Magical Girl Overtime [Second Arc Complete!]

Moon of Long Nights, 1068 AR

Mana jumped through her portal into Nicola’s workshop, leaving the chaotic streets of Tokyo behind. She looked back for just a moment to see Arisu lifting Marisa up in her arms and flying off, then she closed her portal and approached the workbench.

It was empty again, which didn’t fill Mana with confidence, and soon after she found the reason: the fort on riverbank opposite of Romystedt was under attack again, just like it was in Summer. What was different, however, was that this time there wasn’t simply a formation in front of the fort pelting its magic barriers with spells. No, this time the attackers had closed in, ladders were raised up while ballista-looking siege engines pelted the other sections of the walls with glass flasks that contained strange concoctions. They shattered against the walls, melting the battlements and leaving defenders out in the open, forcing them to abandon their positions or be exposed to further attacks from magical arrows, which they met with their shields.

Mana gritted her teeth and immediately opened a portal to the fort. The terrible noises of battle filled her ears as she found herself in the courtyard, with Romystedt’s city guard running from corner to corner, carrying supplies, ammo and weapons, while the dwarf she still knew from her fight with Nicola barked orders.

“More shot for the north wall! And arrows for the east wall for the elf archers! Get some rejuvenating potions to the mages, prioritize the Geomancers for wall repairs! Move, move, for the mistress!”

Mana looked around in awe, watching people of various backgrounds rushing up the stairs to man the battlements. Some were carrying wounded soldiers down, and up on the battlements other soldiers were shooting both long guns and bows, seeking cover behind the stone, or, where it was already molten, behind their companions’ shields.

Nicola was on the battlements herself, giving orders. She was wearing the same red uniform she wore when she commanded the same fort’s defenses in the summer, and now it was an even greater contrast, as the ground and the walls were covered with snow. Mana hurried up the stairs, almost bumping into some defenders, who looked at her suspiciously before they recognized her and let her through. On the battlements she pushed past soldiers who were preventing attackers from scaling the walls with ladders, pushing them back with halberds and sending the attacking soldiers crashing down into the snow below. Some attackers managed to scale the ladders all the way up, and their greeting was either steel or the hand of one of the defenders yanking the helmet off the attacker, resulting in the elf underneath looking around confused and panicked until they were pulled into the fortress, frozen with a stasis spell and brought to a gathering place further below. As she followed the procedure with her eyes, she recognized that the frozen elves were brought to Lithael, the healer, who made incisions in their stomachs and removed strange, crimson-glowing gemstones, smashing them before she closed the cuts with her healing magic and released the stasis spell again to receive the elves’ confused words of thanks.

“They’re attacking here, too? What happened to your marionettes?” Mana asked as she reached Nicola, and the puppeteer turned her head in surprise.

“Young Mana… your presence here means…”

She let out a curse and walked towards the railing, shouting into the courtyard.

“Bernuil! You have command for the next ten minutes!”

“Aye, ma’am! We’ll show you what flesh and blood soldiers can do, mark my words!”

“Just don’t die and keep the casualties to an absolute minimum! That is an order!”

“Yes ma’am!”

Nicola then quickly grabbed Mana by the arm.

“To my workshop, then,” she spoke and Mana nodded, quickly opening a portal back. Nicola walked through the opening, and the sounds of battle died down as Mana closed the portal again. The puppeteer kept walking, approaching one of her shelves from which she retrieved a crystal ball, bringing it to the workbench.

“My guess is you also have enslaved soldiers to deal with?” Nicola spoke, and Mana let out a long sigh.

“That, and the Dream Empress, and also ‘players’ from the world of the Rodent Regiment. Err, the rats with guns, if you’ve ever seen them.”

Nicola raised a brow, turning on her chair.

“All of those at once?” she inquired.

“Yeah! Hey, uh… you never answered me. What happened to your marionettes?”

“I was careless, that’s what happened,” Nicola said dismissively.

“The previous attacks always followed a pattern and were ill-prepared, making me grow complacent. One swift strike was all it took to reduce my soldiers to lumber after I followed my ‘conditioning’ like a good little dog.”

