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     Hi!

      

     Welcome to Magical Girl Rending Nightmare! I hope you’ll enjoy this story!

     Now, before you move on, you should know that Rending Nightmare is a continuation of another story. It’s the second book in my Magical Girl series, following Magical Girl Crystal Genocide.

     You should be able to read this one all on its own! But if you want to read Magical Girl Crystal Genocide, you can do so until the 14th of February on Royal Road! Afterwards, the story will be available on my patreon, and on Amazon!

     MGCG Royal Road Link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/62977/magical-girl-crystal-genocideMCGC Amazon Link: https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0CR8GCS58?maas=&ref=

      

     Thank you very much for giving my story a chance! I hope you enjoy it!

      Prologue Crystal had slept in better places than a ruined, rusty trailer with a tree growing out of it, but this wasn't all that bad. Sure, it smelled a bit mouldy, but she doubted that she'd catch something, and with a few crystal walls around to keep the wind out and Rending Nightmare being so close to watch over her, she felt pretty safe.So she slept, hugging herself close for warmth, until she felt Alice sitting down next to her. The older girl let Crystal use her lap as a pillow and played with her hair, and soon Crystal was plunging into pleasant, indistinct dreams.She was woken up by a shake to her shoulders. "Crystal, wake up," Rending said.She blinked a few times. The light streaming in through the holes in the trailer roof was a deep, dark blue. It was still deep into the night, then, and while Crystal felt somewhat revitalised from her nap... well, she could use a few more hours. "What's wrong?" Crystal asked."I'm feeling something approaching, and quickly," Rending said. She shifted her hips, and Crystal got the message and pushed herself up onto her feet, then stifled a yawn. Now that she was listening, she could hear something too, a distant thrum that was growing louder.Alice brushed down her pants, then jumped out of the trailer and came to stand near the road. Crystal followed her, one hand rising to summon a fist-sized ruby that glowed with an inner light, casting a red glare across the abandoned trailer park they found themselves in.It was just as dilapidated as it had been when they arrived. A couple dozen homes, clearly long abandoned, with nature reclaiming much of it. Trees were growing out of the sides of some, and weeds had overtaken gravel driveways and clung to the wrecks of old cars.Crystal wasn't great at figuring out dates and such, not at a glance, but something about the decor and the cars and the antenna sticking out of an old boxy TV suggested that this place was very... 1970s, maybe.Actually, if the technology here was from the 70s, then the place had probably been abandoned in the 80s. She doubted the average trailer park was on the cutting edge when it came to... stuff."There," Alice said with a gesture to one side. The direction the thrumming was coming from.Crystal squinted that way, but she couldn't see much, just darkness unreached by her gem light and clouds in the distance. Clouds which were roiling and moving. Clouds which seemed almost as if they were alive, stretching from one end of the horizon to the other and approaching fast.The wind started to pick up around them. Stray leaves scattered across the ground, and Crystal noted that her next exhale came with a plume of vapour even as the wind caressing her turned cold.Dust started to be blasted off the ground, and Crystal found herself squinting as the wind continued to grow stronger. Soon the howl was competing with the rustle of a million leaves as every tree started to sway and twist. Some of the trailers clunked as tin walls buckled against the wind, and the big antenna towers with parabolas started to vibrate violently.Alice gestured, and a wall of shadows rose up ahead of them, sharply angled and solid enough to cut through the wind. "Strange," she said just loud enough that Crystal heard."What do you think it is? A hurricane?""No, it's magical," Alice said. "I can feel something... I don't know what, though."Then the first of the clouds reached them. Long tendrils of fog, thin enough to see through, but still able to obscure and hide and obfuscate. They shot past, and where they passed, Crystal noticed trees twisting bizarrely.One of those tendrils slid past, touching the side of one of the trailers as it went. It was just for a moment, but Crystal saw a window... repair itself in reverse, pieces of glass rising off the ground and slipping into place until a window was restored and paint was