It took the boy the rest of the morning to stop looking clueless and to start weeping. Mantis waited, and so did Teela—who was evidently crying more from guilt than sorrow, herself.

  It had been the girl’s idea to not immediately share the bad news with Leroh, and Mantis had felt it wasn’t her place to take that choice from her. It was a family matter.

  For the last few days, they’d waited and allowed the boy to explore the village in relative happiness, but today their stalling had had to come to an end. Ombira was starting to push, and Mantis knew there was no point in delaying the matter longer. Best to get it over with once and for all, she’d told Teela.

  Mantis had her own share of guilt to deal with herself, in all honesty. And Teela had ensured that she suffer for her callousness as was only fair. When the girl had overheard Mantis stupidly talking to the owner of the inn out on the street, Mantis had been forced to reveal her dark tidings to Teela, and she, in turn, had told her how heartless a person she thought her for keeping such secrets from them.

  It’d been the smoke. Its smell, if nothing else, would have informed Mantis of what had occurred. But the unpleasant truth was that she’d known even before the Winds that ran northward had ceased and allowed the unmistakable scent to drift down to the south. She’d been able to see the cloud of smoke the day it happened, not long after the Sun event. The children, with their inferior eyesight, had not distinguished the rising cloud of ash-gray in the distance from the heavy cover of Rainclouds that had reigned in the sky that day, like Mantis had been able to do.

  She’d known. She’d known everything, feared it could happen even before it had come to happen.

  Weather events always led to catastrophe for the unsworn, and the sworn, too, in a different way. If a monstrous wave ravished the coast, all knew the Sea had to be given homage to smother his fury. If a relentless Wind or Rain assailed the land, all knew which one to kneel before with offerings in the dozens and an imploration to put a stop to the destruction. But never before had the Sun displayed such a menacing show of his ire. Mantis had suspected it would take a lot to sate him. And Pirn was the largest town near the capital.

  She’d strongly hoped to be wrong. But that rarely did anything to deter reality from its course.

  Teela had been livid with Mantis, at first, when she’d explained everything to her. The girl had demanded to know how Mantis could be so sure of such a thing, and then requested to be told clear times and dates for all her concealed realizations: her initial suspicion, the smoke, the smell, the Sunmen on their way to deliver the news to the Sea, everything. Soon, it had become evident to Teela that Mantis had purposely withheld the information, and that had led to a whole different type of conflict between the two of them.

  But the girl had seemed to forget her anger when it was replaced by shame over her own actions.

  Mantis didn’t blame her for her reluctance to break the horrible news to her brother. In an ugly and ironic way, it had come to smooth things between Teela and herself to both bear the burden of a wrong committed for the same reason, in two different instances, and by two very different people. They could make peace over the shared mistake.

  And now here they were, hiding in a stuffy room, two thirds of their little party caught in ceaseless bawling with no relief in sight.

  Mantis knew not what to do.

  She’d arranged for an abandoned hut out by the edge of the village to be freshened up for the children. It was not a nice place, but it would serve its purpose as a shelter. Mantis had spent a lot of her money on food, clothing, stable fees, inn fees and the workers’ fees who would put the little house to rights. She had only a handful of coins left now, and a bag full of jewelry she’d not found a place to sell, after just half a dozen days of their bizarre stay at the traditionalist community.

  But it didn’t matter, it was an easy exchange to make, as long as she could depart with her conscience scrubbed a little cleaner. Only then could she move on with her life.

  The children would do well there. Surely they’d be able to find work. They were both young and strong, competent and capable of looking after themselves. They would be fine.

  Mantis only needed to travel as far as it would take to find a target—a wealthy one, preferably—and to manage to exchange her cache of valuables for common currency. Then, she would return to Teela and Leroh and equip them with that last tool she could provide for them before parting ways forever. That was all that was left to do. Just that one final assurance to put in place to help the youths survive the tragedy that befell them.

  It felt a blink before all her neat arrangements turned to muck in her hands, however, as soon as Leroh stopped crying and opened his mouth:

  “I’m going home.”

  Teela lifted her gaze from the ground where she sat cross-legged on the floor to look up at her brother, who was lying still on his side on the large bed. “What?”

  “I have to go back. Even if it’s all burned, even if it’s awful. I need to go and see for myself if there is anything left to do, anything to salvage. I just can’t—I cannot leave it like this. I want to see.”

  And that was that.

  The next morning, they departed for Pirn.

  Leroh could conjure very few thoughts, every single one of them unbearably terrible. So, as they traveled all day under the sweltering light of their unmerciful Sun, all he could do was focus on not focusing on anything. No one image or idea did he allow his brain to fix on; no memory or concern did he let himself pay mind to. It was all he could do to remain unthinking, and so he missed most of what occurred on that tormentous day.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  They left the village behind and traveled at a comfortable trot or fast walk for most of the way. When night fell, they camped. Mantis had supplied them well, but Leroh did not eat. He squeezed into Mantis’s one-person tent and endured the painful mental struggle until sleep took pity on him and claimed him.

  It took less than half the morning the next day to arrive. The horrors started earlier than that, though, as the stench reached them before they reached the town, and Leroh was already mad with sorrow by the time the charred remains of his hometown came into view.

  Some things they’d left untouched, probably the homes and businesses of those who’d put up no resistance and surrendered without a fight. But that was a meager comfort to Leroh, for most of the buildings, they’d utterly destroyed, leaving behind only burned out husks of their former prideful selves. Pirn was now a dark cemetery of jagged stone and sharp spikes of fallen, blackened timbers. None of its dignity left standing.

  As they approached the place Leroh knew as well as his own skin, he observed the ruins of what had been a prosperous community of honest, free people. Very little remained. Aside from the few intact houses, there were some forgotten carts and coaches left parked on the streets, a few scattered possessions on the ground, and nothing more that could be considered whole. What there was plenty of, however, was the smell of death.

