"I have something I need to accomplish in this city."
"Whatever did this to these children is on the other side of this seal."
"Whose Personal Reality would be this twisted?"
To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari
The Third Spell – Index Librorum Prohibitorum III
The two girls, Index Librorum Prohibitorum and Misaka Mikoto, slowly and cautiously threaded their way through the surreal sea of two-dimensional "trees". Misaka, as the one with actual firepower at her disposal, had taken point, while Index had followed behind her closely. Even so, as she was walking, Index was busy absorbing her surroundings, all five of her senses – and her sixth sense of magic – on their fullest alert. As the two moved across the forest, the "grass" beneath their feet crackled loudly and unnaturally, as if being fed to a flame rather than merely being stepped on. Meshing with this distinctly unnatural sound was the atmosphere of chanting and cheering in the background, which remained unintelligible even as the volume and tempo slowly but steadily intensified, further adding to their unease.
Suddenly, Misaka stopped walking, causing Index to bump into her.
"Don't suddenly stop like th—!" Index's protest was silenced when Misaka abruptly placed a finger on her lips.
"If we keep wandering around like this," Misaka said, turning her eyes upward, "we're going to get nowhere fast. Let's climb on top of one of these trees and see if we can't get a better view of this place."
"That might be a good idea," Index affirmed. She then picked the tree directly ahead of her and began climbing.
"Ah, wait! I didn't mean you!" Index could hear Misaka protesting. "Hey, can you even climb in that outfit?"
Deliberately choosing to ignore her, Index carefully began scaling the tree. The unrefined, childlike approximation of tree bark felt chilly, clammy, lifeless to the touch, and the nearly frictionless surface prompted Index to be especially careful as she climbed upward. Some thirty feet upwards, she had grasped a branch protruding from the side of the tree. The branch provided some small measure of support for further climbing but offered no vantage of point of view in itself, so continue her ascent she did.
She had climbed some eighty feet in the air when she finally reached the canopy. Directly ahead of her and to her immediate sides, the "forest" extended as far as the human eye could see. Only when she turned around did she find out that she and Misaka were heading the wrong way from the beginning, and that what was likely to be their destination lay at their backs.
Behind her, Index could see a massive structure in the distance. Given the four rectangular tower structures, each with a white flag on top of it, ringing a central, massive spiral tower at the center, Index at first thought it was a castle, not unlike what one would find in mid-medieval continental Europe during the Norman conquests. However, upon a more thorough inspection, she observed that each of the castle's towers, all four outer ones and the inner one, possessed a spinning wind rotor on the side facing Index, a sight fairly common to Academy City (despite its inland location) but incomprehensibly bizarre in a world where no discernible winds blew. Try as she did, Index could not immediately grasp the significance of these structures and thus resolved to go to this castle and take a closer look.
As soon as she resolved to go back down the tree, however, she witnessed a fiery explosion send the central tower crashing thunderously to the ground. The shock nearly caused her to lose her footing, but she steadied herself and made her way down.
"Hey, Shorty," Misaka said, once Index had safely touched ground. "I heard something hit the ground hard going on from behind us. I think we've been heading the wrong way."
"We were," Index agreed. "I think we should hurry up and go to that castle."
"Castle?"
"There's a castle in the distance behind us," Index confirmed, pointing in that direction. "It might well contain the source of this distorted mana."
"Then we should get going," Misaka said hurriedly. "Staying here is giving me all kinds of chills."
When Index and Misaka finally arrived at the castle seen in the distance, they discovered before them an imposing structure whose detailed stonework and towering battlements stood in stark contrast to the cartoonish nature of everything else they had seen in this world up to this point. Initially arriving at one of the castle's sides, the duo had to scurry around to the entrance. Once there, they saw, strung across the edges of the castle's battlements, a series of dark-blue rectangular panels tethered together by cords of a sickly greenish color.
"What are these?" Index asked herself aloud. "I've never seen such magical devices as these…"
"What do you mean by 'magical devices'?" Misaka retorted, breaking Index's concentration. The confusion and fearful uncertainty in her voice fatally undermined what was likely another attempt at sarcasm. "These are solar panels!"
"Solar… panels?"
"You know… those things which capture and store sunlight and convert it to usable energy?" After another second's worth of inaction, Misaka then reached out her hand. In response, one of the mysterious panels ripped itself from the wall and floated into Misaka's hand… whereupon it made a sizzling noise and Misaka's hand jerked away from it on reflex.
