Young Writers Society

Harry smiled at Mage's question. It was clear the centuries thing had thrown him off just a bit, which was quite fair. At Mage's age, it wasn't exactly going to be easy to wrap one's head around just how long Harry had been living for.

"Ohh, this has been a quiet couple of thousand years. Well..besides that one blip, but we're dealing with that. Helped us gain a valuable trio of agents. But umm, its been good. I'm doing okay....I think."

Mage smiled.

"I'm glad you're okay, too," he said. Just as the words finished leaving his mouth, he heard the creak of the bathroom door and the familiar clanging of Soul's armor. He turned to see Soul leaving the bathroom and heading their way.

"Were you able to get all of the sand out?" Mage asked.

"I was," Soul confirmed, leaning down to readjust one of his metallic boots. When his armor was fixed, he looked over at Harry. "I saw a...bin in there? It was filled with garbage, so I put the sand in there. I hope that was the right place."

Harry nodded again, before turning as he saw Soul emerge from the bathroom, looking, well exactly the same as he had before, but Harry assumed the required cleanup operations had been completed.

Soul mentioned something about a bin and Harry grimaced. Whoops He had completely forgotten about a place to put the sand. The bin in their was probably not a great place to put sand in, but Harry nodded anyway. It wasn't likely to be a big issue, they could just dump it out somewhere somehow.

"We'll sort that out," said Harry, "good to hear you managed to deal with all the sand."

"Thanks," Soul said. "I'm also glad I was able to get it out of my armor."

Soul faltered, not exactly sure what to say next. He must have walked in on a conversation between Harry and Mage. He still wasn't sure how the two of them had met before, and wasn't even all that sure what Harry was. He hadn't ever met someone with his specific abilities before. He was hesitant to call it Sin or Blessing; none of what Harry could do really seemed to fit either of those.

"...I've been wondering this since the ship," he started, "but how did you meet?"

Mage straightened a little at the question. "I walked through a portal in a set of ruins last year." He hesitated, face going red. "...I actually tripped."

Soul stared. "A...portal?"

Harry nodded.

Then Soul asked about the time they'd met and Harry couldn't help reminisce about that particular day. He could hardly imagine just how annoyed he'd been with having to go investigate that glitch with the portal and how he'd planned to get it over with as soon as possible. By the end of that day he'd been wishing for it to be longer.

"It was quite the entrance, " said Harry, a fond smile on his face as he remembered running into that particular bit of footage later during a mission report.

Mage's blush deepened.

Soul was only a little familiar with the concept of portals. He didn't know they actually existed, but he knew they theoretically connected one place with another. This portal must have connected their world to the one that Harry was from—even though Soul had never once considered that other worlds existed before now.

(And yet that felt wrong, like whenever he used electricity Sin. It was like he was forgetting something, but he didn't know how he could ever forget about the existence of other worlds.)

"I helped Harry with a mission," Mage said, clearly trying to change the subject. "Harry helped me get back afterwards."

"Yeah, I unfortunately ended up pulling him along on a bit of an escape, it was a whole sort of mess with timings, Mage was a wonderful sport for sticking along with that and actually helping us out quite a bit while he himself needed to be getting back."

Soul gave him a look after Harry finished speaking. At first, Mage thought he must have done something wrong—Soul wasn't saying anything and seemed to be thinking. A moment later, he realized that he knew the way Soul was holding himself right now. He was proud of Mage, and realizing that made Mage's cheeks grow even more warm.

Mage stared down at the ground.

"...Thank you," he managed to get out. "For the compliments."

When he finally looked up again, he saw that Soul was looking at Harry now. With interest, maybe, and a little bit of innocent curiosity. "You mentioned you were the Darkness earlier, but I've never heard that title before. What do you do?"

The question could have sounded like Soul didn't trust Harry, but there was something about the tone that showed he really was just curious. Soul wasn't good at sounding cold. The few times where he had tried to, it was hard believing it was genuine.

"Well you deserve them," said Harry, with a nod before turning to address Soul's question. "That...is some question, with no simple answer. I don't know how best to put that honestly, I never do, but let me tell what I told Mage all those years ago...well, last year I guess for y'all.

He took a deep breath.

