Chương 61: Jury & Executioner

A court session passed. And then another. And then another. All the TV dramas had lied to me; there was no quick and easy judging. Real life was messy. Slowly, everything was spiraling towards one word: guilty. I knew it in my gut. It was how I felt.

"If that's how it ends," Mason had said to me during an intermission, "We'll appeal and get a retrial. The more we're digging into this, the more it's starting to stink." What he forgot to mention was that the more people went looking for trouble, the more trouble found them. Dollhouse accidents, witnesses withdrawing statements, emergency convergence-dome deployments. They couldn't all be fabricated. We'd hoped that at some point the mastermind would slip up, but so far, no dice.

The longer we waited, the more people got hurt. I'd worried about the verdict so much that at some point, worrying turned boring. So I stopped, and put my mind to other thoughts. What is the mastermind behind all this trying to achieve? If they were the same person that was behind the worsening vampire-werefolk relations, then this was running counter to their plans. The trial was polarizing Custodians as a whole against the wizards, no matter their build, seniority, or place of origin.

A student had been expelled for throwing a tomato at a witch who was apprenticing under one of the Fowl clones. The tomato wasn't rotten, it had barely been ripe. With Custodian-level strength, they were lucky that it wasn't considered battery with lethal intent. The tension was rising. It would continue rising, as long as the legal proceedings continued. It wouldn't even matter whether I would be proclaimed innocent or guilty at the end.

The fact that I even got this far, that people were aware of the trial at all, was already a taint on my reputation. And on the reputation of Custodians as a whole. During the seventh session — a further piece of evidence had been produced that showed the Fowl clone baking the cake and laughing while talking to coworkers shortly before setting out — I noticed Addy slink into the rows of onlookers with a grim look on her face. <<What's with that cut on your left cheek? >> I asked.

<<Don't worry about it, >> she said, and then, seeing I wasn't convinced, added: <<It's not your fault. >> Which meant it was absolutely 100% my fault. I slumped in my chair, tears welling in my eyes. The longer I stay, the more my friends are going to get hurt. The drone of the prosecution rambling on echoed from the hall all around. Someone wants me gone. They'll stop at nothing to get me to leave. The system sent me here undercover. It wanted me here, to see what it can't see, to accuse where it cannot speak.

Make a stir. Poke the hornet's nest. I did that already. The Custodians won't let this issue rest; they'll keep investigating the wizards until finally someone slips. My role is over, isn't it? Idly, I tapped the table. But that's how losers think. I'm not a loser. I'm a magical girl. And someone is trying to fuck with that. This can't continue. It won't continue. There's always a choice. Stay here and become a fulcrum of misery. Or do the unexpected. Blow it all to hell.

"The court has reached a verdict," the judge said. The murmuring all around grew quiet.

"This court, in turn with Madagasy law, the evidence and arguments provided by prosecution and defense, pronounces Samantha Ruben, Level 9 Custodian—" I stood up. A bit out of turn, and a bit dramatic, but hey, magical girls were all about drama. With one hand I grasped the audience's attention, and with a second drew it to my bosom right above the heart.

"I volunteer for the frontlines." The hall grew silent. Mason's chin almost hit the desk as he looked at me.

"Samantha, you can't just say tha—" His interface, and the phones of just about everyone in the building beeped at once. [Request acknowledged. This is now an internal Custodian matter.] [You have volunteered for deployment in the Cauldron. You may not return until your sentence is up. It is recommended to put your affairs in order and to write a will before deployment.] [Applying sentence: 3 years] [Deployment scheduled in: 45 min] … three years?

"Aw, crap." +++ There was a saying that I kept coming back to as I stood in the cafeteria: Out of sight, out of mind. If you couldn't perceive something, you couldn't act on it. I was being acted upon by some malevolent force because it could observe me 24/7. What was the quickest way to get out of its sights? How about dropping down a many mile long hole right into a warzone? Surely nobody would follow me through that, right? Except the wires already point that way. I might be jumping right into a hornet's nest.

The attendance was sparse given the short time frame. It was like the system was trying to rush me through before another spanner could be tossed into the works. Going fast was one thing I could appreciate. It was sort of my thing, next to hugs, vehicular oopsies, and overconfidence. Of my assembled friends and acquaintances, Mason was the first to step forward.

"This is probably the most reckless way I've ever seen anyone end a trial," he said.

"Besides shooting the judge."

"That happen often?"

"No. But it might in the future. Can't exactly disarm people of their magic." I smiled.

"Thanks for defending me. Even if I made your effort kinda useless in the end. You bought me time to think. I appreciate that."