Mana didn’t comment on the venom she heard in Nicola’s voice towards the end. She could imagine that she was beating herself up over these circumstances, but dwelling on it helped neither of them.

“Let’s have a look at what’s happening to your world, then, young Mana, but first allow me to be a little selfish,” Nicola announced and activated the crystal sphere. Its blue surface quickly made way for a clear image of Tokyo, and the chaos that was unfolding on its street, though it first went to a house that Mana wasn’t familiar with, but she quickly understood as she saw Hifumi, trapped in a dream bubble. Nicola hissed and looked like she wanted to jump out of her seat, but Mana put a hand on her arm.

“She’s safest in there right now. Unless you want me to get her right now?”

Nicola hesitated, but then she nodded.

“It’s not really safe here, either until we fend off that invasion. Let’s continue.”

The image changed again, and Mana could see Arisu and Marisa flying towards Bellona and Kuma’s position, though they were attacked by multiple ‘players’ who they had to permanently defeat by destroying their deep dive headsets before they could move on.

She saw houses vanishing after players planted strange devices around their corners, and she could see that people with colorful hair like her own underwent their own mutations as it happened, like they were hit by a wave of magic.

“That is…” Mana started and Nicola grimaced.

“It appears that the boundaries between the worlds are being weakened further. It was only a matter of time until every person with features like yours would mutate, but I didn’t think it would be this fast…” the puppeteer spoke and continued the observation.

Bellona and Kuma were drawing most of the players’ attention, mostly due to the latter’s enormous size and monstrous appearance, painting him as a target to take down for the various thrill-seekers, while Bellona worked to keep most of them off his back. Of course, the stream of attackers was near endless, given that the players could simply return after waiting for a counter to hit zero - or so Mana assumed their reappearances worked.

Another glimpse showed Pallas Athena engaged in combat in the sky. Her and the Dream Empress were flying at breakneck speed through the various streets of Tokyo, taking potshots at each other, though the Dream Empress appeared unusually driven.

Next, Miyu and Momo were fighting an elf wearing leather armor who wielded daggers, or at this point they looked more like short swords to Mana. She surprisingly held her own against the Magical Girls, with the occasional support from a mind-controlled soldier. Pure magic spells from either of the idols were blunted and deflected whenever the elf raised a talisman she wore on her person.

“They still abuse the Rowan I received from the Celestial Sisters. Regrettable,” Nicola commented and Mana bit her lower lip.

“And unfortunately, the trouble doesn’t end with your city,” Nicola announced, and the image on her crystal ball changed again. More ‘players’ were rampaging all around the world. They destroyed buildings, clashed with local Magical Girls or other protectors with an otherworldly patron, or even fought the world’s militaries. One image showed an aircraft carrier group in the middle of the ocean. The carrier was ejecting billowing smoke from various holes and already tilted to the side, while all the escort ships around it were sinking, with a dozen floating figures in the air wearing mechanized armor and weapons observing the results of their work.

“What can we do against that? In thought with your marionettes, we could buy some time…!” Mana complained quietly, and Nicola shook her head.

“They were destroyed, as I told you. However, if you desire to keep these invaders busy to reduce harm until you have a more permanent solution: I recently took an apprentice. You know her.”

Mana tilted her head. She racked her brain for a moment until the weekly play sessions her and Arisu attended sprung back into her mind.

“Rinko?!”

“The very same. However, you might have your work cut out for you, if you wish to utilize her powers. It appears she was caught off guard,” Nicola cautioned her. Mana checked the images on the puppeteer’s crystal ball and let out a groan as she recognized the location as Akihabara. The main street was filled with dream shades, and Rinko was clearly visible, trapped in a bubble in one of the stores, which housed a miniature games vendor and a café.

December 2025

Mana hopped through her portal into the crowded streets right between the endless dream phantoms, which swarmed around the many bubbles in the middle of the streets. Now that she was back in her world, she noticed the blaring of TVs in every building that had switched themselves on and played the NHK emergency news about the situation.

