Arjun laughed as he rose into the blizzard. The sound was barely audible against the roar of the storm. Snow cascaded around them in wild sheets, the winter eclipse staining the sky a midnight shade of purple.

  Unwrinkled and nearly unrecognizable, Zoralia stumbled to the center of the ritual glyph, looked up at the eclipse with eager eyes, and returned to chanting. Beneath them, the colossal head of Ghanesha shuddered, each tremor rolling up through the beast’s skull and into Diya’s bones.

  Caught between a rock and a hard place, Diya looked back and forth between the witch aging backwards and the madman wielding the forbidden weapon. Another blast of white-blue energy split the sky next to Diya—the wave of scathing heat nearly choked her. It was then she knew that to ignore him would be to hammer the nails into her own coffin.

  Shikra called to her, and Diya glanced back just in time to see her feathered friend whip by. With a series of agile movements, Diya wrapped her arm around the fluttering reins and swung herself up onto the saddle. She ran her hand against Shikra’s side. Together, bonded by a lifetime of life-or-death situations, they ascended into the storm towards the oblivious warlord.

  “You don’t understand,” Diya shouted over the gale. Blood slicked her palms where she clutched the battered leather of the reins. “That power isn’t meant to be wielded by humanity! It's a losing bet, and I’ve seen the horrible cost of rolling the dice!"

  Arjun hovered opposite her, suspended in a spiderweb of crackling light. The liquid armor encased him in shimmering angular plates that pulsed with veins of crimson. He looked like some anachronistic nightmare from a distant dystopian future.

  “You saw a failed attempt,” he called back, voice distorted by the helm. “They were not worthy! I am humanity’s salvation made manifest!”

  He thrust his arm forward. A blinding beam lanced toward them.

  Shikra tried to roll away from it, but couldn’t quite avoid it entirely. It was something, at least. The blast clipped her leg instead of her heart.

  The world dropped.

  Diya felt the impact in her teeth. Feathers tore free in a burst of black and silver. Shikra shrieked—a sad sound of fury and pain—and fought to right herself, but her left leg spasmed, trailing smoke.

  Arjun’s laughter faltered. The veins of light along his armor surged violently brighter.

  Too bright.

  Diya saw it then. The instability. The mysterious power wasn’t flowing cleanly into the suit. It was flaring up. Caustic and volatile. The seams along his gauntlets began to glow white-hot. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the chest plate like cracking glass.

  “Arjun!” she yelled. “Power it down! It’s going to blow!”

  For the first time, he hesitated. But the sliver of hesitation vanished as quickly as it appeared.

  “I can control it,” he snapped, but the words slipped into a gasp.

  The crackling energy field around him flickered.

  Below them, Ghanesha cried out. The sound was low and ancient and terrible, a vibration that seemed to make the sky cry. The ritual circle burned brighter, beginning to fill the air with the scent of burnt flesh. Zoralia stood at its center, arms raised, her silhouette haloed in violent light.

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  Arjun shrieked. A hideous, ear-piercing cry of agony. The liquid metal encasing him flowed into his mouth, muffling his cries.

  Cerulean-tinged lightning arced across his body, tearing through the plates. His body convulsed inside the suit.

  Then the energy flowing around and through him vanished. There was a second where his body shrouded in shadow floated there in the blizzard.

  One moment, he was a god, exerting his dominance over the sky.

  But the sky would not be dominated so easily.

  There was a boom of distant thunder. A roar of nature's defiance, and then he was simply a falling man. Weak. Mortal.

  Diya only had seconds to decide.

  Below, the ritual circle flared brighter still. She could feel the siphon coming to an end, feel Ghanesha’s life thinning like ale watered down in the bend. If she dove after Arjun, she might lose her only chance to stop Zoralia before the ritual was completed.

  If she didn’t, he would die.

  He had tried to kill her. He had murdered Prisha in cold blood. He had a hand in the death of her father.