"Are you all right?" Index asked.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Misaka said hurriedly while she examined the solar panel (this time from a remove while levitating the panel using her powers). "Now I remember where I saw these things. Yeah, these are the Hyperion models, from that one green energy conference I had to attend with my dad a few years back. These things used an experimental virus engineered by an American institute affiliated with Academy City that perfectly spaced apart the carbon nanotubes inside, thus substantially increasing the efficiency of energy conversion and retention…"
Index folded her arms and grunted in annoyance again. The other girl might as well have been speaking a foreign language for all she could understand. "So answer me this, Short-Hair. What is such an obviously scientific device doing in such an obviously magical labyrinth?"
"More to the point," Misaka shot back, "what are these doing here anyway? And those propellers up there, for that matter… There's nothing even resembling a sun or wind out—"
As if in timely answer to Misaka's line of questioning, the wind propellers on the sides of the outside castle towers dramatically sped up their rotation. Precisely one second later, the chanting in the background went silent, only to be replaced by a shrill, ear-piercing cacophony that was half scream and half alarm claxon. Just above Index's eyesight, she saw the half-collapsed innermost tower, destroyed in the explosion she witnessed at the treetop, warp and reform itself into a stone-grey drill structure, with the pointy end "drilling" upwards. Rectangular cavities opened up, one-by-one with the impeccable timing of a machine, in the outer walls; and as each one opened up, one of the solar panels retracted into it. The one Misaka ripped from the walls automatically reattached itself to the grid and retracted into the wall alongside its brethren, much to the surprise of both girls. The sickly lime-green cords that once connected the panels together extruded out from under the wall, split into multiple interlocking strands (three to a pattern, a triple-helix), and drilled themselves powerfully into the ground, each of them exerting the force of a fully-powered pile driver.
Aqua-blue symbols then flashed through the nodes on the panels like the different sections of a singular bulletin board system. With her experience in magical languages, Index could instantly recognize these symbols as runes; but before she could analyze this, a gleam of blinding light briefly flashed from the direction of the farthest tower to the right. Without any further warning than this, a gigantic bolt of lightning slammed into the open space between that tower and the one nearest Index's position. The area struck instantly caught fire, as evidenced by the plumes of smoke rising up from in front of the tower and the sudden flush of heat that Index could feel.
"Did you see that?" asked Misaka. Index nodded; and as soon as she did, the taller girl reached into her skirt pocket and produced a shiny, round, metallic object that Index could only guess was some kind of currency. Balancing said coin on her left thumb, she balled her left hand into a fist, flicked said coin into the air with her index finger…
"What are you doing, Short-Hair?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Misaka retorted, a nimbus of agitated electrons surrounding her. "I'm going to blow this freak show to pieces!"
True to her words, she flicked the coin right at the tower from which the light originated. The coin transformed before Index's eyes into a brilliant orange beam of light which sheared perfectly through the broad side of the targeted tower, toppling it on contact, as if the flaming sword of the archangel Michael had ascended back into the Heavens from which it had come after serving its purpose of guarding the Garden of Eden. In response to this, a pitch-black mass of… something… not so much flowed as bled speedily in its advance toward the direction of the two girls.
Moving ahead of Index protectively, Misaka tensed up and readied a second coin. "Stay close to me," she ordered, "and get ready to run. This could get ugly."
"Run? Where to?" Index asked, looking behind her. Another black mass was heading her way from the position from which they had come and quickly cutting off any escape routes. When Misaka checked behind her to see what Index was staring at, she instantly blanched and nearly fumbled her coin.
"This isn't good!" Misaka exclaimed, gasping in surprise. "It's thicker outside than inside!"
"We'll have to go further in," Index said. "This labyrinth is attacking us directly. At this rate, if we don't get to more defensible ground, we'll be surrounded!"
With all other options rapidly closing to them, the two braved the entrance of the mysterious castle, wherein the "fog" was at its thinnest.
Upon arriving past the gate, they found themselves within the courtyard. Another mass of black bubbled up from within the well and attempted to overwhelm them, but Misaka neutralized it with a timely blast of her electrical powers. This brief respite gave the two of them the chance to examine just what the black fog was composed of. When the two of them did so, they spotted that the black fog was comprised of a mass of grasshopper-like insects, with each individual insect possessing runes where its eyes were supposed to have been and double-bladed miniature scythes in place of legs. Other than the runes and blades, and the unnaturally dark coloring, Index could immediately identify what these insects were.
"Locusts," Index said. "These are desert locusts."
"What the Hell?" Misaka asked, just before flash-frying another surprise uprising of said insects that had tried to ambush them.