Please don’t try to send out news helicopters…

Her presence was quickly noticed, so she didn’t dwell long on the situation and sprang into action, instead. She quickly brought herself to an elevated position with the Jump spell and channeled a multitude of Arrow spells which she aimed down the street.

Countless phantoms in the shape of dreams and aspirations looked up at her, some wearing knightly armor, others wearing astronauts’ EVA suits. And soon after, they were banished as arrows pierced their fragile forms. Mana spent a good five minutes shooting arrow after arrow from her platform until only the bubbles were left; she knew that it was only a matter of time until the next wave of phantoms would emerge, so she pondered her options, looking around and counting the bubbles she had to deal with.

She opted to open a portal to a place she knew would be safe and immediately stared into the golden foxlike eyes of a bemused deity, who was currently busy sweeping the grounds of one of her temples, wearing the typical miko dress.

“Mana Kanno. Young descendant of a Bakeneko. To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asked, looking rather concerned as she saw Mana’s exasperated appearance.

“You don’t know what’s going on outside?” Mana asked quickly, and the goddess shook her head.

“While I’m in my realm, I can only look outside through the torii gates, and that is a very narrow view of the world, don’t you think? However, I noticed a thickening of the magic in the air that came through.”

“Yes, that would be the barriers between worlds weakening,” Mana said, shooting an arrow at a dream shade as it emerged from a nearby dream bubble.

“Anyway, I need to clear this street of dream bubbles. That means I need to find a safe place for the people I’m freeing so that those guys who enjoy murdering people don’t find them. I’m going to drop them off at your place!”

Inari narrowed her eyes and spoke quietly.

“Under one condition, Mana.”

Mana looked at her, blinking in confusion. She didn’t expect this kind goddesses’ help to be conditional, but she listened.

“They cannot know who I am. If any of them asks where you’re bringing them, tell them it’s a faraway shrine, and I am its humble miko. It would spell chaos if people learned that their ‘gods’ are indeed physical beings who inhabit the same plane of existence as them.”

Mana nodded and quickly jumped off her platform, down into the streets. She popped one bubble after the other, pulling the confused citizens out of them and immediately pushing them through another portal to the relative safety of Inari’s domain. She saw the white-haired woman watch every new arrival with some exasperation, though she didn’t do anything to stop Mana’s plan. As promised, she didn’t tell anyone about Inari’s true nature, though the strange place with the golden sky was possibly a tell for some of them.

The immediate vicinity of the miniature store was quickly cleared like that, and the inside as well, leaving only one dream bubble: Rinko’s.

Mana popped the bubble, letting the miniature collector fall on the ground.

“Ah? Ah, Mana?! What are you doing here?” the young woman quickly asked and scrambled to her feet while Mana had a look around.

There were multiple tables on which in-progress games had been rudely interrupted by the propagation of the dream shades. Six-sided dice and measuring tapes were scattered between miniatures, some painted while the majority were not. Mana recognized Rinko’s miniatures on one table as one of the few sets that were fully painted.

Some other tables were set up as painting stations, it seemed. Brushes, water cups and paper towels were prepared for customers, as well as some small, half-full pots of paint.

Large display cases dominated the store’s floor, showing off dioramas of armies facing off. Swarms of miniatures assaulted a position held by entrenched defenders, with large robots towering over them and pointing their weapons at the coming forces.

“This is perfect,” Mana said, turning towards Rinko.

“Nicola sent me. She wants you to create an army to defend this world, just as you trained for.”

“HUH?!”

These damn fakes have improved.

That thought filled Taenya with rage, which was good. The rage she felt towards these two was all that kept her going at this very moment, as she dodged magic projectiles or used her Rowan talisman to dissipate them entirely before returning to her dance of death in melee with the white-and-blue one.

The black-and-red one had a bow, which was a nuisance. As she dodged a thrust aimed at her arm, she quickly grabbed the spear’s shaft and yanked it further forward, to make the white one stumble in front of her, into the line of fire of the black one, making her hesitate and reposition instead of shooting at Taenya.

