Work Text:
Dust pattered on Akko’s face.
Everything hurt.
She woke spread-eagled in a constellation of softly glowing marbles, at the bottom of a spiral stairway. Their pale light pushed the darkness up past two turns of stairs before hitting a solid wall of darkness. Blinking stars away, it took a long moment to remember how she could possibly have ended up in a place like this.
The Shrine. Right. She could still do it. Everything was fine.
The pain was already fading. Akko had always been tough, and now the faint remnants of a dozen past shapeshifting spells lazed in her body, tweaking her closer to her pre-fall shape. She’d have to get them dispelled sooner or later, but this was nice.
Finally, Akko sat up and inspected the mesh bag tied to her wrist. Sure enough, it had caught on something up there and torn open, covering the stairs with–another marble hit her head and she yelped. Glowering up into the dark, rubbing her head peevishly, she got another up her nose. So, that explained the fall.
If only she had a flashlight! She’d tried to procure one, but Constanze hadn’t even let her start her request before chasing her out of the workshop at gunpoint. Always grumpy, that one, but it seemed like the holidays hit her especially hard. Maybe she could make it up to her by–
Akko tensed. Soft, clicking steps were falling on the steps above her, and a wash of pale gold had joined her marbles’ green. Who would be down here? Why now? What should she do? Run? Hide? Schmooze?
“There you are,” a cool voice said.
Akko spun on her butt to see Diana Cavendish descending the stairs above her, a phantom of gray cloak and shimmering hair with an old-timey oil lantern. (Was it magical? Hard to say.) There would be no running or hiding from this one, and schmoozing would be useless.
“What are you doing here?” Akko sighed.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Akko crossed her arms. “You first!”
“I’m here to find you, of course, and escort you to the surface.” Diana sounded perfectly matter-of-fact; “Are you hurt?”
She was, a bit. “No.”
“Come on, then. We’ll have to hurry.”
“Oh, listen to you!” Akko cried, springing to her feet. “I’m down here for a reason!”
“Akko, be quiet.”
“Why is this any of your business, anyway?”
“Akko!”
“You think I’m just gonna follow you like a ahi-like, like a baby little duckling? You think–?”
Something slammed into the stone far overhead, stirring their hair with the impact. Akko gaped upwards and a loose stone bounced from her forehead.
“If you fancy living to see Christmas, yes,” Diana said. She turned her lantern down and turned in a whirl of heavy cloak. Something flickered softly red above, tentatively turning like the beacon of a lighthouse, but the corridor she started towards was resolutely black. “Follow me.”
Leaving the marbles, they double-timed through musty, echoing corridors. Akko tried to remember their course, but she lost track almost immediately. Lefts and rights, ramps and stairs; she could only see that they were trending upwards and trying to lose someone.
“Is there something down here?” Akko asked, hustling alongside Diana’s long strides.
Diana gave her an incredulous look, eyes glinting in the lanternlight. They weren’t just pale, but solidly, inhumanly blue. (Also very pretty, not that Akko was in the mood to notice.) “Of course there is! Why do you think the catacombs are forbidden?”
“I don’t know!” Akko clamped down to keep a whine out of her voice. “They have all kinds of stupid rules. I asked around! Or tried. Anyone who’d know…”
“...would have tried to stop you,” Diana sighed. “Stars’ sake… what could be so important down here, Akko?”
“The Outset Shrine!” Akko said defiantly, punching out “the” and then forcing her voice back down. “I came to find the shrine, and…” Here her English failed her.
Akko had started out reading about the Fountain of Polaris, inspired by her Shiny Chariot trading cards, but the book had been so engrossing that she barreled on through a dozen other secret corners of Luna Nova. There she learned about a shrine hidden deep in the catacombs beneath the school, built by the students of a wild and mysterious age. There were no official ceremonies or rites, but in every generation, a few students would find their way down and leave a personal token to affirm their determination to become witches.
She’d almost cried at the idea. A little shrine with no magical power, just the earnest wishes of the little witches who’d built it and those who came after, braving the dangers of the tunnels… it swelled in her chest and she couldn’t find the words to force it out.
