Chapter 28

“Hello? Helloooooo?” Amara called out, doing her best to call as loudly as she could. Despite the complete absence of, well, everything, the sound of her voice didn’t seem to carry very far. She was currently on the campus quad and knew from experience that the surrounding buildings normally amplified louder sounds, but no such thing happened now.

Growing nervous, she manifested her true form just in case. A strong red tail, massive red wings with black spines, and dark horns atop her head all burst into existence in a flurry of hellfire. She took a few moments to examine herself, pulling her tail and wings close to make sure everything appeared normal.

Her tail and wings felt strong and healthy, but that wasn’t a new development. Ever since the night of the ritual, when she’d broken through some kind of mental block, she’d felt more in tune with herself than ever. Her tail felt longer, more powerful, though she couldn’t objectively say if the length had actually changed; she’d never bothered to track the different facets of her transformation.

It occurred to Amara that, for possibly the first time in months, she was completely alone outside. As strange as the situation was, she also had a golden opportunity to explore the campus without hiding her true self.

She started stretching her entire body; arms, legs, tail, and wings, taking advantage of the freedom. The inside of her apartment always felt like it was crowding her, and she frequently hid her wings due to convenience. She started thinking about her transformation, trying to remember the last time she’d had this much freedom to be herself.

The first memory that came to mind was her ill-fated trip to the football stadium. Nick had taken her there just after Vee returned to campus, hoping to give her a space to fly around. What had been intended as a way to cheer her up, to let her explore a part of her transformation she always had to keep hidden, had ended poorly. No matter what she tried, no matter how fit and powerful her wings were, she couldn’t get more than a few feet off the ground without experiencing traumatic flashbacks to the night she almost killed Vee.

Now, with the entire campus to herself, she thought about trying again. The skies were clear, there wasn’t a soul to be seen, and Vee had even helped her defeat the cult. Why shouldn’t she try again?

Moving to the edge of the grass, Amara faced the quad and took a deep breath.

C’mon Amara, you can do this. Vee saved your life, and even if she’s avoiding you right now, she clearly trusts you. It’s going to be okay.

With a running start, she leapt into the air, her wings pushing her higher. Her horns, usually capable of reading wind currents, were strangely quiet given the circumstances, but there didn’t seem to be anything stopping her from climbing. She looked down at the ground, watching it start to grow more distant, when she saw something on her hands. Her chitinous gauntlets had returned, and they were covered in blood.

Is that mine? When did that happen?

Her breathing quickened, and she began to smell smoke. It filled her senses, making it hard to see, and the sky above her vanished. In its place, Amara saw a burning roof, threatening to collapse, the sounds of snapping timber surrounding her. She looked back to her hands and found them wrapped around Vee’s neck. Her friend was gasping for air, blood running down her face, and in her eyes, Amara saw nothing but terror.

“Amara ... please...”

A heavy crack filled the air, and everything stopped. She lost track of how long it took for her to regain her senses, but when she did, she found herself slouched on the grass of the quad. It looked like when she’d fallen from the sky, she’d collided with the branches of a nearby tree. Once again, she remained tethered to the ground.

“DAMMIT!” she shouted. She lashed out, punching the tree she’d collided with and sending a shower of bark across the lawn. With a loud scream, she fell onto her back and stopped moving.

Above her, the sky was empty. Just like earlier today, the sun was nowhere to be seen, yet a dim twilight somehow illuminated the campus. She stayed there, lying on the quad, until her anger subsided. Without her phone, or the sun, it was hard to tell how much time had passed. Eventually, she got up and decided to continue exploring the campus.

While she couldn’t fly, she found was still able to take advantage of her wings in other ways. She was able to make large jumps, using them to gain height and distance, and staying out of the sky seemed to keep the flashbacks away.

She decided to start circling the campus, weaving through the buildings in larger and larger circles. She hoped a thorough search might yield some answers, and started by heading towards Lysander Hall, sitting just north of the quad as usual.

As she approached the building, she immediately noticed how strange the entrance looked. The building itself seemed relatively solid, just grayed out and a little fuzzy, much like the rest of campus. The doors, however, were much less visible. Amara could see an outline of their shape, and hints at their structure, but not much else. It was like someone had opened the entrance in some editing software and turned the opacity down to fifty percent.

When she tried to pull the door open, her hand passed through the handle entirely. Chills ran through her back as this happened, it felt like her hand had passed through incredibly thick fog.

Okay, well, if I can’t open the door, can I just walk through it?

With a deep breath, Amara pushed her hand towards the door and watched as it passed through just like before. She took a step forward, swallowing nervously as she closed her eyes and walked through the door. An even heavier chill ran down her spine, and it took more force than she had expected to step through the door, but soon she found herself on the other side.

