Young Writers Society

Rayden gave up on trying to locate the pebble. That was Kiran's problem.

"Earth's got issues. Major issues," he said. He wondered how much he should reveal. Was the future even the same everywhere? Like, if multiple timelines and worlds were possible, then maybe multiverses were too. He tried to wrap his brain around that: that evrey time someone made a decision, a universe popped up where that someone took the opposite course of action.

Rayden very much wanted to just curl up on a moss root and sleep.

This was too much. He was ten years old again, out in the streets. Cold, and hungry - gods above he was hungry - and lost.

Except this time, he didn't feel very lonely.

Tiny consolation. He didn't even know if he could trust them.

Aegeas opened his mouth to answer Helenah, then paused. Lex had been to Fayne before. When? How? Why had nobody told him? To say nothing about Dana spending a little too much time staring out at the woods - she could spot Kendrik at this rate.

"Wait a minute, Lex," Aegeas said, getting a little closer to Dana. "You've gone to Fayne?"

Dara felt they had been walking for some length now, but it was difficult to tell when all the senseless arches and whatnot looked the same. The sun did seem slightly lower.

Occasionally Dara would catch the game pebble dancing through someone's hands, and she very loosely kept track of it. When it came her way again, she was ready this time, but not ready enough for the even louder clinking noise it made on her rings.

"Far out," Dara spoke, attempting to secure the pebble in her palms; not the most suitable accessories for catching, even if the rings did help her. She was determined to not let Kiran notice, although that seemed a far cry from probable now.

Beside her she heard Aegeas ask Lex a question.

Kiran heard the clinking of stone against metal and her head snapped around to check. There was Dara, looking innocent enough, but a quick glance showed her hands not open or fully visible.

She gestured at Dara, "Hands," she said, holding up her own hands to show her exactly what she expected. Most new players didn't get it right away, she figured she'd be courteous.

Admitting defeat, Dara unfurled her hands. Only now she realised, with substantial discomfort, that the pebble had a high chance of being unclean. Her appearance remained confident as she tossed it to Kiran, assuming that was the correct order of things.

Kiran caught the pebble with a triumphant smirk. She hadn't won a game of Suspicion since Nina had bribed her into cheating that time in the shop.

Kiran couldn't say she minded. Nina was very good at bribery.

"Alright, that's a round," Kiran said, feeling a pang in her chest at the thought of Nina, "If we're playing by the regular rules, Dana's it next. Unless you don't want to play another round?"

"I'm fine with it." Helenah said quickly. She was going to prove that she wasn't going to mess up this time. "Also, whoever knows, can you tell me how much longer? My leg's hurting..." she said, looking down at her poor leg.

Kiran startled, "Oh! Right, you're hurt." She rubbed the back of her neck, her blush blending in with the sunrise shades that her skin was currently in the process of adopting, "If you're, uh, still bleeding I can cauterize it for you? I mean, it'll hurt, and I wouldn't usually do anything unless it was really serious. It's, uh, not serious? Is it?"

She got the distinct impression she was making a fool of herself.

Oh, if Nina were here...

Kiran blushed harder.

If she were honest with herself, Nina would only make her embarrassment so much worse.

"It's probably not too bad, but I'll survive." Helenah chuckled. "It's just bleeding, is all. And it's just hurting, especially because of how much we've walked and - RUBY!"

Ruby was flying furiously from the direction the group was heading. Her pink wings shining from the sunlight. Ruby rested on Helenah's shoulder. Helenah stroked her head. "There there, where were you?"

"Helen, my love, there is something dangerous ahead. You must watch out." Ruby tweeted in her ear. With that she left Helenah with a puzzled expression.

"Guys? Ruby says 'there's something dangerous ahead'." she said, making quotation marks. "We should probably watch out." she warned.

Dara hadn't wanted to do this, not really, because her energy was still in the process of purifying the obsidian she had used before. However it seemed the friendlier action to offer help. If her brother had been here he would have encouraged it, and of course he would get in her head. Besides, there was no practical gain in Helenah possibly slowing the group down, especially if there was indeed something tedious ahead.

"My bloodstone can temporarily stop any bleeding, if that's part of the problem." Dara displayed her right hand.

Helenah smiled at her, "That'd be nice."

She was still thinking about what Ruby had said. Something dangerous? Like as in the weather? Or some creature? Or even worse, was it a dead end?

Apparently she was a crystal magic show now. Moving close to Helenah, Dara channeled into her bloodstone's growling vibration; it always reminded her of booming tribal drums and instinctive beasts. She directed its vibration to Helenah's leg, letting it enter her bloodstream and slow the flow where it bled outward. Slower, slower, slower... until it barely crept beneath her skin. When the task was done, Dara let her attention fade from the crystal, feeling significantly less pure herself.

Aegeas let out of a sigh of relief; Dana had looked away from the forest, thanks to the game and Helenah's injuries. On the other hand, it sounded like they were heading right for a dangerous situation, Helenah was still having trouble walking, and he didn't trust those objects in the distance.

"Should we get our weapons out?" the otter said, reaching for his scimitars. "How far ahead are we talking about?"

"I have been to Fayne," he confirmed. "It was a little while ago, but we accidentally ended up in a palace there."

He tuned out the chaos around him and looked ahead, trying to ignore his sense of worry about the danger was apparently ahead of them.

The shapes in the sky had grown increasingly larger the closer they got to their destination, but the tree cover above currently obscured them from view. He tried to catch a glimpse of them, peering up through the small breaks in the leaf cover.

None of this was successful.

But then he noticed that the river and the makeshift path they had created beside it opened up into something at the edge of the path. His footsteps were faster when he finally turned his attention to the others, and it was only a minute before they finally reached the end of the forest.

"Whoa," Lex managed to get out, his voice little more than a whisper of awe.

The ground before him was a mostly barren wasteland, covered in the occasional patch of grass in holes that were absolutely enormous - it was almost like a surface of a golf ball, but it was flat, brown and the holes were far larger. That on its own would have been strange, but it was what was floating above the holes that was the strangest of all.

There were trees.

Massive trees that could have even rivaled some of Earth's tallest ones. They floated above corresponding holes, dirt clumped around their routes. The more he stared at it, the more details that he noticed - like how the river they had been falling became an almost reverse waterfall, water going up towards the trees instead of down into the holes below. The water that spilled away from it formed little droplets of water suspended in the air.

Following a hunch, Lex leaned down, grabbed a stick, and threw it towards the ground a few feet away from the break in the treeline.

The stick floated.

Dara took back what she had said about this world being better than Earth. This. This was horrifying. So much chaos. It almost didn’t feel worth stepping any further. “Why,” was all she had to say, her mouth a straight line.