"Maybe you should've let that idea cook a little longer." He shook his head before putting a hand on my shoulder and growing serious.

"Stay out of trouble. Don't let yourself be deployed to the frontline of the frontline until you think you can handle it. It's not a prison down there, people will listen if you talk to them. Even then, this is a suicide mission for a level 9." My smile grew wider.

"I'm sure I'll manage." Then came Becca. Well, Orianna holding Becca.

"Hey dorm-mate, I'm supposed to tell you something Becca wanted to say since she's still struggling with long sentences. She says we'll, er, keep looking for the culprit behind all this. And bring them to justice, or lynch them. She's fine either way."

"Please don't do anything too illegal while I'm gone," I said.

"I would never," Orianna said, and I fully believed her. She was a worried bean, not the kind to tear through rules and walls alike. Unlike the slime she was holding. They both handed me some food, snacks, and emergency military rations. I was probably going to get some of my own, but since my backpack was as big inside as an entire house, more could never hurt. And then came the last person. Addy. She was as furious as the first day I met her. Tired too, trailing tears down one cheek.

I lifted her up into my biggest six-armed hug.

"You're coming back," she muttered, her voice muffled by my chest.

"I haven't even taken one step out yet."

"You're coming back," she said again, as if it was a mantra that would come true the more it was repeated. Eventually I had to place her on the ground again, giving her time to wipe her tears and compose herself.

"I've got something for you as well." She handed me her vest, the one with all the stickers and pins on it.

"But, but… this is a memento. Your mentor, she—""She wanted me to pass it on when I thought the time was right. Mentor Irina was only the third Custodian in line to wear this. It's been through a lot, so you know it's important." She pushed it into my hands. When I took it, she grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me in close enough that I could feel her breath on my skin.

"I know you'll do something reckless, and forget to keep yourself safe. So, keep that vest safe, and you'll be keeping your center of mass safe as well." After all the crying I'd done, there were still new tears in my eyes.

"Addy, that is so… efficient."

"I was hoping you were going to say it's nice."

"Oh what, you expecting the convicted criminal to be a good girl?" In place of an answer, she leaned on the tips of her toes to give me a deep kiss, breathing new life into me. And… something else. Something acidic, round, something dissolving on the tip of my tongue. [Essence detected] Urk. Thank you Addy. But you really couldn't just put this in the vest's pocket? Once we were done, she whispered into my ear.

"I managed to trade for the one you wanted—" I shushed her with a finger on her lips.

"Tell me all about it when I'm back." Then I turned to the other Custodians.

"Because I will be. Mark my words." I kicked off the ground and sent myself careening down backwards. +++ I really didn't think any of this through nearly as much as I should have. Jumping into an endless abyss sounded like a fine idea up until I no longer had solid ground underneath my feet. The sight of Addy standing at the edge of a ring of light grew into a pinprick all too soon. I tried to wave goodbye. Mostly, I was flailing chaotically. My stomach twisted. Bile hung in my throat.

There was a threat in the academy. I should be up there with everyone I cared about, not here. That threat had a name now: the Pactmaker. Forcing people to engage in dubious actions and practices because of words scribbled on a piece of dead tree was one of the worst of humanity's inventions. But Rico reassured me that the denizens of The Fun Place, aka hellworld, had already invented every form of legalese before we even thought of pushing sticks into clay tablets.

They just added a tiny bit of magic that would stop your heart while you were in breach of the contract, or made you bleed from every orifice. Which of course hadn't led to more fair dealings, but simply gave the people who held and understood contracts more power over those who were less learned and able.

"You sure are knowledgeable for a pixie," I yelled at Rico as we raced past a ghostly wire crossing in and out of the giant hole.

"Say, does every pixie's dust make people see weird things?" Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"You're the first one who's had this sort of reaction to it," he yelled back. The red streak of a pixie was keeping pace with me, body pointed downwards like an arrow in complete contrast to how I was flying spread-eagled, six arms and two legs acting as horizontal stabilizers. I had to keep my pitch, yaw, and roll under control, or else the base camp down below would meet a violently ill spider spewing her stomach contents in a spiral pattern.

"Maybe we're just both weird." The pixie grabbed onto my hoodie and heaved himself in the back with an exhausted sigh. He had to fight against the drag more than I did, the poor little guy.

"Definitely weird," he huffed.

"You fall like a brick."

