“Cat! Turn me into Healer! Cat!” Rose screamed desperately as one of the creature’s tentacles lifted her by one leg and positioned her above the human face it had just formed from among its protuberances. A huge mouth with rows of hundreds of teeth formed beneath the desperate redhead. “Cat!”
Cat, for her part, was on the ground, exhausted, with the lower half of her body trapped beneath an appendage that alternated between the shape of a human foot and an amorphous purple mass with each pulsation.
“I’m sorry... Rose,” Cat whispered, unable to even speak loudly. “All of this is my fault.”
In horror, Cat watched as the creature dropped Rose into its maw and swallowed her without even chewing. In the silence of the Dimension’s artificial night, she saw the shape of the girl’s body slowly move down the beast’s throat until it disappeared. A few seconds later, the girl’s lifeless face emerged in the area where the dozens of corpses of other students lay... including her friends.
Hugo, Jacob, Tomás... Mica.
All dead because of her. Because of her naivety in believing herself strong enough to carry out that mission. A mission that had seemed so simple...
The creature’s artificial face, its features constantly shifting, turned its attention toward her. Now it was her turn. At last, she would pay for...
“Cat!” shouted a familiar voice behind her. A voice she thought she would never hear again. A voice that made her heart race with hope.
Mica almost dropped Jacob when he saw the scene waiting for him on the rooftop.
Despite his companion's efforts to act as though nothing much had happened, his wounds were actually terrible. So terrible that, only twenty steps after reaching the third floor, he nearly passed out. Mica had to support him for the rest of the way to make sure they reached their destination together.
Now, Jacob was panting more than breathing. Mica doubted he was even conscious.
But that took a back seat. In front of him, Cat was being crushed by an enormous deformed monster.
With all the gentleness his anxiety allowed, he left Jacob beside the doorway and ran toward his friend.
Ignoring the monster, he approached her, shouting her name, but got no reaction until he positioned himself in front of her. Cat was alive, her face drenched in tears and several bruises scattered across her body, but alive.
“Mica... You're alive,” she whispered.
“Of course I am, Cat,” was all he could think to say, holding back his tears. “Don't worry, I'll get you out of here.”
“Hugo... Jacob... Tomás... Rose,” Cat murmured, directing her gaze toward the lower part of the monster's body, a mass clinging to the building's roof that revealed parts of unfamiliar bodies, including many of the heads of those faceless children he had encountered torn apart in the hallways.
“I don't know where they are, but I'll save them, Cat.”
“How? They're already dead… I'm sorry, Mica, I can't do anything. I can't turn you into Swordsman. I'm not like Sarah.”
“Don't worry. We don't need Sarah. I don't know how I'll do it, but...” He stood up and tried to lift the mass that had taken the shape of a foot and was covering Cat. “...BUT I WILL!” he shouted as he strained against it.
The foot didn't move, but the monster's head, with its semihuman face, did.
“I DON'T KNOW HOW I'LL DO IT, BUT I WILL!” Mica shouted again, trying once more. He couldn't lift it even an inch.
A huge hand with sharp fingers began to rise and move toward him. Slowly, certain that it would achieve its goal.
“I WILL! I PROMISE!”
Several more arms began forming behind the creature, rising against the absolute darkness that was the sky before turning toward Mica.
“I'LL SAVE THEM ALL!”
Accept who you are.
Mica suddenly recognized the voice he had been hearing. He knew what would happen if he accepted.
“Ah,” the voice said, now clear inside his mind. “You finally know who I am.”
The dozens of hands were almost upon him.
“You only have to accept who you are. Accept your destiny. Accept that you will destroy everything.”
Mica, without saying anything, tried once more to lift the foot, but once again failed. Behind him, the creature's face opened its tooth-filled jaws, strands of drool hanging here and there as it prepared to devour him.
“I understand,” the voice said. “Perhaps it is too soon, then. But it would be inconvenient for me if you died here. I'll make you a proposition. Say my name. Finish granting me existence. And I will save you.”
Mica tried to lift the foot again, ignoring the voice as best he could. Cat, for her part, screamed his name, pleading through her tears for him to escape.
The creature finally attacked, launching all its hands and teeth at him.
“TOLMOCH!” Mica shouted.
His body stopped being his own for barely half a second. But that was enough.