"The locusts are not all that strange," Index explained as she continued running. "These insects show up a lot within the Holy Scriptures. They were a sign of God's judgment on nations of plenty who refused to follow His precepts. One of the plagues of Egypt was a massive swarm of locusts. St. John the Baptist was said to have subsisted on locusts during his time in the wilderness, though that's a mistranslation. And one of the plagues in the Book of Revelations is—"
"Yeah, well, we're pretty far from the desert," Misaka cut in, "so what are they doing here?"
"They're this labyrinth's familiars," Index responded. "If we can reverse-engineer the process by which these familiars operate, then we can find and attack the labyrinth's source."
"You can do something like that?"
Index quickly stole an aside glance at the still-scrolling display on the solar panels. "Yeah, I can, but it'll take some time to decipher the necessary information."
"In case you haven't noticed, 'time' is one thing we don't have a lot of!"
"I know that!" Index shot back; but before she could continue her retort, she sensed a massive surge of the labyrinth's distorted mana coalescing and gathering into a pinprick-sized spot above them. A quick look upwards revealed that the leaden-grey clouds of the sky had split open to reveal a circular gap in the sky, through which Index could have sworn she had seen the fires of Hell. Upon witnessing magical force build up within that sky, she had a very good idea of what was coming.
"Short-Hair, get away from there NOW!"
"Eh…?"
"MOVE!"
Misaka obeyed Index's urgent command, and not a second too soon. Another lightning blast soundlessly flash-fried Misaka's former position and blew the two girls off their feet. The sudden flash of energy and subsequent wave of searing heat ripped Index's consciousness from her in the blink of an eye.
Index had the look and air of a petite, fragile girl of subnormal constitution, but she was made of sterner stuff than first glances would reveal. Not every girl could run from rooftop to rooftop in a crowded Japanese residential district on the run from professional magicians, after all. Even so, Index had to will her way past a wall of pain covering her entire body from the head down simply to get back to her feet. The pain was not entirely due to acute injuries; she was developing a headache from lack of food. She did not eat nearly as much as her prodigious appetite would allow, due to her emotional state earlier in the morning; and her unsatisfied, undernourished body was running against its limits.
"I'm… hungry…" she could not help but moan softly enough (or at least she hoped) that no one but herself would hear.
When she took a look at her surroundings, she found herself inside a cramped, circular interior room of stone. Destroyed husks of the "solar panel"-like magical tools littered the floors and covered Index up to her shins. Above her, she saw two triangular windows, one to the right of and below the other. To her back lay an upward-curving spiral staircase, and before her lay a wall of fire taller than her which barred entry outside. The walls themselves pulsated with the oily-colored panel connectors, which writhed in place free from their moorings. If she wanted to move past this point, her options now were to advance further into the labyrinth, brave the obstacles of stone and fire guarding the exit, or stay and perish from the familiars or the lightning.
And speaking of lightning…
Index glanced around and looked for Misaka. Surely enough, the esper was struggling to her feet as well… but was hunched over, with her right hand pressing against her chest.
"Are you all right?" Index asked as she hurried to her companion.
"Not… good…" Misaka wheezed. "That last one must have opened the wound."
It took only the briefest of instances for Index to recall the shot to the chest Misaka had suffered during her fight with the magician in violet. At the time, Misaka had seemingly rolled with the blow and shrugged the wound off, leading Index to assume that she had been fortunate enough to avoid being seriously injured. Now, it was evident that such was not the case.
"Why didn't you tell me about that earlier?" Index asked her accusingly even as she helped her to her feet. When Misaka's arm moved away, Index could now clearly see a widening line of red discoloring the brown of her tattered school jacket and shirt.
"Sorry," Misaka apologized. "It didn't seem… like a deal-breaker at the time… What was that last one? Electromasters are normally immune to lightning…"
"Magic follows a different set of rules from science," Index said. "Lightning and firestorms are manifestations of God's wrath and thus cannot be controlled by scientific laws."
Misaka moved her mouth to speak, but then clenched her teeth and wrested herself away from Index. A nimbus of electrical energy surrounded Misaka even as she attempted to steady herself without Index's support. Index, whose eyes were turned toward Misaka, had to follow the other girl's forward gaze before she could understand what had agitated the electric princess so.
The magician in violet walked into the tower they were in, her dark silhouette standing in sharp contrast to the bright glow of the flames surrounding her. Two thin trails of blood crisscrossed her face and converged at a reddened welt on her forehead. Her right arm hung limply at her side, and as she walked, she was clearly forced to favor her right leg. The gem on her left sleeve had lost its previous luster and was instead dimmed with a dull, darkened sheen. Her own familiar, the creature called Kyuubey, slowly kept pace with the violet magician, seemingly heedless of the wounds that were accumulating on its own body.
