Lucia free fell.
Sour tasting wind rushed against her face. Stacked around her were towering heaps of giant porcelain discs, reaching above her into infinity. The ground below resembled water, the puddle in the real world expanding off to cover the entire earth–Lucia was about to conjure a pearl to slow down to her fall when a hand grabbed onto her wrist.
"Hey," said the hand in Steph's voice.
A great force tugged at Lucia's wrist, changing her trajectory leftward. She accelerated towards the ground, towards a spot of color floating over the stagnant water that she identified as Steph, who was becoming bigger and bigger–
CRASH
Lucia landed on something vaguely fleshy and then immediately submerged into the pool. For some reason she tried to breathe and instantly, greasy, sour water rushed to the back of her mouth. Lucia instinctively swallowed a whole mouthful– and there were crumbs in the water, poking against her throat as the water went down her digestive tract—
Lucia's feet found the ground, and she stood up– the water only went up to her waist.
The new labyrinth was warm– the cold from the snowflake witch disappeared entirely. And then Lucia made the worst mistake of her life. Her lungs were completely empty and demanded her brain for oxygen. No worries, her brain thought. They weren't in the water anymore. There's plenty of oxygen for them here!
And so Lucia took a deep breath.
Her brain short circuited.
When Lucia was in second grade, she'd lost her lunchbox. She found it two months ago while cleaning out her attic. Her nine year old sandwich was still inside, festering like a hedgehog carcass. The decaying bug-eaten bread-like material was covered in inky green growths spotted with concentric rings of white and yellow, like a halved hard boiled egg. And the smell– it was sour, greasy, and dusty, like she was force fed expired heavy cream mixed with laundry detergent and volcanic ash. She had gagged for thirty seconds straight and everything smelled wrong for a day.
This was that smell, but worse.
I didn't know the smell was going to be here, Steph's voice echoed in Lucia's head. I swear. I just looked at it.
Lucia barely managed to plug her nose with one of her hands before the water in her lungs sent her into a coughing fit.
Oh god, this isn't worth it. Lucia come on, let's, let's leave. Let's go fight the snowflake witch–
Her intestines twitched–
Lucia emptied her stomach into the pool. A sleuth of half digested food diffused into the water. That was probably an improvement, Lucia would much rather bathe in her own vomit than spend another second in this pool of garbage–
But.
"It's just–" Lucia gagged, she was breathing with her mouth and even that did nothing to lessen the stench. It's just. This is just a minor inconvenience.
Minor inconvenience? Nah, nah. You're crazy.
Lucia looked up. Steph seemed to have gotten out of the way before Lucia almost drowned herself– she was hanging off of one of the towers of porcelain on one incredibly long arm, seemingly not even wet. Her face mask probably covered a good percentage of the smell. Also, now that Lucia looked at them– the towers seemed to be gigantic stacks of unwashed dinner plates. Food waste still clung to them– bits of vegetables, grains of rice, spaghetti noodles, layers of soupy grease.
Now that Lucia looked around, the pool around them was saturated with an abundance of other miscellaneous leftovers. Dissolving pizza crusts. Tons of grains of rice. Chicken bones with meat not yet picked clean. That was probably what she swallowed while underwater.
Lucia gagged in spite of herself. Her mental discipline faded for a moment and she breathed in another huge whiff of foul air. Her brain short circuited. She slipped on a slimy part of the floor, lost her balance, and fell underwater.
"Bbbbbbbb," Lucia dry heaved, her entire digestive tract cringing in discomfort to push up vomit that wasn't there. The water splashed and echoed in her ears–
A force pulled the collar of her suit upwards until her feet hovered inches above the water. Steph grabbed her. Steph was literally the best person in this entire world, thank you God Lucia didn't deserve her–
You okay, girl? Steph said.
