A dozen giant moths slammed into the door and made the entire staffroom rumble.

  Zora didn’t think he and Cecilia had enough strength—both physically and mentally—to defeat twelve more giant bugs, so he didn’t waste any time. Turning his sword back into a wand and then sticking it in his pocket, he tossed four of the katydid’s legs at Emilia to hold onto, and then gestured her to jump onto his back.

  “We’re leaving through the hole in the ceiling!” he said, eyes snapping over to Cecilia, who was trying to fit the rest of the katydid’s limbs somewhere under her cloak. “Leave the rest! You need your hands to climb, don’t you?”

  “But—”

  “Emilia can carry four since she has two extra arms, so just leave the rest! Points won’t matter at all if we die here!”

  Cecilia gritted her teeth, but nodded firmly anyways as she dropped her lute before following his lead, climbing up the side of the great oak tree with both her hands free. Emilia had jumped onto his back with both legs curled around his waist, and thank the Great Makers she was light as a twig despite being so unnaturally strong for her age—the katydid legs she was curling under her armpits were heavier than the entire rest of her body.

  Push through, Zora! He clenched his jaw, ignoring the burns in his muscles as he strained to pull himself up branch by branch, metre by metre. You’ve climbed plenty of trees back when you were a boy, haven’t you? Summon that strength! Where’s your adolescent vitality?

  Now, he could egg himself on all he wanted, but the fact was Cecilia managed to scale the ten-metre-tall tree before he did, and they both managed to reach the top just as the door exploded beneath them. The giant moths fluttered in, screeching, their oversized wings and antennae smashing into every wall and cubicle there was.

  He was just glad Cecilia was here to cast “Da Capo” on the lute she left behind, making the instrument play on its own to distract the moths for a few more seconds.

  She's got plenty of cool spells only she can cast as a music teacher, huh?

  The three of them immediately break into a mad sprint across the roof of the visual and music arts building, cool night winds whipping through their hair. Emilia was still on his back, and she was deathly quiet as he heard the moths bursting through the hole behind them, making the entire building rumble again. No doubt some of them were staying behind in the staffroom, but there was little he could do to protect the bodies of his friends and colleagues from being eaten.

  A part of him wanted to be selfish, idealistic, and fight back against the moths, but… between the already dead and the still living, he knew who he had to protect. It wasn’t an easy choice for Cecilia, either. Her sapphire eyes were watery as they ran side by side, refusing to look back, so at the very least—since they were the ones who'd decided to take Emilia out with them—they had to get Emilia back to the dorm no matter what.

  “Shatter!” he shouted, whipping his wand out and shattering the ceiling right in front of them. The stone was already cracked, weakened, and damaged, so it crumbled with a single spell, dropping all of them into the hallway just as the first moth swooped down at them with its razor sharp wings.

  Cecilia landed light on her toes, but he landed hard on his heels, knees buckling; he had to bite down a groan as he pushed himself forward, ignoring the fact that Emilia was squirming uncomfortably on his back.

  Hold still! Stop moving around! You’re gonna fall off if you—

  With a wave, Emilia tossed a ball of sticky red threads behind him, and it splattered against a window to turn into a massive web. Neither Zora nor Cecilia slowed down to see why she did that, but moments later, a giant moth smashed through the window in an attempt to ram them to death with sheer brute force… and it only ended up flying headfirst into her threads, much like the katydid, unable to free itself and take flight again.

  … Huh.

  Her survival instincts are incredible.

  Emilia didn’t hesitate. She didn’t think. She bit her nails to draw more blood, then weaved two dozen more balls of sticky threads and tossed them at the windows as they ran by. The splattered webs hid them from the moth’s field of vision, and that made all the difference. Three, four, five moths misjudged where they were and smashed through the windows behind them. Five more moths made the same mistake and smashed through the windows in front of them, allowing Zora and Cecilia to jump over them as they continued towards the west-wing cafeteria.

  But there were other giant bugs in the building as well, and they all heard the commotion, converging towards their location with a massive rumble.

  “Violins! Cellos! Flutes, clarinets, trumpets, trombones, harps, bassoons, and timpanis of the building!” Cecilia hollered, screaming as loud as she could with her head tilted back. “Play the academy’s anthem once again!”

