Tonight, Adah would have to break her own rule. She didn’t want to leave the decision of how to handle this situation up to a vote—she was too furious for that. But ironically, that fury brought clarity to her thoughts.

  “What should we say on the program?” Rika asked. “They’re going to ask why you aren’t with us.”

  “It’s obvious,” Ami said. “We tell ‘em that dumbass Secretary is trying to screw everything up again. I could spend the whole show talking shit about him.”

  “No,” Adah said again. “We’ll get more out of this by being patient.”

  Adah had originally thought the same thing as Ami. They should lambaste Thibault in the same way she had the first time she’d appeared on TV. That was what the network’s producers wanted, and this forced mission would be a clear example to point to. While that would be effective to some degree, it would ultimately be short-sighted.

  The girls were going on TV to talk about the carnival. That event was when they needed to call for action—at the moment when their fans were the most riled up, when their allies were standing beside them, and when they had the most possible eyes watching them. Tonight’s appearance was a means to an end and Thibault’s interference was meant to make them lose sight of that.

  Accusing him tonight would only let him muddy the waters. The TV host would ask questions they wouldn’t have answers for, or at least couldn’t prove. Thibault’s office would deny any malfeasance as a matter of course. Attacking him would appeal to people already on the Last Light’s side, but it’d be nothing but a distraction from the real point of tonight’s show for anyone else. Their appearance had been advertised as an announcement, and that’s what it needed to be.

  Adah explained her line of reasoning to the other girls and, despite some grumbling from Ami, they accepted it. If she could make her case to them, Adah hoped that bode well for bringing the region on her side.

  “We still need something to tell the host,” Rika said. “We need an explanation for why you’d suddenly bail on this.”

  “Tonight’s broadcast is about ushering in a new era for the region, right?” Adah said. “And our own plan is to position ourselves as the leaders of that change. Maybe tonight a certain princess will prove why she’s the one fit to stand above everyone else. You tell the cameras that a revolution is coming, and Twilight Heartbreak is kicking it off right now.”

  “What are you going to do?” Emi asked.

  Adah meant to smile, but her mood had soured too much to do anything but frown. Still, she looked at Emi with a glint in her eye.

  “I’m going to surpass my limits.”

  ☆☆☆

  A storm of thoughts raged through Adah’s mind as she flew to the mission’s interception point.

  Adah hadn’t fought this particular variant of Cruelty before, but it was of a similar nature to others she was familiar with. The mission brief had stated the monster was derived from a vulture and featured the same kind of armor-plated feathers as lower-ranked bird Cruelties Adah and her teammates had fought in the past. As expected, the vulture’s main tools of attack were its claws and beak. The Cruelty searched for prey from high in the sky, swooping down to incapacitate its target with its claws before picking it apart with its beak.

  This was an especially dangerous variant for Thibault to choose to sabotage their team with. If left unchecked, the vulture could wreak havoc over a large stretch of land thanks to the freedom of movement that flight allowed. It was essential to respond to airborne Cruelties fast for precisely that reason.

  That fact made Adah all the angrier. This line of action was catastrophically foolish, so stupid and short-sighted that she had a hard time believing even Thibault was dumb enough to go through with it.

  Sure, her last appearance on the MGC had been a complete embarrassment for him, and had probably put him up to his neck in hot water. He was right to be nervous about Adah showing up on TV again, this time teasing a big announcement. But did he seriously think this sabotage would help him save face?

  It was as if he’d learned nothing from forcing DreamRise into that mission with the hydra. And what were the people around him doing? Ekki had claimed the man’s adviser, Elise, had been with the Department of Magic for years. She certainly seemed to have a better head on her shoulders than her boss, so why wasn’t she stepping in to put a stop to this madness?

  The only way this plan could work out for them was if they believed Adah was so fixated on her own fame that she’d skip this mission and let the Cruelty rampage freely. Then, they’d have something to pin on her. Their willingness to allow innocent people to get hurt in the course of their political games was disgusting enough, but the plan was full of holes on a tactical level. Thibault already had evidence that Adah wasn’t such a person—her joining the hydra mission was proof of that.

  Even if Thibault couldn’t recognize that, Elise surely would have. So why go through with today’s plan?

  These thoughts stoked the fires in Adah’s chest into an inferno as she approached the mission’s interception point. She almost felt bad for this Cruelty, for she was going to make an example out of it. Some of those people in power still didn’t understand who they were dealing with, so perhaps Adah had yet to make herself clear. Tonight, she would send a message that any fool could understand.

  The vulture Cruelty was predicted to spawn above some rolling fields that lay between the suburbs along the region’s western border. This was another smart choice by the Cruelties, it seemed. Deer and other game roamed these fields, which would provide the vulture with easy targets for collecting essence. Then, if allowed to, the bird could expand its hunt to the neighboring towns—places with enough people to potentially find some unsheltered prey, but lacking the tall buildings and tight corridors of a city.

  Of course, Adah wouldn’t allow the beast a single kill today.

  She passed by a couple of camera drones as she entered the zone in which the Cruelty’s energy signature had been detected. These drones were the only way to safely capture good footage of most flying Cruelties, but they had also grown popular among fans for filming battles without press credentials. Adah couldn’t be sure who this pair of drones belonged to, but all that mattered was that they were watching her. Once they saw how this fight played out, she had no doubt the footage would be blasted everywhere, regardless of who had captured it.

