Young Writers Society

James felt like he’d gotten pretty high up for the few seconds he had to climb, but all of his confidence shriveled away when he saw Felix plant himself at the bottom of the tree and then launch himself upwards vertically with a several-feet-tall pillar of steaming ice.

James was holding onto the trunk with one foot each on a different branch when Felix shot his way up to him, staring him in the face.

James felt a chill run down his spine, and not because of the cold.

So these guys were mages. Mages in hiding posing as bounty hunters to get by, but using magic to hunt down their bounties. Because who would trust the word of a criminal? Criminals would say anything to be released. If they accused the person who captured them of magic it wouldn’t be considered as truth for a second.

It was smart of them, really. More clever than he initially gave them credit for, when he’d thought they didn’t look like bounty hunters. They must’ve been using their magic to compensate for any lack of physical intimidation and presence.

That said, Felix’s words confused him.

Of course James hurt Viktor. He had been concussed and captured. He was trying to escape.

“It’s nothing personal,” he said bluntly. “You hit me in the head, I knee you in the face to get away. I’d really rather not get taken in today, or ever, you know?”

His body was buzzing to run. To keep climbing. But he’d done this to himself. He glanced down the tree, calculating the worth of the risk of the fall.

“You know I’m wanted alive, right?”

Felix paused.

He didn't entirely understand what that meant. Viktor had used the phrase before, and so had Evie. He assumed there was an alternative, but Viktor hadn't ever taught him the words. It hadn't ever come up in one of the stories he read from the library, and hadn't been on any of Evie's diagrams, either. He just knew that they were bringing Tiberius somewhere else, and that Evie and Viktor didn't want him to fight him with cryo.

But there was that warm, warm red feeling in his chest right now, and Felix didn't want to hold back.

He swayed a bit as he mulled over what Tiberius had said. Despite the swaying, he was in no risk of falling. Evie said he had good balance.

"I guess," Felix relented. "But you're bad, so you deserve it."

That, at least, Felix understood.

James could feel the tension, and the tingle of the cold icy magic in the air. Felix was on the verge of lashing out, but James had him thinking about it instead of doing it, which was something. He had his foot in the door, potentially only stalling the inevitable, but he had to try.

“Am I, though? You don’t even know me, really,” James said. “All you know is what you read on a poster, that the kingdom wrote. And you and I both know the kingdom lies about a lot of things. They lie about your people too, and would just as soon paint you as a criminal just for having magic, when we know that shouldn’t be a crime.”

Felix, in fact, didn't know that the kingdom lied about a lot of things. He also wasn't entirely sure what kingdom they were actually in. Evie and Viktor had said they were somewhere other, but all that Felix knew was that the soil here felt different when he was in his original form.

"Viktor said you were bad," Felix argued. He thought for a moment, swaying a little more. "You know other people like me?"

James relished the opportunity to lean into half-truths.

“Yes, I’ve known other people like you,” James said. “I’ve never met another ice mage like yourself, but I’ve known healing mages, and earth mages, and all different sorts. All of the mages I’ve known have gone into hiding, and as I’m sure you can imagine, with my currenty bounty, they haven’t risked contacting me since. But I have no problems with you, or your magic.”

Felix gave him a long, hard stare.

"I'm not a mage," he said. Mages were what had tried hurting Viktor and Evie. Mages roamed the countryside with their strange little devices and little elemental bugs. Mona and Lisa were maybe mages, if he remembered Viktor's stories right, but he knew he wasn't one.

He leaned forward.

"You don't know people like me," he said, tone not quite accusing but also not quite nonchalant.

James blinked, glanced down at Felix’s ice sculpture he was standing on, and looked back up at him.

“Not a mage,” he repeated quietly.

So either Felix was lying to his face - for what reasons he couldn’t configure - or Felix genuinely believed he wasn’t a mage. Maybe they’d grown up isolated from the world? And were disconnected from mages and their dying culture? He wouldn’t put that past the realm of possibility.

“What do you call yourself, then?” he asked.

Felix paused.

Had Viktor said he wasn't supposed to say the answer? He had told him not to use his cryo, but he was already using that right now. He had shared it with other people before, back when he first started living with Viktor and Evie in the center of Mondstadt instead of in Dragonspine.

No matter how much he thought back on it, he couldn't think of Viktor explicitly saying no.

"A whopperflower," Felix finally said.

Huh.


Of all the alternative words they could’ve come up for the word “mage,” that was not even remotely close to what he was expecting. How’d they even come up with that? What did flowers have to do with magic? It sounded ridiculous.

Of course, he wasn’t going to tell the violent man with magic that.

“Well, maybe I have met other whopperflowers then, and I just didn’t know that’s what they were called,” James replied.

Felix shook his head.

"You would have known," he said. He was the only one who could take on human forms. Every other whopperflower that Viktor or him had ever met could only mimic flowers.

"Felix!" Viktor suddenly shouted. Felix turned, his back to Tiberius. He made a few increasingly smaller pillars to make a staircase of ice down to where Viktor was now standing. He looked out of breath and worried. Felix didn't understand why.

Not that it mattered.

Felix slid across the small gap between the stairs and Viktor and promptly melted into his side. Viktor's chest heaved as he took a deep breath and held Felix tight to his side.

"See," Evie softly said, "he's alright."

James didn’t waste the opportunity to climb up higher. He didn’t think it would help anything in the long run, but going down seemed like a worse option, and he knew he couldn’t beat someone who could summon ice out of thin air.

He kept an eye on the trio down below as he rapidly started climbing again.

Evie looked away from Felix and Viktor. Tiberius was scaling the tree he had apparently climbed into. From the height of the pillar of ice next to it, Felix must have confronted him. She was surprised—and grateful—that he hadn't directed the ice right at their bounty.

She was also surprised that Tiberius hadn't commented on it yet. She had tried comforting Viktor earlier by saying Tiberius likely wasn't going to bring up Felix being able to use cryo, but she didn't fully believe it until now.

She climbed the staircase, purposefully letting her feet press down a little harder than normal so she didn't slip.

"Felix?" she asked. "Can you make another pillar?"

A moment later, her wish was granted. She stepped on the pillar just as it started to form and let it bring her all the way to where Tiberius was currently climbing.

"Hi," Evie said.

James should've seen this coming. Well, he had seen it coming, but he still was determined to not give up so soon. Not when they were still interested in capturing him and walking away with the cash, with no regard for where that would leave him in the near future.

"Hi," James said back tensely, deciding this time to keep busying himself with climbing - though he was, admittedly, running out of tree to climb before he started getting to branches that wouldn't be able to hold his weight.

"Having a lovely morning, I take it?"

Evie could have asked Felix to make another taller pillar of ice, but she was starting to realize there wasn't really a reason to. Viktor and Felix had the ground covered. Tiberius was running out of tree. They'd catch him eventually.

"Definitely," Evie replied. She peered up at the top of the tree. "So what are you going to do when you reach the highest branch?"

"Stay here," James said, ironically reaching the highest branch - at least, the highest he was willing to risk putting his weight on. The fall now would be over 20 feet.