Young Writers Society

Miles

I couldn't tell what this thing was. It was kind of the ironic, the fact that it was a bright light kind of like heaven, and this thing was much closer to hel-

I felt a pressure completely break my arm. Woh. That was totally not right. Literally, it wasn't my right arm, it was my left. Good thing, too, because I shot with my right. I pulled my gun out of my pocket, ignoring the pain the best I could, but I didn't know where to shoot for fear of hitting someone else. Great.

Jack

It was brighter than those annoying penlights doctors insisted on shoving in your eyes. Hell, it was brighter than the sun as far as I was concerned. The thing that burst up out of the floor was blinding to even normal human eyes that looked at it for more than a split second. My heightened senses amplified the light times about a hundred, and a low cry of pain and surprise escaped from my mouth before I could stop it.

I heard shouts, mainly consisting of 'What the...' and 'Shoot it!' though no shots rang out in the air. I fumbled blindly for the gun at my side and after a few tense seconds I located it and pulled it out, holding it before me even though I didn't dare open my eyes. To do so now would almost assuredly cause blindness, possibly forever.

Instead, I waited and hoped that someone else knew that they were doing.


Quinn (look on the Discussion Thread for her profile)

The room erupted into chaos. My team members were yelling and screaming at each other to shoot the monster, but no one could look long enough to get a clear shot. The creature - whatever it was - shrieked and growled with low guttural sounds, and I senses its presence growing closer.

A talon scraped against my skin, drawing pencil lines of crimson down my arm. I jerked away with a startled shout and carefully kept my eyes averted, trying to determine where exactly it was and when it would attack again. A slight shifting of light to the left, out of the corner of my eye, told me that it was slowly circling us, watching almost hungrily. A shudder ran through my body. Being eaten was near the very bottom of my list of things to do.

But how were we supposed to fight something that we couldn't see?

Mikayla's heart shot up into her throat. The talons scraped up her left arm; she screamed and growled obscenities at the thing. She backed into a corner, the light blinding her. It swept past her again and she swatted at it with her katana. How could they destroy something they couldn't see? she asked herself. The blood from the wounds on her arm crept down her arm, and she pulled off her glove with a growl. She ripped a torniquet from her shirt and quickly tied the wound off. She pulled off her other glove, cursing the thing -
Gloves. Dark, black gloves.
Mikayla worked quickly, tying the middle fingers of the gloves together and stretching the rest of them around her head, tying them there. Then she hefted her katana, her arms complaining at the inadiquate strength of her left arm, and rushed at the animal. Only some of the light escaped to her eyes, not enough to blind her but enough to see by. She bellowed a battle scream and rushed at the animal. It turned towards her, or what Mikayla took as turning. She struck at it again and again with the sword, and it too screamed; black liquid burst out of the brightness and hit the floor. She struck again, this time for the top of the thing, and then for the bottom. The battle seemed to go on for ages, just Mikayla hitting at the thing with only an approximate direction of where the thing was. At last, letting out another scream, she shoved the katana through the thing.
And it fell, blackness pattering to the ground.
Mikayla pulled the gloves off from over her head and looked down. At her feet was a little boy, mismatched claws of different animals sown onto his fingers, his eyes sown shut and a great big hole where his heart used to be. There were slashes all over his body from where Mikayla had battled him, or rather his body. There were runes on the back of his hands, feet and neck.
Mikayla felt sick.
The boy's cracked open with a noise like a gunshot and Mikayla was all at once struck with light ten times the brilliance of the sun. She screamed and covered her eyes, stumbling back. Her eyes streamed tears and she looked through her fingers one last time to see the boy's eyes darkening, no longer brilliant, and slowly close. She fainted and fell back onto the floor.

When she woke up, there was nothing but blackness although her eyes were open. But no, in the darkness there were little lights, and she could see an aura around what seemed to be the boy's body on the floor a little way away. Around her people gasped as she opened her eyes. They must be the little lights, Mikayla supposed, each a different colour and some bigger than others. She held her hand up; it hit something, and she rested her palm on it, feeling whatever or whoever it was tense. Spiky growth and the shape of a chin. She felt her way up the face, with her thumbs finding the eyes and sending her hands out towards the ears.
"Guys... guys." she whispered. "I'm blind."