  “Izzy,” she called to her mascot. “What do you know about the scythe’s other function?”

  “Little to nothing,” he answered without materializing. “As we discussed, the weapon is almost like an experiment in the eyes of my kind. We understand it in principle: it allows you to store and access magic essence on your own accord. What a human may be capable of with such a tool is beyond our understanding.”

  “Looks like you’re going to learn a lot more about it tonight, then,” Adah said.

  She summoned Beleth’s Bloodletter now, not wanting to waste any time once the Cruelty finished spawning. She was going to wrap this job up as quick as possible—both to send a message and so that she could return to her teammates before the TV spot ended.

  “Bear in mind,” Izzy continued, “if you do what you intend to do, there will be more than just humans watching you.”

  “Frankly, I hope this will make it clear to the Kataracts or whatever they’re called that they should stay out of my hair, too,” Adah said. “I’ve had enough of being fucked with.”

  “The Keteriel,” Izzy corrected. “And much like humanity, they do not always act in their own best interests.”

  Having given his warning, Izzy quieted again. Even though the mascots didn’t fully understand humans, it seemed he knew enough not to interfere with Adah at the moment. Her ire was a bit like a rampaging bull right now.

  Fortunately, an appropriate outlet for her frustration had just appeared in the air ahead of her. The vulture had materialized, its gray form almost blending in with the rapidly darkening evening sky. The monster was about the size of a small jet, with two thin legs that stretched below its body, each ending in razor sharp talons. Typically, a Cruelty like this would be troublesome to fight alone, but Adah suspected that the power gap between herself and the beast would alleviate that trouble. Beyond that, the scythe’s second power could make this battle even easier.

  The weapon’s description had been vague: Beleth’s Bloodletter would allow its wielder to surpass their limits. Like Izzy, Adah understood in a general sense how that power would function. Whatever essence she had collected within the scythe would somehow empower her or her spells. However, she hadn’t been able to predict the shape that the weapon’s “outward” function had taken—those smoky hands that bent to her will. The “inward” function could wind up taking a similarly strange form.

  In the end, there was only one way to find out. The edgier the effect, the better, Adah figured.

  The question was: how to enable that effect?

  When summoning the hands from the scythe, Adah needed to focus on her will. Her weapon then resonated with those feelings, and she could sense the flow of essence within its handle. If the outward function required her to focus her will on impacting the world around her, then perhaps the inward function would activate upon focusing on herself? That’d be easy enough—she’d been thinking of how she felt the whole way here.

  A magical girl was so often at the mercy of what others thought of her. Of course, Adah had known going into this job that her spells and strength would be subject to the opinions of people who didn’t truly know her. What she hadn’t expected was just how much of her career—her very life and safety—would be in the hands of people who paid no respect to what dangers magic users were facing. Humans and mascots alike—both races had those who saw magic users as pawns. Both of them were willing to ignore the threat of the Cruelties if it meant they could achieve their own goals in the short term.

  The war against the Cruelties couldn’t be left up to the whims of such people. The Secretaries of Magic didn’t understand what magic users went through on the battlefield, what it took to reach a point of even being able to defeat a C-Rank Cruelty. The mascots didn’t understand how magic users could catalyze essence into such powerful spells. They were both blinded by ignorance, yet they felt entitled to call the shots.

  If that was the case, Adah would show them who the real power resided with.

  The essence within her scythe stirred. That familiar heartbeat resonated with her feelings once more, and the smoky magic that formed the weapon’s blade now shaped itself into an eye. So far, its power was expressing itself as it always had.

  But it was Adah who needed to be recognized as the source of this power. Not a weapon, not a spell, but the girl wielding them. Twilight Heartbreak was the weapon tonight.

  The shape of the eye shifted.

  The heartbeat thumped again, but this time Adah felt it within her chest, not her hands. In fact, it was her own heart. Her heart thumped again, sounding in her ears louder than it had during any headache or moment of panic in the past. The pulsing was rhythmic and steady, though, and she felt no discomfort.

  The eye of blackened magic returned, but not from within the scythe. The shape formed itself in the center of Adah’s vision, floating slowly toward her own left eye. Though the shape appeared large, it was only a trick of perspective. The smoky magic could be no larger than her own eye, and the way in which it seemed to swallow the world was only due to how close it had gotten to her retina. The magic moved closer and closer, as if meaning to fit onto her eye like a contact lens. Adah fought off an instinct to squeeze her eye shut and allowed the smoke to make contact with her.

  She felt nothing change at first.

  The world had turned pitch black, but that was all.

  However, it wasn’t all the world. In the distance, where the Cruelty had been, Adah saw a figure of pure white. It was the same monster, in the same place.

  That figure was all that Adah could discern, though. The rest of the world—the lazily rolling hills of these fields, the purple skies, the crest of the moon peeking above the horizon, the trees in the distance—all of it had been covered by a flat sheet of blackness.

  Far off, what must have been a great distance away, she spotted another speck of white. It was small but clear, like a star in the night sky.

  She turned behind herself and noticed two more white dots. These were even smaller, likely even farther away than the first.

  If all she could see near her was the vulture Cruelty, then did that mean those dots were also Cruelties?

  If that was true, then what did that make this black void? Another plane? A realm through which the Cruelties passed?

  At that thought, Adah’s heart did skip a beat. The overwhelming thumping in her chest kept pace even with that arrhythmia.

  Adah looked down and found that her own body was nothing but the same pure white as the Cruelty.