Lucia wasn't so sure about the answer to that question. I am not touching that water again, Lucia telepathied. She sucked in a tiny gulp of air with her mouth and she could still smell it, taste the rotting, spoiled grease and decaying proteins and bacterial biomass. We need an alternative. I wonder if we can jenga a plate out and use that as a raft–
Steph's arms pulled Lucia slowly upwards until they were level. There's food all over your costume, she said.
In the interest of not making herself not throw up harder than it needed to be, Lucia decided against verifying that claim.
Also, no raft. Just pearl us across, Steph said. Please.
Steph was right. She would get exhausted if she pearled everywhere for no reason, but she could work with exhaustion. Exhaustion was infinitely better than– whatever that was.
Lucia concentrated on murdering witches, wiping this repulsive filth off the Pasadena city map. On cue, a glowing amber silhouette, visible through the towering plates, appeared in the distance.
It was shaped like a potato.
Lucia reverted to her civilian clothes (the food crumbs remained on her) and pulled out her phone. Take this, Lucia pointed towards the witch. Zip around these plates and take a picture.
From Steph's right bicep sprouted a pillar of flesh that gained definition, growing bones, joints, and arteries in a matter of seconds. Its tip morphed into a hand which snatched Lucia's phone and zipped off towards the tower.
If you drop my phone, Lucia said. You will never see the light of heaven.
Relax, Steph said. When've I ever dropped anything? Ohhh. I found something.
What, Lucia said.
Steph's arm began to retract. Think fast!
Suddenly something black and shiny pinged her projectile radar. Lucia's heart leaped to her throat. She extended her arm as wide as she can and it was JUST OUT OF REACH so, thinking fast, she conjured her shield and positioned it in the trajectory–
Lucia's phone slammed the arms of her shield with a deafening metallic thunk which reverberated inside her body.
Except it wasn't her phone. It was a rock.
Lucia dismissed her shield and allowed the rock to splash into the pool. What is wrong with you? Do you want me to have a heart attack?
That was a trust building exercise, Steph said. See, you wouldn't have been scared if you trusted me. I'm disappointed.
Shut the– Where's my phone?
Steph handed her phone back, grinning. Lucia resisted the urge to strangle her to death.
The photos Steph took revealed the locations of plate towers that were mostly obscured from their current angle. She identified one as a reference point, deduced the location where Steph had taken the photo, identified where the other towers were relative to that– good, good.
Lucia could make her pearls curve with a good degree of precision. That should take them close enough to the witch to blast it in half and cannibalize its corpse for sustenance. Cheery. Lucia concentrated. Crackling cyan runes spread across Steph's wrist where Lucia held onto her.
You ever wonder what those glyphs say? Steph telepathied.
It says, quote, "Don't pretend to throw people's phones at them, even if it's not actually their phone and you're joking, you're not funny Steph, consider growing as a person" in Hebrew.
Okay. Jeez. I get it.
Lucia conjured her pearl. Hang on tight.
Magical powers worked how you think they worked. That was why an abstract clump of vaguely spherical teleportational energy had the properties of a baseball. Lucia couldn't make her pearls curve through sheer force of will. Instead, she needed to throw it with the right amount of force and make it spin the right amount too.
It was only through rigorous training, throwing baseballs at herself for hours upon end, that she could make her pearl curve smoothly around one of the plate towers to shoot straight for the witch.
With a familiar squeeze on her collar, the world changed. Putrid air rushed against her as she fell freely–
Lucia's back jerked as something grabbed on the back of her clothes, inches above the putrid waste water below, just close enough to see massive clumps of rice and giant vortexes of stiff ramen noodles.
Steph to the rescue again! Lucia breathed a sigh of relief. And then she breathed in.
Multicolored spots danced around her eyes. Her airways scrunched themselves completely shut.
The air near the labyrinth entrance had been manageable. She could still think if she breathed with her mouth. But this? This went beyond rotten food. It smelled like someone mixed sulfur, rotting eggs, and human excrement in a blender, and shoved Lucia's face into it– a scent so horrid it gained physicality, scratching and biting inside Lucia's shriveling lungs like a rabid animal.