  It permeated the air, unmistakable and impossible to ignore. Leroh’s gorge rose.

  To his right, where there should have been a charming little abode of orange painted lumber, stood nothing but a heap of nondescript charcoal and ashes. Anise the seamstress had worked there for decades as the best clothes maker in town, issuing long-lasting garments to all who came to see her at a fraction of their value. She’d had no children of her own, and it always showed in her manner of warm affection for Leroh and Teela, and all the other town children. She’d been sweet and motherly, and more generous than was wise.

  Now she was gone. Dead. She’d not been one for subservience to the Gods, the stubborn old woman. She would have pressed the servants to kill her on the spot, most probably.

  As Leroh moved forward through the dirt path on foot, he looked around in mute despair. There stood the remnants of his friend Petre’s home. Beside it lay the smith’s shop and, across from that, the rubble of what had been Marla’s bakery. Her youngest son, Jun, had been friendly with Leroh. A nice older lad, he’d shared some stolen smoking herbs with Kird once, and they’d all sat at a secluded bench in the southernmost part of town to try them and attempt to not cough.

  Some people had survived, it appeared: men and women, mostly young. Faces Leroh recognized but could not put names to watched them pass. They were working to clear the debris, but they might as well have been attempting to drain a lake with their bare hands. There were too few of them, and too much destruction. It would take years if not decades to return the town to anything resembling Pirn.

  The sight gave Leroh a sadistic kind of hope, however. Those people had to have survived by running into the forest and hiding, or finding some other way to stay away from the raid. If Mother—if Tem and Kird—

  No. He couldn’t want that. Better to keep his expectations low and be positively surprised than to hold high hopes and have them smothered.

  Regardless of his mental preparedness, however, Leroh’s facade of appearing collected failed him the moment he glimpsed the Oak’s Shade, burned down to a skeleton of charred stone. Everything else was gone, incinerated. The stables his father had built, the thatched roof that had protected his family for generations, the windows and doors, flooring, furniture, all their belongings and memories: vanished.

  Across from his mother’s tavern, the cobblery that had been owned by his friends’ families was equally in shambles. Nothing but blackened, empty ruins stood where a beloved building of sturdy pinewood had existed for generations.

  Through the hole that used to be the door to the shop, Leroh caught a glance of what looked like bones on the floor, carbonized to mere sticks resembling the shape of a human body.

  He fell to his knees on the soot-covered ground.

  Mantis looked inside the burnt tavern for any indication of a corpse, but found nothing. Leroh was overcome with sadness, wailing loudly outside. Teela was grief-stricken too, Mantis knew, but she did not weep. The girl only followed her around in deadly silence as she conducted her grim search.

  The servants of the Sun had carried away a majority of the town’s inhabitants. That was no small feat.

  They would have crammed some into horse-drawn carts like grains in a sack and forced the rest to walk in coffles to the nearby Nell, thence to be sent upriver by ship. Cattle.

  And, by now, the folk of Pirn would have all met their fates, whether that be death or forced servitude. It was finished.

  Some scattered townspeople had survived the attack and were now toiling futilely to fix their overwhelmingly broken lives. To everyone’s benefit, Mantis knew, those good souls had disposed of what was sure to have been an abundance of rotting bodies. The odor in the air was all the indication necessary to deduce how many had perished on site. It was as foul a smell as one could tolerate without vomiting, and that was only because the dead had been dealt with: cremated, or possibly even buried. Otherwise, it would have been nearly impossible to breathe, standing where they were.

  Mantis—with Teela following closely behind—approached a woman who’d been loading rubble and loose pieces of wreckage from a house onto a cart. “My condolences.”

  The stranger made no response and only contorted her face into an expression of distaste, not looking away from her task to meet Mantis’s eyes. When the silence stretched too thin and they still didn’t leave her in peace, the woman finally turned to them, then paused and widened her eyes in shock. “Oh. Uh…thank you. We’re doing the best we can, ma’am.”

  “I see. Is it possible that you, or anyone here, knows what became of the woman who owned the big tavern near the grand square? A place called the Oak’s Shade.”

  “Or the cobblers’ boys, across the street,” Teela added in a sad plea.

  “I knew the woman, but I haven’t seen her. And the lads I knew in passing, too. Odds are, if they’re not here now, and they weren't among the ones we cremated, they were taken. They took so many. Hundreds. The whole town. Good men and women, children…” she trailed off, staring blankly into nothing.

  “I am sorry for what he did to you.” Mantis said. “You say you haven’t seen her among the dead? Or the boys?”

  “No.” She sighed and bent down to pick up a burned plank. “But I would check the debris, just in case. Some were charred to the bone, caught inside the house fires. Or pushed in.”

  “Thank you for your time,” Mantis gave her a nod and turned to go back to Leroh with the news.

  “Mantis,” a familiar voice spoke from her left. “I thought I heard you.”

  Yilenn stood at the door of one of the few remaining houses wrapped in what had to have been a curtain, her eyes big and woeful.

  ? Overpowers: Magical Girl Crossover [Grimlight Psychological/Genre based Power System] ?

  by Moawar

  He, Life, had a simple job.

  His responsibility as an Overpower was to make sure that fiction stories and the characters in them follow their dictated path. He always did his job well enough, not more or less than was needed.

  His latest assignment, however, would, in retrospect, prove to be his most challenging one of all.

  He would find himself in a unfamiliar world. There he'll have to quickly adapt to guide Nozomi.

  The strongest magical girl with the potential to accidentally destroy those she seeks to protect in her fight against evil.

  What to Expect:

  -If you like the psychological aspects of Madoka Magica and the mixing of different genres a crossover story brings then this story is for you