When he became aware of reality again, the monster lay before him, split in half horizontally by a blade that he held, as if he himself had carried out the attack.
The weapon's blade was so black that it seemed to swallow what little light there was around them, and at its tip, on the blunt side, the metal took the shape of a flame.
Little by little, the creature's upper half slid over the lower half, and when it fell to the ground, the sound it made blended with the deafening crash of shattering glass.
Mica, beneath the newly appeared moon, breathed the clean air of his reality for the first time in several hours. Around him, Cat and Rose lay on the ground. And Jacob, farther away, leaned unconscious against the wall beside the door. The black sword disappeared along with the Dimension.
“Cat!” Mica exclaimed, crouching down again to take his friend by the shoulders and support her against his arm after lifting her. “Are you okay?”
Cat nodded through her tears.
“I'm glad,” Mica said. “I'm glad we made it.”
“Rose...” she whispered.
Mica turned his attention to the redhead's body.
“Is she... Is she...?”
He gently lowered his friend to the ground once more and approached Rose.
“She’s okay. I think. At least she's breathing.”
Cat cried even harder upon hearing that, but this time it was from relief.
It was almost twenty minutes before Cat was able to stand. Mica used that time to give Jacob first aid as clumsily as possible, making use of the little knowledge he had once been taught at school. Rose had no visible injuries; she simply seemed to need to rest.
While he waited, Mica also approached the edge of the rooftop, curious about the flashing lights of a siren. When he realized they belonged to several police patrol cars, his nerves returned.
On top of that, they knew nothing about Hugo or Tomás. But Mica convinced Cat that, if he had broken the bond, they must surely be outside the Dimension. Cat doubted it, since Jacob had been trapped that way the last time.
“Either way, Cat, I think we'll have to use the Dimension again to get out of here. If the police catch us escaping the school at night...”
“I don't want to go back to that terrible place,” she told him, very seriously.
“Forget the nightmare. Focus on how you handled things before, when we started the infiltration.”
“Mica, we all almost died in there because of me. Don't ask me to put them at risk like that again. I'm useless. There's no way I can...”
Mica took his friend's hands and, with all the sincerity in his heart, spoke while looking her in the eyes.
“Cat. This wasn't your fault. I trust you. You can do it.”
Cat stared at him for several long seconds, until her eyes welled up again, and Mica looked away when they both blushed.
“Okay,” she said, without adding anything else.
But nothing happened.
“Are you going to...?” Mica began to ask.
“Shut up, I'm trying.”
Nothing.
“Rini? Why aren't you answering me?” Cat asked aloud.
Absolute silence.
“Mica, something's wrong... Rini... Rini isn't here.”
“Stop depending on others,” Tolmoch's somber voice said inside him.
Mica jolted and nearly fell backward from the shock.
“What’s happening?” his friend asked.
“It's... It's... I can hear it... The same voice that spoke to me before I could defeat the creature.”
“An Angelino?”
“A what?”
“An Angelino,” Tolmoch replied, noticeably bitter. “That's what I've been reduced to. The Angelino of a useless brat.”
“But... But you're a product of my imagination.”
“If only that were the case, you'd be dead right now. Devoured by a weak, formless creature.”
“You have an Angelino, Mica,” Cat said almost at the same time Tolmoch spoke, indicating that she couldn't hear him. She looked both excited and sad.
“But I...”
“Stop babbling and do what you have to do,” Tolmoch reprimanded him.
When Mica and Cat emerged from the Dimension carrying Jacob and Rose, who were now conscious, they did so in one of the alleys between two residential buildings across from the school. By chance, Hugo and Tomás were there, keeping watch, waiting they came out of the school. Although Mica actually felt that it wasn't a coincidence. Somehow, Tolmoch had guided him directly there.
“We did it!” Hugo shouted, forgetting the caution that had led them to hide there, out of the police's sight.
Without a second thought, he ran toward them and hugged Mica and Cat, including Jacob because of the position he was in.
“If someone had told me this was what I'd be dealing with when I got out, I'd have preferred you let me die up there,” Jacob said when the hug lasted more than five seconds.
“Mica, the police...” Hugo began.
“I can imagine,” his friend interrupted him. “But let's talk on the way. The last thing we need is for them to find us near the school. Besides, Jacob and Rose need to go to the hospital.”