It was time for the nuclear option.
Lucia drew air into her lungs. Stomach acid churned and climbed up her esophagus. The world did jumping jacks in her vision. But still she drew in air until her lungs could no longer contain any more.
The smell was pungent enough that Lucia's nose still sensed it, without breathing. But now, she made out loud, insectile buzzes from all around her.
Flies.
A swarm of flies, each as big as the palm of Lucia's hand. Each detail was magnified– she could distinguish every bristle on their iridescent chitin, each vein on their glassy wings. They were everywhere– feeding on floating crumbs and scraps in the plate towers. Some flew randomly in the air, moving so fast she could feel their wingbeats. The curious ones noticed Lucia and circled her like a flock of vultures.
Common magi knowledge states their abundance meant they were probably not functionally different from normal houseflies. Even if they were big enough to swim, Lucia could electrocute the water and fry them all like a bug zapper.
But what if she couldn't.
The witches portrayed on magi common sense cannot manipulate senses so to make Lucia almost pass out. Maybe they could conglomerate into a fly golem. Lucia's paralysis wouldn't work on that.
Lucia couldn't see Steph. How did she lose Steph? Dread welled up inside her. She was alone. Like she had been in that bathroom. Steph! Lucia screamed. Where are you? I can't find you!
Where are you? Steph screamed back. Relief washed over her. I'm with the witch! Get back here and help me–
Wind. Behind her.
In one swift motion, Lucia pirouetted around and conjured her shield to see a fly smash into it and explode into cloudy yellow-green innards.
More flies shot towards her. Lucia dived underwater and electrified her shield. The water carried Lucia's magical paralysis taser everywhere, and the flies that touched it froze, wings abruptly stopped, and sank into watered down curry. Above the pool, flies crashed into themselves by the dozen, exploding and staining the pool with viscera. Deformed black carcasses floated on the water surface.
Nothing to worry about.
Lucia activated her witch radar, found the potato shaped outline, and conjured a pearl.
She surfaced.
Immediately, the flies that hadn't killed themselves converged upon her. Lucia threw her pearl, which flew inches next to a random fly before zooming off–
A fly smashed into her face.
Something pulled on her collar. Her surroundings faded away.
The fly didn't hurt or anything. It was comparable to getting hit with a water balloon, which was slightly less painful than getting her ankle ripped in half.
But water balloons had water in them. Flies did too.
Guts were smeared all over her face. It got into her left eye and stung like acid. It got in her mouth too, leaving a metallic tang not unlike blood.
Steph! Lucia telepathied. Loud as she could.
Oh hey Lucia. Welcome back from your bizarre adventures. Help me!
Steph was above her. Her arms were a madly branching tree covered with eyes and ears and mouths. She swung across the plate towers like Tarzan. One arm was extended off into the distance, much farther than Lucia could see. That must be how Steph wasn't fainting, Lucia's brain said. She has something supplying all her air where it doesn't smell as bad.
Following her were a swarm of giant mosquitoes. Their bodies were the color of gold, but their lower abdomens were tainted crimson with blood that belonged to Steph. But they weren't as numerous as the flies had been. Steph was handling it well– she extended her arms to snatch bugs out of the air. She moved fast, climbing up and down the plate towers like a monkey, branching her arms to grab multiple handholds at a time. When the mosquitoes attacked Steph's vitals, an arm sprouted out to block the incoming sting. Lucia watched as the arm–
Turn an angry shade of red and swell up to twice its normal size. The inflamed flesh collapsed into Steph's arm as a healthy one moved to squeeze the bug into pulp.
