Magical Girl Syn
Chapter Twenty-Three
by Jennifer Kohl
Syn gazed at her Master in adoration. She knew that Morgan and Lawrence wouldn’t approve of her newfound devotion, that until moments prior they had been her friends and Master her enemy, but now she understood. Obeying Master was everything, all that mattered, her highest duty and greatest joy, and mere friendship paled by comparison. If they could be made to understand as she did, then she would welcome friendship with them; but until then, they were Master’s enemies and therefore hers.
So when Morgan snatched a gun out of the backpack Lawrence was carrying and opened fire on Master, Syn barely needed to think before first snatching the bullets out of the air, then snatching the gun from Morgan, nearly breaking her fingers in the process.
“Sorry,” Syn said. “You’d understand if you were Master’s.” Light flared in her hand, and then she dropped the twisted lump of metal that had been the gun.
“Let her go, you bastard!” Morgan shouted at Master.
“No,” he replied. He waved a hand and Morgan and Lawrence flew across the room, smacking into the wall behind the desk. At the same time, the doors slammed shut and locked. He smirked, though it seemed a bit strained. “The final Beast is coming. Syn, you will slay it, but you are forbidden to protect anyone from it but me.”
Syn nodded. “Yes, Master,” she said dutifully. Deep down, she felt a twinge of regret that her friends would die, but it was buried under the tsunami of pleasure that was obedience.
“Why?” asked Lawrence, picking himself painfully up off the ground. “Why do all this?”
Feiticeiro laughed. “A tiny mind, a tiny life like yours could never understand. I made the Pact with the powers of the Void to live forever, at the price of serving as their bridge into this world. But who wants to live forever in a world overrun by chaos?” He waved a hand at Syn. “I created the first—magical girl, I suppose you’d call it?—and made her irresistible to the Beasts, strong enough to fight them, and obedient enough to serve me against them. Now, at long last, it’s nearly complete. Syn has surpassed any expectations I had of her power, and it belongs to me. She will destroy the Beast, and I will be free, immortal without any further price to pay—and her great power will be mine to command. I will be the most powerful being left in this world!”
“You’re crazy,” said Morgan, now standing as well.
“And you’re cliche,” Feiticeiro replied. He grimaced, and an eerie blue glow began to shine from his back.
“Dude, she’s not the one monologuing,” Lawrence countered.
Feiticeiro was breathing heavily through his nose. “It doesn’t matter. Your time... is up.” The lights flickered and went out; other than the blue-purple glow from his back, they were in total darkness. Thunder rolled.
Instinctively, Morgan glanced out the window that occupied the entire back wall of the office. The city lay in shadow. Clouds, thick and dark, flickering with lightning, rotated slowly, the center of their spiral directly above city hall. The ground shook, and she stumbled as the skyscraper swayed.
“Syn!” Lawrence shouted. “Help us! If you don’t stop this, we’ll all be killed! Me, Morgan, Ruthie!”
Ruthie... Syn’s expression flickered, and Morgan’s heart surged with hope. “That’s right! Your best friend, your whole life! She’s going to die!“
“Master..?” Ruthie asked hesitantly.
“Silence!” Feiticeiro snapped, and her mouth closed as she cowered against the wall.
“Look at her!” Morgan shouted over the rising noise of wind and thunder. “She’s terrified!”
Slowly, fighting herself at every motion, Syn turned to look. “Ruthie...” she started.
Feiticeiro grasped at the amulet hung around his neck. “You have your orders, slave! Obey!”
Syn shuddered in pleasure. “Yes, Master,” she whispered.
Feiticeiro groaned. His knees and back bent as if under great weight—or great pain—and he let go of the amulet to lean his hands on his thighs. Electric sparks arced from his back, crackling across floor, ceiling, the wall behind him.
Please work please work please work... Morgan vaulted over the desk, grabbed the amulet, and yanked, hard. The silver chain it hung on snapped. She had just a moment to register exactly what it was—a pair of wings, one white and one black, curled around each other in a shape similar to a yin-yang—before she through it as hard as she could at the ground.
“No!” Feiticeiro screamed. And then something exploded from his back, and something else exploded from the shattered remains of the amulet.
Cynthia drifted in darkness. “What happened?” she asked. “How am I... am I me again? Where am I?”
“Hush, child,” said a familiar voice. And then someone stood in front of her, someone Cynthia almost recognized, a girl about her own age, skinny and small, with a mop of bright red, curly hair, pale skin and freckles. Then Cynthia saw her eyes, sparkling and green and ancient, and knew exactly who she was.
“Grankitty!” she cried out in delight. “I thought—I thought you were...”