“I was thinking about the tokens,” Akko finally said. “All kinds of precious things down here, abandoned.”
“In a purely sentimental sense, of course. Nobody would risk attracting looters.”
“Loot–?” The word was a slap in the face, but so ridiculous that it couldn’t even make Akko mad. “What, do you think I’m Amanda?”
Diana snorted. “Fair play. So that’s what this is about? Observing that old custom? It hardly seems like you.”
“I dunno. It just seems important.” Akko braced for a cutting remark, but none came. “I was thinking about how important being a witch is to me… and it was the same for all of them, back years and years. It feels like we should see it, right? Someone should!”
Diana didn’t reply. Akko stared at her swaying hair, wondering.
“So if you wanted to know, that’s why. I knew it was stupid, but I couldn’t let it go. So… sorry. You came all this way ‘cause I’m a sap.”
Still, nothing.
“Hello? Earth to Diana? Moshi-moshi?”
“I’m listening,” Diana finally said. “And thinking. What you’re say–”
A soft clatter echoed down the tunnel and Diana froze in mid-sentence, then doused her lantern.
“Diana wha–blrmph?”
If there was any magic to the maneuver, Akko couldn’t feel it. Diana’s shoulder hit her gut as one hand snaked behind her head and the other clamped over her mouth, wrenching her from her feet but then bringing her gently to the stone floor. For a dazed moment, she was startled by how heavy Diana was.
The words came as a soft, voiceless rush and pop against Akko’s ear, sending shivers down her spine. “Don’t move. Breathe slowly. Eyes closed.”
“Wh–?”
Diana’s hand tightened over her mouth and she grudgingly fell quiet.
They lay on the cold stone just long enough for Akko to get impatient, but as she drew a breath to ask again, something fell heavily on the stone by her head. It sounded like a blade, or the head of a shovel.
Diana was trembling.
Click, clack, clack.
The air shifted and Akko realized that there was something enormous in the tunnel with them, with many legs. Heat fell on her cheek and Diana’s hand clenched, more fear than command. The heat glided down her face and chest. It made Akko imagine a blazing red visor inspecting them, but she couldn’t open her eyes, or move at all.
Time disappeared. All that remained was stale tunnel air, their hammering hearts, and the scent of Diana’s cucumber hand soap. It could have been the rest of her life, for all she knew.
Instead, the heat passed and that huge body rattle-clattered away. Diana went limp with a shaky breath. No, it wasn’t just shaky; she was crying.
“Are you–?” Akko croaked. “Hey–?”
Diana surged up to a crouch, huffing and scrubbing at her face. “You see?” she whispered furiously. “You see? Get up! We’re leaving!”
“Um.”
With a snarl, Diana got off of her, hauled her up, and brought the lantern to life with a furious snap. They were no longer double-timing - now they ran.
They were both hardy little witches, but Diana’s endurance gave out well before Akko’s. She coasted to a stop and dialed the lantern down, then sagged against the wall.
Seeing her like this, out of her element and trying hard, felt strange. Akko didn’t know what to make of it.
“Hitam,” Diana said between gasps. “Black spirit. Hitam Hantu. Understand?”
Akko stared. “Huh?”
“Listen.” Diana spent the next few seconds gulping air, but just as Akko got impatient, she finally started biting out short sentences. “They hunt us. Down here, waiting. Scavengers. They eat our young.”
“What, like kids?” Akko’s eyes darted as though they were following each word. “Like us?”
“Young witches.” Diana swallowed and shook her head. “I mean, when children reach out for magic, the Black Hantu come for them. Or used to, when the world had more. The dreaming heart within every girl or boy who could be a witch - that’s their food. Don’t meet their eyes.”
“Don’t meet their eyes,” Akko repeated. “Okay.”
“Schools like this protected us,” Diana continued, pushing away from the wall and setting out at a determined walk. “Before the Nine founded the schools, every generation would race to grow in strength and ward their hearts before a Black Hantu caught their scent.”
“Like baby turtles,” Akko agreed.
Diana blinked back at her. “Turtles?”
