The flames ate away everything.
They burned so powerful that even air itself was turned into steam as oxygen became just more fuel for the carnage.
Were this a more airtight space, anyone who would have survived would have suffocated already.
But no, luckily, the hospital was a large building.
Unfortunately... that also spelled the dire consequences of an attack with such a fury behind it.
The destroyed ceiling was already raining debris over the corridor and Anna saw how large chunks of surviving concrete came crashing down.
In half a minute or a bit more, the whole place would come crashing down.
The building, or at the very least the upper floors, could not take the power of her spell.
--- Such was the strength of the girl known as Skyfall.
But at the same time, the old adage of the Turnside was true... and echoed even on this moment of triumph.
Supernatural begets supernatural.
Power begets power.
Calamity begets calamity.
And thus, on that very moment of victory...
"Wow~ How strong~"
The world that Anna Vandemeel saw broke into a cacophonic, surreal nightmare.
The world broke into fragments and was jumbled up.
Nothing made sense anymore.
Shadows and light switched places.
Overwhelming sense of nausea and vertigo assaulted Anna's brains like a coctail of the most horrible psychedelic drugs ever invented by mankind.
The sheer sensation of her brain losing any and all touch with the world and how she was made gastric juices shoot up form her stomach and into her mouth, as her body convulsed and made an attempt to throw up - just as if she had been sent spinning haphazardly in a zero-gravity space. Her eyes became bloodshot and cold sweat rose all around her body, to the point she could barely stay standing... or was she even standing at this point?
Perhaps she wasn't.
Perhaps she was falling through infinite space, an infinite moment before she would hit the floor and break her skull against the concrete.
"You know, the funny thing with shadows is~ To control them you need to control light~"
What was that?
A familiar voice of a hated enemy came from somewhere behind the raven-haired girl.
Or was it from before her?
To the right?
To the left?
Where!?
"And do you know what human visual perception is~? How we see our world~?"
The bespectacled girl laughed... she laughed somewhere.
Concentrating was impossible here.
But... how was she even alive?
She had disappeared in the hellfire along with the familiars.
"It's the ability to interpret light on the visible spectrum to humans, reflected by objects in the environment~"
A laugh.
A cold laugh.
A humorless laugh.
"So if I twist the light that's being reflected to your eyes~ I can make you insane merely by what you see~"
A laugh... that had gone mad with grief.
Filled with desire for nothing but revenge.
"Not just make you see or shadows where I'm not~ But to turn the whole world you see into an abyss of bizarre~"
This... was a spell of the same height, of the same magnitude, as what Anna had used herself.
Though not a spell that came from the magical power within the user herself, but from a ceremony prepared before-hand, a pinnacle of mysticism, it was still just as powerful as the Cross of Annihilation that had destroyed the corridor. Only... this power was more insidious. It was more cruel. This wasn't pure destruction, simple and true, but a way to render your opponent helpless in a world where nothing made sense anymore.
Up was down. |
Down was up. |
Left was right. |
Right was left. |
Inside was out. |
Out was inside. |
Ahead was behind. |
Behind was ahead. |
Far was close. |
Close was far. |
There was nothing that made sense anymore.
To the point that Anna could barely even control her own body.
And in the midst of that chaos...
"A n d_ t h a t ' s_ t h e_ f a t e_ y o u_ d e s e r v e _ y o u_ d i r t y_ s i s t e r - k i l l e r ."
Zhou Coastrise made her announcement, her judgment, her cry of rage for the execution of the girl before her.
And in that instant.
Fueled by a similar rage, similar white-hot sunflare that dwarfed Anna's fury, similar desire to rip her apart limb-from-limb...
Zhou's cry for justice was answered by rushing feet and a drawn sword that had been hidden so far.
The running feet were the only warning that Anna got. From the midst of blackness, from the world that had gone mad, another warrior appeared with vengeance engraved upont heir very soul. He crossed the boundary of destruction and entered the battlefield from the shadows where his sister's magic had hidden him, a place of darkness that no normal eyes could see through - not even by magical means. Letting out a cry of hatred the youth with ancient armor rushed forward, drawing sword from its sheath as he moved closer and closer to the raven-haired girl like bloodletter lightning, unable to see nothing more than the hated enemy before his eyes.
Anna's eyes could not see this approaching danger.
Or rather, they only saw it in fragments.
They saw the inversed colours of a maddened youth dashing towards her.
She saw his blade approaching from behind her own back.
At the same time the magic he activated - so similar in origin as her own - was unleashed from above her.
The strike came from afar.
But it struck her from close.
The world was made the way she saw it... and thus, she could not react to the approaching attack in time, much less try to defend herself.
After all, Anna's eyes had betrayed her and right now her brains, her body, demanded her to either empty her stomach on the floor or escape this eldritch realm of insanity.
And that's why---!
"... Did you think I wouldn't be able to catch your scent? After you killed our sister and played with her entrails?"
It was the voice of an unknown male.
The other students of Pinefall High might have known him by the name of Minato Coastrise.But to Anna... he was just another enemy who desired her death for reasons she couldn't completely comprehend.
But... even in the midst of her fractured, shattered world...
... She saw tears streaming down the boy's face, face twisted by grief and eyes maddened by the loss of someone he loved so dearly.
Just like the bespectacled girl was.
But as a sword-strike like wires that could cut up the world fell upon Anna...
... They never reached her.
Because before they bisected and dissected her flesh...
--- They were stopped by the body of a blue-haired, spiky-haired thug who had ran out, caught her in his arms, and protected her with his own body.
A scream of pain, a scream of agony.
Even in a world that had been turned into a surrealistic dream of lunacy, Anna was able to see it.
--- The look of relief, and the look of fear, and the look of acceptance...
... On Travis Gagnon's face as he fell to the mutable blade of the young man who had tried to kill her.
"Shit... fuck..."
Travis's voice was weaked, pained, as he gurgled blood rising from deep within him.
"--- Figures. I w-wasn't... able to play the role of a shit-head till the end...!"
The protective arms lost their strength.
The body of the boy wavered.
And with a sickening thud...
... He fell to the floor.
"... hah... I just had to play the hero right at the end..."
Even his last laugh was full of derision.
But not towards anyone else.
Just towards himself... for the fool who he had been.
"... But at least I was... able... to s-save your goddamn life...!"
The fool who had protect a girl he barely knew.