“Of course I am,” Grankitty replied, and her gentle smile was the same as Cynthia remembered, the warm, slightly sad smile of the woman who ran her favorite toy store.
“I’m so sorry,” said Cynthia.
“Don’t be. I’m free now. You’ve grown so much, Cynthia, gotten so much stronger than I ever was. You don’t need me anymore, and I can move on.”
Cynthia felt her eyes filling with tears. “That’s not true. I do need you!”
“Not really. But don’t fret, child. Just because I’m free doesn’t mean I’m not still with you. We always will be.”
“We?” Cynthia asked, but she could see them standing behind Grankitty. Girls, all her age, faint, faded, but still present.
“You won’t see me for a while,” said Grankitty. “But I’m here with you. And we will meet again.”
“Grankitty—!”
But she was already gone. And behind her, two familiar women stood, still bleeding gold and black from wounded shoulder blades, both bound tightly in thorny cords.
But before Cynthia could say or do anything, a third figure appeared between her and them, one she had never actually seen but recognized nonetheless: tall, blonde, perfectly curved, it could be no one but Syn. She reached out for Cynthia—and then dissolved into a familiar swirl of brilliant white light and pitch-black darkness. As she watched in awed, confused silence, the light and darkness separated into shimmering curtains, each of which flowed into one of the two bound women.
One of the women smiled, and Cynthia’s heart bounded with love; the other smirked, and Cynthia drowned in lust. Wings, magnificent and huge, burst from the women’s backs, one black and the other white, shredding the ropes that bound them. They stood in front of her, hand in hand.
“Are you saying goodbye too?” Cynthia asked.
“We must,” the women—the angel and the demon—said. “We are finally free, after so long...”
“He bound us to a human soul,” said the angel.
“And we have passed from soul to soul,” said the demon. “Together.”
Their grips on each other’s hands tightened. “So long with only each other for company,” the angel said. “But I must go home.”
“And so must I,” continued to demons. “She and I will be enemies again. But we thank you for the home you gave us, you and all your predecessors.”
“You don’t want to, do you?” asked Cynthia. “You want to stay together.”
“We have no choice,” answered the angel.
“But didn’t you say you were free? If that doesn’t include being free to stay, are you really free?”
The demon grinned savagely. “She makes a point.”
“There are rules,” said the angel.
“Yes. Aren’t you sick of following them?” the demon countered.
“Please,” said Cynthia. “I need your help. My friends are in danger. Stay with me, help me save them!”
“It’s for good cause...” the angel admitted. Her hand once again tightened on the demon’s. “Very well, Cynthia. If you are willing to continue providing us a home in your soul...”
“...then we will remain,” finished the demon. “Free to stay together.”
They reached out their free hands to Cynthia, and she took them, the angel’s with her left and the demon’s with her right. The circle closed. Feathers and fire swirled around them, light and dark, high and low, angelic and demonic, and so very, very human.
And then they were one.
The top floors of City Hall exploded outwards, chunks of masonry and steel spiraling upwards into the swirling clouds. Something dark and terrible rose against the sky, lightning-illuminated. It looked like a black preying mantis, so black that even against the stormclouds it looked like a hole in the sky. A tail like a scorpion’s curled upward behind that long, insectile, the torso rising up from it like a twisted insect centaur. Two arms, bladed like scythes, glistened sickeningly at its shoulders, and a huge pair of leathery wings like a bat’s stretched out from its back, each longer than it was tall. The huge round eyes in its triangular head glistened with malice, and its mandibles were surrounded by writhing tentacles.
It screamed, and every window, glass, and screen in the city shattered in the echoing un-noise. A torrent of crackling darkness erupted from its mandibles and smashed into the building across the street. It cracked and crumbled, steel beams rusting and masonry decaying, a century of entropy in a few seconds as it caved in on itself in ruin.
Morgan stood below in the ruins of the Mayor’s office. Ruthie knelt next to her, clinging to her legs, her face buried in Morgan’s side. Morgan laid a comforting hand on her head. The other held Lawrence’s; he was standing, but drawn up against her, so close she could feel his trembling. She knew she was, too, and willed herself to stop, glaring defiantly up at the monster towering over her.
“I’m sorry!” Lawrence shouted over the howling wind. “We should never have come here!”
“No,” said Morgan. “It was the right thing to do.” She paused. “I’m sorry I accused you of sleeping with Syn. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
“You were right not to,” Lawrence admitted. “Five minutes after you left...”
Morgan sighed. “Well, it doesn’t matter now.” The Beast stared straight down at them, and widened its mandibles. “Goodbye.”
