One minute to midnight.

  Down in the barren, moonlit courtyard, Magicicada Nona tapped her feet impatiently before the broken southwestern gate.

  She’d come into the academy from the north, but she was beyond proud to see destruction had been wrought in the south as well. Dark stones and rubble lined the edges of the courtyard, leaving sharp rocks scattered around. Half-broken pillars stuck out from the cobbled ground like jagged teeth. The remains of a fountain lay in the far corner, dry and cracked. Star-shaped banners hanging from the distant walls flapped in the light breeze, and as her shadow stretched across the ground, she listened, eyes narrowed, for any sound—a crunch of stone, a bated breath. Anything to indicate she’d be joined by humans very soon.

  The girl she was choking and lifting in the air beside her wasn’t ‘human’ in her eyes.

  “... Boring,” she muttered, clicking her tongue in irritation as she cracked her neck left and right. “Are they gonna come? Are they gonna make me wait? I don’t like waiting. Maybe I should just—”

  “They’re… not boring,” the girl wheezed, her pale human face already completely crept over by black chitin plates. She had no human skin anymore. She was every bit the human-like bug Nona was, but she just didn’t know it yet. “Mister Weird Man… is funny. Mister Marcus is strong. Miss Sarius is kind, and Mister Zora… is brave. He won’t… run.”

  Nona scoffed. “Adults aren’t brave. I’d know, since my older sister, Decima, is always running around and fleeing with her adult spells. She doesn’t fight at all. She just tricks and deceives and makes you humans do her bidding. Children's spells are a more fun, you know? More direct! In your face! You don’t have to think so hard about them!”

  “So… you never want… to grow up?”

  “Why not?” Nona said, grinning from ear to ear as she cast a glance at the archway on the other side of the courtyard. “If growing up means you become boring and predictable like them, why would you want to grow up?”

  She wasn’t looking for an answer, and she didn’t hear it from the girl. What was far, more important was the fact that the four teachers stepping out of the archway had her wand—she could it from afar. The little chunk of chitin she’d lost decades ago on a battlefield had been forged into… a crude, abhorrent weapon. A ‘wand’. As if an Insect God like her needed a wand to channel and direct her spells. It was a weapon only humans needed to properly control their magic, and she had no such weaknesses.

  Still, seeing the four teachers stop thirty strides away made her twitch a brow in anger. The wand made out of her chitin was humming now that it was so, so dearly close to her, but she couldn’t tell who it was on exactly. That was why she’d spent the past three days killing every mage and destroying every wand in the academy. wand hummed, and when they were all gathered together, they overshadowed the sound of her own—and what kind of god would let a bunch of humans overshadow her?

  Even still… she felt like gloating a little.

  Celebrating a little.

  It’d taken her twenty years, but she finally managed to wipe out all but four Magicicada Mages, and that to count for something.

  “... You know, the old lady put up a good fight!” she said, tightening her claw on the girl’s throat as she smirked at the teachers. The three at the back tightened their faces, but the man in front simply looked tired, eyes cold and slanted. “She cursed me even with her final breaths! She did so, much to buy time for you guys to run away, but look! You’re still here! For me! Her death was completely in vain, wasn’t it?”

  Then she lifted a hand, listening for a short moment before pointing at the man in front.

  He was hiding something up his sleeve.

  “You have it,” she said plainly. “Show me.”

  The man didn’t hesitate. With a flick of his wrist, her spiral-patterned wand slipped out from under his sleeve, and she felt a shudder down her spine. Her whole body tingled. She licked her lips and made loud, smacking noises, if not only to drive the point in further—she’d finally won.

  That was her wand.

  “Give it to me!” she said cheerily, her needle-row teeth curving into an exuberant smile. “Throw it, roll it, whatever! Give me my wand worth a thousand human lives, and—”

  “Toss Emilia over at the same time, and I’ll give you more than just the wand,” the man said, his voice steady and even.

  “... Are you negotiating with me?”

  The man shrugged nonchalantly. “First of all, you promised. Good children don’t lie. Secondly, I’m quite aware you used to travel around with a brood of giant bugs—where’s that brood now?”

