Actions

Work Header

The Prism of Worlds

Summary:

Akko couldn't forget the vision she saw in the Blue Moon Abyss. Is there really a Shiny Akko out there, in another world? The ritual designed to meet her kicks off an AU extravaganza as ten witches are fused with their counterparts from other worlds!

Now the witches race to send their visitors home before they lose themselves. However, some may not want to return. Some of them may be dangerous. And some may be willing risk working with Croix, who has plans for them...

Notes:

I've been writing this off and on since 2018. It feels good to finally send it into the world!

This story is set after Episode 13: New Age Magic, and doesn't take the game or any of the manga as canon. A completely different group of witches rescued poor Molly, but our heroines have never had to work together like this before.

I wasn't sure whether to tag for major character deaths. We see other worlds where characters have died, but the witches we're following are all getting out of this intact.

Chapter 1: A Path Untraveled

Chapter Text

Luna Nova was bright and warm against the November chill, bustling with students and fairy staff.  After a most unusual Samhain festival and the tumult of the fairy workers’ strike (and subsequent riot), school life was slowly returning to something like normal.  Discreet black obelisks hummed cheerfully in odd corners of the school: Professor Meridies’s new Sorcery Solution System, providing all the magic practicing students, researching professors, and working staff needed.  In the end, everyone had gotten what they wanted.

Far above, the New Moon Tower cast a green halo through the hazy night, and dozens of disc-shaped “sorcery units” flitted about its upper levels, tirelessly working on Meridies’s new research lab.  Despite the mysterious new teacher and her wondrous machines, it was starting to look like a peaceful holiday season.  For Akko’s coven, this wasn’t much of a relief.  The lack of mayhem only freed them to get back to work.

The room was quiet.  Lotte fought a losing battle with her astronomy homework while Sucy had donned a gas mask to work on her prized Doomcap terrarium.  Akko had petered out early, as usual, but instead of distracting her roommates or running off to something more exciting, she just flopped back into bed and gazed thoughtfully up at the Shiny Rod.  As she turned it from side to side, three of the seven stones down its length caught the light and flashed gold.  Four to go…

After a few minutes of fretting and concerned glances, Lotte finally spoke up.  “What’s on your mind, Akko?”

“Huh?”  Akko blinked out of her haze.   “Oh, I was just thinking about the second word I got for this thing.  It had a ghost, too, y’know?  I wonder if they’re all gonna be ghosts.”

Maybe it was nothing to worry about, but Akko’s pensive mood was strange.  Lotte couldn’t help it.  “Do you want to tell us about what happened?”

“I think I met one of the Nine Olde Witches,” Akko said.  She let the Rod fall to her side.  “It was like a dream – a nightmare.  She looked like a big old tree, or something, and she was telling me I could never be like Chariot, that I should give up and leave.  But then I hit her with an axe, and she suddenly looked like normal, and I saw all kinds of scary stuff – ghosts and monsters and things – and then next thing I knew, Ursula was flying me back up here.”

Lotte stared in slack-jawed horror.  “You hit one of the Nine Olde Wiches with an axe?

“A magic axe,” Akko said distantly.  “I’m pretty sure I was supposed to.  She was a tree, and when I said the words, the Shiny Rod turned into an axe, and what else was I supposed to do?”

“Killing an Olde Witch wouldn’t be so easy,” Sucy put in, without looking up from her work.  She chuckled.  “But wouldn’t it be funny if Akko just murdered one of ‘em?  Whack.

Lotte ignored her.  “But it sounds like you passed.  That’s good!  Right?”

“Yeah,” Akko said, sitting up.  “I went down there looking for a shortcut, but I guess I didn’t need it.  She offered me to be a witch like Shiny Chariot, up on stage, making everyone happy.  All I had to do was give up my memories.  And obviously I said no!”  She cast an embarrassed look between them.  “I mean, what if you guys weren’t there?  She was asking me to disappear!  And then the words came to me, and,” she lightly swung the Rod overhand.  “Akko wins!”

The next word hung heavily in the air until Lotte supplied it.  “…but…”

“But I keep thinking about it.”  Akko sprang to her feet and started pacing.  She was building towards action.  “How can you just show me that and expect me to let it go, right?  It grabbed me!”  Her tone became defensive.  “And – and it was real!  Like, it wasn’t a lie to test me.  She was showing me a me I could be, if I said yes!  Like, when I was transforming all over the place at the Samhain Festival, and everyone was laughing – it was like that, but then different, too!”

“Does that mean Shiny Chariot screwed up?” Sucy asked.

Akko stopped in her tracks.  “What?”

“She had the Rod before you,” Sucy pointed out, delicately tweezing bugs off of the Doomcap and dropping them in a vial.  One of the bugs chittered angrily and waved a foreleg at her until she dropped the next one on top of it.  “And she was doing what the Olde Witch showed you.  Using the Shiny Rod for her shows, instead of whatever you’re supposed to be doing.  So, did she take the test and fail?”

Akko snatched a pillow and whacked Sucy across the head with it, which made her jolt and drive her tweezers deep into the Doomcap’s flesh.  Sucy stood and towed Akko and Lotte from the room without a word, then turned to lash caution tape onto the door with her wand.  Within, the Doomcap puffed out its spores with a loud squelch.

“I can’t believe you’d say that,” Akko grumped.  She drew back her pillow for another swing, but Lotte grabbed it before she could.