"Here's to hoping they catch us down below." The light above was barely visible now. The light of the exit below didn't seem to be coming any closer. All around me were walls made of solid bedrock shrouded in darkness, cloying and unnatural, almost making it seem like I wasn't moving at all. Suddenly, there was a speck of movement in the darkness. My rear-facing eyes caught a small object suddenly growing into a human figure. I twirled in place, though that didn't do much about my trajectory.

"Hello!" Said Professor Wugwort, beaming smile bleached white as she waved at me. She headed an alchemical class Clem was taking. I'd popped in every now and again to check up on her. Her presence here was… worrying.

"Why are you here? Scratch that, how did you get here?"

"You'd be amazed at the places you can enter when transformed into a horsefly. Which I was! We don't have much time; I'm here to send you a message from the Fowl collective: Dodge!" In all my confusion and befuddlement, I still found the time to brace myself and spin out of the way as the Professor dove down and swiped past me with a sickly green glowing hand.

"W-wait, are you trying to kill me?" I asked, still unsure as to where this all came from.

"Maybe. I have more messages!"

"I'm not interested! Sincerely!" I shot back. The professor turned into an owl, wings splayed wide as she shot back above me. Then she dove down, once more going for melee. A swipe of a hand whooshed across the back of my head, whiffing by a hair. Another hit my arm, the limb immediately crumbling into dirt and falling off behind me. I cried out; it hurt like pulling ten fingers out from between a slammed car door. And yet, more than pain, there was a part of me that wanted to just accept it all.

It's fine, I deserve this, after all, I'm a—"You murdered our boy," the professor said with an incongruent jovial tone.

"He's definitely dead. His soul is definitely not in a vat in our secret laboratory, waiting for a donor body. There is absolutely no way he is going to be fine. How dare you?"

"I, uh… are you trying to screw with me or—" Another dive, this one missed. Something wasn't adding up again. It was the same feeling I'd had in Fowl's office.

"Are you talking in some kind of code?"

"Definitely not!" She turned into a sparrow. I pointed my Prickler in her direction and aimed to miss. She dove and wove, dodging in large, parabolic, and most of all obvious and unnecessary arcs.

"I…" Oh my god, she doesn't want to kill me. And she means the opposite of what she's saying.

"I think she's trying to get around her pact with the pactmaster by lying incredibly poorly to me, Rico."

"What a terrible pact," he muttered, crawling down into the bowels of my backpack.

"Bu-ut just in case, I'll be down here." I turned back to the wizard woman. Between frizzy hair interwoven with small animal trinkets, she always seemed like the type of person who abhorred violence. And yet here she was, smiling. Is that also a lie? Or a hint to some other influence he has over her?

"Is he forcing you to do this?" I asked, keeping her away with the odd laser.

"No!" Yes. He can force action, but can't force thought, or stop people from talking. Possibly a restriction to ensure his control over even strong wizards is absolute.

"Are you the only one he sent after me?"

"Absolutely!" Better check my rearward eyes. No sign of any other Fowls. Then again, they can shapeshift, make illusions, and turn my arms into crumbly dirt with a touch.

"What do you want me to do if I encounter more of you?" Her smile widened.

"There's a funny thing about us fowl clones: we're all the exact same person with no personality, desires, and wishes whatsoever. When we die, we die, and that's it. And it's terrifying. You should hunt us all down." We're fine with you killing us. We regenerate. We don't fear death. You should run. So this is what it's like to be hunted by a Custodian… It was a lot to unpack, enough that I didn't see the change overtake her face. Professor Wugwort's body contorted, hands cracking before she went entirely limp.

When she looked back up at me, the smile was wiped from her face." — she's still not dead? Looks like I'm taking over direct control, as always." There was another voice in her throat. It used her pitch, but the tone belonged to someone else entirely. The Pactmaker. The Fowls aren't afraid of death. They're afraid of the pactmaker finding out about their little conspiracy. Which is why we're pretending to kill each other while also kinda trying to kill each other.

If there's one thing I'm confident in, it's my acting skills.

"Wugwort you old hag!" I yelled, scrambling for weapons as his body turned into that of a falcon.

"Couldn't wait for the impact to finish me off?"" What can I say? Loose ends and all that." Their voice echoed from all around. And from there, the real fight was on. The shadows all around grew tenfold, menacing with eyes and teeth and claws. Terror. He wanted me to be unable to use anything but fear to cast. He's fought Custodians before. He knows their weaknesses. He says he knows I'm hiding my level, but that doesn't mean he knows what it really is, what I can really do.