"On the surface of sorts...everyone knows me as "The Darkness"...and that's what I always tell people anyway...and much like the darkness...I'm just a shadowy figure through history, a myth or a legend to most...just a story told around a campfire, a forgotten tale, an urban legend, something or someone that doesn't really exist. On the other hand, I'm also Harrison Harvard Hardy, the celestial with far too many titles to keep track off but hmm...I suppose most people would know me as The Prince of Darkness, which is my sort of official title I guess. If I had to say my job, well its kind of just to exist. I am the physical embodiment of all the darkness that exists and I manipulate and shape it when needed. But it's a bit too much for most people to wrap their heads around...so I'll just say...I've been around for a very, very, long time...and I do a lot of things...like at the moment I'm just roaming space and time, solving issues here and there..and kind of just doing stuff...I guess. I am technically supposed to rule the dark realm and such..but that of course is...not something i'm a big fan of..you probably don't want to know any of that anyway."

Soul tried to wrap his mind around Harry's explanation. It was a difficult thing to comprehend. Zogin hadn't ever been all that into stories, and Soul hadn't had many opportunities to read them on his own. They were always traveling. Even when Mage told him stories as Mage tried to fall asleep at their campsites every night, he had never once told him a story like that.

Part of Soul couldn't help but wonder if Mage was so close with Harry because he could somehow sense that he was the embodiment of darkness. One of Mage's Sins was darkness. He was still hesitant showing it around Soul, even though Soul didn't have any problems with it.

How could he, when-

He faltered, the thought slipping away before he could fully understand it. He absentmindedly raised a hand to his head, even though he knew that wasn't where he processed things like that.

"...Soul?" Mage hesitantly asked. "Are you okay?"

Soul blinked. He forced himself to focus again, letting his hand fall back to his side as he gave Mage a smile underneath his helmet. "I'm fine. I was just thinking."

He looked back at Harry.

"That is hard to wrap my head around," he agreed. "But I think I understand some of it. I travel—traveled—with my partner before meeting Mage. We helped with problems that people we met had. We didn't have a title, but it was our...thing."

Mage glanced between Soul and Harry.

"He's selling himself short," Mage informed Harry. He looked back at Soul. "Everyone in the dungeon knew who you were when you introduced yourself."

Soul's face grew warm, even though he knew it wasn't actually growing hotter. "We were in the area before."

"But you hadn't ever visited there," Mage pointed out, "and you hadn't ever met any of the people there."

"Don't worry about it," said Harry with a chuckle. "I'm just Harry to everyone...well almost everyone." His expression darkened for a second before he continued. "Oooh, that sounds amazing. It really is. Don't be afraid to take credit for what you do. That's something I learnt a long time ago. Also, if you don't mind me asking, are you also a demon like Mage?"

Soul faltered, for a moment.

"I'm not a demon," he finally said. The way he said it made clear that he was telling the truth, despite his hesitation just seconds before. But he didn't outright say what he really was, either. He could have claimed he was human. He did it all the time, especially when people thought he was a demon. Zogin would always argue that he couldn't fit the horns underneath the helmet, and that the tail would be painfully uncomfortable if kept restrained all the time. It was a good argument.

But Soul wasn't sure he needed it when Harry was so supportive of Mage.

Harry knew there was a very valid follow up question to that particular answer and yet he stopped himself. It was quite clear that Soul didn't really want to go ahead and talk about who he was. Perhaps he'd reveal that eventually. For now, Harry decided to move on and ask about how they'd met. Before he could do that however, the other three charged in quickly, or rather Stean did, followed by an enthusiastic James and a Vankous who looked like he'd just lost a bet.

"We need to guy buy some new bedsheets," declared Stean.

Soul was quiet, but Mage breathed a quiet sigh of relief when the others suddenly returned. Mage knew that they could trust Harry and hoped that Soul could tell that, too, but Soul was always hesitant to share his secret. Stean's interruption was enough to switch the subject—Soul wouldn't have to worry about avoiding saying the truth.

"Can we come?" Mage asked, eyes bright at the thought of seeing something new. He hesitated, then looked down at his outfit. "...I might need to change before we leave."

"Of course," said Harry, "y'all prolly shouldn't hang around here by yourselves anyway because you're not paying and could get magically kicked out with the system thinking your intruders and worse, it will probably be quite boring."

"And you're outfit is fine," said Stean, with a smile. "For starters, we're also still in the same outfits, and well, that outfit would honestly not be anything strange. There are people wearing all sorts of costumes, even Soul would look like just another person wearing a giant suit of armor. There are soo many things, honestly you could spend hours just studying those outfits."