As Zora stepped into the vast indoor botanical garden and Cecilia cast “silence”

  He wasn’t expecting ‘fragrance’ amidst a Swarm infestation, but here he was.

  Bright and resplendent sunlight fell onto the garden through the distant glass walls and ceiling. As the ‘bridge’ between the northern building and the rest of the academy, the garden was at least ten times as large as any auditorium hall, and the mages had spared no effort making it look as pretty as possible: alien trees with shimmering silver bark rose from small, rolling hills, their thick canopies glowing faintly with golden veins. Waterfalls tumbled into crystal-clear rivers by the faraway walls. Flower blooms of various shades of deep rosewood and blue irises brought a fresh, vibrant look to the garden, and at some point, Zora had to ask—what part of this was a ‘garden’ instead of a full-blown artificial forest a mad physician had decided to build in the middle of the academy?

  A garden implied there’d be a path winding through the flora, taking them around the garden so they could actually do garden-related activities, but there wasn’t a hint of a cobbled road anywhere in front of them. Zora couldn’t even the greenhouse that was supposed to be a giant building in the middle of the garden; that was just how thick the trees and vines and blooms were.

  he thought, scowling as flocks of starlings chirped by overhead, accompanied by muted tree frog croaks, lizard clicks, and a bunch more background noises he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

  There was an actual, non-zero percent chance Julius had no idea what was going on outside, and he was just extending his biological science class to an extreme degree. That’d be the worst case scenario. If, at any point, he led his class 2-D outside and came face to face with a giant bug…

  But somehow, Zora wasn’t too worried about that happening.

  After performing a cursory scan of the clearing in front of them, Marcus nodded at them to start wading straight through the thicket. The greenhouse be dead centre in the middle of the garden, but Zora wasn’t entirely sure. Despite the lush greenery around him, there was an unsettling quality to the artificial forest that always made the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Walking hand in hand with Emilia, he eyed the towering silver-barked trees, glared at the giant twisted and knotted roots, and twitched an eye every time an opalescent fish jumped from the rivers to make a tiny splash—he’d never actually visited or explored the garden since Julius had it renovated a year ago, so he was letting Marcus and Cecilia lead the way.

  For her part, Emilia had never been in the garden, either. Her fingers trembled with excitement as her antennae swirled in circles, her ears perking and nose sniffing around.

  “Mister Zora! Look! That one!” she whispered, jumping and pointing at an eight-pointed iridescent flower dangling from an overhead vine. “Can I touch it? It looks… soft! Pretty!”

  Before he could even open his mouth, her small feet skipped a few steps ahead of him, dragging him towards a glowing patch of mushrooms nestled by the trunk of a silver-barked tree. She crouched, still gripping his hand as her other hands stretched out inquisitively. “Mister Zora! These ones look soft, too! Can I touch? Can I eat?”

  Marcus and Cecilia glanced back at the two of them while he let Emilia play around a little, allowing her to tug him around pulsing silver fruits, web-like vines, and even to one of the cold river streams where she dipped her hand in the freezing water—she squealed and giggled at that one, her every movement full with unfiltered delight.

  Zora did his best to guide her along the path to the greenhouse, but they were inevitably taking the slower, less-walked path, and… he wasn’t so sure that was an entirely bad thing. Cecilia had already cast “silence”not listen to them if she were too busy being unnerved.

  “... Hasn’t she been here even once the past three weeks, skellyman?” Marcus mumbled several metres in front, but Zora heard the man loud and clear with his Acute Tympana. “She’s playing like she’s never seen a flower before. Have you been locking her inside her room after her afternoon classes all this time?”

  Zora smiled weakly as Emilia whirled and laughed, trying to get him to look at a dangling star-shaped fruit. “It’s a working theory, but since eating bugs without a system gradually turns humans into frenzied insects, the Headmistress said putting her in a floral environment where an insect would feel at home might… hasten the takeover. Weaken her humanity,” he whispered back, shaking his head slowly. “I haven’t let her attend Julius’ classes the past three weeks, no, and I’ve kept her away from any sort of flowers or trees she could possibly climb onto. Until we know the exact type of moth she ate so Julius can brew an antidote, I don’t want her engaging the insect side of herself.”

