Chapter 20: Battle

When the Kryptopeda portal opened, the mirror immediately fell into it. The portal expanded into the wall of Tsubame’s house, tearing the wall to pieces. When the portal met the wall there was a deafening boom and Shiori was thrown from the portal and slammed against the opposite wall.

She slid down the wall to sit on the floor, momentarily confused after the portal opened.

Everything looked wrong. Shiori could see the sky, but that didn’t make sense. She was inside Tsubame’s house.

After blinking, Shiori understood what she was seeing. The portal had torn away large sections of wall, floor, and ceiling. Bits of the mirror on the wall were being pulled into the portal. The air was filled with dust.

The portal wasn’t a clean hole in space or a door. It was a roiling sphere of dark smoke and broken bits of Tsubame’s house. It was a kaleidoscope of black clouds, torn-up house, or the inside of a deep cave somewhere in Kryptopeda.

Amidst the confused time and place, Motohara stepped forward. He reached for Shiori without preamble, grabbing her wrist and pulling her toward the portal.

“Motohara-senpai?” Shiori asked in confusion. He had the strength to open the portal between worlds, so why didn’t he do it sooner?

He pulled on her wrist, and for a moment Shiori resisted. But he was far stronger. Motohara pulled her toward the portal.

“STOP!” Shiori spoke in a clear voice, speaking the magic she had managed twice before. Every piece of floating debris around the portal stopped mid-air, as if frozen in time.

Motohara stopped pulling against her, but with a shimmer of light from his skin and a grunt of effort he broke through the spell. He pulled harder.

Shiori tried yelling ‘stop’ again, but she couldn’t get her mind around the word as before. Apparently she had used up that word presently and couldn’t speak it now.

Shiori flailed with her free hand to grab anything to resist Motohara’s pull toward the portal. Just before she grasped the door handle, it disappeared.

Before Tsubame’s entryway wall vanished, Shiori felt Symphon’s immense power move with the inevitability of a river. She felt him will the wall to move.

“Symphon,” Motohara spat the name like a curse.

Symphon gestured with one hand and the wreckage from Tsubame’s house flew in that direction. Before the wreckage landed, the two were fighting in earnest.

Motohara released Shiori’s wrist and dashed toward Symphon.

Motohara had produced a nearly black metal dagger. He drove it toward Symphon’s chest, but in a flash the taller boy disappeared.

Symphon’s dodge was so fast that Shiori didn’t know it was happening before the spell took Symphon away. Even that instant burst of power was strong enough that she gritted her teeth as she felt Symphon move incredible masses of power.

Motohara looked around, confused, then his eyes locked onto a spot atop Tsubame’s roof that Shiori couldn’t see.

Motohara growled. “Come down, Symphon, I’ve been preparing for this fight. Don’t make me wait.”

Shiori heard Symphon’s voice from the roof. “I don’t even know who you are.”

Motohara mocked a bow while keeping his knife ready. “I am Mores Praetor.” Motohara said, waving the knife. “Killing you will earn me a place of honor.”

Praetor. Shiori knew that name. She tried to stand, but slipped on the dust and rubble from the collapsed wall.

She needed to think. The Praetors were an old, powerful warlord family in Kryptopeda, existing for centuries. They were hated and feared. Motohara was calling himself Mores Praetor?

“Praetor?” Symphon asked.

“Duke Praetor put a bounty on you, double if we retrieve the books your whore mother stole,” Motohara said. He swung his knife with a spoken word. Blood-red light struck at the roof from the knife’s tip like a crimson snake.

Symphon appeared as Motohara finished his knife swing. Symphon’s arms blurred as he spoke a spell. Motohara flew over the road in front of Tsubame’s small fenced yard and into an opposite house.

The amount of power Symphon summon with every attack made Shiori dizzy.

“Princess,” Symphon said without looking back at Shiori, “this one is dangerous. He opened a portal from Kryptopeda. We can use that to escape, leaving him stranded here. Get ready to jump through the portal.”

Shiori found her bag in the rubble and was glad it hadn’t fallen into the portal. Who knows where it would have landed in Kryptopeda?

Another snaking red light from across the street struck at Symphon, gouging the ground. Symphon had disappeared.

Shiori had read about fast, destructive battles between Speakers. Even the weakest Speakers could easily kill a person with a spell. The Speakers that worked for Usurper warlords or were themselves warlords had enough power to destroy cities.

When two people with that kind of power fight, it’s usually over the instant one side lands a clean hit.

A car parked nearby flew across the street at Motohara. No, not Motohara. He was Mores Praetor.

Pieces came together as Shiori remembered the Kryptopedian House of Praetor specialized in manipulation and control magic. Their most powerful were Speakers that controlled minds and lived for centuries.

But they didn’t call their magic users Speakers, they called them Narrators. Shiori should have remembered it sooner, but perhaps the spell had scattered her thoughts.

The Praetors saw magic as the ultimate power, and used it to control people like puppets. Their Speakers called themselves Narrators, because their words became reality. Had Symphon’s mother escaped Duke Praetor himself?

It made sense now. Symphon had said he was bad at that kind of magic, but had used the existing spell over the whole school. Mores Praetor must have created that spell disguise himself as Motohara. Praetors were experts at deceptive magic.

Shiori saw her mother and Tsubame trapped inside the house. The hole in the front wall was mostly occupied by a floating portal that continued to eat any nearby broken wall bits.

If Tsubame or her mother tried to leave, they might get pulled into Kryptopeda. Their house had a back door to a small yard, but the fences were high. Could they go back there and try to escape?

As Shiori turned, she saw Mores appear, knife in hand, behind Symphon. She realized with a start that half a dozen copies of Mores each held a knife, attacking Symphon from multiple directions.

Symphon stomped the ground before any dagger could touch him. A wave of power flew out from him. The feeling of that power took Shiori’s breath away. Even far away, Shiori was nearly knocked down by the blast.

One Mores copy was knocked into the air by the blast. The rest disappeared.

Symphon tracked his enemy’s flight. Shiori felt Symphon gather his power. He was going to impale Motohara, or Mores, on a spike right before he landed.

She should be glad. Mores had deceived her, and cast a spell on her. He was a Praetor, and an enemy.

But she wasn’t a killer. She moved on reflex. She hated Mores for his deception, but she couldn’t watch him die. She was a girl in her first year of high school, not a veteran soldier or killer.

“No!” Shiori cried out. She had been betrayed by Motohara, or Mores Praetor, but she didn’t want him to die in front of her. Time slowed as she felt Symphon gather power.

She had seen him destroy Ghouls with those spikes. He had shown her that he could make them even out of sand. She felt him access that power, and she reached out to stop him.

“SYMPHON!” she said, yanking on the power inside the boy.

The word echoed down the small street. Symphon’s eyes widened as his power was shaken and made useless.

Symphon stood, shocked, as his power collapsed. His every spell and protection shattered. Even his disguise, that of a school uniform, collapsed. He stood defenseless, revealed in his soldier’s uniform from Felthal in Kryptopeda.

Mores landed and was up in a flash, dagger at Symphon’s throat.