes. The region needed as many powerful magic users as it could foster. Each of them would be a weapon humanity would rely on in one battle or another.
Against the Cruelties and the powers that be, the coalition teams were Adah’s arsenal.
Seliah returned Adah’s gaze, but didn’t offer up the answer Adah had hoped for.
“I… think I understand,” the witch said, her eyes slowly falling to gaze into her drink. “But I’m not sure it’s right for me. Ah, not that I’m ungrateful for the offer—if you’re even offering, I don’t know—but… I need to think about it.”
Seliah’s eyes had grown wide as she stumbled over her words, so Adah backed off.
Truth be told, Adah had expected a quick and affirmative answer, but this wasn’t the first time Seliah had surprised her. The girl herself was one big surprise. There was no need to pressure her to make a decision now, especially if she was uncertain. In the meantime, Adah and her teammates could learn more about Seliah, and Seliah could learn more about them.
Recruiting Seliah was only one means of strengthening her team, after all. Adah knew it would take a well-rounded weapon to defeat the Cruelties.
Today’s sparring match was only the first step of humanity’s counterattack.