None of this should be happening, yet it did. The moon-aspected warrior could use her bow, despite fighting in broad daylight, and the sun-aspected one was able to use magic. A horrible truth which she painfully learned the last time she danced with these two. She attempted to stab the white one in the throat once she pulled her close, but the black Magical Girl was way more proficient with her bow than the elf could have anticipated; before the tip of her blade could even get close enough to her opponent’s throat, it was struck by an arrow and knocked out of her hand, uselessly clattering along the road.

She jumped back, building some distance between the Magical Girls and herself before she drew another dagger. This one was meant to be thrown, but with her original off-hand weapon now being on the ground somewhere, she couldn’t be picky.

“Why are you doing this? All of this, for what? Some rice?” the white one asked. Sol, she was called. Taenya didn’t know why she remembered her name just now.

She hesitated a moment after that question, then she cursed herself for her carelessness as she had to run and dodge multiple shots from the Magical Girl in black.

“I’m just doing this for my people!” she countered the question without giving a real answer and tossed a throwing knife towards the archer. She used the short moment said archer had to dodge and closed the distance to the white-clad spear wielder, jumping over the spear that was thrust her way to stop her, and gracefully landing on top of it, running all the way to its wielder’s face and kicking her in the cheek to send her stumbling backwards before Taenya had to dodge another volley of arrows. She quickly ran behind a nearby house’s corner, catching her breath.

“Your people? And what would those people say if you come back with food that you stole after letting people get killed in other worlds?”

“Why does that matter to you? You’re as good as dead anyway,” Taenya hissed, readying the two wrist-mounted crossbows on her armor.

“Your people, if they were here, would tell you to stop!” the one called Sol spoke and Taenya froze for a moment. She peeked around the corner, seeing the two Magical Girls standing at medium distance.

This was ideal. She could hit one of them with a surprise shot from one of her crossbows like this – and yet she didn’t shoot. Not yet. Curiosity took over.

“How would you know?”

“We know about the drought, and the mind control helmets! Madame Bille interrogated the brainwashed soldiers her forces captured,” Luna spoke.

Taenya gritted her teeth and fired a bolt around the corner. It shattered the hastily erected barrier in front of Sol, but the Magical Girl anticipated that move, hitting the bolt out of its flight in mid-air with her spear. More shots from Luna’s bow forced Taenya back into cover and she hissed a curse under her breath.

“They now lead happy lives and don’t have to go hungry, after being released by Madame Bille, but of course they miss home! They always talk about wanting to go home, to find a compromise instead of the misguided path the High Enchantress is following!”

Now rage boiled over and Taenya stepped back out of cover, shooting her other crossbow’s bolt and flinging a throwing knife the way of the idols. She quickly drew another dagger and quickly attacked the idols who were busy deflecting her latest ranged attacks. She jumped towards Luna, the archer of the duo, who cursed and drew a short sword. Taenya’s right-hand dagger clashed with the weapon, and she was about to ram her left into the fake’s neck as it was blocked by Sol’s spear. The three struggled for a moment, with their weapons biting into each other.

“You know nothing!” she shouted at them.

“You haven’t seen children starve in the villages, their bodies so weak that wild dogs stop and eat parts of them! You haven’t seen fresh produce that we imported from neighboring nations rot the moment it reached our realm! You haven’t seen the swarm of locusts devouring what’s left! A curse brought on us by the death of the former High Enchantress, who was taken from us way too soon!”

She could see Luna attempting to channel a spell, so she quickly withdrew while raising her wooden talisman. Just in time: a fireball rushed her way and clashed with an invisible bubble that negated witchcraft.

“And then you decide to plunder other worlds instead of seeking help?!” Sol shouted, and Taenya hissed her way.

“We sought help! We beseeched the occult and the divine alike! And the divine answered. The celestial emissary, Fames! She is the one who gave us the means to transport pieces of other worlds into our own! Foodstuffs from other worlds, that have a natural resistance against whatever plagues our crops!” she shouted and rushed Sol.

The elf and the white-dressed Magical Girl exchanged blows, with the nimble elf dancing around spear thrusts, while the idol had to dodge her knives. To Taenya’s surprise, Luna stood still, with a strange expression on her face. And her next words froze the elf and idol both.