Sucy drew her wand around the edge of the door.  “Sealed up safe,” she said.  “If you’d hit me while I was doing that, I hate to think what could’ve happened.”  Her expression suggested she didn’t really hate to think about it at all.

“What would’ve happened to us if we’d stayed in there?” Lotte asked, but then flapped her hands when Sucy’s smile died.  “Never mind!  Sorry, don’t tell me.”

“Of course Shiny Chariot didn’t fail the test!” Akko insisted.  “If I could pass it, she must’ve!”

“If you can’t stop thinking about this other you the spirit showed you,” Lotte said, trying to steer her.  “It sounds like it gave you an idea?”

“Yeah, I’m curious about her,” Akko said.  “That other me.  I want to know what it’d be like to be her – if she’s happy, if she took the test and failed, what she’d think of me.  You know?”

Sucy smirked.  “What would she think if she saw someone like you?”

Akko either missed her insinuation or ignored it.  “Right?  Isn’t it crazy to think about?”

“It’s strange, you’re right.”  Lotte’s gaze drifted down.  “Imagining if you’d made a big choice like that differently.  I think I know what you mean.”

“Hey, how long do we have to stay out here?” Akko asked. “I have a book I want to show you.”

“It should be safe by now,” Sucy said.  “But it’ll still—"

Akko pushed into the room.

“—stink.”  Sucy stood impassively as Lotte reeled back.  “And it’ll stick to you.  You’re gonna be real popular tomorrow.”

“Look at this!”  Akko emerged and thrust an open book into Sucy’s face.  “Look, the librarian helped me find a book about the kind of magic the spirit did down there, like seeing a world where you’re someone else?  And I read up on it, and found out there’s a ritual that’ll let you join your heart with a you from another world, and you can get to know each other!”

“Another world?” Lotte asked, standing on her toes to look over Sucy’s shoulder.

“I don’t really get it, but it’s like they’re not real worlds, but then we aren’t real to them, either.  The other world’s not a place you can go, it’s just another way the world could’ve been?”  Akko took a deep breath and sprinted back into the room, then came back with another book to shove at Sucy, who backed up this time.  “Anyway, I found that ritual in another book—this one, here.  And it looks really simple, doesn’t it?  I had to learn the glyphs, but it turns out the encyclopedia we got for Professor Pisces’ class has all but one of ‘em, so I asked her about the last one, and it was really easy!”

“This is really important to you,” Lotte said in a subdued tone, eyes wide and wondering.  “You put all of that together… is-is this what you did instead of your math homework yesterday?”

“Yup!  Phaidoari Afairynghor, right?  I have to work hard if I’m gonna… wait, we had math homework?”

“You looked something up that’s not on a trading card,” Sucy said.  “I’m impressed, Akko.”

Akko pulled the book back and half-turned away, pouting.  “You’re being so mean today!”

“I meant it that time,” Sucy insisted.  “I’m actually impressed.”

Lotte caught their sleeves.  “Oh, no!  All of our clothes are in there!”

“I want to do it,” Akko said, once they’d claimed basins in the laundry room.  She stood to put her back into scrubbing, raising her voice over the sloshing.  “The book said the New Moon Tower’s in the perfect place to reach out of our world, so I picked out a room on the second floor nobody uses, right above that little chapel.  I wanna do the ritual there.   If the other me wants to talk, then I can find out what it’s like to be her, and she can hear about me!”

“Would she want to know?” Sucy asked.  She raised a hand to block Akko’s angry splash.  “That wasn’t an insult.  She’ll be curious, sure.  But if she failed the test, would she want to hear that?”

“No, no, see, you’re making it a loop.  She isn’t her because she took the test and failed it!  The test was for me, with the chance to be her!” Akko said, then narrowed her eyes.  “I think.  The book said the worlds don’t split when we make choices, they’re just out there being weird.  She’s a me I could be if this world was like hers, so there could be space aliens there, or maybe magic’s different.”

“That’s not a loop?  If she’s showing you an Akko you could be if you failed, then how is she even you if she didn’t…”  Sucy winced and touched her temple.  “Never mind.”

Akko grinned.  “Am I really smart enough to make your head hurt?  I’m liking this Afairynghor stuff!”

“Are you sure you should?” Lotte asked.  She started wringing a skirt out, but then winced at the smell and slapped it back onto her washboard.

“Well, why not?”

“It’s incredibly dangerous!  Right, Sucy?”

Sucy shrugged.  “I kind of want to see what happens to her.”

“I knew I could count on you, Sucy!” Akko crowed.

“C-can you wait, at least?”  Lotte asked desperately.  “There’ll be a new moon on Friday.  Can we wait for that?”

“That’d be, what, four days?  Come on, why?”

“You went down beneath the chapel on the night of a blue moon, right?  So the spirit’s magic was activated by moonlight!  If we wait, then we can make sure your ritual doesn’t disturb her.  She wouldn’t like that, would she?”

Akko started to reply with a cocky grin, but then that distant look came back, and she shivered.  “Yeah, you know what?  Sure.  Let’s – rrrgh, I was getting fired up to run out and do it tonight, but yeah, let’s wait.”

Lotte sagged in relief.

“You switched to ‘we’ in there,” Akko added, grinning at her sideways.  “I never tried to make you guys come.  That was you.”

