Moonlings: A Clash of Meteors and Mages

Everything went smoothly not until she saw the book.

Infiltrating her teacher's room was definitely not on her lists of pranks and she wasn't even a prankster. When she had reached the other building, she landed on the second floor smoothly and walked normally like she really just came from the stairs. No one was in the hallway anyway.

Ma'am Ague's room was very easy to spot. From afar, you would not think that it was a teacher's office but a single dorm positioned at the far end of the hallway.

Are teachers even allowed to do that?

Then again, she was a Moonling, a gremlin, to be exact. Those who fall prey to her charm are always in a dazed state. Raii Shin wouldn't be surprised if Ma'am Ague used her powers to have the admin make a special room for her. 

But for what reason?

Raii Shin put her hand on the door knob. Of course it was locked. Good thing both of them were related to the moon so they also shared the same spiritual residue. Raii Shin closed her eyes in concentration and little bits of her power traveled from the door to the framework of the office. 

She was surprised to find little of her teacher's essence, like she hadn't been here for some time. Fortunately, it was enough to slip through the small holes of the knob and Raii Shin opened her eyes when it clicked.

'Even if you don't like magic because it's not your forte, learn the basics. It will soon come in handy', she could hear a friend's voice in her ear. She hated to admit it but looks like he was right this time around.

Raii Shin just used the Ethos method or the ability exclusive only to the moonmages. It makes them link any familiar spiritual residues. According to the experienced moonmages, they always used it to locate each other whenever they were separated in large-scale operations. Raii Shin used it to pass through the lock since she compressed it into materia.

"Sorry for the intrusion, Ma'am Ague." 

She turned the doorknob and gently pushed the door open while looking left and right, making sure no one was seeing her.

All clear.

When she stepped inside, all her expectations came crashing. Forget the thing about a separate dorm or a special office. Raii Shin just stepped into a junk shop, if that's what her teacher's definition of an office is.

Everyone admired her teacher because of her bewitching looks but would the spell be broken if they saw her room right now?

What Raii Shin thought of as a huge pile of clothes was actually a bed. Junk food wrappers littered the floor as well as biodegradable and non-biodegradable 'things' or whatever you would call them because they were beyond recognizable now. Black fat flies flew all over the place and the stink was unbearable. How could anyone live in this?

Shame on that teacher.

Raii Shin covered her nose and was about to back out when her eyes caught something.

A circular wooden table was placed beside the large window. Surprisingly, it was the only clean spot in the room. It even had a shining silver vase and a healthy white flower placed on it.

After a while, she realized why.

If it was night, the large window would surely let the moonlight in and it would shine directly at the table. She knew why it was circular. It was in the shape of the moon.

She knew because she also had a spot like that, a place where the moon could freely shine its silver rays, no matter how small her apartment was. For her, it was a sign of respect and just felt reassuring to welcome the source of your power into your room. She didn't expect that it was something that a moonmage and a moonling would share.

Raii Shin went near the table. There was a book which read English 101. Raii Shin picked it up and a huge stack of papers fell down. When she caught a glimpse of the contents, she then realized that the book cover was fake.

The papers contained her teacher's annotations since she recognized her handwriting. The book was filled with runes, geometric shapes, and it emitted an unearthly frequency.

It was a book from outer space.

It is already known that Earth was not alone in the universe. Raii Shin could only laugh silently whenever she heard news of people debating if aliens existed or not. At the same time, she couldn't blame them, because their knowledge of other lifeforms from beyond the galaxy ceased when the moonlings and humans stopped interacting. Now, they were just bedtime stories.

Raii Shin suddenly felt agitated, her fingers grabbing the book in excitement. What could she discover? If she can find something, maybe she would get recognition even if she was just a part-timer at Orion Agency.

She couldn't read alien languages but thanks to Ma'am Ague's notes, she had huge help deciphering them. Most of them were random events in the galaxy. However, on the last page, she caught troubling words arranged vertically and written in dark ink that made her sweat.

Let the hosts cross over

A quest for immortality

Emerge of the ritual of the lover

The time of the worm under the red tree

Raii Shin clamped the book shut, slid it in her bag, and dashed outside without even bothering to remember if she closed the door or not. She didn't care. The only thing that was in her mind was the victims of the missing cases. She had to report to the agency.

The book and the talking monster both mentioned a ritual. The book said hosts and the nightspawn talked about sacrifices.

But what was really scary was immortality.

Raii Shin had been thinking. Their findings say that she was from the 1800's but then her face never changed. Raii Shin wasn't a lover of lectures but she was a hundred percent sure that eternal youth was never a characteristic of a gremlin.

Immortality, huh?

If Ma'am Ague ought to use the missing teenagers as sacrifices for her ritual for her to continue being young, then she was beyond the laws of justice.

She had to take down her teacher.