  Cecilia furrowed her brows, scratching her neck as she hacked through another wall of vines to clear the path. “So you still haven’t figured out what kind of moth she is? I’ve heard a bit from grand… from the Headmistress that she only has a month or so left as a human. That was three weeks ago, right? How long—”

  “Counting today, two days.”

  Both Marcus and Cecilia glanced back at Emilia, their faces scrunched with silent, anxious worry.

  “I will be honest with you, muscleman,” Zora muttered, nudging Emilia along as she picked a particularly pretty star-shaped flower from the ground, “I considered looking for Julius first instead of you, because if nothing else, Julius is the only man in the academy who can possibly brew an antidote for Emilia.”

  Marcus narrowed his eyes. “Why’d the two of you go for me, then?”

  “Because you were closer,” Zora said plainly, quietly, “and because class 2-C is bigger than class 2-D, so—”

  Then the muscleman stopped and slapped him on the back, making him stumble forward a few steps. Emilia didn’t even seem to notice the commotion. She was still skipping and humming along, looking around the vibrant garden with ‘awe’ written all over her face.

  “Idiot,” Marcus grumbled, putting Zora into a painful headlock as the muscleman scrubbed his hair. “Next time, if you have to choose between your kid and mine, choose kid. Class 2-C is mine to deal with. Like I needed your help with that haze moth or whatever the hell that thing was.”

  Zora groaned and tried waving Cecilia over for assistance, but the music teacher simply sighed and took Emilia’s hand, talking to the little girl about flowers and mushrooms in a world of their own while Marcus continued scrubbing his hair.

  He thought about blasting the big man away with a spell, but he neither felt like wasting his physical stamina nor his mental energy over a decision he’d already made. The fact was, Marcus was here with them right now, and he was glad Emilia had a meatshield to hide behind—he didn’t regret not going after Julius first.

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  “... Wait,” Cecilia breathed, and all three teachers lifted their heads at once. Zora and Marcus glanced at the music teacher, whose head craned back, ears perked, and eyes closed; she was picking up something with her higher perception level, and for Zora’s part, he couldn’t hear a single thing. “There are… footsteps. To the left. Over there.”

  Frowning, Zora and Marcus looked left. Past the thicket, through the canopy, and into the shadows of the artificial forest. It was bright outside, but the canopy was thick and Zora couldn’t really see a person-shaped silhouette in the distance. Marcus shook his head as well, and then they both turned back to face Cecilia.

  “Julius?” Zora asked.

  “Can’t be,” Marcus grunted, cracking his neck, “but if it’s someone else lost in this stupidly confusing garden, we should make sure they come with us.”

  The decision was made. While Zora pressed a finger to Emilia’s lips and shushed her, Marcus and Cecilia took point. They moved in front of him. Cecilia led the way, recasting “silence”

  But then a branch crunched in the distance, and this time, Zora and Marcus heard it loud and clear.

  They whipped their heads forward, holding their breaths.

  All four of them paused.

  While Cecilia and Marcus narrowed their eyes, Zora noticed Emilia’s antennae started to tingle. The sharp little strands were pointing straight ahead, at the human-like figure strutting slowly through the forest towards them.

  Then Marcus immediately dashed in front of Cecilia, slapping the two spear-like antennae that flew at her head at the speed of a blink.

  Zora flinched as the two long antennae slammed into two silver trees, before around the bark like wrapping ropes around a stick, and then—the antennae tensed up, slingshotting the body it was connected to forward.

  Marcus frowned.

  Cecilia tilted her head.

  Emilia sucked in a sharp breath.

  Zora blinked, catching what like the shadow of a human soaring over them for the briefest of moments, but it was no shadow. Nor a human. As it swung over their heads, it released its two antennae from the trees and whipped them back in, slicing off Marcus’ left arm and Cecilia’s left ear in one swift motion.

  By the time it landed ten metres behind them, Marcus and Cecilia had already crumpled to the wet earth, groaning in pain.

  “... Blockade!”

  As his blockade crumpled back into the earth, the human-like bug standing in the distance tilted its head curiously.

  He didn’t get a good look at it. He didn’t have the time to. He shouted “mud wave” and flicked his wand at the ground before as hard as he could, kicking up a wave of wet soil that splattered into the air, reducing visibility. Meanwhile, Emilia picked up both the fallen teachers and the severed appendages. By the time the human-like bug’s antennae cleaved through the mist, the two of them were already bolting straight for the greenhouse, vaulting over bushes and ducking under large vines.

