Chapter Text
Kusumi felt a brief moment of fiery pain, the worst pain that she’d ever felt, as the talons of the Huge sliced through her. Then everything went black.
She tried again.
The sky above Legion Álfheimr was dark, the moon nowhere to be seen. A brilliant blue glow shined from the magiesphere as Ena charged it, illuminating the Lilies far more brightly than the stars that twinkled high above them. A while ago, the legion had been able to hear the waves gently lapping at the base of the sea cliff a short distance to their side, but now those were drowned out by the sounds of battle.
Soraha was focused on the gigant-type in front of them, keeping it distracted so that it couldn’t attack Ena from a distance and disrupt their Neunwelt. Kusumi, who was further forward in the formation, had only just turned around to look at Soraha. She didn’t even remember why she had turned around. Lilies closer to the front were supposed to trust the others backing them up, not be watching out for them. Maybe it had been an irrational impulse. A foreboding. A shiver down her spine.
When she’d turned around, she had seen one of the Huge looming behind Soraha, who seemed entirely unaware of its presence. It already had one arm, with viciously sharp claws upon its end, raised to strike at her.
That’s when Kusumi had used Phantasm. She’d stopped time, for herself, to search for the best future that she could—however many tries it took.
If she did nothing and let the future play out, the monster attacked Soraha moments later. Kusumi wondered if it was a special-type; no ordinary Huge would be able to sneak up on Soraha and pierce through her natural defenses. But pierce through them it did, those claws cutting through Soraha with no sign that they had encountered any resistance. Soraha’s eyes met Kusumi’s, for one last instant, before her body fell to the ground.
Blood, as dark as pitch in the magiesphere’s light, pooled beneath Soraha. The fallen Lily had been nearly severed in two at the waist. Kusumi could see what was… what had been... inside of her. She knew, with dreadful certainty, that nobody could survive an injury like that.
She tried again.
Using the telepathy that Phantasm granted her, Kusumi screamed a warning directly into Soraha’s mind. Soraha started to turn, slowly, too slowly. The claws sliced through her at a different angle. Her body went flying, and came apart as it did.
Kusumi fired her CHARM at the Huge with all the magie she could pour into it, causing it to overheat and burn her hands. She blasted the monster’s head off, but whether that wasn’t enough to kill it instantly or the attack was simply lingering momentum, its arm slammed into Soraha, knocking her down and skidding to a stop atop her. Soraha’s limbs splayed out beneath the body of the Huge afterwards, not moving no matter how long Kusumi watched her for.
Misora was the closest to Soraha. Alerted by Kusumi’s telepathy, she fired off an energy blast at the Huge. It pierced through the monster, which then toppled over, crushing Soraha with its dead body.
Kusumi fired at the creature’s arm instead. The impact of having its arm shot off spun the Huge around, causing its other arm to hit Soraha like a massive club. The Lily went flying, all the way off the cliff and into the water below. If she ran to the cliff afterwards, Kusumi couldn’t see a thing in the water beneath her. That was one of the better futures. She couldn’t be sure Soraha was dead in it.
Ena was close to Soraha too, but was distracted by the Neunwelt. Even if Kusumi warned her with telepathy, she couldn’t react in time to save Soraha. All the others were too far away to do anything. Kusumi tried firing her CHARM at different angles, at different levels of power… and yet nothing she did stopped the monster from hitting Soraha, whether with its claws or its body. She shouted everything she could think of into Soraha’s mind, into her friends’ minds, but nothing made any difference.
In desperation, she even fired her CHARM directly at Soraha once, hoping to knock her out of the way without harming her as badly as the Huge would. Kusumi abandoned that future the moment she saw, in the dim light, dark blood spreading out beneath the body of her Schutzengel.
The girl tried again and again, and in not a single one of the futures that she saw could she be certain that Soraha was alive.
There was only one thing Kusumi had tried that had ended without her looking at Soraha’s unmoving body, or the unbroken surface of the sea, or the ponderous body of the Huge fallen atop where Soraha had been standing. If she ran directly towards Soraha, with all the speed Phantasm allowed her to muster, she could interpose herself between that arm and her Schutzengel just before the claws reached them. When she did that, she felt a brief moment of pain, and then everything went black.
Kusumi knew that she should have faith in Soraha. She should choose one of the less dire futures, and take a chance that they would roll the body of the Huge off of Soraha and find the Lily alive and well, protected by her magie barrier. Or hope that if she waited just a little longer—longer than Phantasm would let her watch for—Soraha’s blonde head would surface amidst the waves below and the Lily would wave to her, in the reassuring way that she always did.
But the pain of uncertainty felt far worse than the pain of that Huge’s claws cutting through her.
Kusumi felt certain of only one thing. She didn’t want to live in a world without Soraha in it.
She made her choice. The illusion ended, and Kusumi ran towards Soraha. She couldn’t spare the breath to shout out loud, but before Phantasm’s power left her, before the claws cleaved through her body, Kusumi willed a message towards the blue eyes that met hers for one last brief moment.
Soraha-nee-sama, I love you.