51: Mission Objectives
Ceres’s eyes narrowed and she hummed loudly, clearly suspicious of Phantasia’s revelation, but Korrigan’s face brightened with a look of childish glee.
“That’s awesome!” said the hyperactive blonde; “I totally knew they had it in them! Didn’t I say they had it in them, Ceres?”
“Yeah, ya did…” she sighed, shaking her head in bewilderment. Maybe this would teach them not to underestimate their fellow students. As Phantasia was basking in her moral victory, a cloaked Ms Chiltern entered the chamber, also walking the fringe plane.
“I followed the commotion,” she said, “It’s—“ She noticed Phantasia and frowned, “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. We’re running a delicate operation here, you know? Getting those kids involved might just jeopardise everything. Lives are at stake! If Princess Titania finds out—“
“Aw, Princess Titania won’t mind,” interrupted Korrigan, “She’ll be super happy to find out they got this far!”
“Yeah,” said Ceres, “We oughta probably give ‘em a little credit, even if they just end up a diversion. Might help us either way.”
Ms Chiltern shook her head, walked over to Ms Anderson, and began speaking to her fellow teacher as if she were on their plane. Ceres took the opportunity to explain their mission.
“It were all Ms Anderson’s idea. She’d worked out this higher plane business from that book ya gave her an’ figured we could use it to our advantage. We getta sneak around here and no one sees us, an’ Ms Chiltern can use her astral projecting to communicate between us ‘n Ms Anderson on the normal level. Not sure I understand it all meself, but it works! Kind freaky, though,” she added with darting eyes.
“It really is!” continued Korrigan, slender arms slipping out from beneath her cloak to accentuate her speech with flailing gestures, “We could totally get trapped on this higher level thing and it’ll drain us of all our energy and then we’ll turn into these zombie-like wraith things that lurk around and attack people. And we gotta make sure we don’t end up on an even higher plane cause that’ll drain us even faster and we might also get lost because these planes are like a scary maze and they’re not all connected and you can get trapped between them and—”
“And it’s dangerous stuff,” said Ceres, halting her companion’s breathless enthusiasm, “But we gotta do something. If we don’t disrupt their magic they’ll sacrifice a dozen victims to make this demon master of theirs appear in our world,”
Ms Chiltern returned from her conversation, the coils of her serpentine aura twitching with anxiety. “The thing is we don’t have the resources to deal with this right now,” she explained with a sigh, “Our instructions are to save the sacrifices, but only once the ritual can’t be stopped. In the meantime we’re to disrupt the main circle as much as possible – it’ll do the demon and its followers more harm than good if the manifestation fails than if it’s simply averted. Plus we’ve been asked to…investigate the forces behind this…” She looked away, her voice trailing off and her anxiety deepening. This was the first time Phantasia had seen the self-assured Ms Chiltern look so uneasy. “I’m – we’re – the best candidates for the job. Plus the Chief was certain you and Faye Delphinus would be involved…”
“Look’s like we’ve gotta work together,” said Ceres. Korrigan squealed her excitement.