This was how the witch attacked, then. Toxins, poisons, diseases. Things magical girls were normally immune to– but witches didn't attack with real toxins or real smells. It was nothing more than a simulacrum generated from magic, indistinguishable from real toxins but immune to a magi's ability to protect their bodies and regulate their senses–
The itch in her throat was vaguely familiar. Lucia wanted to cough, but she couldn't let out the air she was holding. But this was way too worthless a thing for her to think about then. She activated her radar and found the witch twenty feet to the right.
It was a slouched man. Its features were gnarled and goatlike, eyes beady and black and mouth protruding in a muzzle. It was shirtless, exposing a thin, bony torso with pale skin.
The witch's human appearance ended there. Its dorsal side was seamlessly fused to what looked like a wasp's nest, as wide and tall as it itself was. The skin changed textures near its back, becoming rough and gnarled like tree bark, tiled by tiny regular hexagons. Fleshy white warts– bug larvae– wriggled inside some of them. In the air, there was a hideous buzzing sound.
That wasn't very potato-like.
Lucia conjured her shield, grew out its platings, and launched it at the witch with enough force to slice it in half.
The witch turned its head towards the shield microscopically. And then, it turned to the left and sprinted away at an impressive speed, leaving a wake of foamy ripples behind it. Lucia threw a pearl at the witch, aiming for where it would be in half a second–
And then Lucia was underwater. She activated her harness to call her shield back and clawed at the greasy sediments on the pool floor to push herself upright. In one fluid motion, Lucia caught her shield and sliced it at where she knew the witch was–
There was the crunchy snap of twigs snapping as her shield lodged into a pocket inside the bug hive. With a shrill scream, the witch splashed into the water. Sparks went off in Lucia's brain to confirm the paralysis.
The adrenaline drained from her veins. Barbells crushed against her lungs, her heart pumping lead sludge through her bloodstream. The magical exertion wasn't helping, either.
Just a little more. With a thought, the symptoms disappeared. But the itch in her throat refused to go away.
That was fine. Deal with the witch, they could all get out of here. She pearled to where the witch was. Steph! Get over here! I paralyzed it!
On cue, Steph fell out of the sky.
The splash went twice Lucia's height and showered her in freezing cold water laced with magenta puddles of what was probably melted sorbet. In fact, the water there was freezing– there were ice cubes floating on the surface. Multicolored ice cream scoops mixed into gray sludge in the oily, viscous water.
Ice cubes. Oil. A permutation not unlike the other patches of food the labyrinth boasted, but Lucia couldn't shake the feeling that they could both do the same thing.
Brrr. Steph shivered. We didn't skip that snowflake witch for this. She was no longer so clean– her hair was covered with fruit rinds and wet spaghetti.
For some reason, her throat was itching. She had the urge to cough. Let's kill the witch and get out.
The bug hive growing out of the witch's back was so large that it touched the bottom and stuck out from the surface. It pulsed and throbbed in a rhythmic heartbeat.
Its vitals are probably in the humanoid, Lucia said. Help me flip it over.
Steph wasn't listening. Lucia traced her eyes to bubbles popping on the surface. Her arms extended and grabbed a person from under the water. He looked peculiar– his skin was ashen. He had a goatlike face, eyes spread wide apart and mouth protruding in a muzzle– the witch.
Lucia activated her witch sense. The bug hive glowed. The human did not. He's a civ, Lucia said. Is he drowning? Do we need to do CPR–
The man's eyes flew open in an instant. "NO!" he boomed.
Sheesh, Lucia telepathied. I was just saying–
Steph shot Lucia a meaningful look. Get the witch, I'll handle it. She put a firm hand around the man's shoulders. "Hey buddy. You gotta calm down for me here alright, this ain't none of your business to worry about–"
Lucia reached the shield etched on the bug hive's back.
Goatee guy made a frenzied pounce towards Lucia, but fell underwater. "DON'T!"
Shocked, Lucia looked backwards.
"I saw in my dream," Goatee guy said quickly. "That's not the witch. It's a drone. If you kill it, you alert the Queen. The Queen is much too powerful! Please, save me, take me and run!"