Even so, her emotionless expression and dark, piercing eyes still managed to instill within Index a sense of menace.
"So you found your way inside this witch's labyrinth, while chasing me, I suppose," she said as she advanced on the two of them. "I was wondering why the witch had suddenly decided to strike elsewhere, but now I know."
"It's you!" Misaka snarled. "You're the one behind all this, aren't you?"
"Don't be silly," the violet magician said, her voice's apparent lack of emotion contrasting with the venom in Misaka's. "Do you think I'm so masochistic as to do all this to myself? Or do you think I'd go all out of my way to falsify these injuries just to lure in a couple of schoolgirls? Quite the self-centered outlook you have there."
"Why, you…" Misaka responded through clenched teeth. "I'm going to make you pay for what you did to Kuroko!"
"Kuroko?" The magician tilted her head to the right in a show of confusion. "Who was that? Judging by that outfit of yours, I would imagine it was the irritatingly persistent one with the twin tails…"
"Why?" Index spoke up softly, so as to deliberately cut through the ugly atmosphere between the electric princess and mystery magician. "Why are you attacking Academy City? Is it revenge for World War III? Did Academy City do something to your magical cabal? Were you the one who laid that curse on those children? Answer me!"
"World War… III? Magical… cabal?" She still maintained the look of confusion on her face, and the sarcastic edge that was present in her goading had softened somewhat, a gesture that Index did not miss.
When the other party did not respond, Misaka spoke up again. "It's useless talking to her! Stand back. You can interrogate her all you want after I kick her ass!"
"You really remind me of someone…" the enemy muttered, the irritation in her own face beginning to show through the cracks in her until-then flawless composure. "Rather than trying to track me down, shouldn't you be worried about getting out of here? If this witch is not stopped, its plague of death and destruction will spread across your precious city while you rot within its bowels. Do you really want that?"
"Witch?" Index asked, deliberately cutting in once more to keep her accomplice's growing blind battle lust in check. Witches were mentioned many times within the library of books that comprised the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, across multiple cultures; and all of those cultures ascribed different functions and powers to those branded with the term. There were witches whose seductions and prophecies brought down entire principalities and nations; witches who ate the flesh of children to perpetuate their own youth; witches who were feared for their ability to control disease and illness in the times long before the advent of scientific knowledge; "witches" who simply had the misfortune of knowing and obtaining more than women of their station were allowed; and so many more. The term thus, to her, begged far more questions than it did answer any.
"When you say a 'witch,' does that mean that there's a witch at the center of this labyrinth, controlling everything?"
"That's not correct," a voice responded in her head. "What she is trying to say is that the 'labyrinth' as you call it is the witch itself. Though I have only her word to take for it…"
"Kyuubey," the magician said, casting an aside glance at the white familiar-like creature on the ground next to her. "You're saying too much…"
"The labyrinth is the witch itself…" Index repeated aloud. She then turned to Misaka. "Did you hear that?"
"Yeah, of course, I did!" she responded heatedly. "This bitch just admitted to trying to kill Kuroko!"
"No, not that! The labyrinth and the witch…"
Now it was Misaka's turn to wear the confused look on her face. "What's this about witches? More occult stuff?"
She can't hear it, Index figured out. She then turned to the other magician. "The one who penetrated this barrier was none other than I, Index Librorum Prohibitorum. I have some idea of how this 'witch' works. If I can just piece together the runes attached to the familiars, then it's likely I can come up with a countermeasure to effectively destroy it and free us all. But I cannot do it alone. I need someone to protect me as I analyze these symbols and decode their message.
"I know I'm asking for a lot," she continued, "especially from a magician. But I can tell… I can tell that you weren't the one behind this. If I had to make an educated guess, I would guess that your magic was purposed from the ground up to combat monsters such as this! If nothing else, that jewel on your arm reacted to this phenomenon long before I detected it!"
At this, the magician in violet flinched and, perhaps on instinct, reached into her shield.
"That's not all!" Index pressed forward, undeterred by the mystery magician's withering stare. "Upon detecting this, you immediately changed course in the middle of a combat, putting whatever plans you had on hold and charging into the barrier by yourself!"
The magician gritted her teeth.
"That's not all either! Not once in any of our encounters did you show any signs of having to process mana like other magicians! Your activations were instantaneous, without any need for invocation or processing of magical energy." Not merely content with just standing her ground, Index took a step forward and spoke her conclusion decisively. "You're not a magician who makes use of magical devices. Your body itself is the magical device… while you yourself, the real you, is externalized and manifested inside that gem! You modified your own body in order to build yourself into the perfect weapon to fight these 'witches'!"
