Young Writers Society

He was silent for a minute.

Then he placed his book on the left arm of his chair, gaze following Jerica's as he tried to see what she was looking at.

"...Tieth says it was because I trespassed," Aska replied. He pushed aside the homey feeling the castle had always had to him - it was difficult to imagine it once being a place that was forbidden to him. "I...I heard there was a princess trapped in the castle and wanted to rescue her. But the only person here was Tieth, so she turned me into a suit of armor..."

His gaze fell down to his lap. Clenching his hands together, he tried not think about how lonely it had been before Nen had shown up. How long it had been since he was first cursed.

"The curse made me lose my memories," Aska said. "I only know what Tieth told me..."

"And what'd she tell you?" She raised her head to look over at him, before remembering that he didn't have facial expressions to read. But his body language -- armor language? -- was still loud and clear.

He gave a tiny but strong shake of his head.

"That's all she told me," he whispered, "besides my name."

Then he fell back into silence, desperately wishing that Nen would be back with snacks soon - even though he couldn't eat them.

"Why would she tell you she cursed you?" She kicked her boots off and pulled her feet up onto the seat so that she could sit cross-legged. She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fist. "Why not pretend she's the good guy in all of this?"

Aska was silent.

Those were questions he had asked himself many times before. He couldn't ever come up with the answers. He tried so, so hard to. He tried thinking of what it was like to be Tieth - to be a dragon that would curse someone and then leave them to do whatever dragons did most of the time. But Tieth was mysterious and concise, so she never really hinted at what she usually did.

"I don't know," he whispered.

He looked up.

Jerica had kicked her shoes off. The shoes hadn't hit the table in between their chairs, but the table seemed annoyed. Aska could just feel it. He shifted a little in his own seat, nervously glancing between Jerica and the table. He wasn't sure who's wrath he was more afraid of.

"...Um," he started, "you might want to be careful with the furniture."

"What's it going to do, curse me?" Jerica asked sarcastically, rolling her eyes.

Her eyes landed on the page in front of her, and she suddenly straightened. That symbol. She'd seen it before. She crawled out of the chair, onto her hands and knees on the floor, examining the symbol a bit more.

It was a flowery rune that she'd ignored the first time she'd seen it. There was a large 'V' with an '82' subscript -- around which was a scrawled decoration. There was a drawn ribbon extending from it, suddenly ending in a jagged edge on the upper left and lower right of the icon.

She hastily grabbed the other book she'd seen it in and flipped it open to the right page. This one had an 'S' with a subscript '4' drawn in it -- and the ribbon started in the lower right corner and looped around the left side then ended in the top right corner.

She arranged the books so that the ribbons lined up, now the S4 on top of the V82. There was... a third one. She was almost certain she'd passively seen it in another book as well. She looked up at Aska in desperation:


She tapped the symbol rapidly. "Find the other book that has this symbol."

He stared at the symbol.

He knew that symbol. He didn't usually read the books on different spells. They never mentioned how to break Nen's curse. They didn't mention how to break his either, but he never...

He pushed the thought away.

"I...I've seen that before," he whispered. He got to his feet. He didn't know why he was so sure of where the symbol was, but it only took him a minute to get it and bring it back. On his first try, he flipped it open to just the right page.

He placed the book beside the two that Jerica had found.

The symbol was complete now.

But the pages didn't make any kind of sense. The books that Jerica had were stories on dragons and a beginner's guide to spellcasting. The symbol that he had found was in a chapter on how to run a castle.

So why was he so sure that it meant something?

He absentmindedly tapped his foot on the ground.

"I'm back-" Nen suddenly announced from nearby, only to fall silent when he saw what they were staring at. Out of the corner of his eye, Aska saw Nen put a wooden basket full of eclairs and cookies down on the table.

He peered down at the books.

"What's that?" he asked.

Aska shook his head.

"We don't know," he said. "Jerica found it-"

When he looked up, Nen was staring at him.

Aska froze. Whatever trance had fallen over him was gone - and the confidence it had brought, too. He stopped tapping his foot and went back to staring down at the book, armor shaking ever so slightly when he realized how off he had been acting a second ago. What had happened to him?

Nen sat down with his legs crossed.

"Maybe it's a code?" he guessed. "The pages look unrelated, but..."