The God Of Destruction's Academy Life

Every student stood frozen, terror crawling up their spines, unable to look away from the abomination seated before them. The silence stretched so complete that several of them could hear their own hearts hammering against their ribs. Then it spoke, and its voice seemed to come from everywhere at once, wrapping around them like smoke.

"Listen. Crimson Mirage is an illusion-play type of magic. The moment it’s cast, it transforms everything around it into a perfect stage, with a single purpose to show its caster a flawless performance. The instant I was resurrected, I cast a small spell across this entire forest. From that moment on, the whole forest and everything surrounding it fell under its control."

A ripple of horrified understanding passed through the crowd. Somewhere near the back, a girl clapped a hand over her mouth, her knees buckling as the truth landed. None of it was real. None of it was ever real. Nix stood rigid, his jaw working soundlessly, replaying every step he’d taken since the barrier first appeared, trying to find the exact moment his own will had stopped being his own and finding nothing. That absence was almost worse than knowing.

"Within that little theater, everything plays its part to make the show as entertaining as possible for its audience. To achieve that, everything inside the affected area has its rules rewritten. Space itself will warp, and every prop and actor will act precisely as scripted, keeping the performance moving forward."

Props, someone whispered, the word catching in their throat like a hook. He called us props. We were just props in someone else’s play. Lloyd’s grip on his greatsword had gone white-knuckled, not from readiness now but from something closer to nausea the dawning realization that every ounce of courage he’d felt, every decision he’d believed was his own, might have been nothing more than blocking in someone else’s play.

"But if anything inside that theater tries to interrupt the play, it’s shut down immediately unusual thoughts that might disrupt the actors, or decisions that would make the performance dull and uninteresting. Those kinds of choices get overridden as well."

Xath’rael paused, savoring the silence it left behind, watching the horror settle over their faces like it was the finest part of the show. Then it continued, almost lazily.

"Now, do you understand what just happened here? Well, if you do, good for you. But if you don’t, I really don’t care to explain it any further, because all of you are about to die anyway. That’s the only bit of conversation I have left to offer you. All of you made for wonderful characters in this little play of mine, and it gave me a great deal of entertainment. But enough of that. I’m bored again."

The word bored landed heavier than any threat could have. Several students began to shake openly, tears cutting silent tracks through the dust and blood on their faces. There was something uniquely unbearable about being told, so casually, that their deaths were simply the closing of a show that had stopped holding its audience’s interest.

Then Xath’rael turned its head, slow and deliberate, its eight eyes settling on Elizabeth and Lyra, standing side by side. A smile spread across its ruined, goat-boned face.

"I don’t know who either of you are, or how you both came to have immeasurable fates. And to think you’d be delivered to me on a silver platter right after my resurrection what a gift from heaven that truly is. To think Lord Death would show me such mercy, after thirty thousand years spent living in his Nether. Witnessing his mercy like this, delivered right at the moment of my rebirth truly, his generosity knows no limit. All praise be to Death."

The moment those words settled on the two of them, something in the clearing seemed to go very still, as though every remaining student understood, all at once, that whatever was coming next would be worse than anything that had come before. Someone near Elizabeth made a small, involuntary sound, a whimper quickly swallowed, too afraid even to be seen being afraid.

Elizabeth and Lyra felt it hit them like ice water poured straight into their veins. Something deep inside them screamed to run, to get away from this place, from those eight yellow eyes fixed so hungrily on them alone. If they stayed, there was no version of this where they survived. But neither of them could move. Their minds begged their legs to carry them away, and their legs simply refused to listen. Fear had them locked entirely in its grip, and somewhere beneath that fear, a colder thought had already begun to take root that perhaps their bodies weren’t disobeying them at all. Perhaps something else, still, was deciding what they were and weren’t allowed to do.

Right then, they noticed Xath’rael finally lowering the hand it had been resting its head against. It planted the dagger it held into the ground, using it to push itself up to its feet. As it rose, its sheer bulk sent tremors through the earth beneath them, and every student felt the ground shudder under their boots. Once it stood fully upright, they finally grasped its true height. It still stood roughly fifteen feet tall, just as before, but now that its body carried a far more humanoid shape, it looked infinitely more terrifying than it had before.

Its entire body was covered in an armor-like shell resembling a turtle’s carapace, its reddish skin visible through the gaps between the plates. Its four yellow eyes swept over the crowd like a predatory insect surveying prey, its mandibles clicking together in a low, hungry hum. Once fully on its feet, it turned its gaze slowly across every student present, scanning them the way someone might pick through a bunch of grapes, searching for the perfect one to eat first.

Watching it move like this, the fragile courage the students had been clinging to nearly collapsed entirely. Several of them dropped straight to the ground. And the moment a few of them fell, Xath’rael’s attention fixed specifically on them. It settled, at last, on its first target a girl with green hair falling to her shoulders, small in stature, with a striking, delicate face. But now, alongside that beauty, something else had settled into her features pure, overwhelming terror. That girl was Natasha Fenwick.

Its gaze fixed on Natasha, Xath’rael slowly raised one of its blade-arms. It was in no hurry at all, moving as though certain that nothing standing before it could ever slip away.

Natasha, still on the ground, watched the abomination raise its blade toward her and began to shake uncontrollably, fear seizing every inch of her. In her mind, she begged silently.

Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Please... please somebody...someone please help me. Save me.

But she didn’t have the strength left in her body to say the words aloud. All she could do was tremble there in terror. And then she saw the blade, slowly rising, begin to turn and align directly with her. She watched it come, utterly unable to move, unable to do anything at all. Her body simply refused to respond. All she could do was stare up at the approaching blade through tear-filled eyes, and accept, with whatever peace she could find, the death now bearing down on her.

Xath’rael’s blade descended slowly, cutting through the still air around it. Natasha kept her eyes locked on it, unable to look away. It closed to within four feet of her. And in that moment, realizing there was truly nothing left she could do, she closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable. But then she felt something some presence suddenly appear directly in front of her face, a rush of displaced air washing over her entire body. Confused, unsure what had just happened, she slowly opened her eyes.

When she did, she saw the blade frozen in place, stopped just three inches from her face. It wasn’t moving any closer. Despite everything, she couldn’t understand why the blade had suddenly halted right in front of her. She tilted her head slightly to the side, peering past the blade, up at Xath’rael. Watching it, she saw the goat-like portion of its head twitching slightly. Then it turned its head, looking off to the right. At first, she had no idea why.

But a moment later, she noticed something rustling in the bushes to her left, as though something were trying to force its way out. And she wasn’t the only one who heard it nearly every student present picked up on the sound at the same time, and instinctively turned to look toward the bush on their left. The longer they watched, the more violent the rustling became, until finally, five figures emerged from within it.

It was Carlos, Arthur, and Simon’s team.