"Doesn't any of us know portal spells?" Musa wondered as the group of six strolled towards the office as silently as they could. It was an early morning and they didn't want to wake up anyone. Nor they wanted to explain Griselda where they were going. She was dealing with enough stress already.
"I'd do this with pleasure and more quickly, but as I always say: better not count on luck unless you want to end up in the guy's bathroom," Stella explained a bit too formally to be taken seriously.
"Which means this will have to do the thing." Tecna held up the gadget for others to see. "I sure hope the office is spacey enough."
"Should be. But why are we going there anyway?" Layla released a silent yawn. "I wouldn't have missed the explanation if you didn't drag me out of bed so quickly."
"We need a safe place for the portal opener," Bloom explained. "Elsewhere someone could run into it and broke it, and we'd be stuck."
Flora was the first one to reach the door of the former headmistress's office. She held the door handle silently and took a sharp breath. "I don't feel too good," she admitted.
"We'll be leaving from there in a minute," Layla assured, her words more like a question to Tecna, who nodded briefly.
Flora hesitantly pushed down the door handle and the door creaked open, revealing a shocked Hagen inside the room.
"What are you doing here?" Stella held her hands on her hips. "Finding more stuff to wreck?" she added in a lowered tone, only to earn an elbow on her side.
"That's.. That's none of your business." Hagen stuffed something to his pocket in hurry. "What are you doing here?"
Musa raised an eyebrow. "And what if that's none of your business?"
"Girls, I think we could as well tell him." Bloom turned to look at the man, even though she couldn't still look him in the eyes. "We're going to Galigine."
If Hagen was surprised, he hid it well. He shook his head. "Not going to succeed."
Stella snorted a tiny bit too angrily and loudly. "If you think you can stop us—"
"Didn't mean that, no. But Galigine has high-level protection spells much more advanced than what you're used to, if I may."
"We have an advanced portal opener," Tecna said with a hint of pride in her voice.
"Trust me when I say it's not enough. Unless..." Hagen searched something from the depths of his pocket. He pulled out a whistle. "You could use my way of travelling. Combined with that... Thing, it could help you past the spells." He handed the whistle to Bloom.
Bloom hung it in front of her face, studying it keenly. "And what happens if we succeed?"
"You get to Galigine and both portal openers return to me. I can bring yours here if you want."
"Why are you even helping us?" Tecna asked, tilting her head.
Hagen smiled sadly. "Do I really have to say it?"
The girls knew it was for the best to leave it there, so they just thanked him and made their way outside. Bloom took in a lungful of air and blew the whistle.
A sharp noise echoed for sometime on the hollow school field. For a moment they thought it didn't work, but then began a faint, but continuous clinking of something metallic. A large robot in a form close to a Chinese dragon (Bloom recalled one from her old story books) landed few meters away from them with a loud crash. If that didn't wake Griselda, nothing would.
"Impressive," Tecna stated with wide eyes. She strolled to the robot, studying it closely. "These engines under here must be the ones that make it fly," she said more to herself, still in awe. "And the portal opener... Here!" She moved the jaw of the dragon robot and attached her own gadget to the one inside.
"Seems like Hagen has much free time," Stella joked.
Bloom looked around to make sure no one was coming outside. That wouldn't last for too long now. "Let's climb on; we must waste no more time."
The robot's back was gladly spacey enough for all of them. Its metallic tail swished couple of times and then it took off.
"One question." Stella made a face as the dragon rose higher and higher. "How do you drive this?"
Tecna, who sat in the front, reached to the dragon's mouth and pressed a button on the gadget inside. "I've put our destination on the portal opener. It should open in any minute."
In all of a sudden the dragon increased its speed, forcing the girls to take a better grip on it and each other. The robot fired an orb out of its mouth and a portal opened half a dozen meters away.
"This is it. Remember that—" Tecna never got to finish. They flew into the portal and the world around them spun along with bright colours. The group felt occasional tugs and invisible shields, which broke eventually. The whole experience was making them nauseous if nothing else. Before Bloom could swear she'd rely on Stella in the future, she fell unconscious.