The more I show, the more he learns about me, but the reverse is true as well. It's a game of chicken, then. Alright. Come at me. An illusion jumped for me, its arm swiping right through my leg. It should've done nothing. Instead, my lower leg turned to dirt, wrenching a horrid scream from my lungs. Focus! Lesson #1: Some of his illusions are solid. I shot it in the back with a Prickler, poofing it into a cloud of smoke. They don't leave a body, either. The ones that do are clones.

These are just incredibly dangerous illusions. Another hand swipe — a real one — missed the back of my neck by mere inches. The wind in this tunnel was unreal, pushing up in irregular gusts, jostling me around. Aiming in anything but a general direction was impossible, meaning my ranged advantage was nullified. The now owl-shaped wizard circled, disappearing into my blind spot yet again for a third strike. However, Addy had given me an essence. And as the magic coursed through my body, I felt my options expand.

[Trigger-bug Essence] Tier 1 Rarity: Rare Growth: +1 Body, +1 Sense, +1 Mind Choice: [1] out of [2] Abilities [Echo] - Joy Charges: 0/1 Charge cost: Moderate When your next attack hits or spell is cast, an ethereal copy repeats it an additional time after a short delay. Spells cast this way do not count their echo towards any spell limits. Gain an extra charge every [50] Mind.

[Trigger] - Anticipation Charges: 0/1 Maximum unique triggers: 0/1 Charge cost: Variable Attach an action within your capabilities to a predetermined trigger. Upon triggering, magic suffuses your body to automatically carry out the prepared action at high speed and no emotional cost. The trigger can be a phrase, a thought, or any sensory cue which you can perceive. Preparing a spell costs twice the normal channeled emotional charge of the prepared ability. Gain an extra charge every [25] Sense.

Gain an extra unique trigger every [100] Body. Does not require a chant. Going through potential essence combinations and crafting my build after a day (and night) of strenuous activity together with Addy had been great fun. She remained adamant that doing anything with a vampire essence would be social suicide for her, so we settled on trading it for another rare essence.

"I won't settle for anything but the best," she'd said.

"Your build will be perfect." It was a gift. And of all the options available, of the ten or so essences we'd narrowed it down to, she managed to trade her way into one of the more unconventional ones. It was rare too. However, unlike [Vampirism I], which promised a long list of possible abilities depending on the donor of the vampiric essence, the [Trigger-Bug] essence had a spell-list of exactly two. And even though I wanted both spells, only one would help me right in the moment.

In the time it took me to confirm my spell selection, the owl, which had now turned into a bearded man, was moments away from striking me again. There's one thing you forgot about Custodians, pactmaker. We adapt very quickly. [Echo - Joy] Thinking of the good times I had with Addy, I charged what joy I could and flipped onto my back, sacrificing another arm to stall for time while biting back a scream. There he came again, in the shape of an eagle this time around.

I took my Spab-4, shot straight up, and let the backblast push me past terminal velocity. After all, there were Custodians waiting at the bottom for me. The pactmaker was on a time limit. For a human, that was around 120mph. I was considerably denser than normal as a Custodian with a Body focus, but weight was only one half of the equation. Even with the regular extreme knockback of my oversized shotgun, the distance I'd gained from the initial surprise was shrinking by the second.

So I simply aimed my next shot slightly to the left, in the rough direction of the wizard. The action alone was enough to make him pause for a moment, returning into human form to cast a spell. As I finally hit him, the Spab-4's pellets bounced off of a glowing translucent shield. Stupid shields. Then he switched into the body of a peregrine falcon, the bird with the highest top speed in any one direction so long as that direction was 'down'. Nature documentaries, thank you for telling me how screwed I am.

"Moe, bazooka round, proximity charge, three feet, thermobaric load!" I sent the rest of the magazine at Fowl in full auto, reloaded manually, and did it again." Feh, this one's got no good offensive spells." Professor Wugwort shuddered and spasmed again.

"Samantha."

"Yes?" The happy smile was back on their face. It felt forced, creepy even.

"We're not angry. At you. We know that in your heart of hearts, you're a vile murderer. As such, please, save us." We're furious. At him. We know you're a good person. Please, kill us. There was a moment where our eyes met. More was said through that than in this entire exchange.

"Thank you." A tap on my back. I yanked my bazooka out and in one smooth motion pointed it at the shielded falcon. [Input target] I blinked. Right, the homing upgrade.

"Fowl clones." [Input anger] There was anger aplenty in my system for a target lock." Echo!" With a click and a fwoomp, the rocket propelled grenade left its launcher. A second, ghostly projectile followed in its wake. One explosion would destroy the shield, then the next would finish the job. Fifty feet up, the leading projectile did a one-eighty turn and zipped right down past me. HUH!? There was a second Fowl clone, a hundred feet down, cloaked in the color of night. He looked as surprised as I was. Flash.