By the time I'd gotten over my initial shock, scrabbled around for my headband in the darkness of eyelids squeezed shut and gotten up again, the battle was over. A final flash flared up after the all-consuming glare died down, but that was definitely the dying spark. The enemy...?
...Oh...peanut brittle.
We killed a kid! Or did we? Maybe it was that sword girl, where was she...
I searched around with my eyes, and then, frustrated, switch to a consciousness search. Ah, there she was, half-blinded, shocked and wounded, but she seemed alright. Most of the others, after rubbing their eyes, stood up, and I could hear thought complaints.
But the kid...
Some psycho had stitched all kinds of junk to his body, hands and...eyes. I looked away, swallowing, but forced my mind to envelope his.
"He's dead," I said, feeling the emptiness of his mind, the hollow feeling of a conscious-less brain. "Somebody just planted him here for-"
I never finished my sentence. Another blinding flash of light flared from the boy's. And then another and another, all while we reeled away, covering our eyes and striking out madly.
It...it couldn't be. He was dead! I read his mind myself, there was no way his consciousness...

And then I remembered that brains were nothing to zombies.
But was he a zombie? Or was his soul captured? It hardly would seem important as we strove for our lives yet again, but it was all I could think of as crawled to safety.

Quinn

I winced and shut my eyes forcefully as the creature flared brighter than ever before. But then the light dimmed, so much so that I deemed it safe to risk a glance. I instantly regretted my decision.

It was a kid, no more than ten years old. His eyes were sewn shut and his hands had been replaced by animal claws. A gaping hole stood out on his chest where his heart should have been, and dirt and darkness - blood perhaps, if he was still capable of bleeding - smeared across his skin in a grotesque mask.

Nicarga seemed to recognize him a second before I did.

"Lethero," she called out in a horrified whisper. "It's him. The child from the vision."

I locked my knees to keep from falling as my legs suddenly turned into something with the consistency of jello. I swayed on the spot, staring down at the kid with eyes wide in disbelief.

"Aaron?"

I felt nearly all eyes swivel towards me as I took a cautious step forward, calling out his name again. Someone's voice rang out through the stillness. "He's dead". Then it hit me, why this place had felt so familiar ever since arriving in New Mexico. It was the place. The one place I had worked so hard to forget. And now, in front of me, was the child that I had worked so hard to avenge.

"Aaron!" I cried, stumbling forward just as his eyes shot open. The girl standing over him screamed as light poured from the holes where his eyes should have been. She clutched at her own eyes and crumpled to the ground only a few feet from where the child was slowly sitting up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone dart forward and take the girl under her arms and drag her back, out of the path of potential danger.

"Quinn, get back!" I heard Lethero bark from somewhere behind me, but the words didn't register in my mind. The only thing I could think of was the child before me, wobbling to his feet and shooting out pulsing rays of light. Lethero called out again, but this time words didn't reach me, only sound.

Then the light was gone. I blinked in confusion at the hole in the floor where the thing - my brother - had suddenly vanished. Light receded into the tunnel that seemed to stretch on for miles, and only then did I allow myself to fall to my knees.

Miles

Ah, crud. We had just killed Quinn's brother.

It wasn't her brother, a small voice in my head said. It was her brothers dead body being used for something decietful.

Of course I didn't listen to it. I barely ever listened to living people, much less voices in my head. I wanted to comfort Quinn, but I wasn't that guy. I wasn't the guy who could comfort someone and tell them it was alright. And I doubted anything would help her right now.

I felt like patting her on the shoulder but that wasn't exactly a good plan, and anyway, she was to my left and like I said, my left arm was totally not in that kind of condition.

I was just making excuses. I didn't want to intrude on her pain, and inside I knew it.

I was such a coward.