“I just assumed,” Lotte said, keeping her eyes closed.  “You always drag us along anyway.”

“I never said I’d…” Sucy started.

“You want to see what happens to her, right?”

Sucy shrugged.  “Alright.”

“Thanks, guys,” Akko said.

For a time, the only sound was sloshing and scrubbing.  Even Akko was quiet.

“I think…” Lotte said.  She lifted the blouse she was working on and gave it a sniff.  “I think it’s starting to come out.”

“Or you’re just getting used to the smell,” Sucy suggested.

Lotte moaned and kept scrubbing.


The first snow came two nights later.  Dozens of students broke curfew to fly amid the whirling flakes, gathering snowballs with great magic scoops to throw at each other.  Amanda was one of the few to escape detention when Nelson and Finnegan got around to rounding them up, and slipped back into her dorm room to find an unexpected guest.  Wangari, star reporter of the Luna Nova News Network, was sitting at their card table with Jasminka, sharing a plate of fig bars with her.

Constanze was nowhere to be seen.  Probably busy in her workshop.

“Evening,” Jasminka said.

“Your roommates are so nice!” Wangari cried.  “You really lucked out, Amanda.”

Amanda blinked at her a few times.  She couldn’t tell if that was a veiled jab.  She was used to listening to Wangari’s voice blaring over campus events; in person, it was somehow both gentler and more striking.  “Guess I did,” she finally said.  “What’s going on, Wangari?”

“I’ve got hot tip for you!” Wangari said.  “Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Amanda echoed, pulling the chair from her desk up to join them.

“Let’s say, hypothetically, Kimberly – she’s our writer, you know – did some research in the old archives and dug up the location of an artifact the school lost track of,” Wangari said.  “A Ley Spike, like they had before Warda Bandorella invented the first sorcerer’s stone!  You poke a hole in the air over a ley line and magical energy just gushes out.  Real scary stuff, especially in a place like this.  What would you say to that?”

“I’d ask why you’re telling me,” Amanda replied.  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m listening, but why not just put it in your paper or something?”

“If somebody comes to you first, it’s obvious why,” Wangari said.  Her smile took away most of the bite.  Come to think of it, Amanda didn’t remember her ever expressing an opinion on recreational burglary.

“You don’t want the school to get it?”

Wangari waggled her hand.  “I’m not thrilled with the way they’ve handled recent crises.  And we can’t say so in the paper, but, well, the fact that they lost it in the first place doesn’t fill any of us at LNN with confidence!”

“So, you come to someone who can sneak it out of wherever it is, and…”  Amanda leaned on the table.  “Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?  I’m bein’ honest because I like you, Wangari – I’m just here to stir the pot.  If you want someone you can trust, I’m not your girl.”

“Maybe,” Wangari agreed.  “What would you do with it if you found it?  This won’t make it into the paper, I’m asking personally – if I give you this info, whatever you do with it will be on me.”

Amanda opened her mouth to say something flippant, but then paused, really considering it.  What would she do?  Before she could come up with an answer, Constanze’s bed popped open and launched her into a three-point landing on the table between them.

Wangari yelped and tipped back in her chair, but Jasminka caught her before she could fall.  Once she was stable, she noticed that everyone was staring at her, even Conz, who had primly stepped down from the table and drawn up a chair.  “What?” she asked.  “That was startling!”

“You didn’t narrate it,” Amanda said.

“Oh, give me a break, I’m off the clock,” Wangari said.  “Honestly, you guys!  I’m not always in announcer mode.  And, hey, Jasna, can I just stay here?”

Jasminka shrugged and drew her chair closer, and Wangari nestled into her.

“But what’s the plan, Amanda?  If you got this spike, what would you do with it?”

“So, my first idea was to just wave it in the Headmistress’s face, show her what hot shit I am and maybe get expelled?”  Amanda spread her hands.  “But then there was that whole thing with the fairies, and now I’m thinking I give it to one of them and see what they do with it.  I’ll bet that’d still piss the teachers off.”

“The fairies would like having another way to access the ley line, for sure,” Wangari said.  “I wonder if that’d disrupt work at the school, if the fairies knew they didn’t have to depend on it.”

“Plan A was getting expelled, so that’d be fine with me.”

“Ha!  I can’t tell if that’s selfish or selfless.  And don’t tell me, I like the mystery!”  Wangari slapped a floorplan onto the table between them and drew her wand over it.  “Noch Dadh.”  The empty map filled out with a surprisingly detailed graphite rendering of the tiles, furniture, and boxes within, with a red circle around one stack in particular.  The stairs were sealed solidly with brick; the only ingress was a tunnel that led to somewhere off-campus.  “This is the storage space under the New Moon Tower – right under that little chapel.  Students aren’t allowed in, of course, ‘cause they lost the records of what’s in there.  We think the spike is in a magic-sealed box here or so.  It should be hard to miss.”

Amanda looked the floorplan up and down.  “Why’s it shaped like that, with the big wall in the middle?”

“Kim thinks there’s a secret passage you access from the chapel,” Wangari said.  “But she hasn’t found out anything about it.”

“If it’s like the other forbidden areas in the tower, getting in should be no problem.  In fact, why don’t I pop over and take a look?”

“Wait – I’ve got another tip for you.  They say there’s a ghost that lives under the chapel, and you can reach her home on the night of a blue moon.  That’s one reason nobody goes to that storage space, you see.”