freshened up."Oh boy," Crystal said.Alice stomped a foot down and a pillar of darkness rose ahead of them, then it swirled around, creating a cocoon. And almost as soon as it was up, the fog was eating at it, sending the moving darkness backwards through time."Time crystal, now!" Alice snapped.Crystal jumped to it. It had been some time since she'd worked with Alice, but that tone was all too familiar. She clasped her hands together, closed her eyes, and focused. There were just two of them, so she didn't need anything too big. Still, this was a trick that she wasn't as well practised with as maybe she should have been.This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.Beads of sweat were clinging to her forehead as she focused. She could hear the crack and tinkle of crystalline shards popping into existence and growing all around her. A barrier, time itself, crystallised into something solid and immutable.The sound rose and rose until, finally, the last piece slotted into place with a bell-like chime that was loud despite the incredible roar of wind blasting past them.The moment it was done, Crystal felt her ears pop. They were cocooned away from the rising pressure of the storm. She made sure that the crystal was well anchored into the ground, and protecting them from below, then she opened her eyes.There wasn't much to see past the clear walls all around them, just buffeting black-grey tendrils. Flashes of a deep blue arced through it all, like lightning contained within a storm cloud, but they did little to illuminate what was happening."What is this?" Crystal asked."I don't know," Alice said. "It looks like something Meagan might have done, but this is wilder, less controlled."Crystal nodded. It kind of made sense that they'd run into Fractured Time's magic here. It fit her theories about... well, everything.When Crystal had awakened on the last world she was on, she discovered that the world's magic was eerily similar to Rending Nightmare's, to Alice's. Now they'd followed a thread to another world, and discovering that the magic here was like another magical girl's just seemed like a logical leap to make.Was Meagan, Magical Girl Fractured Time, locked in a cocoon on this world somewhere? Her magic feeding the entire world's own and twisting it into something new? She wasn't sure.The storm started to abate after a couple of minutes. The flashes were still coming regularly, but they were no longer above them, and instead the majority came from behind.Crystal followed the storm's passing, craning her neck up to catch glimpses of stars through the fading storm front. "Pretty," she said."And terrifying," Alice said. "What would a normal person do against that?""Well, mostly die, I imagine," Crystal said. "Maybe that's why there's no one around?""No, that can't be right. A storm that strong, if it was a regular occurrence, would have flattened all of those trailers a long time ago," Alice said."Ah, I guess that makes sense," Crystal said. She smiled at Alice, who had always been so much better than her at making that kind of deduction.The clouds continued to fade away, and soon all that was left was a lingering fog, but even that was rapidly dissipating."I think it's safe now," Alice said as the fog receded. She was clearly able to push it around with her open magic, so Crystal shut her eyes and worked on cracking the crystalline egg she'd created. She had a hard time unsummoning her gems, but breaking a door-sized hole in them was easy as pie. Just in case, she made the opening on the down-wind side. Maybe if therewasanother storm like that, someone could use it for shelter?"Huh," Alice said. "It's... newer."Crystal blinked, then raised her light up above her head to better illuminate the trailer park. Alice was right. The trailers looked a lot fresher. Not nice, by any means. They were still rusty, poorly-maintained, and not exactly pretty to look at, but the paint had been freshened up, the young trees and big bushes were gone. Some of the cars looked like they'd been repaired to... perhaps not new, but something close. Windows were fixed, doors were back on their hinges, and one trailer that had had a big branch going through it was completely repaired.The branch in question was back on the tree hanging above it, and Crystal had the impression that it was only a matter of time before it crashed down again."So... time-reversing super storm?" Crystal asked."Seems like it," Alice said. "Never seen anything quite like it.""It's weird, yeah," Crystal agreed. "So... you think that might make finding Meagan harder?""I imagine it won't help," Alice said. "Did you sleep enough? I think I want to find someone I can ask about all of this. I have questions."***