Rain drops were cooling on her red-hot face. She felt them pouring endlessly and she wished she'd never have to move. All though, someone was persistent to end her peaceful moment.
"What are you girls doing out there? And without cloaks?" A voice called, no, shrieked from distance. "My, my, come here, quickly, quickly!"
Bloom forced herself up in sitting position, only to get pulled up on her feet. Her clothes were soaking and muddy, so the woman calling out to them at a door of a warm-looking house wasn't such a nasty thing after all.
"We made it," Tecna told her on their way inside. "Hagen was right, the two portal openers worked!"
The woman, who had invited them inside her house, peeked her head briefly outside after the girls had all entered the house. She closed the door swiftly and leaned on it. "Haven't your mothers taught you anything? If you disobey the rules, you'll be arrested! Or worse, you could have been dead by now!"
"We're not from here, ma'am," Flora explained in a soft voice.
"No, that's impossible." The woman shook her head and removed the hood of her long, dark green cloak. "No one from other worlds has set their foot on Galigine in many years."
"Well, now that has happened," Stella stated.
"What rules were you talking about anyway?" Layla watched the woman curiously. "We couldn't have possibly been arrested only from laying there, right?"
"Yes," the woman stated bluntly. "It's over nine in the evening. A patrol walks the same path every day, and they'll be passing this house any minute. Anyone seen outside would be arrested. In your case, it would have been worse."
"Because we're not wearing cloaks?" Musa questioned.
The woman nodded. "It's a law too. Women wear this," she gestured to herself, "and men have their own attire."
"Why do you agree with this madness?" Bloom demanded.
The woman lowered her head, her expression suggesting shame. "I'm scared," she whispered. "Everyone is. And we can't blame anyone but ourselves."
"Tell us." Flora took the woman's hands in her own and gave her a compassionate smile. "We're here to help. The more we know, the easier it will be."
The woman swallowed a bit and chewed her lip. "It started four years ago. You know Mortuus Montgomery, that man, who is corrupting our planet? I knew him when he was just a little boy. He had dreams, wild ones. He wanted Galigine to shine; he wanted that others would stop overlooking us because we are in the darker and smaller parts of the Magic Dimension."
"What did he do?"
"He became a sorcerer and thief, who got his power from stolen spells. He wanted to be known all across the dimension. He wanted that Galigine would be known of its glorious and powerful dark sorcerer. But something happened and he was imprisoned and sent to Light Haven. 21 years went by until he came back. His old allies were impressed that he came back as malevolent as before, with the hint of insanity."
"And he just took over the planet, just like that?"
"No, that could have been impossible. He crept up on us. He made us think we wanted the same as he did. Fame and power. He had speeches, posters, everything. He gathered an army, and back then only his inner circle knew what was really happening. The soldiers are trapped, threatened and as scared as we are. My husband..." Her voice cracked. "He was in the inner circle. And now he's dead. Mortuus gets rid of everyone who could possibly oppose him.
But we didn't know. We let it happen, slowly but surely. Before we knew it, our every action was being watched. Most of the men here were forced to join the army. They were dragged away from their homes without a warning. And that's still happening, as our children grow up."
"We're going to put end to this," Layla assured to the woman, who was blinking away her tears. "We'll make sure that bastard will get what he deserves."
The woman looked up. "You'll find him from his 'palace', as he likes to call it. It's more like a mountain actually. Go to North, you can't miss it."
"Thank you." Bloom turned to Stella. "I guess you know what to do?"
"Of course." Stella raised her hands and spark showers flew over the six girls. Their wet clothes changed to dark green robes.
"Good luck." The woman opened the door, looking out briefly. "And be careful. I can sense you're powerful, but Mortuus Montgomery is capricious man."
"We'll keep that on mind." Tecna lowered her head as a farewell and stepped outside, followed by the other girls.
And so began their journey in the shadows of Galigine, accompanied by the fear that shadowed the whole planet.