Chapter 40.1

Amara clenched her fists, watching them closely as blackened, chitinous plates grew from her knuckles. Once covered, she smashed them together, sparks of hellfire jumping up her wrists. She skipped from side to side, moving faster with each step to force her heart rate up. With a heavy, guttural scream, she charged at Vee, who leaned forward and braced for impact.

She threw her entire body into her first punch, grunting as the strike landed. Vee slid backwards, muttered something under her breath, and a burst of angelic magic washed over Amara. Her skin prickled, though she barely noticed.

Another shout, another strike.

Amara lost focus, her body seizing as uncomfortable emotions tried to bubble up. She forced them down, slapping herself before charging Vee again. This time she jumped before striking, her fist sinking deep into the punching bag suspended between the two of them. Despite Vee’s angelic strength, Amara’s aggression still forced her backward.

With a step backwards, Amara spun and lashed out with her tail. Its tip was thick and blackened, a makeshift club that slammed into the bag before she moved in for another punch.

Amara’s legs shook, threatening to buckle, but she kept fighting. She threw countless blows at the punching bag, her gauntlets growing more jagged with each passing second. She forced them deeper into the fake leather, and it was only a matter of seconds before they were sharp enough to puncture.

Her target weak, Amara pushed the advantage. She focused everything she had on the small tear, hammering into it with everything she had. Her fury grew, hellfire leaping from her fists as she continued her assault. Fire burst from each impact as her gauntlets sank deeper with every strike, and soon the bag began breaking apart. Her prey bled thick, colorful scraps of cloth, and she wanted to see it obliterated.

Amara screamed, flames leaping from her mouth as she grabbed the punching bag. She pulled it from Vee’s hands, yanking hard enough to break the chains that held it aloft. Her wings held her steady as she spun, throwing the bag high into the air. She watched as it flew higher and higher, suspended dozens of feet above the floor of the Gymnastics building, then launched a beam of light from her hands.

The bag exploded, scattering into a thousand pieces of leather and cloth. Many of the pieces were on fire, but Amara didn’t care. Her emotions finally bubbled to the surface, and she screamed before falling to her knees. She slammed a fist into the floor, the impact reverberating through her hand, then repeated herself. Each impact stung worse than the last, and she shouted until her voice threatened to collapse. The hard floor began chipping away at her chitinous gauntlets, but she wanted the pain, needed it.

Vee spoke, though her words were distant and muted. A hand found her shoulder, silently asking her to stop, and it broke her concentration. She slumped over, leaning against Vee in defeat; there was nothing left to distract herself with. Tears poured down her cheeks, the hellfire vanishing as her fury faded. She turned to Vee, wrapped her arms around her waist, and buried her face in her shoulder as she wept.

Amara was drained. Not physically—she’d been taking every available opportunity to make a Nick-sized dent in her mattress—but emotionally. Despite the power thrumming underneath her skin, the hellfire that had turned her into an otherworldly monster, she felt utterly broken.

Five days had passed since Brandon had been defeated, sent back to Purgatory and ripped to pieces by the very creatures he’d tried to subjugate. Five days since Chloé had single-handedly saved everyone’s lives, proving that she was just as capable as her friends, even without any magic backing her up.

She shook her head. She desperately wanted to avoid thinking it, saying it. That one, fateful word that awaited everyone and everything in the end.

Instead, she threw her covers off and got dressed. Her movements were mechanical, she moved without passion as she pulled clothes from her closet. What she wore didn’t matter, so long as it wasn’t pajamas. Ever since spending a week in Purgatory with nothing but her sleepwear, she’d developed a heavy distaste for it. She spent her nights completely nude now, and dressed herself only out of spite for the outfit she’d been stuck in for so long.

Her clothes felt so restrictive now. Just before their fateful battle with Brandon, she’d burned her pajamas to a crisp and simply walked around in her chitinous exoskeleton, and the freedom had felt wonderful. In the years and months prior, clothing had been Amara’s favorite way to express herself, but that joy had slowly diminished as her new body had developed.

She longed to be free, to explore the campus and the world in her true form. She hated hiding away her tail, she loved how her horns sat on her head, and she adored the feeling of wrapping her wings around herself. At the moment, everyone on campus knew her identity, but Nick encouraged her to keep her demonic attributes hidden to appear less intimidating. He’d helped Chloé talk with many of the students after Brandon’s initial invasion, and quite a few of them had expressed concerns about Amara.

