Chapter 47 | PoV: Sanya
Screams rang out through the academy halls. Frightened. Pained. Footsteps thundered as they ran away from something.
What in the ever-living hellscape?
Dima snapped up from her book.
Sanya looked up from the Celestial Summoning grimoire and froze.
Voices screamed about monsters, and begging for help. Snarls and growls echoed through the halls. Monsters indeed. How? From where? What? . . .
Dima and Sanya glanced at each other.
The doorknob to the infirmary door jiggled—panicked.
The door swung open, revealing a haggard librarian.
Sanya was too shocked to speak. Same with Dima. Sanya had never seen the librarian except anything either than silly or composed, this was alien as much as the screams and the snarls . . . Okay, Sanya didn't see much of some people, and only certain sides of others. She couldn't deduce entire people based on the faces they showed her.
The librarian stopped and took a few deep breaths.
“I should’ve . . .” The librarian shook her head. “Sanya! With me!”
Sanya blinked. She would need more words than that. “W-what’s going on?”
The librarian sighed. “Monsters. Nur opened a portal to the abyss. He horribly misunderstood—his greed and blindness—there is no time for this! Help clear all these monster-freaks!”
What? Sanya didn't know how to process any of that. Nur did a thing because of stuff, and now there's monsters. Got it.
Erm. Monsters? Like what? Did the librarian mean bloodthirsty animals from stories?
“C-can I take them?” Sanya found herself asking.
“You must! We need to clear a path out.”
A path out . . . to the surface? Were they abandoning the academy and getting out? Where would they go after that?
“Mai?”
The librarian paused. She shrugged.
Okay. That tossed Sanya into action.
Sanya scrambled for her staff. “[Pocket Space].”
She took her grimoire and tossed it into her personal tear in reality. She pushed herself off her bed.
If for nothing else, Sanya was going to push through and make sure that cute bubbly girl was alive. Sanya needed her for Fleshweaving . . . and precious company. Mai was priceless to her. Maybe she could also do this to confirm if the bigots were dead . . .
. . . okay maybe that was uncalled for.
“Dima, look after the kids!” The librarian ordered. She rushed away from the doorway and into the hall.
Sanya followed her.
The doors to the classrooms were open. Students had run into their far corners, hiding as far as they could from . . . the surface?
Sanya did not look back to see where Dima went.
“Do you still only know [Starshot]?” The librarian asked, running through the hallway.
Sanya shook her head. Then she realized the librarian didn't look back to see her. “I know more.”
“Good. Don't use [Organic Consumption].”
Sanya titled her head. “You knew I learned the Consumptions? Why not? . . .
“Risky. Dangerous,” The librarian said, not elaborating on how she knew.
How did she know? How did she know that Sanya knew those spells but not if she knew anything beyond [Starshot] for Celestial Summoning? Did she, perhaps, already know, and that was just a slip-up? Maybe she just guessed?
Who was the librarian?
It didn't matter! Not now!
The two of them emerged into the garden-like foyer.
Strange beasts prowled the chamber. They turned onto the left and right tunnels, others ran forward–towards Sanya and the librarian.
Others lingered around, sniffing their surroundings.
Oh, and picking at the corpses on the floor.
Half a dozen people lay on the floor, oozing out blood and becoming a late-afternoon meal for monsters from another dimension.
Sanya attacking Thamina flashed in her mind. The relentless swing of her staff . . . Thamina's body on the floor . . .
Sanya twitched.
Blood . . .
Mai's fingers . . .
A flash of water snapped Sanya out of it.
In yet another surprise to Sanya, the librarian began firing off bolts of water at the monsters. The monsters took steps back, others looked up, suddenly provoked.
She only tickled them. Could these things even be damaged? There weren't any corpses of them in the room.
The librarian knew water magic? What kind of magic was that—outside of being called “water magic,” of course. Sanya had not seen that before.
Did the librarian need a staff? Why didn't she have one?
“I need to get to the staff chambers and retrieve my staff. Can you kill all of these?” The librarian said.
Could she read thoughts too?
Where even were the staff chambers? Huh.
“I can try. No promises.”
“I believe in you!” the librarian took off in a run. She used what Sanya believed was basic water magic to try and rebuff any monsters that got too close. It stunned them for barely a second, but enough to give her a bit of an advantage. She turned right.
The rooms down there were the library, gardens, and crafting room. We're the staff chambers down there somewhere?
Or maybe the librarian slept in the library?
Whatever!
Sanya swallowed. A couple of monsters bounded towards her.
“[Starshot],” Sanya pointed at the closer one.
A yellow star shot from her staff and slammed into the monster. Its entire face became purple mist. Its body dropped not soon after. It melted into purple juices, leaving strange crystal-like objects behind.
Sanya repeated the spell just as a great maw opened in front of her, four feet in the air.
Sanya shot that monster down too.
Monsters looked up from their meals and other curious tendencies and took one moment to stare at Sanya.
Then, they charged.
Four more of the wolf-looking things. They ran towards Sanya, reducing the space between them in only a few heartbeats.