  Her spell washed over the entire body, and music roared to life, so loud and so fervent it almost made Zora freeze as well. He didn’t, of course. He kept running full speed ahead, casting “barricade” and all sorts of other environment-destroying spells just to block off hallways, doors, corners, and throw the other giant bugs in the buildings off. The instruments Cecilia had ordered to play themselves already distracted most of them, drawing their attention, but the barricades he erected with debris all around slowed the rest of them—and then they found themselves sprinting across the bridge to the dorm at long last, having shaken off all but one giant bug behind them.

  He slid to a halt in the cafeteria and let Emilia off before the gate as Cecilia banged on it, screaming at Titus to open up. The final giant moth hadn’t been distracted by any of their tricks. It was still soaring straight at them, flying through the narrow bridge with its wings fanned out like blades, and though the heavy steel gate was already swinging open… he knew it wouldn’t open in time.

  At least, not in time to close it and block out the giant moth.

  … No choice.

  So while Cecilia pushed Emilia behind her and whipped out her wand, he snapped his own wand into a sword and sucked in a sharp breath, putting himself before the two of them.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I've done this before.

  I got this.

  Then, just as the giant moth was about to bowl straight into them, he stepped forward, knelt, slashed overhead at the same time—his blade ripping through the moth’s underside as it carved itself open with its momentum.

  Cecilia and Emilia threw themselves out of the way as the giant moth smashed into the gate with an unceremonious bang, making even Titus yelp in fright, but the moth was most certainly ‘dead’.

  It crumpled to the ground with its head caved in, its insides spilling out, and the three-metre-long giant twitched for only a few more seconds before it stopped moving entirely.

  For Zora’s part, he was still kneeling with his blade in both hands, trembling from head to toe as a gasp of cold air escaped his lips.

  “... Alright,” he muttered, managing to compose himself somewhat as he stood up shakily and turned around to face the girls, throwing a half-confident smile onto his face. “If even moths leave the moon for the flame, we don’t wanna stay outside when there’s a warm hearth inside, do we?”

  Cecilia stared at him, dumbfounded, and so was Emilia, Titus, and all of his friends standing right behind the opened gate. They looked between him, the giant moth, the sword he turned back into a wand, then back at him—and finally Cecilia coughed, ushering all of them into the dorm while Zora struggled to drag the giant moth in.

  For her part, Cecilia still looked utterly bewildered as she helped him drag the moth in by its legs, nodding at Titus to close the gate with the lever.

  “When did you learn how to use a sword?” Cecilia muttered. “Aren’t you supposed to be ‘bookworm Zora, the most unathletic, clumsy, physically incompetent, can’t-sew-for-his-life boy in school’?”

  “The one fitness class I took somewhat seriously was swordsmanship,” he muttered back, his legs and spine feeling like they were about to snap as the two of them fell backwards, the gate slamming shut just as they managed to drag the moth into the dimly lit foyer. “You know, all of us boys took that class really seriously, but I took it more seriously than everyone else. While all of you were playing ball and trying out a variety of other exercises, I was studying the blade—”

  “—bullshit—”

  “I wasn’t a particularly good student, though. Mainly coasted by on Cs and Ds,” he finished, sighing a huge breath of relief as the rest of the kids surrounded the giant black moth, poking and kicking curiously at its fluffy hair. “It was luck, by the way. I’m not actually good at the sword. You could’ve held your sword up and let it cut its own belly open, too, seeing as it was just flying in a straight line.”

  Cecilia raised a tired brow, leaning back where she sat. “Still takes courage to walk towards something charging at you.”

  “You do know I’ve already been chased by a giant butterfly and a giant stag beetle. Compared to them, I’d say the moth was rather adorable.”

  She looked away with a soft groan and a small smile as they traded a fistbump, crawling slowly onto their feet. Zora wouldn’t mind passing out on the carpet like this, but he was still a teacher, and his students were in front of him—Titus and his three friends were still kicking the giant moth, while Emilia was standing far back, peeking out at the boys from behind a pillar.

  He gave Cecilia a knowing nod. Their next move was obvious—eat the giant moth and the katydid legs before heading out to look for the two teachers whose corpses hadn’t been in the staffroom—but right now, they were both exhausted. And it was already late. They’d put the kids to sleep and then get some rest themselves, because there was no point heading out again when they could barely take another step.

  Their expedition would have to come tomorrow morning.