Lucia blinked. "What?"
"It's true! So many had died. So many had perished. Please! Take me and leave–"
Lucia realized the witch was controlling him.
She retrieved her shield. On cue, the white larvae changed colors and split into red strings, thousands of them. They waved madly like strands of sentient hair, squirming to weave themselves together until the hive was covered with a red slime from which no individual could be distinguished.
Lucia smashed her shield onto the slime. It bounced harmlessly off, the remaining force recoiling against Lucia's fingers, sending waves of pain up her joints. There was no spark– no paralysis.
The man squeaked. "I– I just told you not to do that–"
Steph elbowed the man hard in the head, and he became a rag doll. She leaned him against the bug hive.
Lucia strengthened her arm with her gem and bashed the hive again. There was the crisp sound of twigs breaking as her shield sunk through the red membrane and pressed into the bark. But there was no spark. The layer of worms had not been pierced.
This wouldn't work. Second after second ticked down as the witch's paralysis slowly slipped away–
Steph. Get out of the pool, Lucia telepathied. I don't want to stun you.
Steph shrugged. Took a couple of steps back, just outside Lucia's range.
The witch was huge. There was no way it could produce enough bugs to insulate its entire surface area.
Lucia submerged her shield underwater and activated her taser. There was an audible pop in the air– the greasy water rippled with invisible energy as Lucia's paralysis beam propagated. Finally, sparks went off in her head. That was it– paralysis. For another fifteen seconds.
Lucia commended the witch's survival instincts. It had sent a civvie to stall. It exhausted its reserves of bugs in order to defend against one measly attack. But all that was for nothing. Some dark happiness erupted inside her.
Thirteen seconds.
The urge to cough was gone– replaced by a persistent sting in her throat. Her saliva turned into needles as she swallowed.
She was sick. She had a cold. How?
Lucia raised her shield again–
On the witch, a section of the red membrane dissipated, revealing rows of honeycombs filled with larvae. The white shells burst, and out came a swarm of gigantic golden mosquitoes– the same ones that made Steph's arm swell to three times their size after it bit them.
Twelve. Eleven.
Lucia ducked underwater and activated her shield. The freezing water, mixed with ice cream, stuck to her skin, digging their icy roots into Lucia's flesh. The golden bugs hovered just above the water.
Ten.
Steph screamed in rage. Her arms shot out, curving in strange, inhuman angles, squeezing the bug into pulp. Trembling from the cold and spending large sums of magic to stave off hypothermia, Lucia swam through the icy water, next to the witch.
Nine. Eight.
Plenty of time to spare. Lucia electrified her shield, but there was no spark. There was no paralysis.
Seven.
There was a jolt in her brain. The witch's paralysis expired.
Some portion of the witch's barky skin softened and bubbled, gaining the consistency of clay, rearranging itself into a tentacle-like appendage which shot underwater and grabbed– another civilian, a man in a soaked wet business suit– and the next moment he was inside the witch.
LUCIA WHAT THE HELL YOU DOING? Steph screamed.
Lucia turned her shield off. Then on again. Nothing happened, nothing sparked, her electricity wasn't being registered. How was that possible?
The back of Suit Guy's clothes dissolved, revealing skin seamlessly grafted onto bark. His skin was losing saturation, becoming sallow and gray.
The remaining golden mosquitoes lost their apprehension about being paralyzed and shot into the electrified water like darts. Again, nothing happened– no spark. Lucia curled herself into a ball and blocked her upper body with her shield– so the bugs stun at her exposed legs, stingers piercing through her pants, their abdomen bulging with blood– her blood–
Lucia conjured a pearl. She threw it in a flat arc and it sailed through water with a miniscule percentage of water resistance than of a baseball. Drag of a collar she'd gotten a good thirty feet away from the swarm. The bugs buzzed, confused.
