The Princess and the Prince

Megara just rolled her eyes again, "All I'm hearing is you take issue with my methods, and you've got a self-loathing problem. So long as you stop getting all philosophical with me, we'll be good, yeah? Because you are aware that my problems can be solved just as easily through less extravagant means," she said, her head tilting toward where her knife was stowed by her side.

She couldn't kill them now, she knew that. She may not even be able to take them all at once, even if it was practical to kill three people without her father's knowledge or permission.

She was dead either way, they didn't have to be.

That line of thinking is why Briar's the favorite, she thought somewhat bitterly.

Nathaniel just nodded.

Asmira and I made awkward eye contact - usually it was the two of them sharing looks about me, but it looked like the tables had flipped. Nathaniel, after all, was acting especially moody, and we were definitely going to chat about that when we got back to our world.

"Glad you see it my way," she said, flashing a false-grin, "I wasn't especially keen on making this whole situation messier than it is." She clapped her hands together suddenly and leaned forward, a result of the sudden jolt of pain that shot up her leg disguised as her usual dramatics.

"Now," she said with the kind of finality in the voice of a showman as he announces the main event after the prattling at the beginning, With no further ado..., "The spell is a rather difficult one, usually used on major non-violent criminals. A kind of extreme exile. You have to focus on where you're going as hard as you can, and the place has to exist. Otherwise, the whole thing shuffles and you end up somewhere random. All the difficult stuff will be handled by the mages, though, so you don't have to deal with anything more difficult than thinking really hard about wherever it is you want to go. Any questions?"

None of us had any.

Part of me - for the briefest of moments - wondered if I could use the spell to get back to my original world. The one that still had Lucy on it, and the one that would always be my home. But then I realized that I couldn't let myself leave the other two like this. Natty boy had some serious issues we needed to talk about, Asmira probably had her fair share, and we still didn't know how we had even gotten to our second world in the first place.

I would go back with them.

"Wonderful." As she said it, Finn returned.

"The students are on their way," they said miserably, "Is there anything else you need m-"

"No, Finn," Megara cut them off with her previous cheery tone, "not right now."

They dipped their head and acknowledgment and glanced at their desk, as though about to wait for their students there, then turned and swam to the other end of the classroom. They dug around in a cupboard, picking out supplies for the spell as though that were the entire reason they were as far as possible from Megara.

She smirked, rolled her eyes, and didn't comment.

We patiently waited for Finn and their students to get ready, my gaze occasionally traveling to Megara when I got bored of watching Finn. I wasn't really sure how this was going to work, but at this point I didn't really care - I just wanted to get back to our world.

A minute later, the room flooded with nervous-looking students. A few of them glanced curiously at the group, but none approached them. Many of them swam over to help Finn collect supplies while the rest set their books and scrolls aside and got into a circle.

Soon enough, a collection of strange objects and sigils had been arranged on the floor in the center of a large circle of twenty-two students, all arranged with their tails occasionally flicking beneath them, causing them to bob up and down. Most of them kept their eyes closed and relaxed their postures, the rest peeked out from beneath their lids to peek at the strangers.

Finn came up to them, speaking to Asmira first, "Do you have your destination in mind?" he asked.

The students who had been peeking before had stopped and were now relaxed and focusing with the others. A shimmering wall, all fogged up like glass in steam, appeared around the students' circle. What little sound they had been making abruptly stopped. They didn't change visually, it was just as though the barrier ceased the sound from reaching beyond it.

Asmira nodded.

"I do," she said. She could visualize where they had been last perfectly - everything down to the most minute detail was perfectly envisioned in her mind. When they cast the spell, there was no doubt that she would be returned to where she was before.

Finn offered a hand, "Come this way."

Megara shook her head, "When did you become polite, Finn?" she said with some humor.

He was rather content to pretend she wasn't there.

Casting a glance back in the direction of Nathaniel and Skull - the former standing incredibly stiff, and the latter picking his nose in an attempt to get a reaction out of Nathaniel - Asmira grabbed onto the extended hand and followed.

They led her past the barrier and wordlessly directed her to stand in the middle of the circle, right in the center of the largest sigil.

They then raised a hand and the students began a chant in a strange language.

"Focus," Finn whispered to Asmira before swimming up and out of the circle.

They joined the group by the desk, lingering as far from Megara as they could with their eyes flitting over their students, watching various aspects of the spell.

Asmira closed her eyes and did exactly as requested.

Or, at least, I assumed she did. It was hard to tell from where I was standing, but I trusted her with that. Now all I could do was wait for my turn.

The runes below her gradually began to glow, faintly at first, but soon they got brighter and brighter until they were blinding. The room was so filled with blue light it was impossible to see anything else.

A beat.

Two.

With a final flash, the light subsided.

Asmira was gone.

Nathaniel and I looked at each other.

I didn't even give him a chance to volunteer or suggest that I go first - I stepped up and pushed him in the direction of the runes, and he surprisingly didn't protest.

Fenn led Nathanial to the center of the runes next, his students momentarily breaking their circle to let him in after a brief pause where they apparently forgot that he was bound to the ground.

The process repeated and Nathanial was soon gone as well.

Megara grabbed Skull before he could even think to step into the circle.

"If you ever show up in my life again, I'll kill you," she said, dead serious.