  Nona curled her lips, tilting her head slightly. She could entertain the conversation just a little bit, she supposed. “Probably still going through your academy and cleaning up the corpses! They’ll be back in a bit, and then we’ll–”

  “We killed them all,” the man interrupted, raising his wand and pointing it at the academy behind him. “may have survived, but every last one of your foot soldiers is dead. Even that giant stick bug you assigned to guard the northern building? We killed it.”

  “So? They’re bugs! Who cares—”

  “If I give you this wand, you’ll kill all of us, and you’ll be walking out of this castle alone,” he said, flipping her wand before catching it by the tip and offering the handle to her. “But if you give Emilia back, we’ll join your side. Fifty-seven children and four adults—hell, I don’t even care if you kill the four of us. But instead of killing us and stealing our voices, you can have all of us eat bugs and turn into your soldiers. You need a new brood, don’t you? You don’t want to be doing all the grunt work while you continue wreaking havoc around the continent, do you?”

  Nona blinked.

  “You… want to be bugs?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he replied curtly.

  “Why give up now?”

  “Because we can’t win?” he said, almost matter-of-factly. “And nobody likes being alone. The same goes for you. We’re the ones who survived and killed the strongest bugs in the academy, so you we’ll be strong once we turn into bugs ourselves. Probably even stronger than your last brood. Don’t you want to shove it in your older sisters’ faces once you show up on their doorstep with your wand in hand? Not only did you find what you've been looking for all this time, but you’ve even recruited a new army to boot. Don’t you think they’ll be proud of you?”

  She’d never thought about that word before. It’d been decades since she last saw her older sisters, but it true that before they parted, Decima and Morta had laughed at her for being the only one to fail at retrieving her wand from the mages’ research town. Since then, she’d carried ‘anger’ around in her chest, and as the years went by, the mages continued to shave off bits and pieces of her brood—it was true that now, she had no brood. No giant stick bug would let her sit on their back while they marched across the continent, going from human borough to borough. No moths and beetles would act as her scouts, her vanguards, and her battering rams.

  She go around the area and look for a brood to take control of, but again, it true that the adults in front of her had killed some of her strongest bugs.

  “... Oh, well! Whatever! Okay!” she chirped, clapping two of her hands together. “Not like you can fight back anyways! I’ll turn all of you into bugs and hope some of you even emerge as Mutants! I’ve only had two or three in my brood the past two decades, so here’s to hoping all four of you turn into Mutants!”

  The man grinned, clapping his hands as well. “Great. Then, toss Emilia over and let us rest for half a day or so before we start looking around for bugs to eat. If we don’t eat while we’re in peak physical condition, the bugs we’ll turn into won’t be as powerful, either.”

  “Sure, sure! But toss me my wand in the meantime!”

  “On the count of three?”

  “Two!”

  “One.”

  She was physically inept compared to other Insect Gods, but she wasn’t inept. Her reaction speed was still several times that of a human, so it wasn’t until she saw the muscles in the man’s arms twitching that she flung the girl across the courtyard, raising her own arm to catch the wand soaring at her.

  The big man in the back caught the girl without issue, and the other two immediately dashed over to check on her, but Nona watched the spiral wand fly at her face—and then past her head, around it, before shooting straight back at the man’s outstretched hand.

  She sighed, though she wasn’t particularly disappointed or surprised.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “You cast ‘swerve’ on it before you threw it, right? I saw that one before! It’s not new anymore—”

  “To me, wand!”

  The man’s spell rippled across the courtyard and dragged her wand back to him, but it was weak. Slow. She threw a hand out and cast “to me”

  For her part, she was just savouring every last moment of the mages’ final struggle. She could end the tug-of-war anytime she wanted, but–

  “Da Capo!” “Read my motions, follow my beat, and as long as you are in Amadeus Academy, I amplify your sound! Direct it at the Witch!”

  And then her triumphant victory was shadowed by the thunder that around the courtyard, a storm of horns, drums, bells, flutes, and strings puncturing her ears with sharp, foul wails of rage.

