A/N: Hello loves! Hope you all enjoy this new installment! Thank you so much to everyone who has left comments on my chapters :) I appreciate it so much! It would be great to hear from more voices as well; this story has 54 followers and it would mean so much if you guys could review. They motivate me to update faster and let me know if this idea sucks or not. Just, please show me some love. It would mean the world. Thanks! XOXOX!
Interlude
Musa stood in the middle of what used to be the Alfea College for Fairies.
All that remained of the once-familiar campus was reduced to rubble. The winged gates were warped and wilted, the tower crumbled and the green pocketed with craters and scorch marks. Dead bodies littered the area. Columns of ice were the only things holding up the devastated structures, and even those were melting by the second. Soon, the rest of it would collapse and the remaining students would be forced to find somewhere else to hide, but that wasn't the immediate problem.
Now, Musa was on retrieval duty. Faragonda had assigned her, Stella, and Tecna to retrieve the bodies of their fallen classmates. It was a horrible job. Stella had already cried twice and refused to go on, but Tecna pushed her forward. It was hard to see, hard to find the corpses of friends. When she found Galatea's body, Musa bent a knee and wept silently for her fallen princess. Musa didn't consider herself much of a royalist, but Galatea was a good fairy and an even better person. Melody suffered a great loss that day.
One by one, the girls picked up their friends (or in most cases, what remained of them) and piled them onto a cart. There were other teams, other carts waiting to be filled by the few survivors who made it through the attack. When Headmistress Faragonda did a head count after the witches had left, out of the hundreds of fairies attending the college less than fifty students remained, most of whom sustained injuries that needed to be treated as soon as possible. Musa and her friends had been lucky. They had been off chasing Bloom with the Eraklyan soldiers and the Magix police. Had they stayed behind with the rest of the school...Musa shuddered to think about the consequences.
Of course, at the thought of Bloom, Musa's blood boiled. Just the idea of being so close to such a vile creature...to sharing a dorm and inside jokes and embraces...it made her skin crawl. How had they all been so blind? Well, not all of them. Tecna always had her suspicions, and Musa felt guilty for not listening to her beautiful lover sooner. Truly, Tecna's mind was a marvel. Without her connecting the dots, they would be dead along with all the others.
Musa stood and stretched her legs, looking out at the charred terrain, trying to imagine it as it was yesterday or all the days before this horrific one. Sadly, her mind could not draw up the imagine. Instead, this gruesome scene was stained onto her memory like a tattoo: permanent and forever.
Her muscles burned but Musa gathered the strength to lift Galatea's body off the ground, careful not to smear any more blood than necessary across her clothes. Faragonda had given them more practical get ups, ones that covered more and provided more protection than her old crop top and ripped jeans. The clothes were really more like a Specialist's jumpsuit, but Musa wasn't complaining. The navy blue material felt light but was durable, and would serve its purpose.
"I think we've got enough," Musa called to Stella and Tecna as she deposited Galatea's body on top of the pile. There were too many glassy eyes staring emptily her way to count. "Any more and it might be too heavy to move."
"Headmistress said we had to finish by sundown," Tecna reminded, her voice hollow, as if she could not compute this kind of damage.
"I know Tec, but we have to save our strength," Musa countered, watching as the technical girl finally gave way to exhaustion.
Stella did not have to be persuaded to quit. Her face was ashen and her hair streaked with dirt, hanging limply by her shoulders. She looked like she'd seen a ghost, or twenty. Musa knew she was not strong enough to handle this, and had no idea why Faragonda would assign such a squeamish person to such a macabre job. But Stella was the fairy of the shining sun, and so she supposed Stella was there to light their way seeing as though the electricity was currently out of service.
Slowly, the three retraced their steps through the carnage back into the withering remains of the school. The foundation was cracking and crumbling all around them, the ceiling groaning and dripping from burst pipes. Out of the corner of her eye, Musa spotted Flora along with a few other fairies working to keep the building up for as long as possible. Flora looked ready to drop, her shoulders sagging and knees knocking as she kept on summoning thick green vines to wind around the failing support beams and hold them steady. The others around her looked to be in similar shape, a water fairy trying to divert the leaks from melting ice into huge basins while a magnetism fairy moved sheets of fallen metal and molded them into different shapes.
There was no time to stop and chat. They had a mission to report.
Following Stella's flickering ball of light, the girls wound their way through the mess until they reached a seal on the center of the floor off one of the main corridors. To the outside eye, it looked like a pretty decoration. The girls new better now. With a wave of their hands and a slight convergence, the seal started to glow and spin until the magic around it gave way and a spiral staircase appeared, the stone steps sinking downward into the ground. When they first approached this odd passage, the girls were hesitant but followed their Headmistress anyway. Now, they took the steps two at a time, the cart hovering close behind them.
The staircase deposited them in the catacombs of Alfea, the passage closing as soon as the cart was settled on the ground. The tunnel was narrow and dimly lit, but Stella's orb still had life left in it. They walked a now-familiar path down the winding way until they reached an antechamber. It was there were the remainder of the Alfea College for Fairies set up its base.
