Young Writers Society

"If its any consolation, you reacted better than 92% of the people that ride this car for the first time," said Harry, "I'll give you a hint, I have a special system to catch vomit before it hits people in the face due to inertia."

"So anyway, do you need a minute to gather yourself or can we step inside? Hopefully I remember the section we need to go look in?" said Harry, stepping out.

He turned to the car. "Hydra, lock up and go find a parking spot. We'll be back shortly." The doors closed and the car took off towards the parking lot.

"So?" asked Harry, turning back to Mage.

"I'm fine," Mage said - a little too quickly.

He hoped Harry didn't know notice him stumbling as he went to take a step towards the library. Mage had already pulled his hood down, but he tried to pull it down even further to hide his face. Some of it was because he was honestly embarrassed.

But humans didn't like demons. Angels didn't, either. He knew that Harry wasn't either one and that the other people here probably were whatever Harry was, but Mage was too nervous to take the risk. He'd hide his demonic traits as long and as well as he could.

"Alright then," said Harry, "stay behind me and no one should notice you. We're going to be walking through this place pretty fast so don't get left behind."

With that Harry made his way in through the library doors.

Already spectacularly failing at Harry's request, Mage hesitated - and immediately fell behind. He had to rush to catch up as Harry made his way in through the library doors.

And then Mage couldn't help but stop again.

He couldn't remember the last time he had been in a library. It had to have been long before he left Infernum. And while Infernum wasn't without books, it was nothing like the collection in front of him now. His eyes were wide and bright underneath his hood.

It was beautiful.

Kiera would have loved it. With all of those books, at least a few of them had to be brand new stories neither one of them would have ever heard.

Harry was halfway across the main desk when he turned back to see that Mage had stopped at the doors. He let out a sigh. This was really turning out to be a long night. He marched back towards the demon.

He coughed. "We need to get this over with quickly remember, standing there staring is not going to help you not get noticed. Now come on, I'm sure you've seen much more impressive libraries before, this is tiny compared to some of the good ones."

His eyes widened underneath his hood.

"You've been in bigger ones?" he just barely managed to get out. He knew he was supposed to be following Harry and avoiding being spotted, but he couldn't help it. Standing here in this library had to be the best part of stumbling through that doorway. It even made this whole incident seem worth it. "Where-Where are they? Can we visit-"

He faltered.

He wasn't supposed to be getting as excited as he was. He was supposed to be finding a way home right now; he couldn't afford to get sidetracked. Even though he didn't really have a true home anymore, he still couldn't stay here. It wasn't where he was from.

He didn't deserve to be here.

"Well duh," said Harry, rolling his eyes, "you should see the ones back where I'm from. I think the library we have at...umm....home is probably bigger than this. Trust me when I say this is not that impressive. As for visiting, the nearest such library is...hard to get to, shall we say...you don't want to get that far sidetracked believe me...or at least, let's get your path home secured first, then if you still want to check out a library, I can try to arrange something. Does that sound good? Can we continue now?"

"You...you would do that for me?" Mage quietly asked. He had just assumed that Harry was helping him because he had been the first person he met. If it had been someone else in the ruins and Harry had found him later on, Mage had been certain Harry would have completely ignored his problem.

But Harry was willing to show him another library.

He frantically nodded. His hood started to slip a little, but he quickly fixed it with his hand.

"That sounds good," he said. "We can keep walking."

"Sure," said Harry, giving him a genuine smile for once, "if it means so much, it's not really all that much trouble. Well...then, follow me. We need to get to the fourth floor and if we want to be discrete we'll have use the stairs." He took off at a brisk pace, hoping Mage would finally follow him this time. He had a sneaking suspicion he would. For some reason Harry couldn't quite understand, the library seemed to be quite important to Mage and his tone suggested he actually would follow him.

Harry took a second to smile to himself. As much as he wanted to try and get this over with quickly and blame Mage for ruining his chance to watch a movie, he realized none of that was exactly Mage's fault. Mage was someone lost in a strange world and even though it had been a truly long time since Harry found himself in a such a predicament, he knew what it felt like, especially when one wasn't an all powerful celestial. Harry shook his head at the memory. That was one thought he hadn't planned on having that day. Dang it, he was getting emotional of all things. He schooled his face to be an emotionless mask.