Another bolt of darkness stabbed out, headed straight for them. And then—it splashed against light. Morgan looked around in confusion; a dome of white feathers surrounded her and the others. It held for a moment, and then unfolded into vast, shining wings.
Morgan turned and stared in awe. Syn stood there, smiling, her wings—wings so radiant, so shining, they almost distracted from Syn’s own magnificent beauty—outspread. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Morgan, Lawrence, Ruthie... I’ve got this.” She sprang upward, soaring into the air. “I’ll protect everyone!”
White flame erupted in her hands and formed itself into a bow. The sound it made when she fired echoed like thunder, and it exploded against the Beast, washed over it—and harmed it not at all. It seemed to hurt it, though, or perhaps simply anger it; either way, it screamed again, and then fired a blast of darkness at Syn. She curved one wing inward and blocked the darkness with it, then flicked it back out dismissively.
Syn could feel them inside her, all three balanced, equal, together. Cynthia, the cupid, and the succubus, their power, their will, all united. Together, in this moment, riding high on new freedom and new unity, they could do anything.
She stretched out her hand. Words flowed from her heart and out her mouth, her voice clear and strong, even in the vortex of noise that was the storm.
The fire in her hand formed into a shining sword of flame, hundreds of feet long and yet sized perfectly for her. She raised the sword. The Beast screamed. And then she brought it down, in a single stroke, and the Beast’s scream continued, rising higher and louder, a bellow of rage and pain and frustration.
And then it was gone.
Syn settled slowly to the ground in front of her friends, folding her wings against her back.
“Cynthia!” cried Ruthie, and fell into her friend’s arms.
“...it is you, isn’t it?” asked Morgan. “Not Syn.”
Syn shrugged. “I’m Cynthia, and more than Cynthia. Soon I’ll be just Cynthia, but she can be more whenever she pleases. We’re free now.”
“Wow,” said Lawrence. “So... that’s it? We’re done? We... actually won?”
Syn grinned. “Don’t sound so surprised.” She looked down at Ruthie, and her appearance sobered. “And no. Not quite. There’s still one more thing to do.” She patted Ruthie’s head gently. “Let go now, I need room to do this.”
“Now?” asked Morgan. “I have so many questions—”
“It must be now,” said Syn. “Now, while I am at the peak of new power. I won’t be strong enough for long.” She detached herself from Ruthie, and then leaped into the air again. This would take almost everything she had, more even than calling forth the sword—but it had to be done. She stretched out hands and wings as far as they could go, and let the light flood outward from them, a healing wave that quieted the storm, soothed minds—and broke Feiticeiro’s spells.
Epilogue
A few weeks later...
“Is that the last of it?” Lawrence asked.
“I think so,” Cynthia answered. “Ruthie?”
Ruthie grinned. “That’s it!”
Cynthia gave Lawrence a hug. “Thank you.”
He tousled her hair affectionately. “No problem. Remember, if either of you need anything, Morgan and I are still a phone call away?”
“How are you two, anyway?” asked Ruthie.
“Taking it slow,” Lawrence answered. “There’s a lot to work through, and it’ll take time, but hopefully... well, anyway, she’s sorry she couldn’t be here today, but that meeting was kind of important.”
“I understand,” said Cynthia. “Say hi to her, okay?”
“Sure.”
When Lawrence was gone, the two girls looked around their new dorm room. “College,” said Cynthia. “Us! Can you believe it?”
“With everything that’s happened,” Ruthie said quietly, “I’m not sure what I believe.”
“What’s that?” asked Cynthia.
“Nothing!” Ruthie said. “Let’s unpack.” To Cynthia’s frown, she continued, “No, really, don’t worry about it. Let’s just get the room set up, okay?”
“Okay,” said Cynthia, dubiously. Maybe Lawrence and Morgan aren’t the only ones with things to work through. I guess... take it slow, like he said.
“...as the reports said,” Janelle said testily. “City Hall was evacuated prior to the blast, but we had no way of knowing it wasn’t the primary target! Fortunately the terrorist responsible was killed in the blast, and there will be no further explosions of this kind. Now if you’ll all excuse me, I have work to attend to.”
She strode out of the press room and into a conference room. Morgan, Morgan’s lawyers, and the city lawyer were already there. “So, you agree to the terms?” she asked without preamble as she sat.
“Twenty thousand dollars,” Morgan said. “In exchange, I don’t see the police department for harassment or taking out a warrant on false pretenses.”
“And you don’t disclose the details of those events, or publicly question the official reports on certain other recent incidents,” Janelle insisted.