At that, the magician in violet dashed forward at breakneck speed and clutched her petite, but inhumanly powerful left arm around Index's neck, lifting her off the ground and threatening to obstruct her air supply at her leisure if she so chose. Misaka, in response, immediately readied a spear of electricity, but Index managed to shake her head, a gesture that meant not to interfere for the time being.
"You're mostly right, Sister," the magician said, staring up at the girl in her power. "Your little analysis is right, but just barely missed the mark. 88 out of 100, I would say. Indeed, I am something other than 'human'. I'll also tell you something else: This witch is unlike any other that I've ever fought before."
Index's eyes opened further in shock at this candid admission.
"It's not quite on the level of Walpurgisnacht," the magician continued, "at least in terms of sheer attack strength and magnitude of corruption and in the fact that it still requires a barrier. But it's in a unique category of its own. It can regenerate whatever attacks are thrown at it and absorb its own structure to strengthen and repair itself. That tower you shredded, incidentally, has already been restored to full capacity." She emphasized the last sentence with an aside glance at Misaka.
"Much like an embryo, it comes fully equipped with all of the energy and nutrients it needs to survive. It does not need to infect to survive, unlike the other witches. Destroying its familiars has proven useless, as it directly harnesses the destructive energy needed to harm it to revive itself. We would need to find the witch's core, but it hides itself well. If we do not find the core, anything else is meaningless. And you think you, who have been bumbling around this maze ineffectually, can succeed where I, who by your own deductions has been created to fight these monstrosities, have failed, Sister?"
The pressure applied to her neck precluded a vocal answer, so Index instead lifted her arms and attempted to squeeze the magician's lifting arm. Her feeble arms could apply no pressure, but she let go regardless. Index collapsed to her knees and had to force her way back up. But when she did, she spoke clearly.
"I know I can succeed," Index answered her resolutely. "But I can't do it alone. If you can still fight, I need your help. That goes for Misaka Mikoto as well."
"Hmph…" The violet magician shot Misaka one last glare before returning her attention to Index. "Normally, I would ask you what kind of guarantee I'd have that the two of you wouldn't try anything funny, but it seems that this conversation is now over." With a sweeping hand gesture, she directed Index's attention to the barrier of magic energy that kept the familiars and firestorms at bay. The purple corona of energy flickered on and off, like a flashlight draining the last of its battery reserve. "The shield I erected has lost its power. If we're going to strike, we must strike immediately. What awaits us from this point onward is either victory or annihilation."
Not even a second after the shield at last dissipated, a cloud of the black locust-creatures swarmed their way into the tower in force… only to find themselves instantly incinerated by a well-timed cascade of explosions and entombed in the tower's collapse.
Escaping the crumbling tower through an open window in the second floor, the three girls sprinted in a tight formation, with Misaka and the magician taking point and the slower Index and Kyuubey bringing up the rear. With their way to the embattled ground floor thus gone, they dashed along the walls connecting the towers, and they stopped only briefly at intervals to allow Index to engrave the runes lining the walls into her memory before they unmercifully destroyed them. During their travels, a shot of lightning crushed a section of the walls into so much debris and blocked their way forward. With an army of locusts at their back and a newly-made cliff at the hold, Misaka, Index, and their new ally were trapped… until Misaka used her powers to magnetically bond together a "staircase" of discarded panels.
Upon analysis of the runes, Index discovered that the "theme" of the witch was deceptively simple. The modern trappings were an ingenious evolution, using the instruments of the science side to help sustain its prodigious appetite even while hiding its true magical nature. But aside from that, they were largely superfluous as to the true meaning. At its core, the runes throughout the castle pieced together a narrative of a woman who had been secluded and sheltered from society at the behest of cruel men who wished, however misguidedly, to guard her innocence and virtue. Admired by all around her for her beauty and intelligence, she was locked away by her wealthy, jealous father until she could be married off. While in captivity, she had seen the truth and converted to the Way of the Cross. In secret, she specifically gave orders to her servants that her private bathhouse be made with three windows (in reverence to the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) rather than her father's two. This act of devotion to her Heavenly Father enraged her earthly one, who, upon confirming his daughter's conversion, rushed to kill her with his own sword. The Son of God, answering her fervent prayers, bore her away through an open wall in her tower to a mountain, where she was happened upon by two shepherds. When her father chased after her, the first shepherd rebuffed him, but the second had betrayed her into his hands; for this, she invoked the Lord's curse on him. He turned into stone, and his flocks of sheep became locusts.