  “Where are the other teachers, Miss Sarius?” one of the boys asked suddenly. “I thought you… went to the staffroom to find them?”

  Silence.

  Cecilia glanced at him and gave him a look that said ‘I’ll take them up to their rooms’, so he left the boys to her while he turned towards Emilia, beckoning the little girl over—

  “They’re dead, aren’t they?”

  He paused. Looked around. Cecilia was ushering the other three boys to the common room while fending their questions off with clever diversions, but Titus alone stayed behind, hands clasped behind his back.

  Zora blinked.

  Then he narrowed his eyes.

  Then, he dipped his head slowly and pressed his wand against his lips, shushing the little boy.

  Thankfully, Cecilia’s star student seemed to understand and returned the gesture, racing off to follow her and join his friends in the common room.

  … Right.

  His profile said he was rescued as the sole survivor of an infestation in a far southwestern town in the Attini Empire, huh?

  His lips thinned into a line as he beckoned Emilia over, motioning for her to just drop the katydid legs behind the pillar. He’d come back for them tomorrow morning. Right now, it was more important they all got a good night’s rest, and that meant leading Emilia to the communal bathroom where she could at least wash off the glowing red blood trickling down her torn nails.

  He couldn’t help but grimace as she skipped over with a cheery smile, walking hand in hand with him to the bathroom outside the common room. When they got there, she tried pulling him inside as well, but he simply patted her head and nudged her into the girl’s bathroom, pointing at the doorway as he did.

  “I’ll be right outside,” he said quietly. “Promise.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  She looked a bit anxious, and it took a bit of time, but she eventually went into the bathroom alone—and once he did, he collapsed against the doorway with one knee drawn up to his chest, putting his face in his hands.

  She hadn’t seemed to notice it herself, but not only had she ripped so many threads from her nails that they weren’t regenerating as fast as they used to, there were also black chitin plates growing across her cheek that hadn’t been there before.

  The more she used her Art and her moth mutations—whatever ‘moth’ could coagulate their blood and weave sticky, glowing red threads like that—the faster she'd lose her humanity and turn into a flesh-craving bug.

  After tonight, she’d only have a maximum of six or so days left as a human.

  … And yet, children like her and Titus were all too common across the world.

  Sixty-one years ago—Year Zero—the Swarm descended from the sky and took humanity by complete surprise. Giant moths tore through the far eastern continent. Armies of ants claimed the far southern continent. Titanic crustaceans sank the far western continent, and many, many more bugs of all shapes and sizes conquered the rest of the world. By Year Ten, humanity had been pushed to one final continent in the centre of the world, surrounded on all sides by the Swarm… and although humanity had finally figured out how to mass-produce bioarcanic system by Year Eleven to achieve a strenuous stalemate, the war was still very much leaning in the bugs’ favour.

  While the borders of the continent were currently being protected by the Six Swarmsteel Fronts—humanity’s six strongest militaries—plenty of giant bugs could still slip through cracks in the defenses and ravage the rest of the continent. Soldiers in the Swarmsteel Fronts may all have systems and classes, but most humans trying to live relatively quiet and peaceful lives didn’t, and as such, ‘Infestations’ were deadly beyond belief. Giant bugs could pop out of the ground without warning, and within a single week, they could infest an entire small region with poisonous spores choking the air and pinkish-purple flesh crawling across the lands, expanding the reach of the Swarm.

  The chances of an average adult surviving a spontaneous infestation was incredibly low. For a child… even lower. Most would choose to die alongside their friends and family. Some would resort to eating bugs even without a class just to gain a little bit of strength, a little bit of magic, praying they wouldn’t mutate any undesirable traits or lose their sanity in the process.

  And Amadeus Academy was a refuge for pitiful children who were all victims of the Swarm, one way or another.

  “Are you still there, Mister Zora?” Emilia asked, her voice faint and distant.

  “I’m there,” he replied softly, resting the back of his head against the doorway.

  “How about now?”

  “Still there.”

  His eyes were dark and half-lidded as he listened to the sound of running water inside the bathroom, the katydid’s last words still echoing inside his eardrums.

  After all, he’d once been a child of the academy, too.

  “... Nona, youngest of the three Magicicada Witches,” he whispered, his voice muffled in his hands, “it just has to be you again, huh?”