Crack. Double-boom. The air turned violent as the angry gust of the dispersed fuel particles in the thermobaric load ensured the blast wave did what blast waves did best. It rattled me to my core, pressure popping my eardrum, squeezing my eyes and tearing my organs. Sound only returned to me muted, the wind smashing me against the wall, then picking me up and tossing me out of it like a picky eater plucking a raisin off a cake. My plan would have worked if there had been only one clone.

Even if the explosion couldn't crack his shield, the blast wave would have set him back too far to make up for the distance before I hit the ground. The second clone was obliterated, no shield yet cast in favor of stealth. The clone above gunned it right towards me. I let him have a third arm, in exchange for grabbing him with three others. And then, with one charge of [Echo], I stabbed her straight in the neck with a knife.

A second ghostly knife materialized, stabbing her again right as the first one scratched gratingly along his spine. He coughed up blood, arms going to his neck as I kicked him off me, twirling into the air above. I didn't have anything else to give. Maybe that was enough. Given how Miss Wugwort's hand was glowing with magic, knitting the wound closed in front of my eyes, probably not. Her arms seized up and contorted."

I was planning to spawn-camp you while you were falling down the tube, but I suppose my preparations were inadequate. Custodians are such bullshit." I kicked him back with my remaining leg before he could dissolve any more of my limbs. Wizards are such bullshit. He didn't follow me, not immediately, disappearing in the cloud of smoke and aerosols. My ears were ringing as from below a ring of light grew larger and closer before it swallowed me up in a blinding glare. And my first thought was oh, what a pretty sky.

There was a sky below the earth, distorted, contorted, like heaps of broken and stained glass melted together. It reflected shattered scenes from so many places at once; ocean paradises, deserts that stretched beyond the horizon, industrial skylines lined with plumes of hazy yellow smog. One particularly large piece reflected the red sand of the land below into the sky, a land that I was approaching much too quickly for comfort now. But then, my fall slowed.

I was grabbed by some invisible hand in a gentle, almost motherly embrace. It ushered me to the ground where I rested quite comfortably in the hot sand. This is nice. Would be better without all the life-threatening injuries. Someone walked up, standing in my light. It was a bald man, mean-looking, dressed in a red military shirt with the top three buttons unbuttoned and exactly one medal on his chest. He had a solid presence despite being rather on the wiry side.

Maybe it was the one cybernetic eye, or maybe it was because half of his face was replaced with metal, like a family-friendly terminator. I raised my head, trying to warn him that he was in the splash zone.

"Wizard. Help." With all the mental wherewithal my concussed-as-heck brain could provide, I sent him my recordings, before realizing moments later that they were garbled too. That's just not fair. Is there no one I can share my side of the story with? The man stared at the system interface message with the same frown he'd greeted me with.

"Ah fuck. Momsy, we have a code red, bearing straight above!" Something moved. I couldn't say what. It wasn't visible, that much was for sure. But when a falcon came through the hole in the ceiling, spreading its wings to avoid becoming a poultry pancake, it stopped with an awkward squawk, seized by the invisible force. For context, to me invisibility wasn't as invisible as for most people. The glamor did its best to make Custodians, cryptids, aliens, and so on invisible, but that had worked on me just as little.

Where the light reflected from one of the brightly gleaming shards in the sky hit bird-Fowl, I could make out the shape of two ginormous translucent hands cupping him the way a child might cup a trapped insect. Professor Wugwort, puppeted by the pactmaker, bonked into the edge twice, transforming first into a boar, then a rhino, then back into human form. He was doing something with his own hands at a nervous pace when the grim-faced officer raised his voice so loud I could hear it in my bones.

"Momsy, crunch 'em!" The translucent hands twisted, shifted out of sight. I winced as the Fowl clone was pressed flat, then popped, then was ground back and forth until he was a bloody rag. Somehow, I didn't feel happiness, only sadness and some modicum of relief. The real pactmaker didn't suffer. The real pactmaker was safe beyond my reach, for now. Wizards are such bullshit. Slowly, I lolled my head to face the metal-jawed man.

"Welcome to Red Hill Forward Base," he said.

"We're in a shoot first, ask questions later zone, and I'll be sure to ask you some questions once you can hold a conversation without falling to pieces. You got any self-healing spells that can regenerate limbs?"

"No… sir."

"How many extra lives?"

"S-six?"

"Sorry about this then. We need you in fighting form, stat." He pulled out a gun and shot me straight in the head.