Origin - Three - Rending Nightmare

Alice stabbed forwards with Dream Charter and the blade made a discordant hum through the air. A darkening shadow gathered at the tip of the blade, and when her thrust ended it flew onwards.

It reminded her a little of a firework, lazily drifting ahead, looking slow, but in reality moving with deceptive speed until, with a twist of her will, it exploded.

Not a huge explosion, more of a pop with a few trailing shadows that spluttered out after a few metres.

Alice let out a breath, then straightened and flicked her sword to the side, then back up.

The gesture was... extra, and rather unnecessary, but it felt right, and she was beginning to realise that that was important with her particular kind of magic.

That attack had been weak, weak on purpose. She was in her backyard, next to a mango tree planted by her grandmother when the family had first bought the house and she didn’t want to see anything destroyed because she was careless.

Also, the mangos were still in-season and they always tasted so much fresher than what they got at the store.

“Okay,” she said. “How was that?”

BETTER.

She nodded, satisfied, and walked over to the side where her laptop was sitting on a table. There was a video paused on the screen, of something called HEMA, where people beat themselves and their friends with dulled versions of ancient weapons.

It was the closest thing she’d found to a training video.

There were some martial arts available in the city, but those didn’t appeal to her, not the way she was now.

“Okay, next,” she said as she dismissed her blade and it disappeared into a wash of darkness. She laid herself flat on the tiles next to the table, locked her legs in place, then started doing push ups. She didn’t bother counting, knowing that there was no point.

Even if she counted aloud, eventually she’d reach the triple digits where she couldn’t say the numbers faster than she could do another pushup and it slowed her down. So now she just moved until she started to feel some strain, some pressure in her muscles that told her they were working hard.

It took literal minutes.

Whatever had happened when she turned into a magical girl had done a lot for her physique, and that was while she was out of costume. At the moment, in nothing but shorts and an old t-shirt tied to the side so as not to get in the way, she was fitter than... well, probably an Olympian, maybe.

The problem was the knowledge that went with her physique. Sure, she could run for hours without breaking too much of a sweat, but now that she could run so much faster, she found that her coordination was just a little bit off.

Her reflexes might have been faster, but her reaction time was still lagging behind a little bit.

It was actually nice. It reminded her that she was still her; that while her body might have improved substantially, her mind was still Alice, and that was important.

“What’s after this?” she asked as she pushed herself up to her feet. There was a notebook sitting next to her laptop, with doodles and notes all across it. It had her training regimen, and some notes on magic.

Magic which she couldn’t quite wrap her head around.

Or... no, that wasn’t right. She could, easily, and maybe that was the problem.

Shadows called to her. She ordered and they obeyed. She could tell when others were nervous or afraid, and when someone nearby, even homes away, was having a nightmare.

It all felt natural, as natural as breathing.

Weaponizing it was easy too, though she worked very hard to limit it all to attacks that weren’t explosive, or lethal... or loud. At least, after the first time she’d tried creating a ball that made noise and set every dog in the region to barking when she made a nightmarish, twisting sphere of darkness which whirled to reveal hidden mouths.

Her magic wasn’t pretty.

She’d done some research on that too, of course. Magical girls.

It was the one part of her research that was maybe a little more normal, and the part she didn’t mind her family seeing. Which of course meant that they now thought she was having a weird cartoon phase, but she could live with that.

The magical girls she saw differed from herself in two ways. Well, she wasn’t a cartoon character, so maybe more than just two, but two really jumped out to her.

First, their powers were generally colourful and bright. Hers were very much not. And second, they tended to rely a lot on each other; there was almost always a running theme of friendship and camaraderie working in the background, or sometimes the theme was right in the viewer’s face.

She was alone in this.

Alice raised her hand then turned it palm-down. That cast a shadow, which made it easier to pull her magic from wherever it came from. From the shadows came wisps that shifted and moved, questing for something while shying away from the light.

She focused, and the darkness started to take shape. A cube, a sphere, a pyramid with first three, then four, then five sides.

If she had a better imagination, she might try something else, but for the moment this kind of exercise seemed decent enough. It was all so easy though. Magic was... well, what did she know? But it felt as if something that could be so powerful ought to be harder to use.

Her exercises were interrupted as her mom opened the screen door and Alice flicked her hand, instantly dismissing the smoke. “Mom?” she asked.

“Hey sweetie,” she said as she came over. Alice endured a hug. Her mother more than anyone else had become a lot more... touchy since the incident at the school. “There’s a letter for you,” she said as she pulled out an envelope. One that was notably open already.