Cots had been erected for the wounded, Ophelia going back and forth as fast as she could between broken legs to fractured ribs and worse. Some of the girls stood off to the side and sparred, taking the opportunity to train when it came time to face the Trix again. Most just sat in huddled silence or were busy completing their assigned tasks such as rationing food, digging graves, and running surveillance. In the center of the room stood Headmistress Faragonda who was staring at a map as if it had personally offended her, Griselda standing austerely at her side.
"Any luck contacting Red Fountain?" Faragonda asked as the girls got close enough to hear.
"None," Griselda seethed, slamming the phone down on the table. "We can only assume the worst."
"Give the phone to me," Tecna instructed as she stepped into the older women's domain, palm open patiently. "I'll see what I can do to improve the signal."
Thankfully, Griselda did not yell Tecna's ear off. Had this been any other day and she would have scolded the magenta haired fairy for impertinence. But this was not any other day. This was the start of war, and Tecna knew the most about technology. If she could help, then Griselda was going to do as she said. The older woman glared over the tops of her glasses and passed the cell phone with mild reluctance. Tecna nodded her head, satisfied, and sat in a chair as she fiddled with the circuits.
"How many more did you find?" the Headmistress asked, turning her attention towards Musa and Stella.
"Ten," Stella all but whispered, willing herself not to cry. "I don't think we're ever going to stop finding them."
"Do we have names?"
Stella nodded and handed over the PDA Tecna used to log them. Headmistress Faragonda frowned but sighed in acceptance before handing the PDA back to Stella.
"Contact their families, let them know what happened."
"Why don't you do it yourself?" Stella snapped, her emotions taut like a wire. "This is your job; this is your school. These girls were your responsibility and you let them die!"
Headmistress Faragonda lashed out and slapped Stella clear across the face. For a minute, no one moved, no one even dared to breathe.
"I am prioritizing," the Headmistress replied with anger barely restrained. "Yes, it is horrible that those girls lost their lives and yes, they died under my care but I have no power to change that. I cannot turn back time. I can only lead this school forward and my first priority as Headmistress is to reach out to the other forces in Magix to ensure the safety of those students who are still alive. I do not have time to waste, not even on honoring the dead."
Musa flinched. Stella didn't speak, didn't even look up from the ground.
"Now, do as I say and notify their families. Then get back out there and gather more of your fallen sisters. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes ma'am," Musa and Stella muttered, unable to do anything other than obey.
"Good. You're dismissed," the Headmistress seethed, shooing them away with a brush of her hand.
As they were walking away Stella muttered, "I hate this. I hate this so much."
"I know Stel, just hang in there," Musa encouraged. She knew she and Stella had never been the closest, but that was no reason not to be kind when the girl needed it. Musa was never the best at the whole comforting thing, but she was doing her best and she could tell Stella appreciated what she could get. It wasnt' like anyone else was lining up to do it.
Suddenly, alarms went off, blaring echoes through the cavernous space. Immediately, everyone's guards went up. All thoughts were on the possibility of another attack. The simple fact was, if this was another attack, they were not ready. They were sitting ducks, ripe and ready for the picking.
Musa swallowed thickly and looked over at Tecna. For once, the girl looked frightened. Musa reached over and squeezed her hand in comfort. Tecna managed a small smile before the flashing red lights brought the panic back.
"Ladies, attack formation!" Headmistress Faragonda ordered. Those who could move mobilized immediately. Those who could not looked on with dread.
This was a bad idea. Going out unarmed and weak was a bad idea. But what other choice was there? They could either go down cowards or put up a fight. Musa chose a fight any day.
The stairs reappeared by Faragonda's command. Musa took charge and was one of the first up the stone steps, Tecna and Stella following close behind. Somehow, the journey through the tunnels and back up to the surface seemed longer than before. She knew that it was just her fears playing on her anticipation, pulling out the period of dread before the bomb dropped. Knowing that didn't make it any easier.
Nothing on the surface looked any different from before. There were no roars of ice dragons or the spark of electric storms indicated the Trix. It was quiet...almost too quiet.
Moving out on the green, Musa noticed that Flora and the other few fixers were already posed to fight the intruder, wherever they were. Musa sidled up next to Flora, offering her friend much needed back up. The relief in Flora's eyes was palpable. It was the first time they'd been close since the initial attack, and Musa discovered just how much she missed the nature fairy's soothing presence. However, no amount of soothing auras were going to change the terror of a very real and present danger.
Finally, the intruder showed their face, or her face was more accurate.
A single young woman approached the dilapidated gate. She could not have been any older than the Alfea girls, her skin a dark brown and her hair even darker spun in wild wavy curls that fell down her back. Her eyes were cold and focused straight ahead. Scars littered her exposed, muscular arms; even through the fabric of her shirt Musa could make out ab muscles that would make a body builder jealous. A small creature flittered above her head, buzzing like a bee that she simply ignored, stepping over debris and bones alike, crushing them under her worn combat boots. She was a formidable presence to stumble upon Alfea, though she did not give off the impression of a witch. No, in fact she gave off the impression of a warrior.
"Who the fuck are you?" Musa snapped, not lowering her guard.
The young woman scanned the area back and forth, as if assessing if what she had stumbled upon was worth her time. Whatever she was looking for, she found. In the next moment she was smiling, and not kindly.
"My name is Princess Aisha of Andros, and I hear you have a Succubus problem."