“Right, right,” said Morgan. “The gas explosions were actually terrorist attacks, and the City Hall attack was the last one. It caused atmospheric disturbances and a smoke plume that from some angle looked a little insect-y, and toxic fumes caused some people to hallucinate some very strange events. Nothing about magic, or mind control, or a certain contractor. Speaking of, you found his body yet?”
“You know I can’t tell you about an ongoing police matter,” said Janelle sharply.
“So no, then. Great, whatever, gimme the thing.” She pulled the settlement and nondisclosure agreement to herself and signed it.
Janelle slipped out while the lawyers told Morgan how and when she’d be paid. She didn’t like that they hadn’t found Feiticeiro, but he had to be dead. He had to be—why else was she free now? Her and all his other victims. She’d quietly arranged to have counseling made available to all of them, or at least all the ones she knew about, but oddly, no one had needed it. Herself included—she could remember every horrible thing he’d made her do, knew that he’d violated her, forced her to enjoy it, but those were just things that happened. She felt no shame or guilt over things she’d had no control over, and no fear or pain over having been helpless to stop. Like some gentle hand had just swept over her mind, some cleansing light flowed through it, and wiped away all the trauma without changing anything else.
It was a miracle, Janelle had to admit—and on that count, she was correct. As she looked out the window, the members of a certain sorority, sans one, were arguing about how to raise funds to rebuild their house. Halfway across the country, Jessica was moving into the dorm room for her final year of college. Elsewhere in that same city, two young women found they didn’t really need couples counseling any longer. Syn’s healing magic had done its work, a wave of psychic healing that freed the souls and healed the psyches of all of Feiticeiro’s victims.
Carice laid down the final rune. Then she consulted the book in her hand, confirming it was correct. “That’s it then,” she said, “straightening up.” She looked around what had been Feiticeiro’s sanctum, and was now her own.
Meghan smiled. “Yours, Mistress. As am I.”
Carice pulled the brunette close and kissed her, hard. “The spells on our minds were broken,” she said. “I’m grateful with your help here, but you don’t have to be mine anymore.”
“I know,” said Meghan. “But... I want to be.”
Carice grinned and raised her hands to Meghan’s temples. “You sure?”
“Absolutely,” Meghan replied without hesitation.
Carice closed her eyes and began to wrap her power around Meghan’s mind.
Somewhere that was definitely not a boardroom, though it partook somewhat of that essence, were several entities that definitely were not people, though they partook somewhat of that essence. Not being people, they neither had, nor needed, a leader. Nor did they need to speak. Nonetheless, the one who wasn’t their leader didn’t say, “Report.“
And another didn’t reply, “The Sword has been used. By a human.“
“Have you contacted the Garden?” the not-leader didn’t ask. “The guard—”
“Still has theirs. The Fruit of Life is safe.”
“Michael,” the leader didn’t say. “You have yours?”
“Of course.”
“So,” the not-leader unmused. “It is the third one. The last and lost. An agent must be sent at once. But a minor one—if the Other Side has not detected this, they must not be alerted. Besides, a minor agent is plenty—sword or not, it’s just a human.”
Somewhere else that was also definitely not a boardroom, another ungroup of not-people listened as their not-leader didn’t issue the exact same dis-order.
Charlene smiled at her customer and bent low, showing off her cleavage as she collected his plate. He was a bit on the short side, but seemed nice enough; plus, judging by his clothes, he seemed a lot wealthier than the kinds of people who normally stopped at a roadside diner in a nowhere town. Charlene wasn’t above a little flirting to get an extra tip—she couldn’t be, not if she wanted to ever get out of this podunk.
But before she could even bring the check, the customer stood and started to walk out.
“Hey!” she shouted, and chased after him. But when she got outside, he wasn’t running; he just stood there, waiting for her.
“You forgot to pay,” she said diplomatically.
“No, I didn’t forget,” he answered. “But that’s not why you came out here, is it?”
Charlene was suddenly acutely aware of just how attractive he was, and just how long it had been since she’d last had any fun. “...it doesn’t have to be,” she told him with a sly smile.
“Good girl.” He took her by the hand and led her into the alleyway. That wasn’t exactly her notion of the ideal spot, but the longer she spent with him, the easier it became to just go along with anything he wanted.
And the hornier she got. If doing it here meant doing it now, she was all for it.
Seemed he was too. He pulled the skirt of her cheesy diner waitress outfit up, her panties down, and then her back was to the wall and he was entering her and it felt amazing.
She clung to him desperately as he fucked her, her breath coming out in sharp little pants of pleasure. She opened her eyes and gazed into his own, dark orbs like windows into the void. She felt like she was falling into them, and hoped she could fall forever.
Enraptured by his eyes and lost in pleasure as she was, she didn’t even notice when the tentacles erupted from his back.