      Chapter One - Bothered Alice stared at her hand for a moment. Her fingers were trembling. Not much, but just enough that she could pick it up.It bothered her.A lot was bothering her at the moment. Not because such a trembling was unnatural, but because it was. Humans shook a little all the time. They didn't have perfect control over themselves.She did.Or she had, once.Now she wasn't so sure."Alice?"She looked up and found Crystal staring at her, so Alice straightened her spine and stood with more confidence. She was, in many ways, the leader of their little team. Not the team-mom (that role was definitely Shanti's) but often the person that others turned to when they needed directions. It was something about being the first."Sorry," she said before smiling in a self-deprecating manner. "Just a little distracted.""Is something wrong?" Crystal asked. She had very distracting eyes. Big and bright blue and terribly innocent."No, I think I'm just trying to get to grips with... whatever happened.""Do you remember anything?" Crystal asked.Alice frowned, but shook her head. "Being on the moon, then nothing. Just a big blank. Honestly, I'd liken it to going to sleep. Time passed, and I don't recall anything happening in that period.""Weird," Crystal said. "I think it was the same for me, but I kinda woke up on my own... while falling. Anyway! I'm glad you're back.""Yeah, of course," Alice said. "We should move out. The others will need saving too.""Yeah!" Crystal said, all of her worry disappearing in a blink and turning into good cheer. Alice smiled a little. It was hard to remain in a poor mood with Crystal around.Glancing around, Alice took in their surroundings. They were still in that trailer park. The space looked... not local. She couldn't quite put a finger on it, but something about the design of the homes didn't feel like what she might have seen around her home.There were videos on the news, sometimes, of favelas and other places where the poor congregated, and they certainly lived in similar homes, but the style of these was different.So, at a guess, she figured that they weren't in South America. "Before we head out, I think... spend a few minutes discovering where we are?""The cars are weird," Crystal said."How so?" Alice asked. There were a few rotting in backyards. Nothing very fancy, just plain little boxy cars."I dunno, they look like a kid drew a car then someone built that. They're not... curvy," Crystal said as she walked over to one of them. She tried the door, but it was predictably locked."I can—" Alice began. She could do a neat trick with some shadows, slipping into locks and opening them up without much fuss.Crystal punched the window, then pulled on the lock tab. "I got it," she said."Of course," Alice replied. She didn't dislike Crystal, by any means, but her lack of subtlety was... glaring.Crystal sat in the car, then realized she was on the passenger side. "Weird," she said again before tugging the glovebox open. She pulled out a few water-logged papers that stank of mould. One had a monochrome picture of the car she'd broken into on the front, the ink a little runny, but still legible. "Looks... Russian?""The letters are Cyrillic, yes," Alice said. It took a fraction of a second of focus to not just 'understand' what she was seeing, but to actually see the letters on the cover. "I guess this car is a Lada?" She had never heard of the brand, but the writing did give her an approximate location."Eastern Europe?" Crystal asked as she looked up."The weather's a bit chilly, but the plant life suggests late fall or early spring," Alice said as she looked about. "I think that's about right.""Does that help us?""It gives us some context," Alice said. She took the user's manual from Crystal as it was passed over and flipped it open. "The world you were in, what was it like?""Uh... it was a fantasy world," Crystal said.Alice raised an eyebrow. "Could you clarify?""It had magic and wizards, kinda, and like, people fighting with swords and spears," Crystal said. "No cars, no technology, no internet.""Right, a fantasy world," Alice muttered. "Well, this isn't." The car accepted petrol, and it had a jury-rigged radio under the dashboard with a few wires trailing beneath. Radio, electricity, petrol, and an obvious consumer base for the purchasing and manufacturing of cars. This was an industrialised, modern world they were in.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.One with magic time-warping storms."I don't even know where to begin from here," Alice admitted."There's a road that way," Crystal said, pointing through the stained windshield. "We could get to a highway or something, then figure things out from there."Alice considered it, then nodded. "That's acceptable," she said.Crystal pulled herself out of the car, then grumbled as she wiped her rear clean of old dust, which of course got onto her hands. She bent over double and rubbed her hands off of some grass to clean them off.Alice rolled her eyes, but put on a straight face as Crystal looked her way with a goofy smile. "Come on," Alice said.She was still worried, but the walk helped. She felt... uncentred. Still... she raised a hand towards a rusty minivan, then closed the hand into a fist.Tendrils of darkness ripped out of the earth around the car and speared upwards. The car tipped to one side as the all-consuming black started to eat at the earth beneath it. Then the tendrils crashed into each other, engulfing the car with a loud rending scream of metal being compressed.Letting go of the spell, Alice watched as the half-melted blob of the minivan crashed down onto the grass."Wow, you really didn't like that car," Crystal said."Something like that," Alice replied.Her magic was still responsive. Still... unbelievably powerful. But it felt... off."So, what was that for?" Crystal asked as she flounced along next to Alice."It's nothing," Alice said."Oh... is this the kind of 'nothing' where you're keeping a secret from me because you're worried and-slash-or ashamed and you don't want to bother me with the information you have until it inevitably comes out later and makes everything worse?" Crystal asked.Alice gave her a look. "Where did that come from?" she asked."Hypertense said that it's the number one way for our group to break apart," Crystal said. "Since we're all so strong and awesome, the only way for things to really go bad is for us not to communicate or work together."Alice held back a sigh. "Fine. My magic feels... off?""Off how?" Crystal asked. She reached towards Alice, paused, blushed, then touched Alice's shoulder anyway. "Does it hurt?""No, it's just not as responsive. I don't know exactly how to describe it. It feels... at once weaker and less close? It's like trying to write with mittens on. I can hold the pen well enough, but there's a barrier that I'm not used to having in the way.""Oh," Crystal said. "It's hard to tell if that's because of the other-world stuff or if it's just normal magic stuff. Maybe the feeling will fade? Or maybe... maybe you haven't used your magic in a long time, so it's less like wearing mittens and more like you slept wrong and now your arm's all tingly and asleep?"Alice considered it, glanced at her empty palm again, then nodded. "That's possible. I'll monitor things.""And we'll move slowly," Crystal said."Meagan is waiting on us to save her," Alice pointed out."And we will, because we won't be charging in blind and hurting ourselves because we ignored something big and important.""That's... a fair point. We can take it slow," Alice agreed. She wasn't sure what to think of the silent 'yes' Crystal gave herself along with a fist pumping motion, but she decided not to comment. Crystal was... like that, sometimes.The trailer park's roads all seemed to lead to one slightly-less awful road. It was asphalt covered in a thin layer of gravel, with weeds poking out from below, but it was intact enough to travel on.They started down the road, walking at a brisk, steady pace. They could have run, but Alice didn't want to, not just yet. She extended her senses ahead, and could feel something small some ways down the road.It could be interesting, and it might run away if they approached it too quickly.So they walked, past a few more homes, mobile or otherwise, and past an ancient park that was almost entirely overgrown, only the bright children's playthings within hinting at what it was.Finally, they reached a road.Four lanes, with a boundary guard in the middle."Oh," Crystal said. "Well, that's not a good sign."***