“You know, when sea turtles hatch on the beach,” Akko said. “The seagulls and crabs and tanuki rush in to eat them, but you can’t help, ‘cause that’s nature. It’s sad.” She jolted. “Oh, but! But good that the Nine fixed it for witches, yeah!”
“Quiet, please - but yes. I suppose witches are like turtles in many ways.” What was that tone? Akko almost jogged to see her face. “Now, as magic fades away, the Hantu… thank Beatrix… the Hantu are dying out faster. The last few lurk under places like Luna Nova, waiting. Hoping. And very few witches are foolish enough to risk feeding them!”
Akko flushed and drew an angry breath.
“But this shrine…” Diana’s voice had picked up an odd melancholy note. “It was one reason that they did. You’re not the first to…”
Then she wobbled and Akko caught her arm. “Hey. Diana - breathe with your belly.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Like a singer, you know? It helps to catch your breath.”
“Oh. Oh!” Diana brightened a bit. “Diaphragmatic breathing - of course!”
“Diaphra–what?” Akko laughed out loud, then reeled it in at Diana’s urgent look. “Sorry. Right. Keeping it down. But it really helps. Lotte taught me about it - her tummy’s like a little snare drum! Wh–what?”
Whatever that look in Diana’s eyes was, it had vanished. She held up a finger, straightened, relaxed her shoulders, and said. “The wards around the Outset Shrine should still hold. If you really must visit, I could use a moment longer to rest.”
Akko was annoyed to find a lump in her throat. “Diana…”
Crack. They froze. Diana killed the lantern and soft red light danced over the ceiling like the sunset on the water. Clatter.
They were off like a shot.
After a nightmare sprint in flickering darkness, Diana’s hand bruising her wrist, banging her shoulders or shins on every corner, Akko felt the air change. They collapsed onto hard, dusty tiles and sprawled apart. The run wouldn’t have winded her, but a history lesson that was also a ghost story and a description of the deadly predator stalking them? That did it.
Now, despite the damp cold and weak light, she felt like she’d passed into a summer morning. The pain above her heart eased and her jaw unclenched. Somehow, her body knew that she was safe here.
“Be quiet,” Diana whispered miserably. Akko was frustrated for a moment, but realized that she was talking to herself. “Quiet!”
Akko wormed over, slipped a hand under Diana’s shoulder to flip her, and set a hand on Diana’s stomach and upper chest. “Belly breathing!” she whispered. “Ready? In!” Diana’s chest rose and Akko pushed gently down on it. “Nope! Not like that! The Diaphragmact thing!”
After a few awkward seconds, Diana’s stomach fluttered and Akko realized that she was silently laughing. Had she ever seen the Pride of Luna laugh? She’d seen smiles, yes. A whole world of them, from the warm smile of a proud tutor to a cold, disdainful look that Akko had wanted to slap all the way back to Scotland.
But laughing? (Or crying, come to think of it…)
“Thank you,” Diana said, with half her voice. Even that tuneless croak was a nice sound after all the whispering they’d been doing. “You keep your head in a crisis. It’s admirable. Important for a witch.”
Akko raised an eyebrow. That sounded like an admission.
“You too,” she said, instead. “I can’t believe you remembered the way! But…” The question she wanted to ask slammed into her brain-mouth filter and, for a wonder, didn’t fit. “Sorry, never mind.”
Diana finally dialed the lantern up just a bit, enough to cast the chamber into dim, wavering light, then curled on her side. “Pay your respects, then. I’ll be ready soon.”
Akko rose, head swimming, and took the room in. There was little to set the room itself apart; the walls were carved with orderly rows of glyphs that might have once given it a purpose, and a slab in the center that could have been an altar, but any vestige of the builders’ plans were lost to time.
As for the contents? Her first impression, battering down an awkward smile, was of a flea market. The altar was covered with an array of dolls, figures, tools, coins, icons, and folded papers, and two small tables had been set in front of it to make more room. Akko felt fat tears gathering in the corners of her eyes and didn’t fight them.
The second table was mostly clear, and the items seemed more modern. There was even a Labubu, of all things, lying facedown with a cocktail sword in its back. Noticing it drew her eyes to a little porcelain unicorn, head lowered as though tending to the stricken gremlin. Was the scene deliberate? Had they come together, or had Ms. Unicorn collaborated with a witch she’d never met? Oh, great: another thing to get sappy about!
