Young Writers Society

Elias's eyes glinted at Aen mentioning a secret.

He also looked around and then leaned in forward too, trying to conceal his excitement to learn this super secret thing.

"Secret? What secret? I didn't hear anything," he said with a grin.

Maahes stared.

"But you just said secret," he pointed out, "so you had to have heard something!"

Crossing his arms, he gave Elias a look of disbelief and confusion. Elias was acting weird, but Maahes was too eager to spill the truth to really question him about it. He'd ask him about it later. Even though he wasn't really a scholar any more because he wasn't with Odris, he still wanted to know things.

He cupped his hand around his mouth.

"I'm not from here," he whispered. "And I'm not like you, either! My name is Maahes. I'm a scholar and a diplomat and a spirit. Odris says that I'm really important, but I don't want to be important. So I snuck into a lab and grabbed something weird, and then I was here."

He leaned a little closer.

"But you can't tell anyone," he said. "Because then Odris is going to find me! And I can't go back. I don't want to work all the time!"

Elias narrowed his eyes at him when the sarcasm flew over Aen's head, but then he continued talking, and his eyes softened.

Wait... so he was saying...

"Wait, wait, wait," Elias said, hands out in front of him, visibly confused by this info dump. "First of all, remind me to teach you sarcasm. And second..."

He squinted at him.

"So your name isn't Aen?"

Maahes frowned.

"I know what sarcasm is," he said. "It's when you say something but you don't really mean it! It's kind of like lying, but it's not really okay to Odris."

Then he gave a nod.

"And my name isn't Aen! It's Maahes. Aen's a book character I really like."

"I'm sure you know sarcasm, alright," Elias said, trying to repress a grin to not give away the potential irony if Maahes didn't pick it up.

He was still trying to wrap his brain around all this.

"Why'd you lie about your name? You could have just told me your name is Maahes," he said, but it came out more of a grumble.

He shook his head.

"I couldn't," Maahes insisted. He leaned a little closer for emphasis; it seemed like the right thing to do when sharing secrets. "I'm important. And Odris is important, too - and knows everyone. If the important people on your world found out who I was, then they'd tell him! He'd catch me."

Maahes faltered.

"...Again," he admitted.

Elias was about a hundred steps behind. "Odris?" he echoed, leaning forward as well. "Your brother?"

"Yeah!" Maahes confirmed.

He held his hand underneath his chin, copying a pose that he had seen Odris do before when he was thinking. One hand was still cupped around his mouth, so it looked kind of silly. But Maahes had no idea that it looked as funny as it did.

"Odris isn't really my brother," he admitted. "He's my summoner and supervisor. He's always running tests on me and making me run tests, too! He's a scholar and a diplomat, and he says I'm supposed to be one someday. But I only like being a scholar - I don't want to sit in boring meetings all day! I want to explore."

Elias copied Maahes's body language, also putting his hand under his chin. This probably makes me look smarter, Elias thought.

"Hmm, hmm, yes, I see," he said, nodding up and down, but he actually had no idea what Maahes was talking about. He said a lot of words he didn't really fully understand.

"A summoner, huh? Interesting... Tell me more..."

Because he had no idea what that meant.

Maahes thought the summoner part was pretty straightforward, but then he remembered Odris saying that summoning spirits wasn't a thing most Alterans did. He furrowed his brow in thought again as he tried to figure out how to describe it to someone who had never done it. He had never done it, either, so it was hard for him to figure out how it was really done.

Maahes took a step back and eyed the ground in front of him.

"I'm not from here!" he said. "Not just this world, but this plane, too. I'm from a place called the Other Place. It flows together and isn't weirdly solid like this place is! And when Odris calls my name and says some funny words, I appear in a pentacle and have to do whatever he wants me to do. Other people can summon me, too, but Odris always does it."

With a little, dramatic flick of his hand, he made fire shoot out of the ground in front of them to make a very rough version of a pentacle. He didn't know what all the words were in it and wasn't good at making circles, but he definitely made a good copy.

He pointed at it with the hand he had been cupping around his mouth.

"That's a pentacle," he informed Elias.

Elias continued to nod with each passing word from Maahes, hand still on chin, eyes squinted at him like he knew what he was talking about.

Which he didn't. He probably got, like, five words out of his mouth.

"Right," Elias began, his mind slowly catching up. This may take a while. "So what's a pent—OH MY GOSH WHAT IS THAT?" he yelped as his feet pitter-pattered away to non-burned ground.

When safe (because it was definitely a danger to begin with), he turned and leaned over the pentacle, eyes in disbelief. "What is that?!" he said again, but this time, his eyes burned with curiosity.

Maahes blinked.

"I just told you," he said, crossing his arms again. "That's a pentacle! That's what Odris summons me with. But he uses chalk instead of fire, since Alterans are boring and don't have magic."

Elias leaned forward and craned his neck down to stare at the pentacle, scratching his cheek while deep in thought... which, turns out for Elias, subjectively wasn't that deep.

"Okay, I think I'm understanding this," he said.

He wasn't understanding this.

He looked back up at Maahes with a small nod. "So, uh, what's an Alteran again?" he asked.

Maahes gave Elias a little poke.

"You're an Alteran!" he said. He thought for a moment. Alterans technically were from Altera - even if they were on other planets - but Elias didn't seem to know what Altera was. So maybe he was almost like an Alteran? "Or almost one. You look Alteran. You feel like one, too. But Alterans don't have magic like me and know that they're Alteran."

Elias squinted at him. What the heck was an Alteran? Maahes said he was an Alteran. So, they were Elias'es? That made no sense. There was only one Elias in this world.

His brain was like slow-moving sludge as he finally started to piece together the puzzle pieces with Maahes's infinite patience.

But of course, he heard one buzz word, and he jumped on it, forgetting all the other words in the sentence.

"Magic?" Elias echoed with a scoff. "What are you, six? That's what kids say." He straightened up and patted down his wrinkly uniform with pride. "We have powers," he said proudly. "And I'll have you know, I'm a healer! Cell regeneration or whatever-you-call it. Or, well, I will have that."

He pursed his lips and pouted, kicking a pebble on the ground. It landed on the burnt pentacle.

"It might be another year or two before I awaken it. But my brothers and sisters have the same power, so I'm prepared!"