Thankfully, the interior of the building seemed to be open, but she immediately noticed something else just as strange. Surrounding Amara were dozens of strange, ethereal wisps of dull light. Some were next to tables, some were behind the counter of the nearby café, and some were moving around the area. One of these wisps even passed through her, bringing another heavy chill before it left the building entirely. Sick of that feeling, she did her best to avoid these wisps as she continued exploring Lysander Hall.

The upper floors of the building didn’t reveal anything of note, just more collections of strange wisps. The more Amara looked at them, the more she felt like they were ghosts, living out memories of students’ past. They walked in and out of classrooms, sat at desks, even visited the bathrooms.

Before leaving, Amara remembered that the basement held a magic circle. She made her way downstairs, pushing through another vaguely defined door, and revisited the first magic circle Tessa had shown her. It was strange, she knew it was supposed to be hidden by an illusory wall, but that defense was nowhere to be found here. The circle seemed to be out in the open, softly pulsing with dim light.

Amara knelt next to it, watching it for several minutes, before sighing in frustration.

I don’t know shit about these circles...

Regretting that she hadn’t tried to study Tessa’s magic more, while also knowing that she would never have the patience for it, Amara decided to leave Lysander Hall and continue her search elsewhere.

She visited a few more buildings, exploring them inside and out, hoping that something might start to make sense. No matter where she looked, however, she continued to find absolutely nothing.

One thing she noticed, however, was that the world seemed devoid of small objects; there were no leaves, no flyers, no litter, the campus was completely barren. All the buildings seemed relatively solid, the doors were always slightly opaque, and those ghostly wisps were also quite common. After what felt like hours of searching, she decided to head back home. If there was nothing here, and nothing to do, she might as well be some place familiar.

As she rounded the last corner of campus, however, she finally found something. More accurately, she found someone. A few dozen feet in front of Amara stood a girl with medium-length blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and several scars on her face. After a moment of surprise from both of them, she finally spoke up.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Vee said.

Tessa groaned as sunlight crept into her bedroom. She’d been trying to ignore it for the last few hours, but it was finally time to admit that she needed to get up. She slowly crawled out of bed, her tattoos beginning to glow as clothes floated out of her closet. She also grabbed her switchblade from her nightstand; completely black, beat to shit, and reliable. She’d lost her favorite knife in the fight with the cult, and this was her backup. She quickly got dressed, shoving her blade and her phone in her pockets, then unlocked her bedroom door and walked to the bathroom.

She reapplied her makeup, used a shaver to clean up the tattoos on the side of her head, and sighed in resignation. It was time to start thinking about finals.

She’d lucked out, and didn’t have any tests in the morning today. The sleep had felt amazing, especially after how busy the last few weeks had been. As the only one able to read and interact with magic circles, Tessa had run herself ragged trying to find a way to stop the cult. She’d also spent a few days training with Vee and Amara, doing her best to keep up with her two supernaturally powerful friends.

To be fair, they had done most of the fighting. There was a lot of tension between them, and Tessa had found she enjoyed watching them work out their frustration on each other. Still, she had a few painful memories of the occasions where she’d tried to join in to learn more about fighting. That bruise on her hip had taken forever to go away.

They’d successfully stopped the ritual, thankfully, and Tessa was fairly proud of her work from that night. In just a few minutes she’d managed to decipher a centuries old magic circle, and reverse engineer the damage the cult had done.

The week after the ritual had been interesting, to say the least. Ever since that night, after Amara had fed on three guys at once, her sex drive had skyrocketed. Tessa was barely able to keep the demon’s hands off her, and for the first time in her life, had found herself on the other end of an insatiable libido. To be fair, she did love sex, and sex with Amara was the stuff of legends. Sometimes, though, when she was alone, she would see the faces of the men Amara had fucked that night.

Pale, sick, gasping for air. Terrified of Amara, begging for their lives as Amara pinned them to the wall. While Tessa would never admit this aloud, her conversation with Vee from a few weeks back had started creeping into her thoughts.

“In the end, you belong to her, body and soul.”

She hated the thought of Vee being right. She hated everything Vee stood for. She hated the Church, she hated how they hoarded absurd amounts of power only to watch men suffer around them.

At first, the thought of fucking a demon sounded like a dream come true. Tessa had been collecting monster porn for years; terrible creatures doing awful, delightful things to eager young women. She even had a few exotic dildos shaped like monstrous appendages, and they saw a lot of action. Sure, she’d been scared when she realized Amara was a demon, but the fear had faded once she realized Amara was still herself.