Once Amara was mostly dressed, she began shuffling to the kitchen. She’d left her jeans unbuttoned, sitting lower than usual so she could keep her tail out. As she rinsed out her coffee pot, her tail opened a nearby cabinet to grab her travel mug. She forced down a breakfast bar while the coffee brewed, and after she’d screwed the lid on her thermos, her eyes flared. She superheated the coffee until it boiled, then demanifested her tail in a burst of hellfire and buttoned her pants. With a heavy sigh of frustration, she locked up her apartment and walked outside.

Winter was in full swing for Aurelius University. Tree branches hung barren and lifeless, and a brisk wind scattered what few leaves remained on the ground. Light snowflakes fell from the sky, melting before they had a chance to land on Amara’s skin. She scowled, took another sip of coffee, then started walking.

It was time to meet up with everyone at the cafeteria.

She’d been ignoring the other students ever since the fight. Vee had been spending quite a bit of time with her, which she didn’t mind, but that left Nick and Tessa as the primary points of contact for everyone else. On rare occasions, in the short spans of time before and after they fucked, Nick would share small updates about how the students were feeling, but Amara never paid attention.

As she approached the dining hall, she stopped. She didn’t want to go in, not yet, and instead veered around the building to visit the quad on the other side. She hadn’t seen it since the fight, and surveying the wreckage sounded better than surrounding herself with flocks of frightened humans, at least for now.

Her first stop was the outer sidewalk, to the place where she’d first saved Chloé. A massive crater sat in the middle of the concrete, and the building nearby shared just as much damage. The reaper hadn’t crashed entirely through the outer wall, but many of the bricks had been shattered, now lying in pieces and scattered amongst the wreckage.

A trail of destruction led towards the quad, mainly large scratches in the ground and trees, and Amara followed it onto the main field. A literal battleground awaited her. The grass, normally pristine and uniform, had effectively been reimagined as a set for an old war movie. Impact craters, massive gouges, and countless scorch marks from Amara’s hellfire marred the landscape. Many trees were now missing large branches, and one had fallen over completely, its trunk snapped in half by some otherworldly force.

In the center of everything, a complex web of concentric, circular scorch marks. Lines of damage radiated out from a single point; the exact spot the portal had closed for good.

Wincing in pain, Amara turned away. There was nothing here for her now.

Instead, she entered the dining hall through the bistro entrance, marching up the stairs to approach the cafeteria. She could hear dozens of voices, and was able to pick out Vee’s in particular, along with Nick and Tessa. With a deep breath, she tried to mentally prepare herself for whatever they had planned, then walked into view.

Many of the tables had been rearranged, shifted around to better serve their purposes. The point of today’s meeting, according to Nick, was to finally talk about what needed to happen next.

Vee was the first to see Amara and excused herself from her conversation before running over.

“Hey,” Vee said. “How are you feeling?”

Amara shrugged, looking down at the ground. “About how you’d expect.”

“We’ll get through this together, alright? I know it’s frustrating to be here, but this is how we keep people safe moving forward.”

With a heavy sigh, Amara looked up. Vee had a powerfully sympathetic smile, and her presence made this whole gathering significantly more tolerable. “Yeah, that’s what Nick keeps trying to tell me. I just don’t have the energy.”

Vee stepped closer, playfully wrapping an arm around Amara’s shoulder. “That’s what your coffee is for, right? Besides, once we wrap up, Ruby is making everyone food, so at least there’s something to look forward to. If nothing else, I doubt you’ll need to talk much, if at all.”

After chugging more coffee, Amara forced herself to nod slowly. “…Thanks, Vee.”

It only took a few minutes to corral everyone to the tables, forming a vague circle so all the students could see each other. Nick called for everyone to quiet down, and once the murmurs stopped, he launched into a speech that sounded suspiciously well-practiced.

“So, I know you’re all worried about what comes next. A lot of crazy shit happened over the last week, and it’s not fair that you got pulled into all this. However, at the end of the day, we’re all in this together, and we need to come to an agreement on how we proceed. Now, I’ve met with most of you in smaller groups the last few days, so hopefully we all have context for what happened on Monday. The purpose of today’s meeting is to get us all on the same page about how serious the situation is. This isn’t over just because we got rid of Brandon, and if we don’t band together, more people are going to get hurt. However, I’m not the best person to talk about that, so… Tessa?”