Did the bugs build up tolerance, somehow? Were golden mosquitoes naturally immune to electricity like tubifex worms? And then, there was a jolt in Lucia's brain. Some sort of paralysis had expired.
Then Lucia realized.
Ice cream.
Water was a great conductor. Metallic ions could move fast within it, bumping into each other and transferring electric charge millions of times a second. But if you lowered its temperature with ice cream, reduced the speed of its ions, the water would lose its conductivity. Saturate it with polarly inert substances like oil and sugar, and you had a disgusting soupy sludge that neutralized Lucia's paralysis.
The spark that she received came from Goatee guy, who had been strategically placed to cause Lucia's senses to misfire.
The people she was trying to save were being used against her.
The water, Lucia told Steph. The witch froze it and filled it with oil. It's not a good conductor anymore.
Steph's left arm lengthened and flailed to grab onto the witch, using it as leverage to leap and land on top of it. Then, her shoulders bloomed like a flower, diverging into four, five arms. With them Steph threw a rush of punches at the witch, her magically improved strength duplicated tenfold–
Even protected by the tubifex worms, the surface of the nest crumbled, revealing an trypophobic honeycomb of networks oozing with white slime.
Lucia pearled herself next to Steph. The golden mosquitoes were beginning to swarm, biting into Steph, leaving long streaks of red through her flesh. Lucia needed to help her–
Lucia's throat locked up. Ice seeped into her skin. She struggled to keep herself upright.
No. She could still fight.
Lucia steadied her legs. The world spun. But the witch was right there. Steph was still on it, her left shoulder forming a gnarled branch of arms that contorted to form a mass of bulging inflamed flesh that blocked her upper body from getting stung.
Lucia. Steph's voice said. Does blood conduct electricity?
Blood had a ton of iron in it. So, yeah, incredibly well. Lucia could barely find the energy to think of an answer. Yes, she rasped.
Steph smiled.
She grew another arm– but only halfway. The stump wasn't covered by skin. Blood– fresh, red, conductible blood– oozed from it like a leaky faucet, staining the water under the witch red. And, in the middle was a femur, sliced with a perfectly smooth, diagonal cut, the edge sharp enough to glint under the witch.
With effort, Steph removed the defensive weave of swollen arms from above her head and arrayed them over the water towards Lucia. The bugs swarmed her, stinging at her exposed face and neck–
Steph was not perturbed. She stabbed her arm with her weaponized femur. Blood gushed out from the wound like an overflowing river. Lengthening her femur arm, Steph sliced the conglomeration of her left arms open lengthwise.
Blood gushed out her cut, flowing into the filth surrounding them, staining the water red. But Steph didn't stop. More arms sprouted from her shoulders, only to be sliced them open too. The red splotch expanded, moved outwards, until it was wide enough to reach Sofia–
Steph's voice screamed. DO IT! She jumped from witch's back, hand already lengthening away to grab onto the tower next to her–
This will work.
Steph made this easy. Lucia squeezed her eyes shut to block out the disorientation, but even the darkness spun. Her knees became jelly, no different from the other foods that slowly dissolved into the water.
Lucia conjured her shield, electrified it, and plunged it into Steph's blood.
Spark.
Suits guy detached from the bug hive. The back of his suit was missing, but his exposed back looked fine. Steph leaped off, extended her arm to use a plate tower as a handhold to climb up.
T-teamwork, Lucia said. She couldn't take it anymore. She scrunched her body into a ball and shivered.
Gonna climb up and drop a plate on it. That'll probably do it. Steph said. Also, my throat hurts. I probably have malaria now.
Steph's exposed skin was the color of a crushed eggplant. Blood was dripping down her arm. She didn't seem to find it important to mention that.
The mosquitoes that swarmed Steph attacked Lucia instead. Lucia submerged herself under the bloody water. The bugs brave enough to attack were paralyzed in a cacophony of sparks.