“Well, I’m here,” Akko finally said. Japanese felt right for the place. She wondered if everyone came and spoke their mother tongues, but the whole point was that it wasn’t dictated to them. “I’m just like all of you who’ve come here, I hope. And all of you who’ll come after… I hope. Another baby witch. Maybe I’m a useless witch, but still…”
“No,” Diana murmured, sitting up.
Akko glanced down at her.
“That is–I’m sorry,” Diana said. “I no doubt misunderstood. I - I didn’t mean to listen in.”
“It’s fine,” Akko said, smirking. Another first: a flustered Diana. “Cute.”
Diana grimaced and lowered her head.
That made having an audience for this next part a lot less embarrassing. Akko fished in her jacket pocket and came up with a beanbag Alcor, lifting him gently in a cupped hand. “Hey, little buddy. I’ve got a job for you - but don’t worry! I’ll leave you with a friend!”
She kissed his little felt head and gently set him at the end of the line, alongside a threadbare Motanka doll with a fine, still-ticking watch in its lap. Akko frowned at the pair for a moment; they tickled something in her brain. It felt like they were missing something.
Shaking her head, Akko solemnly clapped her hands once and bowed her head, then let out a sigh. Done! But as she opened her eyes, she frowned. The doll’s hair hadn’t always been red, had it?
“Akko,” Diana suddenly said, low and urgent. “It’s here. Don’t turn around!”
Reflexively, Akko turned and met the many eyes of the Black Hantu.
Its face filled the doorway, a jagged wedge of finely-layered black plates, cut through with seven narrow, blood-red eyes, blinking in an uneven pattern that set their light flowing hypnotically through the room. The armor shone black at the tip of its snout, but took on blue and purple highlights along the razor-sharp line of its brow and spreading into four sweeping antennae. Its many legs jostled and clattered to either side of the door; it had coiled tightly to get a look at them.
It was almost pretty.
“Oh, no…” Diana moaned, but then her eyes widened. “Akko, are you–?”
Akko was frozen in terror, but the feeling wasn’t so different from the time she’d locked eyes with a black bear on a family camping trip. Whatever was supposed to happen when you met its eyes, wasn’t.
“D…D…” Akko gasped. “Is it… can it…?”
“The wards should–”
A sound cut through her voice, soft but growing, crackling growing into a deep, thunderous rumble. The face outside opened into an array of scythes, and then a tunnel to hell. Maybe not so pretty after all. The thunder rose into a bellow that broke against Akko in a wall of air.
Finally, Akko could move, but all she did was fall on her butt. Diana was instantly at her side, gripping her arm. The plan was no doubt to pull her behind the altar so they could at least be out of sight. Before they could take even one step together, though, the monster lunged.
It smashed effortlessly through the door’s edges, but a grid of burning green lines lashed over its face and hauled back on it. Its legs scrabbled and gouged at the tiles in a hellish clamor as it pushed closer and closer, huffing furiously in clouds of its own vaporized armor, gnashing curved teeth the length of Akko’s forearm.
They’d both frozen in that split second, as the Hantu drove in against the Outset Shrine’s ward. Maybe it would have gotten them. Maybe they would have been safe. But as its jaws snapped shut a meter short, Akko instinctively lunged back. One long step, foot planted, hips turning, core tensed, arm uncoiling with two knuckles forward–
CRACK.
It was not the armor that broke.
However, as Akko fell flat on her face, the ward’s light flared from the point of impact and it flung the Hantu back to crater the opposite wall and get lost in its own nightmare spaghetti tangle of bladed legs.
Of course - the ward had been crafted by unsanctioned students whose shrine marked their devotion to themselves, each other, and magic itself over the school they happened to be attending.
Its power was defiance.
The monster was still storming off as Akko woke, so she’d only passed out for a second or two.
“Don’t move,” Diana said firmly, and expertly restrained her as she tried. “I said–! Keep still! I’m healing you!”