Her father brought her before the magistrate, who quickly convicted her of blaspheming the pagan gods and ordered her imprisoned, beaten, and killed. She was made to endure many tortures and indignities. She was beaten by the sinews of bulls. Her flesh was softened for the blows by rubbing salt in the wounds. She was drawn and hanged between trees. Staves broke her legs. The executioners cut off her breasts. Her father had eagerly dealt her the finishing blow; and as retribution, he was killed where he stood, struck down by lightning and consumed in flames.
The Roman Catholic Church canonized this woman, Barbara of Nicomedia, in the eighth century. She became the patron saint of many purviews – artillerymen, cannoneers, prisoners, window-makers, young girls, and indeed anyone who potentially faced sudden death while doing their duty. She was invoked against fire and lightning.
Index, who was a walking encyclopedia due to the religious and heretical books and grimoires implanted into her mind, was able to cross-reference this information immediately. From then on, it was a simple matter of placing where they were in the narrative. If they could do so, then finding "Barbara" (the witch itself) would be simple… theoretically. The problem with that simple solving pattern was that the divine wrath of lightning at the end of the story coexisted co-temporally with the divine punishment of the locusts within the witch. "Barbara" could not be in any of the castle's towers, because if she were, then she would have doubtless responded to the relentless assault of the other two girls. Her next thought was that perhaps the witch had hidden herself within a range of mountains, as per the analogous point in the legend, but that too was unlikely. She would have seen the mountain range during her time on the treetops in the distance, unless it was specifically cloaked… in which case the locusts would have originated from this theoretical mountain range, which was apparently not the case. Even so, while improbable, the "mountain" theory was not entirely impossible. Come to think of it, the divine energy that could be tapped into by reenacting the tale of St. Barbara should have been on the theoretical level incompatible with the defiling force the witch gave off… which led Index back to believing that the witch was not just mimicking, but actively corrupting one vital theme of the original legend to sustain itself.
Just as she thought that, she heard Misaka yelp in pain and saw her cover her face in response to stray shards of glass from the latest round of enemy fire.
Wait a minute…
Glass…
Windows…
Two triangular windows, one to the right of and above the other.
The legend had mandated three windows in reverence to the Spirit.
"Of course… the tower windows…" Index said aloud in mid-run. "Why didn't I see it before?"
"That's quite the interesting face you have there," Kyuubey said. "Have you found something out? If so, please feel free to share. Even I can't keep this up forever…"
"The tower windows!" Index screamed out.
"I said destroying them was useless!" the magician snapped.
Index shook her head. "No, not like that! You have to carve another window into each of the towers!"
Both of the other girls did a double-take, glancing at each other and then at Index in rapid succession.
"There are two windows on the uppermost floor of each tower!" she explained. "One of them is to the right of and above the other! There are supposed to be three windows, one to signify each facet of the Holy Trinity! In the original legend, St. Barbara the Martyr had her private chambers fitted with three windows to represent the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in defiance of her pagan father, who wanted only two! It sounds like a long shot, but if we can make changes and mess with the symbolism, then we can stem the flow of energy to the witch and force it to reveal itself!"
"What an annoying story…" Misaka muttered.
"So, do you have any precision tools in that electric arsenal of yours?" asked the magician in that subdued tone Index had begun to associate with her. "Or are you just some glorified stun-gun?"
"I don't want to hear about 'precision' from someone who guns her way through police once she gets caught!" Even with that retort, Misaka stretched out her hand. Three arcs of lightning shot forth from her outstretched hand and drilled into the side of the nearest tower. Instead of smashing into it and destroying it as before, the electricity lances carved into the stone like a welder. The lances briefly faltered, and Index thought she heard a disturbingly wet-sounding cough coming from the Electromaster. She opened her mouth to ask if Misaka was well, but then a bloodcurdling shriek of despair sounded through the air.
The solar panels and locusts ringing the tower burst into bluish-white flames, one after another, in a frightening and deafening chain reaction. The sense of relief Index could feel was almost palpable… and fleeting. Likely sensing the danger their master now faced, the locust clouds of the other towers abandoned their previous posts and descended upon the trio en masse. Unable to evade or counterattack this fell miasma, grievously injured from their previous battles, and with their energies stretched to the breaking point, they could only await their ends.
Misaka, the Level 5 esper, put up a magnificent defense, but faltered when the wound on her chest reopened and forced her to her knees. The all-consuming locusts capitalized on this moment of weakness and swarmed her down.