“Fames? Fames?! You absolute moron!!”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’ll pay for anything that I damage, promise!” Rinko stammered to an imaginary store manager as Mana broke the display case with the miniature armies inside.

“Leave that to Triple-Eye. You shouldn’t reveal your identity to anyone with your abilities. You never know when someone evil might catch wind of them,” Mana chastised her, and Rinko let out a little ‘uuuhh…’ that sounded like a dog’s whimper. The woman was terribly shy and meek – not exactly the personality traits Mana imagined someone with powers similar if not equal to Madame Bille to have.

“Anyway, let’s get started. The whole world is under attack, so we need a few of them for like… a hundred places.”

“Eh?! But we’ll never animate that many miniatures in time!” Rinko complained.

“Then let us focus on Tokyo and expand from there. It’s important that we clear a path for Arisu and Marisa to reach Miss Bellona, first. You animate the miniatures; I’ll open portals for them! Let’s get a move on!”

Rinko nodded and hurried to the opened case. Her eyes darted around and she immediately picked an important-looking figure from among the space knights that held position against what Mana could only assume were space goblins.

“This one’s powerful! He should do alright with Marisa and Arisu!” she announced and quickly worked her magic. Mana took a step back as Rinko tossed the miniature into the air and let it grow, until it towered over them.

Mana hadn’t seen Rinko use her magic like this before; she had a hunch when Nicola said that the young woman was her ‘apprentice’, but until now she had only ever seen her magic used to shrink people and bring them into the world of the game, not the other way around.

The space knight wore a red-and-green tabard with intricate heraldry on one of his pauldrons. Where his arms and legs peeked out of the cloth he wore silver greaves and vambraces that whirred with some kind of motors at the joints. His head was entirely covered with a bascinet, but instead of the usual air holes it featured an air filter system and a blue optical lens that moved from left to right along the singular eye slit, like the mono-eye of a Zaku.

In a sheath on his hip was a sword, but Mana got the impression that it wasn’t just simply sharp steel, while in his hands he carried what looked like a laser blaster. He wore some kind of jetpack, which would come in handy for assisting Marisa and Arisu in their attempt to approach Bellona through the ceaseless onslaught of ‘players’.

“Good! It worked!” Rinko shouted and clapped her hands together. Mana looked at her with an incredulous expression.

“You weren’t sure if it was going to work?”

“Well, uh… I haven’t done this without Nicola so far!” Rinko admitted, clearing her throat. “Ahem, would you… open a portal to where he needs to go?”

Mana looked at the two-and-a-half-meter tall knight, and it stared right back at her with its eye lens.

“…sure. If he won’t hurt any of the city’s residents?”

“I SERVE MOTHER GAIA AND ITS INHABITANTS!” the knight suddenly shouted, its voice distorted by a speaker that amplified it to eardrum-shattering levels. Mana immediately flinched and pressed her cat ears flat against her skull to spare them the noise, then she hastily opened a portal above the city, near where Arisu and Marisa were fighting further hordes of the ‘players’ at the moment.

The knight’s helmet snapped around by forty degrees, and he looked straight at Rinko, who gave him a thumbs-up.

“FOR MOTHER GAIA! THE HOLIEST PLANET IN THE UNIVERSE!” the knight shouted and his jetpack scorched the floor beneath him, then he flew off through the portal. Mana stared at the spot where he just stood.

“…are they all this crazy?” she asked Rinko, skeptically.

“Yeah, of course! It wouldn’t be fun otherwise, would it?”

Mana didn’t answer, she just stared at Rinko, who slowly blushed before she turned her head away.

“A-anyway! We’re going to animate a whole lot more of these, so watch my back and open some portals for me!”

***

Arisu dodged a shot from an energy rifle, then another kick from a flying player. The closer they got to Mama Bellona and Kuma, the more players harassed them. She made sure to communicate the locations of every player who got in their way to Marisa, and the red-headed witch opened portals before utilizing ‘Atomize’ on the hapless people on the other side.