Cold, cold, cold. But also so tired. Her muscles were pumped full of lead. She wanted to sleep. She looked in the only place she could– the Goatee guy.
Goatee guy remained in the water behind her, still paralyzed. And Lucia saw– his eyes shone with distress. Bubbles flowed out his nose. The only part of his body that could move– his head shook desperately against the sediment, unable to find enough leverage to float up.
The witch's emotions were manifesting in him! Witches weren't expressive. They didn't have easily readable interfaces that told you what they were thinking. For the first time, Lucia could see it– the death knell of a witch. The desperation. Hope being converted to despair in real time as its efforts to live failed one after the other.
Lucia wanted to see it. Goatee guy's face as Steph dropped the plate on the witch. The pain. Lucia's triumph, to finally witness those who desecrated her city punished–
Lucia. Steph's voice brought her out of her trance. It's snowing.
Snowing?
Lucia looked above. The water was freezing over, particles and crumbs flowing together and coalescing into bits of white snow, and floating upwards, out the water into the abyss. It was snowing– in reverse.
Lucia activated her radar. The bug hive was outlined in an amber glow. And above her– was nothing. But when Lucia looked back down, she saw it.
A glowing amber trail in the distance. The outline of the new witch was too large for Lucia's field of vision to contain. She turned her head to see it in full, the orange glow circumscribing a jagged patch in the sky, a new celestial object
The snowflake witch was huge. Blot-out-the-sky huge.
I think we need to fucking go, Steph said. Tell me where you are. I'll carry you.
No, no, no. Lucia was so close. We still have time. It's not attacking. We can't even see it. Kill the witch first.
We literally do not need to, Steph said. They'll kill themselves. We save us and the civs. That's what matters here. That's what we came to do.
Sure. That was true.
Goatee guy is right next to me– Suit Guy is right next to me too, wow. I can go grab them– acid coursed through Lucia's veins at the idea of movement. I can try my best, anyway.
What if there's more than these two.
Lucia scowled. Could there really be more? The entrance was a puddle. I'm surprised there's any at all!
Pause.
I'll give you a pass for suggesting that, Steph said. because you've got a fever and all. Turn off your paralysis. I have an idea.
Lucia thought about arguing with her. Her brain spun her vision into a washing machine at the idea of thinking. Instead, Lucia turned off her paralysis.
Steph splashed into pool next to her. She surveyed her surroundings. Jesus, you really left him underwater? You know humans need to breathe, right?
Steph dragged him upright. He took a breath and coughed out a concerning amount of water.
Pearl them away, Steph said, pressing Goatee and Suit Guy's arms into Lucia's hand. As far away as you can get. Then, if the witch tries to drag anyone else out of the pool–
Around the ocean floor all around them, shards of ice flowed against the water current and collected into chunks of white hail. Then, they fell upwards, shooting out the pool and accelerating into the miasma above.
Go. Go! Steph said. Lucia grabbed onto the civilians, drawing to draw the runes on them– but flakes of ice began collecting on Lucia's arm and–
OW!
A chunk of hail the size of an ostrich egg formed on Lucia's arm, gouging out skin to make room. The cyan runes she drew receded into her hand. Blood gushed everywhere. Instantly, the hailstone flew off again into the aether with a sickening CRUNCH–
Unbearable pain ripped through the left side of her body. Muscle tendons tore. Bones snapped. Further than that her arm dangled limply like meat on a drying rack. She willed the pain to go away, and after an excruciating period of recovery it was reduced to a dull throb. Still, she couldn't feel her left arm.
What was that. It wasn't magic because Lucia could still dull it. The hailstone didn't feel magic either. What–
No, that was enough thinking. Steph's plan. Other civilians–
Her fever cleared.
It was immediate. The headache was gone. The nausea disappeared. The chill that suffused through every cell in her body evaporated.