  “Rustle!”

  Emilia looked at him with quivering lips—and certainly looked funny herself, a little girl with inhuman strength carrying two grown adults with four bony arms—but he wasn’t about to hear ‘no’ for an answer now. There was no doubt about it: the way Marcus and Cecilia were groaning and turning incredibly pale by the second, the human-like bug’s antennae were laced with venom. The severed appendages weren’t the worst of their injuries. They needed venom treatment , and only Julius could help them.

  So, while Emilia continued to sprint full-speed ahead, he whirled and cast another “blockade”

  Skidding to a halt right at the edge of the clearing, he backed towards the greenhouse slowly with his wand poised in front of him.

  He couldn’t see the bug quite clearly through the fall of silver leaves, but the fact that it was vaguely human-sized, walking on two legs, and swinging its four arms as it meandered forward with a human gait told him everything he needed to know about it.

  His mind scrambled for ideas on how to get out of this situation, but his thoughts were interrupted as the Mutant suddenly screeched in the distance, and the forest in response.

  If his blood wasn’t frozen enough already, it sure was rock solid now.

  He backed into a shallow river running around the greenhouse in a wide circle, chewing his lip. He could hear them coming now: a dozen, two dozen, maybe even three dozen Giant-Class bugs crashing through the forest on all sides, converging on the clearing he was in. He would've preferred if they were all coming from the direction of the slowly-approaching Mutant—he could try making a gigantic “barricade” to keep them all at bay—but they wouldn't be called the Swarm if they weren't hard to pin down.

  He scowled, glancing down at the shallow river he just backed across.

  The ‘water’ was dark, muddy, and clung to his heels like oil—because it oil, and he heard a dozen burning arrows volleying over his head from behind.

  He saw only the Mutant’s armoured beetle head as it slingshotted itself forward, but the flame-tipped arrows stabbed into the river of oil right before it could reach him, turning the river into a wall of poisonous green flames that roared into existence. The heat made him reel and stumble back with a hiss, but so did the Mutant and the dozens of giant beetles that charged into the clearing.

  Through the wall of fire, the Mutant-Class beetle clad in oil-black chitin glared at him, and its black compound eyes on the sides of its head blinked slowly once before it backed off into the forest. It dragged its twenty-metre-long antennae along the ground, and while the other giant bugs seemed to want to try jumping through the fire, another screech from the Mutant made all of them shudder. They were its soldiers, it was their general; they’d rather regain control over the rest of the garden than to brute-force their way through the flames.

  It was like they were saying ‘we can kill you any time we want’.

  And no words could describe how relieved he was as he whirled around, seeing the kids of class 2-D waving at him from the greenhouse’s front gate. Emilia stood amongst them looking confused and dumbfounded, and he couldn’t blame her for it. They were all armed to the teeth with makeshift bows, glaives, and knives, and a few of them were still holding flame-tipped arrows as they gulped at the retreating horde of bugs.

  Quickly, he sprinted into the greenhouse with Emilia and the injured teachers in tow, class 2-D immediately pulling the double gates close behind them. The wall of flames didn’t look like it’d extinguish anytime soon, and the children looked like they’d done this a few times before, so he allowed himself to run past all of them and nudge Emilia into the heart of the greenhouse. 2-D could probably handle the locking of the gates by themselves.

  Much to his relief once again, the moment he barged into the centre of the greenhouse with Emilia—a dome-shaped room with multi-coloured flowers blooming on vines across the glass walls—was the moment he spotted the scrawny, skeleton-looking man in a lab coat twice his size, standing behind the second floor railings with binoculars fitted over his eyes.

  The man was looking out at the artificial forest near the top of the dome, and it wasn’t until he confirmed the bugs were leaving them alone that he tossed the binoculars away, whirling down to blink at Zora.

  … But before Zora could jab a finger at the injured Marcus and Cecilia, the man started screaming, the railings as he jabbed a wand back at Emilia.

  “Mutant!” Julius shrieked, a sound wave swirling around the tip of his wand. “Kids! Help! Get that thing out of here!