“Is a blue moon coming up?”

“Just past.”  Wangari leaned forward and held her wand up under her chin, conjuring an eerie green light to cast up over her face.  “You don’t want to bother this ghost.  She knows everything there is to know, they say, and she can steal your soul with just a thought – and then put something else in.  You turn into a totally different person, and nobody ever knows!”

“Nice!”  Amanda burst out laughing, but then trailed off awkwardly when she made eye contact with Jasminka.  Her expression was mellow as ever, but something about it… “Wh-what?”

“Nothing,” Jasminka said, and held out her plate.  “Fig bar?”

“I hate those things.”

Constanze took one.

“New moon’s coming up in two days,” Wangari continued, taking two.  “You can go out under cover of dark, and the chapel’s magic should be quiet.  Isn’t that convenient?  You won’t have to risk disturbing the ghost!”

“Wait, are you trying to convince me to do this the safe way?”

Wangari’s smile faltered.  “Well, yeah?”

“This is a heist, though!  C’mon, the whole point is to…”

“I won’t help you if you don’t,” Jasminka announced.

Amanda frowned.  “Why are you so serious, all of a sudden?”

“Bad things live in the Earth,” Jasminka said, resting a hand on her belly.  “You shouldn’t give yourself to them.”

“I, I could still,” Amanda started, then sat back and crossed her arms.  “Fine, jeez.  Making me stop and think.  Pencil a burglary in for the day after tomorrow, then!”

Jasminka nodded, satisfied.

“Whatever.”  Amanda’s scowl became a smirk.  “And you know, Jasna, I never even asked you to help.  But since you’re offering…”


The next night disappointed everyone with a return to cold, lashing rain.  It drove the witches into their rooms and filled the dim halls with a tense rumble, a drumroll building up to something awful.  At least, that’s how it felt to Diana.  She’d vanquished her homework hours before, and now her desk was strewn with charts and calculations that had culminated in a simple diagram that she’d been staring at for the past twenty minutes.  Normally, it was easy to set aside a job well done and move on to the next, but this time…

“What’s wrong, Diana?” Hannah asked.  She’d wandered around the bookcase that separated their beds and drawn up a chair.  “You’re really out of it, today.”

“Family troubles,” Diana said shortly.

Hannah set her elbows on the desk and her chin in her hands.  “Want to talk about it?”

“It’s nothing,” Diana said, then amended to, “It’s private.”  When Hannah didn’t move or react, she finally sighed and relented.  “My Aunt Daryl has been acting as the head of the House of Cavendish these past few years, and it seems like every letter I get from home is about some new disaster caused by her greed or carelessness.  Yesterday, I got word that we’ve had to close down the estate hospital and discharge all of its patients.  That was the last vestige of our family doing anything to live up to M—” Diana noticed her volume rising and stopped short.  “She’s turning us into a family of parasites, and all I’ve been able to do is sit here and watch.”

“What an asshole!  Is there anything we can do?”

Diana considered commenting on the “we,” but let it go.  “It was in my mother’s will was that I would ascend when I was ready, so I should… what?”

“Your mother’s—you never said your—” Hannah sputtered, flailing.  “I’m – I’m so sorry!”

“Thank you,” Diana said blankly, wrong-footed, then deliberately warmed her voice.  “Please, Hannah, don’t worry about me.  It was a long time ago, and I’ve grieved.  She’s a happy memory.”  The words felt artificial and rehearsed, but they were true enough.  There was no need to go into the more complicated parts, or how the past-tense wasn’t strictly accurate, or the feeling of getting lost in memory, simultaneously weighed down and lifted…

“Okay,” Hannah said, shaky but recovering.  “I-I just realized, you don’t really talk about yourself.”

“Except to boast,” Diana deadpanned.

“Oh, sure.”  Hannah snickered.  That was the trick with her: jokes.

“Anyway,” Diana said firmly.  “There will be a Venusian eclipse in January, which means that it will be possible to perform the House of Cavendish ascension ritual and properly become the head of the family.  I suspect that Daryl is going to try to perform the ascension ritual herself, and… continue down her path, with the full powers of the house’s head.  Or fail and die, which I also don’t want to happen.  So, if I’m going to outwit her and carry out my mother’s will, I might need to try something underhanded.”

“She’ll never expect that from you!”

“It’s not the sort of thing I’m used to,” Diana agreed.

“And that’s your trick?” Hannah asked, indicating the diagram.

“This is a spell that my great grandmother designed,” Diana said.  “It’s an astral lens that distorts the light of the moon and stars to ‘trick’ ritual sites into acting like some astrological phenomenon is overhead.  A planetary alignment, say, or a blue moon.”  Diana’s expression lightened a little.  It was a grim topic, but she liked the story.  “My great grandmother was able to slip onto the ascension ritual site with some allies and perform it a week early, confounding her brother’s assassins.  Of course, the scheme only worked in the first place because she was judged worthy by Beatrix the… what?”

“A…assassins?” Hannah asked weakly.

“There are no assassins now, obviously!  Daryl is…”  Diana trailed off, lost in a blizzard of adjectives.  How could you describe a relationship like that to someone outside of the family?   “…she’ll try to stop me, but she’d never hurt me.”

“Okay,” Hannah said, bouncing back.  “Great!  So all you have to do is go and make this lens, do the thing, and then you’re the family head?”