  Her vision blurred. She couldn’t hold it in. She staggered, clutching her head as the blaring symphony scraped against her mind, prying open the cracks in her focus. Her voice tore out in an involuntary screech as pain flooded her skull, but her voice alone wasn’t stronger than the orchestra, and it wasn’t a spell—in her lapse of concentration, the man won the tug of war, and when he yanked it out of the air to toss it back at his lady friend–

  “Crescendo, my children of Amadeus Academy!” “Sing the tune to soothe a sorry soul!”

  Her wand wasn’t normal. Nona knew it could amplify every spell cast on it tenfold, and if the orchestra of fifty-seven children scattered around the walls of the courtyard wasn’t already loud enough, now it became a sound.

  The horns became brutal torrents, the deep thud of the drums hammered in relentless waves, and the strings shrieked in cruel, piercing blades. She felt her legs giving away, folding beneath her until she collapsed to her knees. She slammed her claws into the ground as she forced herself to breathe, trying to will her thoughts back into existence, but the pain was a steady rhythm—she could get used to it in five or so minutes, but this was, by far, the most horrific ailment any human had ever forced onto her.

  “Not bad!” she screamed, half-cackling, half-bleeding from her eardrums as she pried her head up. “Not entirely boring! Not entirely predictable! But this isn’t—”

  “Strike!”

  The first spell slung by the man in front slammed into her arm, sweeping it off the ground. She recovered quickly enough, pushing through the pain, but then ten, twenty, thirty more “strikes” “strikes”,

  Gnashing her teeth together, she threw her body back and screeched as loud as she could, matching the orchestra’s volume for a brief second. That second was all she needed. She screamed “boom”

  When the big muscle man started charging at her—crossing the thirty stride distance between them in just ten strides—she was ready for him.

  He was physically strong like that, and she already knew it.

  “Expand!” five times in size. “Those muscles mean nothing in the face of ‘magic’, human—”

  But he sped up suddenly, augmented by half a dozen self-enhancing spells and two syringes stabbed in his back she hadn’t noticed before—a gasp of air escaped her as his fist slammed into her face, her neck snapping, her entire body thrown back by the whiplash.

  She hissed, skidding a few metres back as she flailed her arms, stabilising herself.

  “Don’t you fly, Mister Evander!” “If she says ‘fly’—”

  “Fly!” “Get back, big man—”

  “the teacher here, not you!” “ fly, Mister Evander! Stay! Stay on your goddamned feet!”

  And her spell didn’t go off. She blinked. Between the deafening orchestra, the raw drug-enhanced strength of the fitness teacher in front of her, and the counter-spell thrown out in the exact same tongue as hers, she couldn’t muster a voice loud enough to make the big man ‘fly’—so he punched her in the face again, forcing her another few steps back.

  Then it became a melee as all three men converged on her.

  They moved nimbly. The big man cast “toughen” “haste” “strengthen”

  “How do you like our school anthem?” the man with the sword asked, stepping in, and she barely managed to deflect it, the blade carving a small dent in her cheek. “Do you know how many serious and not-so-serious conversations we’ve had while standing in the atrium, listening to the Headmistress make everyone else sing the anthem? Why, we’re at talking over the anthem!”

  She spat and slashed her left claws back, forcing the big man and the bladed man off her side for a second, but then the syringe man chucked a few needles at her face. She cast “poof”“silence”

  She screamed out, switching to a different tongue.

  “Squishy! Stretch the ground! Make it bounc—”

  “But you froze the ground already!” the bladed man shouted, matching her tongue. “You gotta un-freeze the ground first, and you can’t do that, can you? Your only magic is related to the cold! That’s the only ‘magic’ you’ve ever felt in your life!”

  “Shut up!” “Spin and whirl! Carve through everything—”

  “Counterspin! No making cyclones in the courtyard!” “Children can only do that in Mister Tadius’ botanical garden, but– oh wait! That doesn’t exist anymore!”