FUCK! Steph said. FUCK! No. No. No don't you dare. Don't you dare!
The bug hive witch had been crushed to death by four, five hailstones. The layer of tubifex worms was petrified into gray basalt. The bark crumbled in Steph's hands. It must have been instant.
Lucia let out her breath. The acrid smell disappeared, too. Goatee guy and Suits guy were out cold, their expressions serene.
Around them the hailstorm propagated. Hailstones fell upwards towards the sky. It was uncanny seeing things fly without being encased in an aura of magic or leaving a wake of chemical waste. It was as if gravity itself was wrong.
Either way, they needed to leave. The hailstones formed without warning. Another one could form in her skin any second. It could hit her brain. Her gem, even, still in its toe ring form, hidden in only a layer of fabric in her combat boots–
"It's okay," Lucia told Steph. "Keep looking. You'll find someone."
Steph sent her arms into the ocean floor around her, clawing at the sediment, looking for a human face. Hailstones rose from the ground and gored into her arms. Steph didn't wince.
Lucia saw flakes of white frost begin to collect behind Steph. It probably wouldn't reach her.
"Behind you," Lucia warned anyway.
"Behind me?" Steph lit up. Another arm sprouted behind her shoulder, grew eyes, extended behind her, right into the coalescing white mist–
CRUNCH
A hailstone formed where her arm was, smashing a bloodied crater into her shoulder before falling up. Steph yelped– more shocked than pain. Her network of appendages retracted. Millimeters next to Steph's wound, under her torn dress, Lucia made out a dim green glow–
Steph ripped her gem off her stethoscope and shoved it into her pocket. "Fuck me." She said, her eyes bulging out of her sockets."Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. We are not doing this, we are not doing this. We are NOT DOING THIS—"
"Steph. It's fine! It was just a coincidence. Don't say that kind of–"
Steph was trying her hardest to pull out her professionally braid hair. "We're leaving. We're leaving! Lucia get me out of here, please–"
If Lucia pressed onto Steph's spine, her hand would sink into soft, malleable putty. If Steph wanted to risk her life, then she should go risk her life, not be scared off when what she knew could happen happened.
"Sure," Lucia said. "Let's leave."
Lucia splayed her left palm and placed both Steph and the two civs upon it. Runes spread from her hand over their skins.
Steph rambled incoherently. "I almost died. I almost died. Fuck!"
"You're fine." Lucia said.
Lucia conjured a pearl. A bout of dizziness struck her. When was the last time she teleported four people? Not to mention the storm. Lucia had no time to calculate trajectories, if they hit a hailstone it'd be over.
Lucia threw her pearl.
The teleportation was much harsher on her collar than she was used to.
They'd gone– a couple of hundred feet? The hailstorm could still be heard, but nothing else could.
No hailstones formed. Here the labyrinth shimmered and blinked in and out of existence, revealing the real world behind it.
"I–" Steph said. She looked like she'd mostly calmed down. "You think there's any civs in this place?"
"This place is out of bounds of the snow witch's labyrinth," Lucia said. "If there were any, they would be freed since the bug witch died."
"You're right. That. That was a close one."
"Not really," Lucia said.
Steph shrugged. She threw something at Lucia. A grief seed.
The labyrinth around them rippled and disappeared. The pool drained away. The real world reformed behind them– the back of a convenience store,the same overflowing dumpsters and the highway beyond chained fences. The sun was still high up in the sky. In the summer it wouldn't set for another four hours. All of its warmth was being sapped away by Snowflake witch, whose labyrinth entrance spun and boiled ominously next to them.
Steph's costume disappeared in a flash. Her civilian clothes were soaked and covered with garbage.
"We call a meeting tonight." Lucia said wistfully. "Report the witch. Form a party. We will take it down tomorrow."
The two civilians were slowly coming to. The butterfly mark on their necks was fading away. They should probably leave soon.
"Sure," Steph said. "Whatever makes you happy."