The violet magician, defiant of the end, summoned her bow and fired frantically while desperately trying to force her legs to move from her spot. But for each cloud of locusts she cleared, many times that number would come and take the place of the fallen. Focused on the locusts as she was, one last bolt of "divine" lightning caught her off guard and struck her and her familiar creature down.
Index found herself the only one left. Glancing around frantically, she saw nothing but darkness surrounding the area like a funeral shroud. Fear and hunger together conspired to rob her of her will to resist. Within her mind lay hundreds of thousands of tools to save her from her predicament, but with her own ability to use her own powerful magical energies deliberately sealed away, she could not use any of them. She wanted to curse her uselessness – curse herself for ever having been born.
If all of the magic knowledge in the world throughout history could not be used to save even one person from the darkness, then perhaps that knowledge has lost its right to be perpetuated and passed down after all…
Anyone can fight.
At the edges of Index's mind, as time seemed to slow to a crawl, she could hear a voice – the familiar voice of a certain boy. It was faint, ethereal, transitory, poised to fade away at any second.
As long as you have something you wish to risk your life to protect…
Even if it makes the entire world your enemy…
You can fight!
The conviction and hope in this person's voice briefly, if for a second, cut through the oncoming darkness like a beam of light. Index could not help but wonder – was this a spirit, come to guide the living in their time of need? Was it an illusion brought on by the fear of imminent death? Or was it…?
At the end of the light, Index could see, as if through a looking glass, a fell creature of despair, shattered hopes, and broken dreams. Where once its hands and feet were, a mass of cylindrical structures protruded from its arms and legs and stabbed into the ground. The cylindrical things pulsated as something flowed from its "arms" to its head. On that head was a crown whose shape reminded her of a castle's battlement; and on its body, runes were engraved that narrated a litany of oppression, torture, abuse, and finally destruction. On the spots where its eyes should have been, two fires black as night blazed unceasingly. The creature towered over the castle that once guarded it and glared furiously down at the remaining intruder, daring her to continue resisting right until the very end.
But Index was not afraid anymore, for he was with her.
Index boldly took a step forward, unwavering in her resolve to fight. She took one last glance around for something, anything that could be used as a focus for her last stand. Next to the fallen magician's position, she saw her wooden bow, which had yet to dematerialize. Without hesitation, she picked it up.
By all accounts, this was a futile endeavor. Magicians were notoriously idiosyncratic and individualistic; and as a side effect, there was no guarantee that this magical tool was not locked and coded to respond to only its user's magical signature. While Index could break the code and take control of the magic, as she had before, she could only do so by intercepting the spell while the caster had done the hard work of inputting mana and commands into it. Index herself had no power to fuel magic, as a safety feature to keep her from using the grimoires stored within her mind and becoming an existential threat to the world herself.
Even so, she could not simply stand by and watch as the others were devoured. Even if by some miracle she were saved herself, she would not be able to live it down if the others died. Someone had once refused to accompany her to the depths of Hell and instead, using nothing but his own fist and wits, had pulled her out. Now she fervently wished to pull the others out of this Hell…
She raised the bow at the level of the beast's head. Her vision was obscured by the descending locust clouds, but during that brief flash of light, she internalized the monster's position. She pulled the bowstring as hard as she could, but nothing came of it. No bolt of energy had materialized, and the first of the locusts had already begun to cut into her face with their scythe-like legs.
This was truly the end, it seemed…
"M… ma… do… k…"
Even in the midst of the witch's wailing and the locusts' buzzing, and even in the throes of her own pain, Index could hear the faint voice of the other magician. She could feel the touch of the magician's petite hand on her own legs… and she could feel a wave of energy not her own pulsing through her body. Seizing the moment, she reoriented herself and the magician's bow, deliberately ignoring the swarm of deadly insects. She then channeled all of this energy directly into the bow, refused the urge to avert her eyes as a blindingly bright pink light materialized in front of her face…
"I am Dedicatus545, the dedicated lamb that protects the knowledge of the strong!"
…and fired.
The pink beam of light shredded through the darkness, destroying all of the fell demons who dared cross its flight path, and struck the queen of the labyrinth head on. The cylindrical structures anchoring it to the ground severed one by one, with each of them leaking and bleeding a greenish-black substance that looked part blood, part oil, and part flame. The shrieking of the witch reached a fevered pace; the crown on its head shattered; and at last, the monster perished, screaming, in a conflagration of flame and lightning.
The pink light of the bow gave way to a pure white light which blinded and engulfed Index and the visage of the other girls.
