Pulling her Flight spell forward in her mind, she lifted into the air. That still worked then. She had no ketcom to get her into anywhere, but she could walk through walls. Or fly through them. ‘This could actually be kind of fun.’ She let herself grin, because there was absolutely no one around to see her, and then she flew off toward Mitsuko’s apartment building.
~~~
Of course, without her ketcom, Mitsuko’s apartment had identified Nava as an intruder and sent a message to Mitsuko’s ketcom. So, Courtney and Kyle had burst into the apartment ready to blast anything they found there with Mitsuko right on their tails. And what they found was Nava, in Mitsuko’s red robe, sitting on one of the sofas in the dark.
‘Are you okay?’ Mitsuko asked immediately.
‘I’m fine,’ Nava replied, ‘though I’d appreciate it if you could tell your apartment that I’m not here to steal all your stuff or something.’
‘And the Harbinger?’ Courtney asked.
‘It’s not fine. In fact, it’s probably nothing more than a few random fluctuations in the Q-field. Chess was right about it being vulnerable to raw quintessence attacks. There was nothing left.’
‘So, it’s over.’
‘No one else is going to die,’ Nava said. ‘I think calling it over is premature. Candide Stenger is still traumatised. Lambert has quite possibly lost his wife and maybe his child. Petra Faulkner is a mess and Anton Landon is dead. But the living can be told that the thing that was responsible has paid for what it did. I guess that’s as good a result as we could hope for.’
‘Sometimes,’ Mitsuko said, ‘we have to make do with small victories. I’m just glad we didn’t lose you in the process.’
‘Of course not. Now there’s only one thing left to do.’
‘Oh, and what’s that?’
‘I have to beat Chess soundly for not mentioning the part where I end up naked after using that spell.’
235/5/25.
‘I didn’t consider that as an issue!’ Rochester was practically glowing red around the cheeks and throat. It was kind of like someone had refitted his skin with internal LED lighting. Nava was somewhat pacified by this reaction, not that she was going to show that, obviously. ‘T-taking clothes across would have increased the spell complexity.’
‘But you didn’t consider clothing as an issue,’ Nava said, pouncing on the excuse as a means of prolonging her friend’s suffering. ‘How would you know that it would increase its complexity?’
‘Uh, well, obviously, uh–’
‘Stop being mean, Nava,’ Melissa said. ‘Even I know that it would mean an increase in complexity and I’m nowhere near as good at metaphysics as you and Chess. Besides, having to fight an alien thought entity in the buff wouldn’t have bothered you in the slightest.’
‘While true,’ Nava replied, ‘that statement doesn’t negate the fact that I did have to. I’d have liked a warning.’
‘N-next time, I’ll be sure to take n-nudity into consideration,’ Rochester said with a hand over his heart.
‘I’m hoping there won’t be a next time,’ Mitsuko said.
‘And so say all of us,’ Courtney added.
It was late for breakfast, but it was Sunday morning and everyone had decided that they deserved a lie-in. Not much of a lie-in since they had met up in the refectory at nine a.m., but still a lie-in compared to school days. Rochester and Melissa had wanted the full story and not just a ‘yes, I’m fine, it’s gone’ summary from Nava. They would probably be going back to bed soon enough since it was Rochester’s birthday. Courtney and Kyle were there too, partially to see whether anything new was added to what they had heard the night before.
‘Well,’ Nava said, ‘you were right about it being susceptible to quintessence-based attacks, so I suppose that makes up for it. And it’s your birthday… I’ll let you go without diabolical punishment this time.’
‘Just out of interest,’ Courtney asked, ‘what kind of diabolical punishment did you have in mind?’
‘Well, there’s absolutely no reason why I can’t cast that spell on someone else…’
There was a pause while everyone worked out who her target would have been, and they watched the LEDs in Rochester’s face brighten another hundred Watts.
‘You actually thought about that, didn’t you?’ Mitsuko asked.
‘I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I might incriminate myself. Anyway, it was a somewhat interesting experience and the results were positive. For us. For the Harbinger, not so much.’
‘Uh,’ Rochester began, which probably meant that what he was going to say might go down the wrong way, ‘Lambert Stenger did suggest that, if the spell worked as intended, we could write it up for inclusion in one of the metaphysics journals. He, uh, suggested that Advances in Metaphysics might publish it. We would, uh, both get credit as co-authors.’
‘He really thinks AiM might accept it?’ Mitsuko asked.
‘A spell which shifts someone to within the Q-field together with a report on the subjective experience of being there? Yes, he does.’
‘I’d rather not be mentioned,’ Nava said.
‘What? Why?’ Mitsuko looked genuinely surprised. It appeared to be an emotion shared by everyone.
‘Because people will want to know how a first year at SAS-squared was capable of casting a two hundred and thirty Tammy spell. I did say my abilities were to remain a private matter, didn’t I?’
‘Yes. Yes, you did,’ Rochester said. He sounded a little sad about it. ‘I’m sure we can anonymise the report, if that’s what you want.’
‘I don’t mind contributing my experiences there, brief as they were, but I do wish to remain anonymous. Frankly, I don’t need the attention. Too many people know about this as it is.’ She