Arisu felt a little bad for them. In one instance, a woman who was sleeping in a pod that appeared to be her whole home cried audibly as she realized what was happening to her headset, and Arisu understood that she must have worked long and hard to afford one, only to get it ripped away from her like this.

However, there was no room for doubt when lives in their own world were on the line, no matter what their self-defense meant for the private lives of the players.

Whenever a headset was destroyed, the associated player avatar would go limp and fall from the sky, only to blink out of existence mere seconds later, so the witch and demigod’s advance towards the Magical Girl and the monster made it rain bodies. She was almost close enough to shout and get her mother’s attention as a sudden flash of light came close and grazed her cheek. She thought that an attack nearly missed her, but then she felt a heavy force behind the sudden contact and got flung away. Marisa let out a surprised shout as she was dropped, and the two were in freefall, pursued by the strange light.

It slowed down a bit, and Arisu could see another ‘player’, a catgirl dressed entirely in blue, with a scarf flapping behind her in the wind.

I’m guessing this one is a speedster.

She focused on the girl, but as she did, the speedster zipped right out of sight before crashing into her side. Arisu let out a short scream as she felt something break inside her chest and was sent tumbling towards the nearest high rise. Only Marisa’s quick intervention prevented her from crashing into the approaching window front and instead sent her shooting back up in the sky, where Marisa quickly followed.

“Did you get a read on her location?” Marisa asked hastily after Arisu recovered and caught her in her arms, which caused the demigod to grimace as her one broken rib shot a sharp pain through her side before it mended on its own.

“She’s too fast…! I can’t get a proper read on where exactly she is. She moves right before it comes to me!”

“That’s a problem,” Marisa commented dryly, though she summoned an array of arrows around the duo, urging Arisu to keep flying towards Bellona. The speedster approached them again and Marisa fired multiple volleys of arrows, though the catgirl simply dodged them. Arisu turned her head, and time appeared to freeze as the speedster was right next to her, forearm in front of her for the imminent ramming action.

Arisu quickly clenched her eyes shut and braced herself for the imminent pain, but it never came. Instead, there was a loud crash and curses that were distorted by some kind of speaker system.

“FOR ATTACKING A CHILD OF GAIA I SENTENCE YOU TO DIE!”

Arisu stopped mid-air, utterly flabbergasted by what she saw; right in front of her was one of the space knight figurines that Rinko owned a set of, the size of a man or maybe even two. He was wrestling the speedster who desperately tried to get away from him.

It took Arisu a second to realize that this was a perfect chance. She extended a hand and read the catgirl’s exact location before transmitting the information straight to Marisa’s tome.

The witch in white didn’t hesitate. She opened the portal, cast ‘Atomize’, and a few seconds later, the player avatar went limp, tumbling down into the streets and blinking out of existence like so many before it. The strange knight joined them, flying by their side as they made their way across the rooftops of Tokyo. Ever so often, a player would attempt to attack them, but their new companion reacted fast. He wielded a ridiculously large laser blaster and shot players out of the sky or met them in single combat with his energized sword, not allowing a single one to get close.

Arisu and Marisa didn’t get to banish the players on the way towards her mama, due to the flying knight’s interference, but right now it was more important to get to her and help her out with her ability.

***

And soon, Rinko’s power materialized around the world. Military bases, cities, any place of interest to the ‘players’ found itself with unlikely protectors. Some were clad in steel, just like the flying knight in Tokyo, but in other places, the players were suddenly surrounded by swarms of goblins, who overwhelmed them with their sheer numbers and defeated them with hundreds of stabs from tiny daggers.

Witnesses would describe this as one of the most confusing days of their lives.

“What is the meaning of your words? What do you know about that name?” Taenya shouted Luna’s way. The profane copy of her mistresses’ lunar warriors stepped closer. She didn’t look like she was about to attack, nor did she look like she expected Taenya to attack, either. Instead, she grabbed the elf by the collar, looking her in the eyes as she grimaced, with her eyes full of pain.

“You’ve been tricked! You’re, like, dancing to the tune of the bitch who did that to you in the first place!” Luna shouted, breaking her refined façade of a ‘Magical Girl’.