“W-well,” Diana said.  Hearing it in such a breezy tone dazed her, a little.  “The ascension ritual will be a challenge.  And beyond that, the idea of becoming the family head is daunting.”

“I just know you’re up to it!”

“So do I!” Diana snapped, then took a slow breath.  That shouldn’t have irritated her so much.  She really was on edge.  “Intellectually, that is.  Facing the reality of it is what frightens me.  I… may have an overconfident side, but I can’t really be ready for headship until I’m there.  Who could?”

“Right,” Hannah said, chastened.  “Sorry.”

Diana gave her a quick smile.  “Also, apart from the ascension ritual, this spell is dangerous.”

“Really?”  Hannah put on a confused face.  She probably thought that explaining the technical aspects would help Diana to cool down.  Good bet.  “It doesn’t sound dangerous.”

“It depends on what the lens has to filter.”  Diana swiped her marker twice, suggesting a beam of magic flying into her diagram, then quickly sketched a spray of lightning on the far side.  “A spell going through it would be warped and scattered.  Ambient magical energy can radiate from it in unpredictable ways.  It can even distort magic within your body if you’re too close.  I’ve designed one that should work in the chapel at the base of the New Moon Tower – a test.  I’ve gotten permission from Headmistress Holbrooke to carry out the experiment, but now I’m… not sure that I’m brave enough to.”

“What if me and Barbara helped you?”

Diana meant to dismiss the idea out of hand, but, meeting Hannah’s earnest gaze, found herself asking, “You would?”

“Of course we—!”  Hannah interrupted herself with an embarrassed laugh.  “I’ll ask Barbara.  But I know she’ll say yes – you know how worried she gets!”

Diana nodded.  “The time will be tomorrow night, if the sky is clear - it will be a new moon, so the power beneath the chapel should be at its lowest ebb.  I’ll use the lens to filter starlight into the light of a blue moon, which should cause a magical reaction, but not enough to open the path to the ghost’s home.”

“There’s a ghost?” Hannah cried.  “Like Vajarois?”

“Worse.”  Diana looked down at her diagram again.  “That’s another reason I was worrying.”

“Headship of an ancient magical family, two scary rituals, and a ghost,” Hannah said.  “No wonder you’re staring into space!  I’d be crying – I can’t handle ghosts.  I mean, unless they’re eating Akko.”

Diana snorted despite herself.

“But that won’t stop us, will it?  So, what will you need us to do?”

“I’ll wait until Barbara is back to explain it to you both,” Diana said, then let her shoulders relax.  “And thank you, Hannah.  Truly.”

“Ha, come on, Diana.  You’ve been here for us all this time, it’s about time we did something for you!”

“You think you haven’t…?” Diana started, then looked away.  As always, her throat had closed instead of letting her get sentimental.

Hannah chuckled and went back to her homework.


The chosen night was clear and bitterly cold.  Akko huddled close behind Lotte as Red Team slipped from the window on their brooms and ghosted to the base of the New Moon Tower.  Sucy flew ahead and crunched a black-capped shroud-shroom in her teeth, which muted the light and sound of her magic when she delicately opened the latch from the outside and let them in.

“Nice!” Akko said, whapping her shoulder in passing.

The room was little more than a stone cube with a few empty bookshelves on one wall.  In happier days, Luna Nova would have been full to bursting, but now the tower was riddled with disused spaces like this.  No wonder Croix had had such an easy time getting space for her research lab upstairs.

Lotte knelt and set her lantern down, and a squad of flickering fairy spirits tumbled out.  While most of them toddled about and found their bearings, a one-eyed spirit saluted Lotte and gave a serious little honk.  “Thank you so much for coming on such short notice,” she said sweetly.  “Could you please keep watch and warn us if anyone comes this way?”

The fairy commander saluted again and got its subordinates in marching order.  In seconds, they were deployed all over the second floor and hidden away, leaving the witches in darkness once more.

“It’s so quiet in here,” Akko whispered, grinning.  “Isn’t it creepy?”

Lotte glanced over her shoulder nervously.  “Yeah… my ears are ringing.”

Hello!” Sucy called, making her companions jump.  Her voice fell flatly, without even an echo.  “I thought so,” she continued in a conversational tone.  “These rooms are soundproofed, so you can close them off for your experiments.  I had a room like that, back home.  You could scream at the top of your lungs in there, and nobody outside would hear a thing.”

“What did you, uh, use it for?” Akko asked.

Sucy just smiled with half-lidded eyes.

“Do you want to show us the magic circle, Akko?” Lotte asked.  “We can help you draw it.”

“Oh!  Right!  Look, I made stencils!”  Akko pulled a bedsheet from her pack and spread it out over the floor, revealing that a few swoops and curls had been cut out of the middle.  “Sarah let me use her fabric scissors.  Turns out there are all kinds of things to help with rituals that they don’t let us use in class.  So here, let me—” The others stumbled back from the blue paint spluttering and coughing from Akko’s wand as she waved her arm at random.   The spell made a total mess, but then she swept the stencil away to reveal perfect lines and glyphs on the floor.  “See?  Pretty great, right?  I just have two more!  I just – oh – I didn’t think of how we’d line ‘em up.”

“I can help with that,” Lotte said.  “May I see the pattern?”