Grudgingly, Akko relaxed, squeezed her eyes shut, and did her best to ignore her aching hand. Diana’s healing magic fell over it in layer after feathery, tingling layer. After an hour of relying on that lantern, her wand was shockingly bright.
“You haven’t been dispelling, I notice,” Diana continued. “I had to fight my way through four… metamorphie spells, I believe… to even start tending to you. We’re both lucky the injury wasn’t life-threatening.”
Akko grumbled indistinctly.
“It’s common enough - nobody expects to need urgent healing.”
Turning her head to the side, Akko could see a very tired smile on Diana’s face, and dried tears on her cheeks. “You okay?”
“Now, yes. I think.” Diana heaved a deep sigh - from her belly. “It’s strange. I wondered why the Hantu was having such a hard time seeing us. When it first found us, I… I thought for certain that it would throw me aside and rip you apart in front of me! But it didn’t see our eyes, so…”
“Huh? It should’ve seen us then?”
“You, specifically,” Diana said, frowning. “Do you know why I came, instead of asking a teacher for help?”
“Because you’re not a narc?”
Diana snorted, covered her face, and barked out a short laugh. “Well, yes. To get you expelled for something so many students do, it… it would be cruel. But I came because the Black Hantu couldn’t feed on me.”
“Oh! You said everyone raced to make a shield…”
“It’s not that. There’s nothing within me for the monster to eat.”
Careful to avoid her healing hand, Akko pushed up to sit on her feet. “But you–they eat–you have a heart, right?”
“It’s poetic license. The ‘dreaming heart’ isn’t literally your heart, of course, though a Black Hantu will tear you open all the same. It’s the potential for magic you’re born with. I had… lost mine. I can only draw magic from without.”
Akko tilted her head. She could see about five paragraphs between “had” and “lost.” And if she’d lost the potential she’d been born with, why was she such a wunderkind now?
“I’d prefer not to talk about it,” Diana said, finding her bedraggled smile again. “For now. It doesn’t sense your spirit, and it’s barely aware of your body - so long as it doesn’t see my eyes, it can only guess at where I might be, by scent. And when it met your eyes…”
“Yeah, wasn’t it supposed to get me?”
“It feeds on the emotions of witches, drawing them out through his or her gaze. You would have lost all fear, all hope, all will, and walked into its jaws.”
Akko shivered.
“And yet you didn’t.” Diana bit her lip for a long moment, then said, “Akko, I’m sorry. I’ve severely misjudged you.”
“How? I mean, yeah, you did, but how do you mean?”
Diana covered her mouth. After months of never hearing her laugh, Akko was already getting sick of it! “Either you’ve shielded your heart with the strength of the ancient witches, or… like me… something terrible happened to you, and you’ve been struggling to overcome it.”
“Something… terrible?” Akko had no idea what to do with that.
“At any rate, this makes returning to the surface easier,” Diana said briskly. It was like a mask dropping over her eyes. “How does your hand feel? Better? Good. Since you seem to have the same condition as I, we should both be able to use magic without attracting the Hantu’s attention. And you’ve been practicing your shapeshifting, yes?”
“Yeah,” Akko said. She wanted to say ‘wait, hang on, explain all that,’ but she wanted to get out of this monster-haunted pit even more.
“Good!” Diana set her wand against her temple. “If you’ll follow me, then…”
With a green flash, she became a little white ferret. Before she could take a single scampering step, Akko had scooped her up, given her a big hug, tossed her into the air, swung her fuzzy butt like a pendulum, and gotten bitten.
Cuteness aggression. It happens to the best of us, and also to Akko.
Clambering through the ducts as a mouse, Akko had a lot to think about, and no energy to do it with. Had Diana just implied she’d had her heart scooped out? Was there a reason magic refused to come to her? What was so terrible that it could have done that to her? Was she–?
Diana chirped sharply and scooped a hindclaw to pull Akko off of the wrong course. She chittered back irritably and got scampering. All of that could wait. They’d probably just go back to normal as soon as they were back in the cozy halls of Luna Nova, and Diana had her adoring masses to preen for. Probably.
Akko knew she wouldn’t be so lucky. Despite herself, she was glad.