Mikayla felt her way back against the wall, and shakily stood up. She sent her arms around, feeling for something, anything. She took a step forwards and fear shot up her throat - what if she stood on something, fell into something? She brought out her naginata and used it as a cane, sweeping it in front of her and wincing at the thought of what this was doing to the weapon. She took a few steps, feeling with her naginata. The naginata she'd kiled her sister and father with was being used to help her see.
She stretched her neck, just as something to do to stop the tears. One of the sparks near her flared, a green one. Must be a telepathic, she thought, seeing into her mind. She boil with anger, and imagined her swinging the flat of her naginata blade towards whoever it was. She thought they backed off.
Could see see outside her normal body, she thought? She sat carefully and tried it.
She gasped.
She could still see when doing an Astral Projection! Because her spirit body didn't have the same eyes as her normal body. Wait - she could see Quinn crouching beside the body of the boy.
Her brother. As Mikayla went forwards, she looked at her face. Stricken. Remembering.
Mikayla fell back into her own body and located Quinn's spark. She got up and continued forwards to fall at her side.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry that something like this happened to someone I'm sure was one of the best of people."

Quinn

I looked over at the girl who had fallen beside me. It was the same one whom I had seen attacking the creature that was Aaron-but-not-Aaron, and who had crumpled once his eyes opened. Her words broke through the numbing mental barrier in my mind, battering against my already cracked self-control.

"I'm sorry," she said, eyes wandering sightlessly. Only then did I realize she was blind - most likely a result of staring into the halo of light that had surrounded the creature. "I'm sorry that something like this happened to someone I'm sure was one of the best of people."

I smiled sadly, shaking my head before realizing that it was a useless gesture since she couldn't see it. "Don't be," I said quietly. "He died nearly ten years ago. What just attacked us..." I paused and drew in a breath, my eyes flickering over to the hole in the floor where my not-brother had disappeared. "That thing wasn't him."

I stood and reached over, grasping the girl's hand and helping her to her feet. Turning, I regarded the rest of the group, my gaze finally coming to rest on Lethero.

"Sir, with your permission, I'd very much like to get this mission over with. And if I had to guess, I'd say that our guy is down there," I said, pointing to the hole in the floor.

Jack

And I thought the crow demon was bad?

Talk about a harsh reality check. Shesh. This wasn't another of those pansy training missions we were sent on in the first few weeks with APOSF so that the higher-ups could assess us and appropriately place us in our groups. This was the real shit. This was dangerous, as the numerous cuts and scrapes we all carried and Mikayla's new condition so accurately demonstrated. This was potentially deadly.

I mean, Quinn's long dead brother had somehow magically appeared out of the freaking floor. And on top of that, the kid/demon/thing had animal claws for fingers and blinding light oozing out of every pore. It had attacked us with the clear purpose of killing us, or at least injuring severely. My eyes still stung from the harsh light and my arm had a few new lines of crimson trickling towards my hand, coming from a cut near my shoulder. The pain was bearable, but it would've been an understatement to say that it hurt.

Quinn spoke, asking Lethero, in somewhat nicer terms, that we get this over with and get the hell out of this place. Murmurs of agreement crept through our group and a few uneasy glances were cast towards the newly-appeared hole that Quinn's not-brother had disappeared down into.

I stepped forward and offered my arm to Mikayla, seeing as she was using her naginata to feel her way around. I didn't say anything, waiting for the orders to move.

"Thank you," Mikayla said to Jack. She looked at his spark; it was green. She wondered what made the colours different.
"What's your favourite colour?" she asked.
"What?" Jack asked, caught off-guard.
Mikayla frowned. "Never mind," she said. It wouldn't be that. She raised her voice. "Lethero, sir, I can still see when doing an astral projection, and I can see the sparks of people. I can see deamons, I can still fight." Her voice was desperate at the end. She tripped up a little, but righted herself. "Sorry," she apologized to Jack.
"Really?" Lethero said. Mikayla turned her head to find where his voice was, but couldn't find his spark amoung so many.
"Yes, sir." she said. "Let one of the telepathers look inside my head, I'm telling the truth -"
"I believe you," Lethero said, and Mikayla relaxed.
Only to tense again.
Huge eyes blocked everything, outlined in sparks. Everything else was black. She screamed as it dug into her, and it backed away, covering its ears. Behind the spark outline there was a huge whirlpool, a huge whirlpool of every colour spinning and fizzing. Mikayla collapsed, and everything went black again.

Another future... the creature was in front of her, but the others were ripping it apart. She saw a purple spark rush into it and kill it, and a bright red something dropped off a dark red spark, which was murmering something. There was a flash, and there was the whirlpool, spinning around. And then it ended.