Between the three of them, it just took a few minutes to line up and lay down the red and green stencils, plastering a serviceable magic circle onto the floor, like a Celtic knot full of harsh, thorny angles.  Nine glyphs were arrayed around the circle in groups of three, leaving spaces between for three ritualists to stand.  They took their places and Lotte cast the first spell, throwing a sparkling green canopy over their heads.  “Tectumbrae!

“I’ve seen something like this before,” Sucy said contemplatively.  “The style looks familiar.”

“I’ve got it all figured out,” Akko said, and produced a sheaf of notes from her pack.  “My other self had better watch out, ‘cause I’ve got the whole plan right here!  Lotte just has to hold that spell to block the Sorcerer’s Stone until you and me finish the chant and the circle starts drawing power, then she can let it go, and I step into the circle and trance out.  Easy!”

Lotte and Sucy shared a wide-eyed look.

“Are you sure you’re not already some other Akko?” Sucy asked.

Akko rounded on her angrily, but then got a thoughtful look.  “You know, there’s something different about this.  Because… nobody was getting on my case ‘cause I couldn’t do it the way they wanted, so I could do my own thing.  It’s like there’s usually a cloud in my brain, and stuff like this clears it up.  Is that weird?”

“It’s something,” Sucy said.

“Can we talk about it after the ritual?” Lotte suggested.  “Sorry – I can’t hold this spell forever!”

“Right!  Sorry sorry sorry!”  Akko glanced to her notes and said, “Once I start the chant, I can’t stop until the circle’s charged up.  C’mon, guys, let’s do it in one!”

“Because if we mess it up,” Sucy said, accepting the sheets with her part.  “We’ll probably die.”

Lotte sighed.

Akko was unfazed, lifting her notes like a libretto.  “Here we go!”


The tunnel leading to the forbidden storage room opened into the woods a kilometer from the school, also forbidden.  Green Team gathered at the tunnel’s mouth, a barred gate with a simple chain and padlock.

“You sure you’re up for this?” Amanda asked, turning to their tag-along.  “Last chance to back out!”

Wangari blew a cloud of steam and stomped.  “Let’s go!” she said brightly.  “Anything to get out of this cold!”

“Ha!  Go ahead, Jasna.”

Jasminka took the padlock in hand and destroyed it with a quick pull.  When the gate still wouldn’t open, she casually wrenched it out of the tunnel altogether.  Constanze ducked past her in a pair of high-tech goggles and held out her arms to stop them at the edge of the tunnel’s security spells.  Once they were all in, Jasna carefully replaced the grate and Amanda repaired it with a quick “Sosomme Tidiare!

“That spell should have triggered something!”  Wangari whispered.

“I’m talented,” Amanda replied loudly.  “What are we looking at, Conz?”

Constanze had set her heavy backpack down and deployed a trio of drones from it, metal orbs with softly buzzing rotors that she directed from a clunky, ruggedized laptop.  They drifted down the tunnel, trailing a faint mist that revealed layers of crisscrossing red beams.  Amanda wandered up behind Conz and watched over her shoulder.  “Looks like we can pause there… and there?”

Wangari danced in place and rubbed her arms miserably until Jasminka produced a thermos of hot cocoa and offered her a cup.  “I love you guys,” she said, sounding genuinely choked up.

“Okay, girls,” Amanda said.  “Get your brooms ready.  We’re gonna do this in bursts.  Me and Conz picked out two places in the tunnel where there’s room for all of us to rest, so I’m gonna slip in and disable the security spell so you can get to the first place.  I can blank it out for three seconds before the spell realizes something’s up, so you’ve got to zoom.  When you’re with me, I’ll disable it again and let you go to the next spot, and that’s how we’ll get through, understand?  Conz first, then Wangari, then Jasna.   And sorry, Jasna, if I have to push you, I will.”

“Sure,” Jasminka said.  “Cocoa?”

“Yeah, better warm up before we get in there,” Amanda agreed, accepting a cup.


With the headmistress’s blessing, Blue Team was able to walk right in the front door.  The chapel was quiet and empty, as always; it hadn’t seen a service in 300 years, and nobody was even sure who (or what) it was dedicated to.  Diana cleared the floor of dust with a sweep of her wand, then effortlessly conjured a series of pigment balls that burst into an intricate magic circle, purple, blue, gold.  She strode around the circle, eyeing it critically, then gestured her companions forward without looking.

Barbara patted Hannah’s shoulder bracingly.  They both got a little nervous when Diana went cold like this – she wouldn’t hurt them, of course, but it meant that they were doing something dangerous enough to take all of her focus.

“That was the easy part,” Diana said as they took their places.  “I’ll speak the incantations to create the lens, then you’ll be able to help hold its shape.  Remember the spells I taught you to manipulate it, and you’ll be fine.”  She produced a thaumometer from her breast pocket and guided it to the center of the magic circle with a telekinesis spell.  Its gauge dropped to zero as soon as she released it.  “We’ll be watching for the magical reaction on this - I’ve calibrated it to account for the lens itself, so anything else will be the path to the ghost’s home reacting.”

“Shouldn’t we check around more?” Hannah asked nervously.  “Make sure there’s nothing to mess with the spell?”

“I prepared everything in advance.”

A tiny shadow raced along the wall and Barbara’s head whipped around following it.  She didn’t register much more than an odd little diamond silhouetted in the doorway, like somebody had thrown a child’s block into the air.  Or had she imagined it?  “Something’s wrong,” she said urgently.