When Index regained her sight, she found herself inside the same room from which she had entered the witch's barrier. The symbol she had traced into the wall to force the barrier open remained intact visually, but was now entirely bereft of any power; the analogous symbol she and Misaka used to actually enter was, perhaps unsurprisingly, gone without a trace of its existence. The blond Skill-Out was still alive but unconscious, as was his attacker, Misaka Mikoto, who was surrounded by a small pool of blood. The unfortunate schoolchildren of Judgment were still dead, though the lack of decay or smell, or, for that matter, the conspicuous absence of any of Academy City's law enforcement, led Index to believe that not much time had passed in the outside world while they were traversing the world inside the barrier.
While Index was searching the room for something to stem her fallen friend's blood loss, she found, near the spot of the barrier entrance, something she had missed on her first look-around. There lay a tiny, night-black jewel, with a princess cut on both sides, a stem-like structure at the bottom, and the witch's tree motif in the center. Index started to take a closer look at this curious jewel, but then without warning, someone snatched it out of her hands. Looking up, she saw the magician touch the gem to her own purple one, which effected a two-way energy reaction between the black gem and hers and brightened her own gem's violet glow. This having been accomplished, she hesitated for a second, gripped the black gem as if to crush it, and then – wearing an expression of deciding something distasteful to her – tossed the black jewel to Kyuubey, who immediately consumed it through a maw-like opening on its back.
"You're right, Homura. This truly does contain a prodigious amount of energy. So this is what you would call a 'Grief Seed'?"
"Yes," she – her name was Homura? – responded quickly and somewhat acidly, refusing to look at the creature she just fed.
"So your name is Homura?" Index asked her. "That's… a strange name there."
"That is not something I want to hear from some weird foreign nun who calls herself an Index," Homura responded.
Index opened her mouth to retort, but the sound of a police alarm grabbed her attention. Homura made a "Tch" sound to voice her irritation. She then grabbed Index by the scruff of her neck and Kyuubey by its back.
"Wh—what's going on?" Index asked.
"We're getting out of here," Homura responded cleanly.
"What do you mean 'we'?" Index asked her in disbelief.
"Did I not make myself clear?" Homura asked her rhetorically. "You're coming with me."
Brooking no further dissent, she activated her shield-like device. From Index's point of view, she could now see that the deceptively simple exterior of this magical device hid a patchwork of gears and wires surrounding a vial of sand. Upon activation, a gear slid into place and blocked the flow of sand; and in response, the world around the two turned stark grey. The gentle swaying of the plants surrounding the building stopped entirely, and no sound but the ones they made could be heard. Fluidly, with Index in tow, the magician named Homura glided through this world of grey and out the window. Looking down, Index could see a convoy of Anti-Skill vans and people in the midst of pouring out of them and swarming the laboratory. The members of the Anti-Skill squadron were all frozen in motion, allowing the two girls to skip through them with ease.
It wasn't instantaneous movement at all, Index realized. This girl has the ability to stop time!
"But what about Sh... Misaka Mikoto?" Index cried.
"The electricity user? I'll leave her to the police," Homura responded.
"Where are we going?" Index asked.
"Somewhere that isn't here."
Frustrated with the curt answers and at herself for being caught once again in a situation where she was powerless, Index then asked one last question.
"What are you doing in Academy City?"
At that question, Homura paused for the briefest of instances and turned her eyes toward Index. The two girls' faces met just inches away from each other. Homura stared into Index's eyes, as if peering into her very soul, which made Index more than a little uncomfortable. Then she turned away and continued her escape.
"A dear friend of mine has been abducted, and the few clues that I have point to this city. If you truly love this city as much as you claim to, you will assist me in finding her."
TO BE CONTINUED IN
To Aru Mahou Shoujotachi no Monogatari
The Fourth Spell – Akemi Homura I
Author's Note:
Well, that's the end of the introductory arc. I hope you liked the story. As per usual for fanfiction, constructive criticism is welcome, while flames are not.
I would like to thank certain people for inspiring me to create this work:
The fine people at for translating the Index novels from Japanese to English and hosting them, free of charge, on their Website;
Flere821 and Fukou da, whose stories "Minds, Memories, and Misfortune" and "Unlucky Star" inspired me to write fanfiction for the first time in nearly a decade;
CaptainOverkill from the Beast Lair forums, a longtime friend of mine who proofread the work in mid-draft;
Juli "Chanoa" Hasegawa of DeviantArt, for answering one of my commissions and providing me with a lovely piece of commission artwork;
Random Unsigned 4chan Drawfag, for answering another commission with a nifty, albeit unfinished sketch;
Kamachi Kazuma and Urobuchi Gen, for providing us with their respective settings;
and finally, you, the reader.