  But if she did nothing, the cycle of death would be propelled forward by her own inaction.

  Choice was a blade. But it was her blade.

  She kicked her heels, turning Shikra sharply downward. They plunged through the clouds.

  Arjun fell fast, trailing sparks and smoke, armor burning away in molten fragments. The ruined surface rushed up to meet him.

  “Faster!” Diya urged, tucking tighter to Shikra, feeling the force of the fall threatening to snatch her consciousness right from her.

  Shikra let instinct kick in, becoming speed incarnate, just like the countless times she had dove from the sky to snatch up some unlucky prey.

  Diya’s vision flickered—going black and seeing spots—then she felt her mount’s claws pluck something from the air. Without warning, gravity had reversed, and they were ascending.

  The wind and frost bit at them as they zipped up through the clouds. Then they were parallel with the side of the sacred beast, which was shaking badly. So violently that Shikra had to roll right, then left to avoid pieces of rickety construction that were being shaken loose from the township.

  They soared up until the ritual came into view.

  Shikra landed roughly, wings buckling and sliding to a stop near the ritual site. The great roc tried to get back up, then collapsed.

  “Shikra!” Diya cried, wrapping her arms around her feathered friend.

  The wound along the bird’s leg was blackened, feathers burned to stubs. Blood stained the snow a dark, spreading crimson.

  Diya pressed her forehead briefly to the roc’s beak. “Rest,” she whispered. “You’ve done enough.”

  Diya glanced down at Arjun. He was unconscious, and the liquid armor had turned to ash. Flakes of ashen wreckage wilted from his body like rotten fruit.

  She didn’t let herself look at him for long. He was alive. Barely.

  That was enough.

  Ghanesha shuddered again.

  The ritual circle was painted in the crimson luminance of the lightning arcing between the rods. Lines of light glowed from the sigil carved into the elephant’s ancient skin. At its center stood Zoralia, she was no older than Diya now. Eighteen or so. Face unblemished and soft.

  The storm parted around her like a curtain drawn aside.

  Her spine was straight. Her hair, once patchy and white, spilled down her back in a torrent of black. Her skin glowed with stolen vitality. Arcane sigils orbited her like moons around a dark star.

  She looked young. She looked beautiful. She looked wrong.

  Her voice chanted, no longer gravelly and harsh, now delicate and melodic like a harp. Everything came down to her completing the ritual.

  The blood magic inside of her burned with the intensity of the shaded sun. Diya grabbed her spear, cocked he arm back, and with all the energy she could summon, hurled it at the witch. The exquisitely crafted weapon sailed through the air, spinning wildly like the blades of a windmill in the first storm of winter. Right when it seemed it would impale Zoralia—ending this madness—the witch's skin shimmered with tessellating red energy, and the spear bounced harmlessly away.

  Diya’s stomach sank. She looked up at the eclipse with dread in her eyes. One way or another, it would all be over soon.

  Instinctively, her hand reached for the satchel at her hip. Just the way it always had. Her fingers pulled out the only bomb she had left in the bag.

  With time slipping away, she pitched the ceramic bomb at the witch who was now levitating just off the ground. Her youthful face twisted with ecstasy.

  She felt immortality within her grasp.

  ? Overpowers: Magical Girl Crossover [Grimlight Progression Urban Fantasy/Genre based Power System] ?

  by Moawar

  He, Life, had a simple job.

  His responsibility as an Overpower was to make sure that fiction stories and the characters in them follow their dictated path. He always did his job well enough, not more or less than was needed.

  His latest assignment, however, would, in retrospect, prove to be his most challenging one of all.

  He would find himself in a unfamiliar world. There he'll have to quickly adapt to guide Nozomi.

  The strongest magical girl with the potential to accidentally destroy those she seeks to protect in her fight against evil.

  What to Expect:

  -If you like the psychological aspects of Madoka Magica and the mixing of different genres a crossover story brings then this story is for you