Focusing on the start of her ritual, Diana hadn’t noticed.  “If you’ve lost your nerve, step back and let me do this alone.”

Barbara gritted her teeth, looking back and forth anxiously.

“We should at least make sure nobody’s around,” Hannah insisted.

Diana cast her wand to the ceiling and said, “Lahma Suilan.”  Green light flared above it like a torch, then spread out in vivid blue streamers that crawled over the walls like the filaments in a plasma globe.  Barbara flinched as one passed through her head, but all it did was note her presence and make a tiny blue stick figure flash into being above the hovering flare.  The streamers quickly broke off and crawled out of the chapel, spreading through the lower floors of the tower.

Below, Diana’s spell spread into the storage room just as Amanda was reaching for the Ley Spike’s box.  She skittered back with a curse, and Constanze’s drones fired a volley of crackling green bolts that broke the streamers apart.

“Nice, Conz!” Amanda said.  “I didn’t think the security here would be so heavy duty!”

Constanze gave her a stern thumbs-up and focused on her controls again.

“Was that security?”  Jasminka asked.  “It looked like someone cast a spell.”

“Yeah,” Wangari agreed.  “Might’ve been one of the Lahma spells?”

“Yeah, but who’d be out here at 2am?  Let’s just hurry up and find that spike.” 

Above, a trio of spirits saw the web of blue light gliding up the steps and started to flee, squeaking in panic.  The grizzled fairy commander stomped past them and pointed with a heroic honk.  By its command, the spirits each threw themselves into a streamer and drank up its power like so much spaghetti, gripping it in their little flippers to guide it away from Lotte.  They finished slurping the spell up a mere meter from the door to the ritual site, and then collapsed into an exhausted pile with a chorus of moans and burps.  None thought to report to Lotte, though.  The problem was taken care of, wasn’t it?  And she already looked so worried!

“Nobody,” Diana said as the spell completed.

“Of-of course,” Hannah said, embarrassed.  “I shouldn’t have doubted…”

“It was a good idea to check,” Diana admitted.  “But now, we have to hurry.”

“But what about…?” Barbara started, looking towards the door, but broke off when Diana turned to her.  She could read the impatience behind her friend’s calm gaze.  “Never mind.  We’re ready.”

Diana began the chant in a soft, even tone, and the lens slowly took form, warping and shimmering as Hannah and Barbara wove it from her voice.  It was only visible as a distortion in the air, but it was still beautiful – at least to them.  Maybe it was because they knew the work that was going into it.  Finally, it cast a pall of silvery light onto the chapel floor and the thaumometer jumped. 

“It worked,” Diana said, stunned.  “I can do it!  It’s going to…”

“Uh… D-Diana?” Barbara quavered, as the floor started to turn lime green.  “Isn’t the light supposed to be coming from above?”

“What do you mean, coming from—?” Diana started, then gasped as the thaumometer burst into tinkling fragments.  “No!  What—?”

Below, Amanda was holding the Ley Spike aloft and soaking in the praise of her fellow burglars.  Suddenly, it wobbled in the air and she shifted her weight to keep a firm grip on it.

“What is that, an endzone dance?” Wangari asked lightly.

“No, this thing’s kinda jinking around,” Amanda said, gripping it with both hands.  “Like you know how when you’re going really fast on your broom, and you hold your hand out and it won’t stay steady ‘cause of the wind?  It’s like that.”

“Oh.”  Wangari dug for her notebook.  “I should be taking notes.  We’ll want people to know what happened if it kills us all.”

Jasminka’s reaction was more practical.  She took two swift steps towards Amanda and reached out to take the spike.

“What are you—?” Amanda yelped, pulling back, but as the spike’s tip turned downward, the resistance broke and it plunged into the skin of the world.  “SHIT!”

A vivid green beam lashed up through the ceiling and Amanda fell sprawling, leaving the Spike embedded in thin air.  Jasminka took another step towards it, but then fell back as the beam redoubled with a roar beneath hearing.  Constanze kicked her laptop away before it burst into sparks and flame, and Wangari avidly bent over her notebook, recording their unfolding doom.

Above, the beam struck Blue Team’s astral lens dead center and exploded in a blinding flower of light.  Hannah screamed and set one foot out of the circle, but held her ground.  Shielding her eyes, Diana froze on the verge of giving her next order – she’d prepared for everything that could possibly go wrong, but this was impossible.  Shock had blasted her apart.

“What do we do?” Barbara wailed.

They’re counting on me!  Diana’s mind clicked back together.  “B-bend it!  Make the lens concave!”

Despite their terror, Hannah and Barbara joined her in reshaping the astral lens between them.  Instead of spreading out, the beam was now focused on a single point directly overhead, in an unused room where nobody would be hurt.

Above, Akko had just finished her chant, and crossed her arms proudly as the magic circle lit up beneath them. “Look at all that power!” she crowed.  “That’s more like it!”

Lotte grunted and bent her knees, as though dropping her weight into the canopy overhead.  “Something’s not right!” she said.  “It’s coming from the wrong way!  Why is the power coming from below?

The circle flared, as expected, then flared again, then just kept getting brighter.  The paint started to pop and burst into flame, but the circle remained beneath, steadily scorching into the stone.  The center was already blindingly bright; something was focusing an incredible amount of power there, and their ritual was pulling it into the world.

