They almost made it to the Dean's office. Almost.

They had less than a hundred meters to go when Mortimer raised a hand in a halting gesture. By that time, Mary had managed to recover all the memories of all the reasons why full plate armour wasn't something people wore every day, especially in the middle of the desert.

“They're coming. That street,” he said, pointing at the opening of a twisty street, with buildings all resembling different blobs, formless masses without any edges or corners. They looked like sand blown by a gust of scorching wind then frozen in time by a bored supernatural being.

Mortimer and Paolo walked to the front while Mary took a step backwards and took Rose by her bare hand - the girl winced slightly at contact with the heated metal of Mary's armour but didn't pull away. It wasn't that hot... yet. Was Rose's other hand also heating up?

A party of four ten-year-olds in puppy-themed t-shirts walked from around a twist in the street. Mary recognized Roy, the boy with a nasty scar on his forehead from her selection day. So they did survive, at least for now. That... was a good thing, right? At the front stomped the smallest of the kids, a blond girl stomping her little shoes so hard that each step raised a cloud of sand to the air. Another girl looked almost normal, but her violently pink hair moved in the wrong direction with each gust of wind. There was also a boy who barely lifted his eyes from a device with one screen and a few controls, half of which were moving seemingly on their own.

“Remember,” Mortimer whispered to Mary without turning his head, “don't let go.”

“Creepy guy!” a girl leading the other party yelled. “What do you think you're doing?”

“Stella,” Mortimer said calmly. A few more of his white rifts opened in the air as he spoke. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“You know very well! You stole Rose!” They stopped at a thirty feet distance.

“I believe the word 'steal' implies some sort of illegality. I assure you that we hadn't forced the girl into anything.”

“Yeah?” Stella said. “Rose, you have five seconds to come here!”

“Rosy'll be in trouble, Rosy'll be in trouble,” the pink-haired girl intoned.

The hand Mary was holding shook. She looked at the girl by her side and saw the absolute terror in her watering eyes.

“I... I-I told you...,” the girl said but didn't attempt to rejoin her previous party. “And y-you promised she wouldn't know-”

“What is this nonsense? Get back here!” Stella yelled.

“It seems that she'd rather stay with us,” Paolo said. “I wonder why...”

“Rose! Get back here NOW!”

A spark danced in the air a couple of feet in front of Mortimer's face with a loud cracking sound. The charts engraved in the boy's iron ring flashed a fiery orange. He didn't flinch, so it was either still cool, or the boy had tremendous self-control skills. Probably both.

“Get ready,” Mortimer said without lifting his eyes from Stella. “Use the flask.”

What flask?

“GET THEM!” Stella yelled, and all heck broke slightly less tight.

A bubble of air before Mary's party started to shine under a local thunderstorm. No, wait, it wasn't a bubble - it was actually two, one around each of her friends, joined in the middle.

“Rose, catch!” Paolo said as he threw a flask with crimson liquid behind his back. How had he even got it? Yeah, that's not important for the moment. The other party wasn't standing still either - the boy with that strange device flipped a switch, and Rose cried right into Mary's ear. The glove-thingy she was wearing started shining from the inside, and whatever it was doing couldn't have been good. The young girl tried to yank her hand out of Mary's grip, so the older heroine caught her by the waist instead - as commanded, she wasn't going to let her go.

The vial broke still in the air and its crimson contents flew towards Rose, who was still trying to get her hand out of the device it was trapped in. It wasn't working. A trail of smoke started to rise up from the darned thing. What the freak was going on? The red liquid wrapped itself around the metal glove, pouring inside and tearing it apart.

Mary glanced up. Mortimer was summoning his eyes just in time to block shots from Roy's gun. Wait, why did Roy have a gun? He was still a child! And why didn't Mary have one? Heck, why did everyone use swords and stuff if guns were a thing?

Paolo was sending spike-shaped crimson lances at the enemy party, but they were somehow intercepted by the flashes of some pink force the exact shade of the other girl's hair. It was clear he couldn't fully focus, as he was still working on Rose's hand, who was now openly weeping.

Stella was starting to take deeper breaths, and the sparks stopped dancing on Mortimer and Paolo's shields. Mary's stomach twisted in anticipation - it wasn't going to be anything good, was it? The shadow inside her stirred, and the heroine felt the shadow behind her back lengthening and preparing itself. Should Mary be throwing live fireballs at the other party? But... they were still children!

Suddenly Stella thrust her hands to the sky and let out a long, piercing scream. The scream was rising in volume every few seconds, but soon was barely audible over a cacophony of distant... whimpers and barks?

Mary's head snapped upwards to see hundreds of puppies of all possible colours and races falling down at her party. A cold shudder ran down her body, and in a fraction of a second, her shadow jumped from the ground, grew fifty feet tall and twisted its arms into a steep but mostly safe slide that redirected the flow of pets to the ground. A second later, Mary fell to her knees as the effort almost knocked her unconscious. She could almost feel the dark veins pulsing below her skin, seeping shadow into her very life. She started coughing and stared in disbelief at small puffs of dark smoke leaving her mouth with each breath. It did not seem good.

Through some miracle, she was still holding on to Rose, who switched back to quiet sobbing as the last bit of her metal glove fell to the ground.

“You're worthless!” Stella yelled at her own party. “All of you! Worthless! Adam, gas! Aria, get them!”

Before Mary managed to fully process what was happening, the boy with tablet-thingy took out a grenade and tossed it at his own feet.

Time seemed to slow down as Paolo flung a whole wave of blood at the device, but another flash of pink deflected it like the rest. The grenade beeped thrice in quick succession, and a cloud of green gas exploded in all directions. Paolo and Mortimer bent in half and started coughing before the fumes forced themselves down Mary's lungs. She barely managed to notice that the other party was going down too before everything went dark.