      Chapter Two - Roadside The road was a mess.Sure, the gravel road leading out of the trailer park wasn't well-maintained, but Alice imagined that it had never been well-maintained to begin with. Seeing weeds poking out from between patches of loose asphalt and gravel wasn't anything unexpected.The highway, however, that was another story.The road was covered in cracks, some wide enough that she imagined someone could break an ankle walking down them. All sorts of plants were poking through, and it seemed pretty obvious that nature had long ago started to reclaim this patch of civilisation."No, that isn't good," Alice muttered.She was never someone who considered herself an expert in the study of history, but Alice knew enough to tell that roads were the veins and arteries of a civilised world. They made travel, trade, and movement possible. They allowed the countryside to feed the city, for goods to move across nations.This was a four lane highway that hadn't seen maintenance or probably much traffic in at least a couple of years.She knelt, slipping her hand into one of the cracks in the road then tugging out a large chunk of asphalt with minimal effort. A squeeze of her hand and it was crushed. "This place feels... dead.""Kinda spooky, yeah," Crystal agreed. "There's a sign way off over there."Alice looked up and followed Crystal's pointing finger. There was a roadsign out ahead, covered in too many plants to see what was written on it, and bent by time."Nice catch," Alice said.They started that way, walking in the middle of the deserted road in a way that felt somehow terribly wrong. Pedestrians weren't supposed to occupy the middle of such a wide road. It should have been covered in traffic, not be so quietly empty.Crystal tilted her head back and started to sniff at the air."Are you okay?" Alice asked."Smell the air," Crystal said.Alice did so, then shrugged. "It smells natural? Or is that the point?""Yeah," Crystal said.Alice nodded along. "No stink of gas. None of the burning oil smell around cities and towns. No food smells... no garbage either.""I don't mind that last one," Crystal said with a smile, a smile which quickly faded. "Still, it's a little weird, right? Even back home, which was pretty nice, had some smells to it. This smells like deep in nature, not along a highway."They made it to the road sign, and Alice flicked her power out. Thin shadowy blades slipped out of the shadows cast by the greenery stuck to the sign, and soon it all came tumbling down. It was just directions to a city some fifty kilometres down the road."Pripyat," Alice read. "Why does that sound familiar?""Sounds fancy," Crystal said. "What's it mean?""I have no idea," Alice said. "The sign's only in one language.""Okay?""Most signage in Europe has the local language above, then sometimes for big cities some English text below.""Why?""Tourism, I suppose," Alice said. "That's from what I remember seeing in Europe. But we might not be in a world too similar to our own. The writing definitely looks Cyrillic, and the style of the sign, the homes, the cars, it would all fit into our own homeworld.""So this isn't as big of a divergence as the world you were stuck on," Crystal said. "So, should we, uh, continue down that way?""Seems like as good an idea as any," Alice said.Crystal grinned. "Oh, good, because I wanted to look at the weird air over there."Alice followed her pointing finger again, and then squinted. She didn't see anything this time. Though now that she was looking for something, she focused her magic onwards and could feel a very faint stirring.The two continued down the road. A minute or two later, Alice was starting to see what Crystal had noticed. "You're observant," she praised, which had Crystal smiling all the harder.There was a shimmer in the air. It was right off the side of the road, between the roadside and a ditch. The shimmer was roughly spherical, though Alice couldn't make out its exact shape, not when, at best, the shimmer was weaker than a heat haze."I wanna throw a rock at it," Crystal said."Before we know anything else?" Alice asked."We'll know something once we throw a rock at it, won't we?""I suppose. I'd rather the rock than trying to walk into it. What if it's something technological?" Alice asked. She could imagine some governments wanting to install invisible cameras along the roadside. Or it could be military equipment. A stealth field of some sort.Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.Or an active weapon.The shimmering space wasn't warm from where they stood some dozen metres away, at least."Toss it underhand," Alice suggested.Crystal bent down, picked up a loose chunk of asphalt, then underhanded it over to the shimmer. It passed right through, but in a way that was a little strange. "You saw that, right?" Crystal asked.Alice nodded. The rock had sailed in a simple arc, the parabola somewhere in the middle of the shimmering space. But it's arc had shifted in speeds. At first moving quickly, then slowing down for about half a metre, then moving faster as if to make up for the lost time. The rock came out the other side and tumbled down into the ditch as if nothing had happened. "It looks like it was slowed down, then sped up. Just a little, however. And without changing trajectories.""Which is weird-weird, right?""Meagan can speed herself up, or slow the world down around her," Alice said. "We might be looking at something similar. Localised, and going both ways, but fundamentally the same." She picked up a small handfull of rocks and chucked them through the distortion.With more projectiles in the air, it was much easier to see how some suddenly started moving slower or faster. Some merely sailed right through, undisturbed."And the shimmering?" Crystal asked."Light travels through time, same as anything else," Alice said. "It could be a sort of lensing effect in the air? Darkening where the light slows, growing brighter where it moves faster. I'm just speculating.""Smarter than what I'd do," Crystal said."And what's that?" Alice asked."Well, I was thinking I could make a long stick..."Alice chuckled. "No, let's not touch the weird magical bubble if we can avoid it. It just doesn't seem like a wise thing to do.""I was never really big on doing wise things," Crystal said. "Should we fling some magic at it anyway?"Alice considered it, giving the thought more weight than the immediate dismissal she was inclined to give. There was some merit to trying. Magic was finicky and fickle at the best of times, but before all of this, she was definitely one of the magical girls with the best control over her magical abilities."Let me try something. Just to see if it affects our control."Alice reached out, and from the shadows of the grass and uneven ground came a few seeking tendrils of darkness made solid. They climbed upwards, twisting and searching through the air until they reached into the strange space and started moving through it."Huh," Alice said as she felt her control slipping, but only in parts. It was jarring, like watching a television screen where a band across the middle was playing something a few seconds behind the rest. Still, it didn't wrestle her control away, merely... delayed it.The spaces where her control was sped up felt slick and strange, her magic acting faster than she was used to, but it wasn't playing against her control as much."That would be frustrating to fight in, but it's not too bad," Alice said. "The real concern is... well, this thing's very existence.""Oh. Yeah, weird magic bubbles shouldn't be a thing. Let alone next to the road. Maybe that's why it's closed?""It would be a danger to motorists," Alice said. "But I think if this were a unique thing, then there would be... something around it.""So there's more?" Crystal asked."Let's find out," Alice said.The city was some fifty kilometres away still, at least according to that sign. That was further than Alice wanted to walk, but not so far that it would be too annoying. She stretched a little, even if it might not have been needed, then took off at a quick jog with Crystal skipping along at her side.Alice was once again secretly thankful that her magical girl outfit came with pants. It made running so much less awkward.What felt like an hour later, the highway slid out of the woods and into an open space, with uncultivated fields all around, and a few farms in the distance. The road climbed up a ramp, meeting another equally broken road along a turnpike.They discovered two things there.First, the strange space they'd discovered wasn't unique. And second, this other road, as unkept as it was, was still being used.***

      Amazon Link

     It's up! Which... unfortunately means that I have to pull it from RR. This is literally the last second where I can do that, so I hope that everyone who wanted to enjoy the story has!

     (but if you want a free or cheap copy, poke me on my Patreon Discord!)

     Anyway! Thank you for enjoying Magical Girl Rending Nightmare! Here's to hoping it does well on a bigger scene!