U-um. She wouldn't be able to cast four [Starshots] so quickly . . .
Sanya began preparing a spell she had seen in the book. It took precious moments, but hopefully it was still quicker than the alternative. Plus, it would give her a new spell for later. If she didn't die to these leaping monsters.
“[Meteor Bombardment].” Sanya pointed in between the group of converging monsters.
Rocks appeared paces above them, materializing out of round portals. The rocks fell down in a blink of an eye.
They slammed into the monsters. They couldn't even whimper before they turned into purple goo and crystal, only paces away from her.
Monsters continued to spill into the foyer from the entrance.
What happened to all the students on the surface? . . . What happened to Mai?
Were the only monsters these wolf-things?
Sanya continued onward.
She soon found out that the monsters were not, in fact, only the wolves.
Sanya pushed through the foyer, pulverizing wolf-things into purple goo. She walked forward, stepping around that gross stuff and not bothering to figure out what the crystals were.
Then, tentacle monsters and large scorpion-things appeared. The scorpions fought with a pair of big meaty claws. They brandished their stingers, but never got close enough to use them. The tentacle monsters walked on eight of them, swinging them like swords and jabbing like spears. They had a beak-like mouth behind all of those appendages as well.
Um, correction—they only had two tentacles. Those other things were arms.
Anyway!
They had two large, ball-like eyes on either side of its big frilly head.
Sanya turned them all into melted purple flatbreads—and the crystals, of course. No—she did not have the time to figure out what they were! They were probably useless anyway. Definitely not special or anything, nope.
Someone tapped Sanya on the shoulder, causing her to jump.
She looked away from the one-sided battlefield in the middle of the school and looked at the offender.
“Librarian,” Sanya greeted flatly.
The librarian nodded. “Student.” The librarian held her staff—notably blue, but not the light-blue of an aeolian mage. Hers was a deeper blue, like a deep reservoir of water. The butt of her staff looked like a water droplet breaking away from something. The top was a complicated entwinement or sculpture of metal rods that did not make any sense to Sanya. What did that have to do with water?
Sanya snuck a glance at the corridor to the next foyer. “I don't know your name.”
“Oh,” the librarian coughed. “Right.”
Sanya raised an eyebrow. Okay? . . . Guess she wasn't going to get a name. Sanya decided not to press for it. She knew she wouldn't receive it.
“[Water bolt],” The librarian cast.
An arrow—okay, a bolt, like a crossbow, not from a bow, right, yeah, a bolt (Sanya needed a synonym! Bolt was just used!)—of . . . blue liquid (water, because, synonym) shot from the librarian's staff and pierced the head of an approaching purple tentacle-monster.
The blasphemous thing continued to scuttle forward.
“[Starfall],” Sanya cast.
A big bright ball of flame crashed down onto the monster and annihilated it. It burst into little embers, burning away the otherworldly juices. Was it their blood? Flame, and Sanya wasn't even a thermal mage. Neat spell.
The librarian snorted. “Show-off.”
“It's not my fault your magic is bad!” Sanya protested.
“I don't think you understand how much stronger your magic affinity is compared to others. You remind me of Of-Jinan.”
“Who's Of-Jinan?” Sanya blasted another creature to pieces.
“Not important—she's dead. Come on, let's go. I wonder how those idiots are letting so many monsters inside,” The librarian pushed.
The two of them carved a path through the monsters. The two killed at a quicker rate than the monsters replaced themselves. Eventually, they made it through the corridor and into the first foyer. The incline down to the double doors swarmed with nasty purple things from another dimension.
Purple goo clung to the floors like rain puddles—right, rain existed now. Sanya ignored the bodies and the blood. She did not see anyone she recognized.
Sanya glanced up. Stray projectiles arched overhead, damaging and killing some of the monsters.
She couldn't see who produced the magic from here. Whoever it was, there was at least one person up there somewhere! If it was Barakat or another on her short list, she hoped to expedite their downfall to some unfortunate monster attack—um, what? Sanya didn't think anything.
So, Sanya and the librarian continued their massacre.
Monster after monster, step after step through the clingy purple liquid, they made their way up the incline and onto the surface proper. What could the crystals be used for? How much would they end up being worth? Had Sanya littered the floor with thousands of gold coins?
The two of them made it up the incline.
Only to see hundreds of monsters. They crawled around like a colony of ants suddenly anarchic, pooling from some great purple portal dozens of paces beyond them. If there were human bodies, Sanya couldn't see them amongst the monsters.
Sanya glanced around, but didn't have the time. Wolf after tentacle-thing after oversized scorpion rushed at her. Each one fell to a star or a different star or sometimes a bombardment of big rocks for good measure.
Unfortunately Sanya hadn't quite grasped the absurdly destructive spells yet. Not [Nebula Cleansing] or [Black Hole] or any of those fun things.
Whatever, her three Cosmic Summoning spells were enough to deal with all of these things so far, with help from the librarian.
When would these creatures stop coming? . . .
For now, Sanya carved her way towards other humans.
Maybe she should protect the pathway into the academy? . . . Nah.