"Damn," Mikayla whispered when she was out of the vision.

**Gah, having a life really sucks. >.< What's going on?**

(The person you're protecting, me, is blind, we're under a hut and we're about to find a portal and probably get attacked by deamons. ... that sounds weird >.>)

Lethero

The team arrived at the portal, at least, they thought it was the portal. It looked like an ordinary door that led into the rock wall. In front of it was the altar, stained black from blood. Lethero watched as Nicarga laid her hand on one of the large black stains on the altar.

"Many lives were lost here," Nicarga said, her eyes glowing a dark red. "It seems that regular sacrifices are needed to keep it open." She took her hand away, letting her eyes fade back to normal. "Wherever that door leads to, it's not good."

"Are you able to cast your Astral Projection beyond the door?" Lethero asked Wright.

"Let me see," Wright replied, suddenly going limp in Jack's arms. A few seconds latter she returned to her body and said, "Nope. There's a barrier there blocking me from entering."

"Well," Lethero said, stepping up to the door, "there's only one way to find out." He turned the know and walked through the door.

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Nicarga

Nicarga followed right behind Lethero through the door and left the cave . . . stepping out onto an ordinary city street. The entire team followed them through, all looking surprised.

The city they walked into looked perfectly normal. There were streets, cars, buildings: for all they knew they could've stepped into New York, except for one minor detail. There was no people. Absolutely no one, except for the team.

"Where are we?" someone finally asked.

Miles

"Where are we?" I asked. No one replied, and I corrected myself contritely. "Sorry, where the hell are we?"

"I... have no idea," someone said. I didn't know everyone in the group yet- heck, I only knew a couple of people's last names.

"Wonderful," I said. "Well, if anyone would like to pipe up a suggestion, that'd be great.

Jack

This was...strange weird creepy confusing. To say the least.

Big cities normally meant lots of people, right? Not deserted ghost town. It looked like what I would have imagined New York to look like after a plague or something - everything still in place except for its inhabitants. Not a soul was in sight and there was no sound other than a chilling whistle as the wind blew through the streets. Newspapers rustled and skipped across the asphalt, reminding me eerily of the tumbleweeds you usually see in those old western movies in, well, a ghost town.

"Wonderful," Miles was saying, and I drew myself back to the conversation at hand. "Well if anyone would like to pipe up with a suggestion, that'd be great."

"Doesn't really seem like what I would picture hell to look like," I muttered. "Alternate universe, maybe? Parallel dimension? Demon realm? Some strange city somewhere in the world that everyone conveniently forgot about?"

"Wherever we are, everyone needs to keep alert. Whoever made this portal made it for a reason; it has to lead somewhere important and probably somewhere where we're not welcome to be snooping around," Lethero said, eyes narrowed as he took in our surroundings.

I focused on sight, sound, and smell and studied the immediate area around us as well. Nothing was amiss, as far as I could tell. It had the same smells as a normal city - gasoline and oil, metal, exhaust fumes, et cetera. There were no other sounds except the wind, and nothing to see except for a few cars parked along the street, overshadowed by the large buildings looming overhead.

"Can you see anything?" I asked Mikayla, who was holding onto my arm tightly.

Quinn

This place gave me the chills. Big cities like this weren't just abandoned.

Everyone began to fan out slowly, sweeping along the street but keeping close enough together to be able to help should anything dangerous come along. Jack and Mikayla seemed to hesitate, speaking quietly to one another before following along behind. We made it to a four-way intersection before we stopped again, looking down each street cautiously. They all looked the same: like a normal city, minus the people.

I bent down and picked up a newspaper page that blew against my foot. I scanned it quickly before glancing up at the top, to where the date was printed.

"Sir?" I said, edging up next to Lethero. He cast me a questioning glance. "Look at the date on this. Isn't that...?"

Saphire
I felt a prickle of unease across my scalp. This was wrong a big city like this abandoned? This was wrong. I crossed my arms and shivered slightly. It was like any other city except there were no people. "Sir?" Quinn asked Lethero. He looked at him questioningly. "Look at the date on this. Isn't that...?" Lethero glanced at the newspaper page and his eyes widened in surprise and shock.