Young Writers Society

“Robots? I’ve never heard of those.” Estella Fay hummed. “Or the word aliens.”

“We’re going to be here all day if we keep running into things we don’t understand about each other. I’m afraid that list is miles long and it will take years to sort all of the details.” Helios Everett scanned the forest once more. “It would be best to attempt to find a city. Or at least shelter.”

Estella Fay scrunched her nose. “He’s right. I don’t want to be here when it’s dark. Besides, we can talk more as we explore! The powers of multitasking.” She grinned again, bouncing on her toes. Her wings ruffled again, cuffing her in the back of the head. “Ow.” She winced.

Jo was honestly content just chatting, but then she really looked around at the forest they were in. It wasn't anything like the woods on Mutopia. The woods there were creepy, too, but not in a dangerous kind of way. At the end of the day, Jo knew they couldn't get hurt in those woods because that was where Cybele liked to spend her free time.

But these woods? These ones sent shivers down her spine. The trees were gnarled. There was an eerie mist. There was a coldness, too, the kind that settled right into your bones.

"Do you...Do you think these woods are haunted?" Jo said, glancing over at the others.

"Ghosts aren't real," Kyle said, matter-of-fact.

Jo stared at him. "But mutants are real. Aliens are real. Robots are real. Mother Nature is real. We even know different Earths exist, too!"

Kyle didn't have a response for that.

"Let's go exploring now," Jo quickly decided. If they thought too much longer on this, they'd just want to curl up in a ball on the ground. "But no one goes off on their own."

Estella Fay shuddered. “Gladly. The last time I got separated from my team, someone got me arrested.”

Heliodor Everett cocked his head to the side. “Wait, really? Who?”

She sighed. “Are you going to do this right now?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Estella Fay sighed. “Never mind.” She squinted at the mist. “How thick do you think the mist is? It almost reminds me of The Mist.”

Heliodor Everett led the way, ducking beneath branches with his wings neatly folded against his back. “They don’t know what The Mist is.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Kyle blinked.

The Mist made them think of the Percy Jackson series, but that couldn't be what they were referring to. They probably meant something more physical. Something like an actual mist they regularly saw, rather than a magical phenomenon that was difficult to see.

Jo, meanwhile, quickly fell into step behind Heliodor and Estella. Even though they were shorter than both of them, Kyle suspected that Jo would quickly catch up to Heliodor. She could be fast when she wanted to be.

After a pause, Kyle followed as well.

"Are you guys...not exactly friends?" Jo asked. Kyle shot them a look at the very back of their head, but Jo was oblivious to the nonverbal reprimand. "You don't really seem like you're on the best of terms."

Estella Fay laughed nervously. “It’s complicated.”

Heliodor Everett shrugged. “She’s a war criminal. I’m a Lord. She asked me to join her revolution, and I said no. That’s not complicated at all.”

“You left out the part where you got me arrested after telling me you were sympathetic to the cause.”

Heliodor Everett stopped walking. “I must’ve missed that because I definitely didn’t.”

Estella Fay crossed her arms. “Please. Don’t be coy. Who else would’ve?”

“I’m not sure, but it wasn’t me.”

"Maybe you were brainwashed," Jo guessed. She didn't really know if brainwashing was possible on their version of Earth, but Jo had met their fair share of brainwashing mutants during their time on Mutopia. "Like when Naomi brainwashed Castiel in Supernatural to make him be evil."

"You never watched Supernatural," Kyle pointed out, giving her a tired look.

"But I was on Tumblr," Jo protested, "and that's enough to make me know all about it. Castiel was all about revolutions, and then he wasn't. Besides, there's also the brainwashing with..."

They faltered. She had been trying her best not to think of Him, but it was hard when she was already thinking of angels. They had seen what Michael could do to people. The idea of brainwashing wasn't all that farfetched after that.

Estella Fay wrung her hands. “I’m sorry, but most of that was completely lost on me.”

Heliodor Everett shrugged, his face still listless. Based on what Jo said about this character Castiel, “brainwashing” was a way to prevent rebellions. Whether the process was to actually cut open someone’s skull and scrub their brain or if the name was simply a metaphor didn’t matter.

If anyone in London was to be brainwashed, it would the revolutionaries. Not a renowned member of the House of Lords. “I doubt that I was ‘brainwashed.’ I know I didn’t tell anyone you were speaking to me, Estella Fay. If you trust me on nothing else, trust me on that.”

Estella Fay stared at him for a moment, her golden eyes narrowed. “Alright. I’ll believe you. But I want to know why when we return to London.”

Heliodor Everett nodded. “And I shall tell you.”