  “Enough! Friends! Come out and play—”

  The big man and the syringe man dashed in again, punching her face and jamming two more syringes into her belly button before she could finish her sentence. The venoms dealt internal damage, the punches knocked the air out of her lungs. In a panic, she flicked her wings open and took off into the air, trying to put some distance between her and the sticky melee fighters—but then five glowing red threads whipped around her ankle from below, jerking her to a halt just as she was about to recover her voice.

  She glared down at the little girl standing beside the conductor lady, snarling, and there was nothing elegant about it. Ten, twenty, thirty “strikes”

  Now she was back in the centre of the courtyard. Orchestra blaring at full force. A blade tried to decapitate her. She slapped it away while scrambling onto her feet. A kick to her stomach sent her flying up anyways, and then two more syringes flew at her left eye. She cast “boom” “swerve” “strikes”

  She slashed, cut, and kicked away the bladed man who tried to jump on her. He dropped his sword at her feet with a pained groan, but the other two pounced on her. With a low growl, she landed a blow on the syringe man, stabbing two arms through his chest, but then his wound immediately regenerated and his skin turned to crystal. He snarled at her, emerald eyes bearing the visage of a venomous bug. She realised her mistake when she couldn’t rip her arms out of his chest, and with two less limbs to work with, the big man pummelled her. Each punch was accompanied by a ‘boom’ that rattled her bones, destroying her focus. She couldn’t even get a spell out anymore.

  And just as she was about to scream ‘frost’ again, willing to drain her stamina just to force everyone back for ten goddamned seconds—

  “To me, sword!”

  The blade that’d been dropped at her feet suddenly shot off the ground, flying into her chest through the tiny gap in her chitin—that mortal she’d had for twenty years, ever since she failed to recover the chitin that the mages had used to forge her spiral wand.

  For the first time in two decades, her pulse pounded in her ears.

  The blade was trying to fly back to its owner, and the man was standing far behind her so it’d pierce right through her chest—and that it most certainly did as it shot out her back, opening a second gap in her chitin with a squelch of amber blood.

  For their part, the big man and the syringe man couldn’t hold her still anymore. She thrashed and flung them both to the sides of the courtyard, drawing on latent strength she hadn’t had to summon since the first time she’d been wounded, but she couldn’t immediately speak. As the blade shot back into the distant man’s hands, she staggered a step forward, almost tripping on her own feet. Her hands were clamped over the see-through hole in her chest, and while the blade had just barely missed her heart, it’d done more than enough damage.

  Enough for the bladed man, the little girl, and the conductor lady to sneer at her with their heads tilted back.

  “... As complacency becomes an accessory, stagnation becomes second nature, and a child’s posture, their nature, and even their fate will never begin to take the form of an ‘adult’. That is exactly what the type of bugs you are,” the bladed man said, heaving for breath himself as he whipped his sword back into a wand, pointing it straight at her. “For all the voices you have stolen from children across the continent, your spells are every bit as boring and predictable as ours. You lack creativity. Imagination. I’ve seen your spells, too, and I can counter each and every last one of them—casting them in another tongue won’t work on me.”

  The orchestra took a breath. took a breath. They’d been screeching non-stop for the past few minutes, but if even Nona had to pause for a moment, then they had to pause, too.

  But the man who spoke a thousand tongues kept his wand raised, eyes burning bright amber, and Nona saw the reflection of her own bloody face in them.

  She couldn’t help but laugh despite the pain, the venom, the ringing in her head.

  This was scary.

  This was painful.

  This was beyond anything she’d ever done before.

  “Name,” she rasped, lifting a trembling finger at him. “What… is your name?”

  The man forced a pained grin onto his face. He was just as bloody and bruised and battered as her, but she interested.

  He was the first man who’d pushed her this far.

  “Zora Fabre,” he finally whispered. “But you may now call me the Thousand Tongue Mage of homeroom 2-A.”

  Fabre.

  Coughing blood with every word, she slammed her own hands over her mouth and gathered every last ounce of strength into her throat.

  “... It’s so, cold here, Thousand Tongue!” She laughed, ripping her hands away from her mouth, and her glowing blue sound waves coagulated around her hands as solid, sharpened blades of ice. “And what, exactly, are you going to do to warm this castle up?”