She’d started fantasizing about Amara’s tail almost instantly after setting her free; it was thick, powerful, and completely prehensile. Amara had incredible control over it and had been able to give Tessa the most powerful orgasms of her life.

Now, however, it was impossible to deny that Amara was changing, and she didn’t even seem to realize it.

In the kitchen, Tessa was sad to see that her partners were both in classes already. She’d been spending so much time with Amara recently that she hadn’t gotten as much quality time as she wanted with Sydney or Riley. She made a note to try and do something with them soon, then began raiding the pantry for something easy to make.

Her search for food was interrupted, however, when her phone went off.

Nick: How soon can you get to Amara’s?

Tessa: i can head there now maybe liek 15?

Nick: Bring your beanie.

Shit.

Tessa usually only broke out her beanie when she needed to hide that she was doing magic. Whatever Nick wanted, this meant it couldn’t be good. She grabbed a toaster pastry, shoved it in her mouth, and ran out the front door to try to get to Amara’s as soon as possible.

Campus was fairly slow today. Everyone was either studying for finals, or taking them, and that meant fewer people lingering outside. Thankfully, this meant getting to Amara’s was a fairly quick affair.

When she arrived, she found Nick pacing outside Amara’s apartment. “Thanks for making it so quickly. Can you get us inside?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course. She never gave you a key?” Tessa said, pulling her beanie tight around her head, just in case.

“It never seemed necessary until her transformation started, and after ... well, we’ve been pretty busy. I guess we never thought about it.”

“Why are we breaking in, anyways?”

“She’s not responding to texts or calls, I haven’t seen her all day, and she’s not answering the door.”

Engaging her magic, Tessa’s tattoos started glowing, and she reached for the lock with her telekinesis. Lockpicking was one of the first things she’d taught herself, it was just a matter of messing with the tumblers, using the magic to feel how they moved. Soon enough, the door popped open, and they walked inside.

“Amara? You home?” Nick asked.

The first thing Tessa noticed was that everything seemed fine. Amara’s apartment was in the exact shape it had been yesterday. There were no signs of a struggle, everything was as clean as Amara liked it, and there weren’t any indications that Amara had left any unfinished meals or projects. With no sign of Amara in the living room, Nick walked to her bedroom while Tessa yawned and finished her breakfast. As she walked closer, she heard Nick’s voice grow tense.

“Shit. Shit!”

“What is it now?” Tessa asked.

“She’s not here, but all of her stuff is. Phone, wallet, keys, everything. She would never leave home without her phone!”

Entering the room, Tessa saw Nick frantically turning the place over. He was digging under blankets, through her closet, looking for any sign of what might have happened. Tessa couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him like this, if ever.

“Alright, well, she’s got to be somewhere. People don’t just vanish without a trace,” Tessa said.

“Are you sure? Didn’t you say that the campus is exposed to all the other planes now that the Gate is down? Who’s to say this isn’t weird magic bullshit?” Nick was breathing faster now, his words almost slurring together.

Tessa moved closer, grabbing Nick’s shoulders. “Hey, deep breath. Whatever’s going on here, we’ll figure it out. Plus, Amara’s a fucking beast. Whatever is going on, I promise that if someone is trying to fuck with her, they’re going to regret it.” Tessa’s tattoos flared again, and she started examining the room. Rather than engaging her telekinesis, she was now trying to read the magical leylines that converged over Aurelius University.

“Okay, it’s fine, we’re gonna figure this out,” Nick said, trying to convince himself. “Seeing anything?”

“It’s hard to say. Ever since the Gate fell apart, the magic around campus has changed dramatically. There’s a lot more of it, and it doesn’t move as predictably as it used to. Like I mentioned before, we’re exposed to energies from all sorts of planes, but that doesn’t mean we feel everything equally. Just like with the tides, planar energies have ebbs and flows to them. One day, we might see more energy from the Wilds, but another we might see more from the Depths.”

“So ... you don’t know.”

“Hey, I didn’t say that. Magic doesn’t work on instant gratification, it takes time, research, and practice. Remember, it took me weeks to start to understand all the magic circles on campus, and those were manmade. The planar tides of the universe might need a bit longer, alright? Cool your tits.”

Nick continued pacing around the room, digging through Amara’s things to look for hints about her disappearance. It only took a few minutes for Tessa to speak up again.

“Alright, look. Magically, I’m not seeing anything that stands out, but like I said, a lot of this is new for me. If we’re assuming this is weird magic nonsense, which it might not be, I would have to start by charting everything I’m seeing. I left my magic notebook at home, though. Care to walk me back to my place?”