"I'm pretty sure the whole point of brainwashing is to make the person think they're not being brainwashed," Jo pointed out.

Kyle, though he usually hated to agree with them, gave a slight nod to show he did for once.

"And brainwashing is making someone think one thing instead of what they naturally think," Jo added, picking up on Estella and Heliodor's confusion over the word. Which, in their professional opinion, meant at least one of them probably had been brainwashed before, but she knew neither one would believe her on that.

Estella Fay’s eyes lit up in recognition. “Oh! That makes sense. Like the Prime Minister convincing you-“ She pointed at Heliodor Everett. “-that alis can’t control the elements of their birth.”

Heliodor Everett glanced at her finger, his blank face making him look painfully unamused. “The alis can’t, Estella Fay. If they could, we’d-“

“Oh, really? Then why can I do this?” Estella Fay held out her hand and tugged at the air. The light above her fingers seemed to tear, leaving thick shadow where there was once struggling daylight.

Heliodor Everett paused, his eyebrows furrowing for just a moment before neutrality stole his face again. “What did you do?”

Estella Fay shrugged. “I just moved the light.” She pushed her hand up, the darkness disappearing as if it were never there.

"You got it!" Jo said, snapping their fingers and pointing at Estella. That was exactly what brainwashing was. So it was probably only Heliodor who had actually been brainwashed, unless there was something very true that Estella was very wrong about.

Kyle, meanwhile, studied Heliodor's face to see how he was processing the new information. Though Kyle also wasn't the most expression, he assumed that Heliodor would have had more of a reaction to Estella controlling the light. It was something he had believed wasn't possible before now. Suddenly, it was. Even Kyle had been shocked when he had first seen mutants on TV.

As that thought crossed Kyle's mind, the air temperature plummeted. The forest, which had already been deathly quiet, became even more so. The only sound was their own breathing and something rustling in the woods.

Jo tensed. Kyle did, too, though he wasn't particularly worried about how whatever was there would affect him.

Estella Fay froze, eyes darting around the trees. “That’s not good.” Her face twitched.

The forest seemed to stare at them, etching their souls into memory. Heliodor Everett clenched his jaw hard enough to feel his teeth strain.

A whisper broke the silence. It was small and intelligible, but it might as well have been a gunshot in this forest.

Estella Fay peered at the group. “Did that happen to be anyone you?”
She chuckled nervously. “No? Splendid.”

Another whisper sounded in the distance. Then another. And another. Soon enough, the whispers were constant and in tandem, still intelligible and breathy, but they were loud enough to consume the group.

Estella Fay covered her ears, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of sound. Heliodor Everett seemed to cower, now clenching his fists tight enough to leave indents on his skin.

When Jo heard the first voice, she jumped. They moved closer to Kyle in preparation for a fight, but all that happened was the volume of the voices growing louder and louder.

"You know," Jo said, trying to keep her voice even louder than the ones around them, "the voices aren't actually that scary. It's like hearing Biome's gremlin children causing chaos in the distance."

Kyle gave them a deadpan look.

"You're shivering," he pointed out, even more loudly than Jo had been, and Jo just hugged her arms tight to her body in response.

The whispers stopped, dropping the forest back to an eerie silence. Estella Fay trembled; her wings unfolded and prepared for flight.

"What are you doing here?"

Estella Fay yelped, launching herself into the air.

There was a single, slightly translucent person in the forest where there once was nothing but trees. Heliodor Everett stumbled backward, clutching his waistcoat.

The person had nothing above their shoulders, carrying their head in their arms, a shiny ax protruding from their forehead. Wisps of smokey blood oozed from their chopped neck, dripping to the forest floor and evaporating.

"Oh," Jo quietly got out, staring at the apparition that had appeared. Her skin paled, and her eyes widened. They weren't good with gore, no matter how many times they tried to pretend otherwise.

Kyle also stared, but it was with less terror than Jo. It was a distant sort of interest. Kyle didn't exactly find the gore intriguing, but he did wonder why they had ended up in a haunted forest like this one.

Kyle gave a nod of his head in greeting. Gore didn't bother him all that much these days.

"Hello," he said, trying to see if the ghost was sentient or not.

Jo, meanwhile, scooted closer to Kyle and grabbed onto his arm as tight as she possibly could.

“What are you doing here?”

The apparition’s mouth did not move, but its eyes zeroed in on the group.

Estella Fay tumbled to the ground, her breath coming out in shallow gasps. “Hello! Is this your forest?”

The apparition did not respond.

Estella Fay stood up. “We didn’t mean to intrude.”

The apparition blinked. “What are you doing here?”