Twisted Wonderland | Mickey's Print

25. The Snow Girl (II)

The girl could not stop panting. The pain in her shoulder was as persistent just as the fiery red light emanating from it.

Ortho wiped the sweat from her forehead with some toilet paper. He tried to remain calm, but deep down he was quite worried about the uncertainty of the situation. "Breathe," he urged to help her calm down. "Try to breathe through your nose. In, out. Mr. Lilia Vanrouge will come back with help, you will get well, and then meet your brother soon. You'll see!" 

She was scared, but still had hope that this nightmare would end soon. She looked away from the disgusting black ink she dumped into the sink and tried to say something, but she only managed to sneeze violently, creating a powerful trail of magical sparkles.

"Bless you." The android said before checking the gem in her magical pen. "Look, you're doing great! Your gem hasn't been stained any further. Keep it up!"

"Thank goodness..." She murmured before covering the light on her shoulder with her left hand in attempt to reduce the glow, but she quickly took it away as she felt some strong sensation of heat from it.

"You shouldn't touch it!" Ortho insisted. "We don't know what it is and could get worse. I know, let's search for some information. Maybe there's something that will help us until Mr. Lilia Vanrouge comes back."

He created several holographic screens in which a large amount of text appeared with images attached. Ortho looked at them in frustration. "Lights in the skin, burning clothes... This may take a while. Oh, you didn't get to tell me your brother's name! Maybe he was one of the students we ran into before, as you said."

The girl coughed a bit before telling him his name, which Ortho took with surprise.

"Do you know him?" She asked after noticing his reaction.

"Not personally, but I've heard of him. He had a bit of notoriety for being magic-less until he helped to solve an incident in Heartslabyul. But you were right, we had come across him before! I should have figured it was him, you two are very alike."

The girl's chest filled with hope, she was getting closer to finally being able to see him and solve the doubts that had plagued her since she had woken up. Talking about it seemed to help, as the pain in her shoulder eased to the point of being more tolerable.

"That could be it!" Ortho exclaimed when he saw the changes in her vitals and noticed she was panting less. "Come on, let's keek talking like this to distract you from the pain until the others come."

At that very moment the door opened, Ortho undid his screens and the girl hurriedly covered her face with her hood.

Meanwhile, Lilia questioned several nearby Heartslabyul students until one of them claimed seeing Riddle in the inner courtyard. He teleported there and ran to him as soon as he saw him. He was with more people, including Ramshackle's prefect and his friend, the little monster.

"Riddle, I finally found you!" He exclaimed with concern.

"Lilia Vanrouge," Riddle said upon seeing him. "Is something wrong? Just now we needed to talk to you about something related the Magical Shift tournament, haven't you found Cater along the way?"

"No, but there is no time for that. We have an emergency!" Lilia said with a serious look. "We may need your Unique Magic!"

Everybody turned their attention towards him.

"My Unique Magic?" Riddle repeated. "Why? Are there any students fighting?"

"Not at all, but right now a young girl is having trouble controlling her magic and she's creating blot as a result. I'm afraid she might fall into Overblot if we don't stop her!"