“I don’t understand! Explain yourself!” Taenya demanded, forcefully ripping her opponent’s hand off her collar and readying her daggers again.

“And if I sense the slightest bit of falsehood in your words, I will slit your throat!”

“You can try!” the lunar warrior challenged her, almost instinctively, but she still didn’t show any sign of attempting to continue the fight. She took a deep breath before making eye contact with Taenya again, as if to show her sincerity.

“In one of our world’s mythologies, Fames, or Limos, is the goddess of hunger and famine!”

“So what? Plenty of languages and mythologies share names that don’t mean the same thing!” Taenya shouted. She had to believe that what she said was the truth. Just some cosmic coincidence, nothing more. The alternative was way too cruel.

Memories of her home came back to her mind. Swarms of flies circling the decaying bodies of families that couldn’t go on after years of malnutrition. The quiet sobbing of her mistress behind closed doors, while she wore her cold expression for the public and callously made decisions that saw some lives exchanged for others.

She had her own sister killed as they couldn’t agree on a plan to raise an army and get more food from raids on other worlds – and in the end she resorted to using her sister’s methods after all. The brainwashing effect of the poison her sister brewed gave her an excuse to send waves of mind-controlled citizenry to places that would capture, rather than kill them, and then integrate them after lifting the curse, giving them a new home without severe food scarcity.

All of this was supposed to be the work of the very messenger of the gods who came from the heaves to assist them? Laughable! If it were true, it would shatter the perception of the world that Taenya built for herself for the past seventeen years.

“Tell me this, then: does she have glowing hair? Like Minerva and Bellona, perhaps?” the solar warrior now asked, and Taenya subconsciously nodded to answer the question, no matter how much her mind didn’t want to admit anything that would confirm these girls’ claims. The Celestial Sisters exchanged a short look, then they lowered their heads apologetically before Luna spoke again.

“Then it’s true. She’s a Deogemma like them. They’re going to be our Roman gods. One day in their future, but in our past.”

“Ah… ahaha… ahahahah!”

Taenya laughed. And cried. She felt her cheeks get wet as her world shattered. There was no lie in the eyes of these foolish copies. No, she was the fool. She and her mistress, and everyone back home was made a plaything for the twisted plans of whatever it was that this abomination pretending to be a goddess wanted.

“I have to tell the mistress. Excuse me,” she heard herself say in a robotic tone, and quickly turned around. She bumped into one of her white-robed soldiers who stood right behind her.

“You’re in the way. I need to-” she started but soon noticed that she had no air left to continue or finish that sentence. She looked down and saw a crimson stain spread on her clothes, radiating from a thin piece of steel – a dagger, as she quickly realized - while the brainwashed soldier kept looking her in the eyes with his dead expression behind that cone-shaped helmet’s visor.

Taenya stumbled backwards, and the soldier followed. Now she felt the sharp pain of the blade, too, as it went into her chest half a dozen times more and she finally fell backwards, hitting the ground hard as her strength left her. She heard the Celestial Sisters shout as they finally noticed what was going on, and then she saw the corner of the controlled soldier’s mouth rise.

Ah… she listened in. She took control to make sure the mistress wouldn’t learn about it…

The soldier was quickly blasted by magic and his helmet knocked off by an arrow, reducing him to a harmless cobbler or leatherworker or whatever he was before he put on that cursed item and now had to live with what he did while he was under its spell.

I can’t just let it end like this… not without having my revenge…

Taenya coughed up some blood and knew that she only had mere moments left. The corners of her vision faded, and just then, her dying mind had a final idea. She would get her revenge. For all the people who died thanks to the machinations of that fake goddess.

She would use hatred. Pure, unadulterated hatred in human form to become the avatar of her people’s revenge. Luckily, her command ring worked with only a thought, as her blood-filled lungs weren’t any good for talking. She raised it up above her head as she saw the Celestial Sisters rush towards her, digging through their strange collection of magic items to find something that would free her from the clutches of death – but she had made her peace, as long as this one final command came through.

I hereby order you: take off your mask and avenge my people… become the avatar of our vengeance, Maria!