“Call the ritual off!” Lotte cried.  “Dispel it!”

“Okay, I—how do I—?”  Akko flipped frantically through her notes.  “I just know I looked up how to—!”

The circle burst with a glassine crack and shredded their canopy in a blast of magical shrapnel that condensed into a cloud of wisps overhead and kept growing brighter.  Ten green suns hung over their heads, glaring down through three floors of impetuous witches, and then each became a spotlight on a different one, burning away all obstacles and enveloping her in a blinding shell.

“Well, now,” Sucy said, grinning.

Diana!” Hannah shrieked, reaching out to her.

“Oh, for—!” Amanda snarled.

And then—


—they were gone.

They’d become beams of light shining through an infinite prism, spearing through the crystal planes of a million worlds.  Or rather, the witches themselves were tiny sparks that had formed from their beams striking the plane that held Luna Nova, and now they were free to race out through others, dancing past their fellow sparks.  Each was safely enfolded in a private universe of blazing green light, body, clothes, and all, gazing out into other selves they might have been and other homes they might have had as the ritual carried them far away.

Akko glimpsed the self she’d wanted to meet, then shot past her, then a singing pirate, a plucky reporter, an Akko in a spacesuit striding on what looked like an elliptical machine alongside Andrew… they kept coming!  She recognized bits and pieces of each scene in the manner of dreams, but they shot by before she could make sense of them.  She fought monsters?  She healed sick children?  She made video games?  “Wait,” she cried.  “How do I steer?  What do I dooooo?”

A quiet voice drifted through her thoughts, inflectionless but warm.  Who do you want to be?  The ritual was doing its job!  Her mental image of Shiny Akko was broken up by a whisper of fear as she plunged further and further from home, and the worlds grew ever more alien around her.  How would she find her way back?  Would she?  “No, come on!” she told herself.  “You just have to be brave!” 

The voice fell quiet and she came to an abrupt stop.  She’d struck another Akko and held fast, two sparks meeting and flaring together.  They cried out in unison, no, with one voice, and Akko fell back to the stone floor.  “Hello, other me, do you want to…?” she asked dazedly, realized that she was too late, and then went out like a light.

Lotte plummeted through the dimensions limply, hardly noticing them, or the ritual’s voice.  “Oh, I never should have let this happen!  I wish I’d put my foot down!  Why am I always such a weakling?  Why can’t I be someone who…?”  Suddenly, she was.

“This isn’t the worst trip I’ve had,” Sucy mused, relaxing into the flight.  Somehow, the parade of alternate Sucies felt familiar, but she couldn’t place the memory.  “That shroud-shroom must’ve been stronger than I thought!  I wonder if I’ll get the munchies this time, too.”  At that moment, she collided with a Sucy who definitely had the munchies.

Wangari was so amazed that she forgot to be scared.  She had a hard time focusing on herself in each tableau, instead looking to the amazing worlds surrounding them.  “I wish…” she said, startled by her own voice.  “Look at all of that!  I wish I could see them all!”  She almost didn’t notice when she joined a Wangari who felt the same way.  Or had, once.

Amanda thrashed and struggled.  “What the hell is this?” she demanded.  “I don’t care!  Let me off!  I have a job to finish!”  Her determination and ambition shone from plane to plane until she hit another Amanda with the same heart.

Jasminka knew from experience what to do when spirited away by malevolent magic.  This didn’t seem so bad, though, and the whirlwind of Jasnas it showed her was fascinating.  “It’s like a menu,” she observed.  “But I never asked to be served!”  Zooming past a masseuse, a chef, and the security chief on a spaceship, her gaze fell on an imposing figure standing from a crystal throne and casting her hands over a crowd of kneeling, armored figures.  “Ooh!  Who’s that?

Constanze understood the ritual’s request instantly.  It sounded just like the silent electronic voices of her stanbots, and it was every bit as simple-minded.  Who did she want to be?  She tapped for her headset out of reflex and answered in a wordless burst of associations.  It seemed like an oddly philosophical question, but her answer was accepted.

“Diana!  Diana, where are you?” Hannah wailed.  “Sh-she’s not here!  Okay.  I can handle this.  I can handle this!  I don’t need her!”  And indeed, there were many Hannahs across many worlds who didn’t need Diana.  Before she could say another word, she became one of them.

“Am I dying?” Barbara wondered, more bemused than frightened.  By chance, she shone into another Barbara who was wondering the same thing, with the same mild tone.  They would find out together.

Diana tried to keep a cool head and think her way out, but Hannah’s panicked cry had been a knife in her heart.  A legion of Dianas shone all around her against a universe of amazing vistas, and yet all she could do was turn inward.  She’d caused this.  Hannah and Barbara looked up to her and trusted her, and now they’d come here in the middle of the night and cast dangerous, powerful magic with nothing but her word…  How could you let this happen?  Unforgivable!  You arrogant, preening moron!  You’ve killed your friends!

“I have to…”  The ritual’s request threaded through her self-recrimination, a dry, needling voice she couldn’t make sense of.  “I didn’t want… I can’t…”  With all of that noise filling her, it was impossible to complete a thought.  Finally, she clutched her head and snarled, “Just stop!”  And so, it did.  The fear, guilt, and anger were gone, but their energy remained, humming deep in her chest.  She collapsed into cold, electric peace.