They had to figure out how to get Mage back, he'd take him to a library, it really would be nothing, the nearest large on was barely 250 light years away and perhaps it would make the day of this strange visitor from wherever Infernum was. He knew, he could have used a helping hand all those years ago. And there it was, back again. Ruthlessly squashing it all down, once again, he continued walking. This was becoming annoying...if things continued in this vein, he might even end up with a new friend and that would be truly infuriating. He was the Prince of Darkness for crying out loud. He did not make friends, especially not in one single day, especially a day as short as the ones on the planet he was currently on. Jennifer was going to have a field day with this one if he didn't take emotion out of this.

Harry was fast, but Mage somehow managed to keep up. He had a feeling it was because he always traveled by foot. Demons didn't have the luxury of buying carriages in Medium; he had to make due with what he could carry on himself.

Not that he had much to begin with.

When he peeked out from underneath his hood, he saw that Harry had an emotionless expression on his face. Mage's gaze dropped back down to the ground. He knew this wasn't meant to be an attempted friendship. Harry's expression proved it. Mage knew he should have been happy with that. It would make returning to Medium hurt less.

But why did his chest clench up at the thought of Harry just being a kind person and not wanting to be more than passing acquaintances?

Harry quickly made his way over to the bookshelf that he wanted and pulled down the book he knew should have the description of the portal thing. He couldn't remember exactly what is called, contrary to popular belief, he didn't remember everything...just enough things that it seemed like he remembered everything when it mattered.

He quickly skimmed to the page he wanted and opened it, taking a seat at one of the many desks in the library and gesturing for Mage to sit next to him. He pointed at the passage talking about the device.

Mage stared at the page. He hadn't sat down yet; he was too distracted by the book. Even before he realized something very important about the book, he would have probably remained standing.

"I can't read that-" Mage started to say. Before he could finish his comment, the page started to glow.

He stumbled back. What kind of Sin or Blessing was this? He had never seen something could impact books like this-

He could read it now.

Still a few extra inches away from the table, Mage continued to stare at the book with wide eyes underneath his hood.

Harry read aloud:

The Harc Doorway, rare form of naturally occuring portal, often found hidden away in tombs that have housed the dead for over a century. The Harc doorway is known for its tendency to pop up in worlds seemingly at random, and then go inactive for nearly a decade if it ever used. Its notorious for leaving curious life forms trapped in worlds not their own.

The only known method of reactivating a Harc Doorway is to speed up the charging process of its natural dimensional tunneling core and that can be achieved by a man made device known simply as the Bell. The Bell, so named due to the fact that it was disguised as a Bell by its owner during its highly secretive construction, is a small device that can act almost as a sort of supercharging reducing the decade it would normally take down to a few days or hours depending on the size of the Harc Doorway.

The device can be found...

Harry looked up to make sure Mage was following along and understanding at least some of it. Still carefully keeping the emotion off his face, he raised an eyebrow.

"You mind reading that last part, I need to punch in some numbers real quick," said Harry, turning to his wrist mounted communicator.

Not for the first time since ending up here, Mage could barely understand what exactly was being described. Despite that, he gave a little nod when Harry asked if he could finish reading it. He read it over a few more times to make sure he fully comprehended the text.

He looked back over at Harry.

As long as Harry didn't know how many times he had reread the section, he would be alright.

"It says the Bell is in the Oldin Forest," he said. "In some kind of clearing. It doesn't give more details than that, but..."

He got up and fixed his hood.

"I think that's the information we need," Mage guessed.

Harry nodded.

"That's plenty. Let's get going then. The sooner we get our hands on this the better."



"Welcome to the Oldin Forest," announce Harry, spreading his hands like he was just announcing the opening of Jurassic Park. That wasn't too far from the truth however, the area was notorious for housing creatures that were arguably far worse than the dinosaurs.

It wasn't the cheeriest of places. The entire area was shrouded in a permanent darkness thanks to the trees that essentially cut off all light which mean they could barely make out the night sky above them and the unnatural darkness that permeated the area hardly helped. The temperature was also several degrees below freezing, another one of the many things that made this forest what it was. The forest was also deathly quiet. None of the usual sounds you expect to hear in a forest at night could be heard. It was as if the world was on mute causing every word uttered there to echo hauntingly.

"So...the clearing isn't too far from here," Harry began.