Young Writers Society

Several minutes of walking later, they were finally there. The detour. The place certainly looked relative mysterious at first glance, with its weathered and moss covered walls, it looked like an abandoned old temple. The inside was also quite dark, and didn't look particularly inviting. And yet, it was probably going to be the most convenient place to be in at night, if they could avoid running into trouble with the guardian of course. They were going to have to get past that one before they could get their hands on what they needed.

"So, uhh...welcome to this ol' place," began Harry, "now where exactly do we need to be in order to get a hold of this thing."

"Uhh, the very center of this I believe, we'll have to come up with a bit of a plan to dodge around the guardian here and just grab that thing outta there. And then, this little mission will officially be complete," said Stean.

"Just like that," said James.

"Surprisingly, yes, just like that," said Stean.

"So, Mage, are you ready for a bit of a heist?" asked, Harry, cracking a smile.

The old temple felt familiar, but not in a way that Mage could quite describe. He hadn't ever seen a temple exactly like it before. He knew Medium and Infernum didn't make temples like this. But he had been in plenty of old ruins during his time traveling across Medium, and this made him feel more at ease than he knew he should have been feeling.

...Even though he couldn't shake the feeling that something was probably going to go wrong while they were in the temple.

Mage glanced over at Harry and gave him a tiny, hesitant smile of his own.

"Only if you're ready for a heist," he said.

"Or we're always ready for a heist," said Harry, smiling back, "alright, now does anyone have any sort of map for the inside of this thing?"

"Err, I think I got a copy of it somewhere, I think Ray managed to look into an old database of some kind, you know I don't understand half of what he says, but somehow, he did get a copy of some kind of map that he said would be useful," said Stean, "lemme just send this thing to your communicator."

Harry heard a quick ping and a took a look at the image that he'd just being sent. "Alright, I'm going to project this real quick." He pressed the right buttons and snapped of the small pointer from is communicator setting it down on the temple floor so that is projected an image on to the mossy wall of the temple.

"Vankous," he said, and the wizard proceeded to wave his hand, causing a small white screen to appear on the wall. The now much large image of the map appeared on the whall.

"Okay, everyone, let's see, that red dot there, is the center, that's where we need to get to, now I need to hear ideas of how we're getting there while avoiding those blackened areas there, those all indicated places where there could be traps of some sort, and of course we'll have to figure out how to deal with the guardian, cause we can't kill him, we have to get past him, but I guess we can figure that one out, once we're actually at the center."

"Soooo, ideas, give them to me," said Harry.

Mage's eyes widened when he saw an image suddenly appear on the closest wall. He hadn't ever seen something like that before. He tried to hide his surprise and curiosity, but he knew at least Harry would have noticed it.

He cleared his throat and tried to make himself seem a little less in awe.

(He wasn't that successful.)

"Why can't we kill the guardian?" Mage asked. He didn't know about how to handle and avoid traps, but maybe he could figure out how to fight the guardian? If they could just hold it off, someone could sneak in and get to the red dot.

Mage seemed to be quite surprised to see the projection appear on the wall, he was definitely trying to hide it, but didn't quite manage it. He smiled. Mage probably hadn't been exposed to that kind of technology. Their equipment was designed from the future after all, well the past, but the future.

"Uhh, nope, no can do, if that guardian is killed, its going to send an alert to a lot of very bad people that will immediately come running to cause a lot of chaos that I'm hoping to avoid today," said Harry.

"Aww, I was kind of hoping for more of a fight," said Vankous.

"Ohh, I'll get you one very soon," said Harry, "for now, we do this with no fighting if we can help it. Okay, more idea, keep 'em coming."

"We could always try the tried and tested air vent technique," said Stean.

"That is an oldie but a goldie indeed," said James, "they dedicated a literal month of training just for air vent combat back in the agency."

"Hmm, I don't know quite how large the vents of this place are though," said Harry, "but it is very, very tempting. Mage, have you ever tried crawling through one of those?"

Mage glanced between the others. Stean had suggested the plan. James had supported it. Harry had seemed to partially support it, too. The only one who hadn't commented was Vankous, but he would have probably said something if he didn't know what an air vent was.

Pulling his hood down to hide his blushing face, Mage asked, "...What's an air vent?"

"Uhh, right, you don't know," said Harry, "uhh..don't worry about it, that's reasonable. Umm..well...let's just say its like a small tunnel that can take us to where we need to go, bypassing the guardian and just getting right to what we need. You guys do have tunnels right?"

His face grew warmer.

"We do," Mage confirmed. He didn't entirely get why a tunnel would have a special name like that, but the name almost made it sound like it was something that air was supposed to go through.

He faltered.

"...Wait," he said. "How small is small?"

"Uhh, good question," said Harry, "usually the things are big enough to fit a regular sized person, crawling through, you're definitely not going to be able to walk upright but yeah its usually fairly comfortable to crawl through one if its a fairy big one, but...sometimes these things can be a bit smaller, so that's why I said we can't be sure. We'd have to actually access one of the events to see if there's a way to comfortably fit in there. At any rate, I could travel through a vent of any size, so if worst comes to worse, I'll pop in there, maybe with Vankous and the two of us can quickly retrieve while you guys distract the guardian maybe."

"So, yeah, we need to take a look at it to really say how big, but worse case scenario, we just won't use it, and if we use it, it'll be relatively okay to crawl through," summed up Stean.

Distracting the guardian sounded like a horrible idea, especially when they couldn't kill it. Mage really didn't want to be left in charge of that. While Harry hadn't outright said that he would be one of the people left behind to distract it, Mage had gotten it from the context.

"Okay," he said.

This wasn't going to go well. He could just feel it.

A few minutes later, Harry found himself squeezing his way through an air vent. For once, inhabiting a smaller form that most shapeshifting immortals was an actual advantage because as terrible as the heat and smell was, it was relatively comfortable to fit through the vent. James was up ahead, having a bit more trouble squeezing his large frame through, and Vankous was floating through, having predictably turned himself into a small pink bunny and was running far ahead, complaining in bunny language about how cramped and smelly it was.

Stean was up at the very front of their strange procession, and from the looks of it, he was smoothly making his way through without any complaints.

"So this is an air vent," said Harry, "what are you thoughts on it Mage?"

"It's okay-" Mage quietly started to say, not entirely sure if the guardian could somehow hear them moving around in the vents.

He raised his head to get a better look at everyone else. He still couldn't wrap his head around how Vankous had changed his appearance so much, but he had decided it was probably something only this other world's Sin could do.

His horns suddenly scrapped across the top of the vent.

Mage let out a pained cry and shuddered. That hurt!

"Ooof," said Harry, wincing in sympathy. That couldn't have felt good. "You alright back there? You want to some kind of cushioning charm or something to get applied, it might help a little?"

"I'm fine-"

Mage hit his horns on the vent's ceiling again.

"Ouch," he whined, pausing his crawling as he instinctively reached for his horns. It hurt the first time, but it hurt even worse the second! His horns were going to be aching for at least the next day. If it had been just a month or two later, they probably would have just popped off—it was almost that time of year again.

"Suit yourself," said Harry, "but you certainly don't sound fine."

Harry turned back towards the front.

"Vankous, how much longer, we need to exit this things as early as possibly, I don't think Mage is having the greatest time here."

There was muffled squeaking from up ahed.

"Talk louder dude," said Harry.

Loud squeaking followed.

"I know its not called talking, fine, squeak louder, how much further do we need to go."

More squeaking.

"Thank you," said Harry, rolling his eyes. "Well, Mage hang on for a little bit longer. We don't have too much more distance to cover."