『fire sign』

She walked in step with those around her, patent leather shoes beating a rhythm upon polished floors and face expressionless. Despite the frills and extravagance of her school uniform, her head was shaved, leaving behind only a dusting of pale blonde stubble, like sickened moss upon an alabaster swelling.

“Umm-MMM-mmm,” whispered another girl, falling in step alongside her, “you’ve been naughty!”

Her eyes flashed, her head jerking to one side in order to grant her a better look at the other girl.

Standing at her side was a girl with uncharacteristically long hair tied in two knots either side of her head and a coy, playful smile.

Deuce hissed, her eyes widening.

“You’re the Drowned World agent!” she gasped in a hushed whisper.

The other smiled, keeping time with the endless procession of girls faultlessly, skirt and petticoat rustling with each movement of her hips.

“Magical Girl Pawn!” she winked knowingly.

The other averted her eyes, looking dead ahead at the endless movement of girls before her and the loud tramp of hundreds of feet brushing wooden floors in the dim candlelight.

“They’ll kill you if they find you,” she warned, trying her hardest to keep the momentary hint of fear from her voice.

Pawn leant in close, her breath warm against Deuce’s cheek.

“Then I won’t let them find me,” she whispered with a smirk.

Angrily, Deuce pushed her away.

“Stop acting so conspicuously!” she snapped, her voice louder than intended, “You’ll get us both in trouble!”

A sudden, sharp voice erupted from the loudspeakers as they passed beneath a carved stone arch and moved into another hallway, this one longer than the first and adorned with stained glass windows on either side.

‘You there!’ the voice cried, ‘You girls at the back! Keep in line! Disorder brings indignity, don’t you know?’

“Yes, Ms. Abe,” Deuce made a show of answering in a bland, emotionless voice, “Sorry, Ms. Abe.”

They kept moving deeper and deeper still into the confines of the ancient academy, passing beneath statues of angels, hands clasped together in supplication to a higher authority and portraits of aged headmasters and significant personages.

Either side of them, light filtered through the glass depictions of the myriad of saints associated with the academy so that, at one step, they were bathed in the light of Saint George’s shield, whilst at another, the spear of Saint Edmund cast illuminated patterns across their own features.

“How did you get in here?” Deuce hissed after a while, “Your hair’s too long, you know that? You don’t look like you’re from here.”

The other girl pouted.

“Pawn doesn’t change her look for anyone! Pawn is her own sort of girl!”

Deuce set her jaw in determination.

“Then you have no place here, you idiot,” she cursed, “the academy teaches you to be everybody else’s girl. They won’t take kindly to your line of thinking.”

The pout eased into a smile.

“I know,” she said with pride, “which is why you should think of this as a gaol-break.”

Deuce blinked.

“Gaol… break?” she repeated.

The other girl nodded enthusiastically.

“You’ve been scouted, Princess,” she smiled, “the Drowned World Society has need of a girl like you!”

Deuce’s eyes widened with panic, her head turning wildly as she glanced about the endless corridor whilst, at her side, Pawn maintained her Cheshire Cat grin.

“You’re crazy!” Deuce hissed, “Even the Drowned World Society can’t bust someone out of here. Don’t you know what this place is?”

Pawn nodded enthusiastically, her broad smile and rosy cheeks a contrast with Deuce’s own pale, fearful features.

“You girls!” Ms. Abe screeched in her shrill voice, emerging from beneath an archway and swiftly charging forward, her plump hands pushing aside students as she waded into the centre of the corridor. “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times!”

“Don’t you know who you work for, Princess?” Pawn purred softly, reaching out and taking hold of Deuce’s hand in her own.

Abruptly she pulled the other girl close to her, their faces so close that Deuce could feel the warmth of the other’s breath upon her cheek.

“Your academy,” Pawn whispered, the words like a caress upon Deuce’s face, “is run by Destronger!”

Deuce felt her eyes grow wide with fear, her heart falling silent beneath the frail invented cage of her ribs.

Without warning, the wall running alongside the endless corridor exploded inward, showering fragments of broken red brick and Portland stone over the polished floor and hurling students back against the far side of the corridor.

In the distance, Deuce imagined she could hear Ms. Abe cry out in alarm but in her ears she was conscious only of a terrible ringing, the roar of the unexpected explosion having disorientated her.

She felt Pawn’s fingers wrap about her wrist and pull her along, the jagged hole in the wall sucking her down like a whirlpool into the spiralling depths of some unknown ocean.

She cursed silently under her breath. This wasn’t the way she was supposed to react! She had been trained in the most exacting techniques of combat, she understood violence, she was, by the nature the academy had imprinted upon her, a tool of violence.

To have been caught unaware by an explosion, to have been so easily manipulated by such simple trickery undermined everything she had learnt, everything that she was.

She had failed in her duty as a student of the academy and thus she had failed in her purpose for existing.

“Where are we going?” she cried out above the noise in her head, “What’s happening?”

Yet from the girl whose fingers were wrapped so tightly around her wrist there was no reply. Instead, she felt only the momentum of outside forces, dragging her down into darkness and shadow, carrying her forward into a world that was not her own.

She closed her eyes and it made no difference.

Somewhere, at the back of her mind, she heard a voice call back to her from the years beyond.

‘I’m here to teach you the true nature of magic,’ the words announced with disinterest, ‘I’m here to take you to Earth.’

She stumbled and, in the surrounding darkness, heard nothing more.