Alice took it and noted her name on the front. “You opened it?” she asked as she inspected the crest on the opposite side to her name. It was from the Escola Central de Brasil.

“I was curious,” her mom said, unapologetically.

“Hn,” Alice said as she pulled the paper out and unfolded it. She scanned the page, then lowered it. “I was accepted?”

“Congratulations!” her mom said. She pressed a kiss onto Alice’s forehead. “We can have some pave later, if you want. I have cherries.”

Alice nodded. She wasn’t going to say no to her favourite dessert, and... well, she wasn’t sure if she could put on any weight being as fit as she was, but maybe she ought to put that theory to the test.

“You don’t have to.”

Alice looked up to her mom. She didn’t have to look too far up anymore, she noticed. She was catching up in height, and had been for a while. “What?”

“The school. You can go elsewhere. I know we really wanted you to be able to, but... it’s up to you. There are other places.”

“No, it’s fine,” Alice said.

“Think about it, there’s still some time. Classes don’t start for a little while.”

“Alright, I will,” Alice said. But she wasn’t going to turn down the offer. Not because it was the best high school in the region, but because if the demons returned, it was very possible they’d try at the same school, and she needed to be there to keep people safe. Safer than they had been the first time, where her confusion had slowed her down.

This time, she’d do better.

The rest of the time until school started passed as a blur, but not the sort of vague, unimportant haze she was used to losing her summer vacations in. Instead, every day she woke up, ran, ate a hearty breakfast, meditated, and then studied.

Her parents didn’t prohibit her, or tell her to stop. If anything, she suspected they saw her push as a way to cope with what had happened.

It was even true, in a way.

That, and magic was fascinating. Her powers obviously touched on darker things if she could sense people’s less... kind emotions, but at the same time they literally allowed her to control shadows. She could make hers disappear, she could darken others and from those darker shadows, summon just about anything she wanted as long as it was a twisting mass of wriggling nightmares.

Oddly enough, one of the things she was finding to be most limiting was the lack of defined rules to her magic. As long as she could envision it, and it roughly fit within the theme of the magic, she could do it.

A bit of concentration and she could blend in with the shadows. A little more and she was able to distract people (or so she assumed, she’d limited herself to testing on stray dogs whose confused expressions when she tried to make them forget about the snack she’d dropped in front of them was always amusing. So was the glee when she let go of the magic and they rediscovered a whole snack right at their paws).

Her sword, Dream Charter, was as helpful as it was annoying. It merely told her that she was limitless, which... didn’t suit her. She had been raised with clear goals, intentions, and a structure. She wanted that too.

It seemed that if she wanted structure to her magic, then she would have to build the scaffolds herself, which was, to some degree, what she had been working on. Her magic didn’t come with ‘spells’ so to speak, but if she did the same thing the same way, she could expect similar results.

It was something to start with, and it was what occupied a lot of her time until the day came that she had to go to school for the first time.

The Escola Central de Brasil had a uniform, or at least, a choice of attire based on a small selection that the school sold. She had a choice between a long navy blue skirt, or a long beige skirt, and a similar choice in sweater vests. During the colder months they had little jackets too, but for now, as she was dropped off at the front of the school, all she saw was a tide of students in navy and beige, with the school’s emblem sitting proud on their chest.

The boys had slacks, of course, and while the school insisted that both boys and girls wear a tie, they were allowed to pick their own, within reason. It added a splash of colour to the scene that she felt was needed.

The school was all modern architecture trying to emulate the grandiosity of old English schools. So it was tall and imposing, with lots of cement and sharp angles and useless glass features. It would have been a little drab if it wasn’t for the huge pile of wreaths and posters and pictures off to one side.

Alice averted her eyes from those. She didn’t want to see the smiling faces of people who’d been killed by the demons.

Demons who might only have been there because of her.

She entered the school, hiking up her bag and taking in the grand entrance hall, a wall of which was dedicated to the trophies and awards the school had won and another which had pictures of successful former students.

“It’s a lot, huh?”

Alice blinked and glanced over to find a girl half a head shorter than her standing nearby with a wicked grin on and an all-navy uniform that clashed with her pink tie. “Pardon?”

“All of this, it’s a lot, isn’t it?” the girl asked. She extended a hand. “I’m Marcia.”

“Hi,” Alice said. She was going to grab the hand, but was tangled up in her backpack and then Marcia let hers drop with a rueful smile. “Um, do I know you from somewhere?” Alice asked.

“Nope, but I remember you. You’re the magical girl that saved everyone. Figured I’d best make friends with you before anyone else.”

***