Nick looked to his side, locking eyes with Tessa. They seemed to share a quick, wordless conversation, and she sighed before standing up to trade places with Nick.

“Alright. So, uh, I suck at public speaking, and I hate beating around the bush. Long story short, this has to stay a secret. The fact that you all know magic is real, and have personally witnessed a planar incursion, marks you as targets. There are countless organizations out there that benefit from keeping magic a secret, and they will not hesitate to resort to drastic measures if they think someone here is in on the secret. But that’s only the first part of all this.”

She cleared her throat, then continued. “This campus sits on… well, it’s like a large confluence of magical energy. The walls between the different planes are incredibly thin, and until recently, we’ve been kept safe by a series of protective spells placed around campus. This magic essentially formed a large gate that kept otherworldly forces at bay, but Mr. Wellington’s cult blew the entrance open in pursuit of power. Without it, we’re completely exposed to all the other planes of existence. Things might come through; magical energies are at risk of going haywire.”

From the crowd of students, a concerned redheaded girl raised her hand. “What do you mean ‘things might come through’?”

“Like, monsters. Cryptids. Take the cult, for example; a powerful demon wanted to invade our world and opened the Gate to make that happen. There are other creatures like that, ones that want access to humanity, who they only see as a resource. Vampires see us as food, fae beings see us as gullible fools to toy with, demons want to steal our souls, consuming them for power.”

Behind Tessa, Vee cleared her throat loudly before nodding her head at Amara.

“Sorry, demons want to take our souls. Look, the point is, can know about this. I don’t care what your personal feelings are, I don’t care if you’re having a religious panic, or anything like that. If word gets out, we’re fucked. Now, to my knowledge, no one outside of this room knows about what’s been happening. The planes, however, are constantly shifting around like… like tides in the ocean. If one of them brushes too close, something could very easily slip through, and that’s where you all come in. Until I find a way to repair the Gate, we need all of you to report anything strange that happens on campus.”

Another student in the crowd raised a hand, this one a dark-skinned girl with thick, curly hair gathered atop her head. The ends of it had been dyed red, and she spoke with exceptional confidence. “That’s all well and good, but how the fuck are we supposed to explain the state of the campus? The quad looks like it was leveled by an airstrike!”

Nick stood up again. “That’s a good point, Naomi, and that’s part of the reason we’re here. We need to think of a solid excuse. Honestly, since you have connections to the school paper, you could probably write an article to help sell the story.”

“You want me to abuse my position to spread lies? I didn’t join the newspaper to be a pawn in some magical conspiracy!” Naomi shouted back.

Amara rolled her head back and stared up at the ceiling. Around her, dozens of students began chipping in their thoughts, some pitching cover stories, others debating with Naomi about the importance of controlling the narrative. There was quite a bit of dissent, and despite Nick’s best efforts, little progress was made. Some students agreed with Naomi, some with Tessa, and no one was able to keep the conversation focused.

It was hard to summon the strength to care. Amara zoned out for large periods of time; not quite asleep, but certainly not alert. On rare occasions she would catch other students staring at her, and she would amuse herself by flaring her eyes and scaring their gaze off.

After nearly an hour of conversation, most of it Amara ignored, she found herself idly listening to someone arguing with Tessa. She wasn’t sure what the specific topic was, but a brown-haired athlete seemed to be concerned about safety.

“—look, I’m not saying you’re wrong, but there’s no way we can guarantee people won’t get hurt! I mean, fuck, your friend Clara knew everything and she still—”

“Her name is CHLOÉ!!” Amara shouted, suddenly laser-focused on the conversation. She jumped to her feet, slamming the table in front of her and cracking it down the center. Her horns appeared in a burst of hellfire, and she glared at the athlete from behind a veil of flames.

Everyone went silent, the air thick with fear as everyone stared at Amara. Her breathing was heavy, and with each exhale, sparks of hellfire floated from her mouth.

She felt soft fingers grab her wrist, then quickly turned to make eye contact with Vee. “Hey, let’s take a walk, okay?” Her eyes were kind, but unyielding, and Amara scoffed before turning away from the crowd and storming off. Vee stood up, quickly apologized to everyone, then hurried after her.