Young Writers Society

Luke apprehensively looked over the shoulder of Joe as he took down another monster. "So... is there anything I can do to help?"

Magestorrow Rian:

He wanted to hate her.

He wanted to hate Celina for taking the one person left in his life that cared about him; the one last person who he considered close to him. But then, when he opened his mouth to yell at how he would always hate her, the words wouldn't come.

When he saw the tears starting to slide down her face as she stared at Soul's lifeless body, and when he saw how she didn't try to wipe the new ones away, he realized he couldn't hate her. It hadn't been her fault. She had gone berserk, and she hadn't been the one to kill Soul.

If anything, it had been him. It had been him trying to play the hero, him trying to help out and possibly save the day. He shouldn't have tried playing the role of an adult. He was just a kid. A powerless, weak kid who could never save the ones he cared about. He should have been the body on the ground, not Soul.

Suddenly, someone spoke. "Why are you apologizing?"

Mage froze. He had to be hearing things. The trauma of Soul's death was making him delusional; there was no way that he could have heard that voice speak those words.

When no one said anything, the voice repeated the question. The teenage, masculine voice. "Why are you apologizing?"

A scream left his lips when Soul sat up. He scrambled away from his friend. Though he wanted Soul to live, he knew it was impossible. There was no way he could have survived his wounds.

"I'm the idiot who jumped in the way of your attack," Soul Error Arwitch informed the shocked Celina. "Not you. And you weren't in control, right?"

Celina managed to nod.

"Don't blame yourself, then." He glanced at Mage before his gaze returned to the Mythopal. "I probably could have pushed him out of the way, now that I think about it." He gave a nervous laugh. "Zogin's right when she says I'm an idiot."

Mage got to his feet. With shaking hands, he withdrew his sword and pointed the tip at Soul. "You should be dead," he whispered. "You should have died from her attack!"

Soul got to his feet as well. Mage had always hated how small he was compared to his friend; now he hated it even more. He towered over the trembling demon. Soul gently pushed the sword out of his sweaty hands, and hugged him.

And then the tears fell down harder than before.

"I thought I had lost you too!" Mage yelled. He didn't care that everyone else was listening, didn't care that he wasn't acting the age he was supposed to. All that mattered was Soul's comforting embrace, and the realization that everything was alright. He sobbed into the cold metal armor.

"I'm sorry," Soul apologized softly. "I'm really sorry. I'm really really sorry for scaring you like that, and I'm really really sorry for lying to you..."

"Lying?"

Soul's voice was louder when he spoke again, this time addressing not just Mage, but the entire assembled group. "I lied to everyone. I couldn't help it. I never thought a situation like this would happen, and I had promised to only tell the truth in the right situation." He took a deep breath. "I'm not human. I'm an automaton. The only way I can be 'killed' is if my creator or current user dies."

@Mage

*ANGRILY HONKS*

Achernar:

The thoughts in his head were a whirl. In the space of less than a minute, he'd panicked, stole the power from somebody he didn't know, made that person pass out, seen somebody stabbed with a magic he'd never even believed possible, and watched as the monster who did it reverted to a strange girl. In the last case, the long-eared girl was now crying and asking for forgiveness in what seemed to be a completely legitimate voice and demeanor, supported by another individual that bound into the scene.

And, of course, he was pointing the lightning now crackling in massive amounts in his fingers at her, his ears drowned by the constant cries for the man in the armor suit to wake up. Achernar doubted this would happen, which was perhaps the worst fact of all.

His senses were overwhelmed. Achernar had never taken the prospect of death lightly, particularly in an army where so many lives were thrown about, but seeing the possible death of somebody innocent by someone else innocent was too much to handle. Between the screaming, crying, darkness, and the fear creeping all about them, it was a perfectly disastrous, and incomprehensible, situation. It took him a couple of seconds to register that he was, in fact, pouring the majority of his available energy into a singular attack that he had no more motivation to use, and he had no idea what he was going to do with it.

"Oh," he whispered, staring wide-eyed at his hands in horror. "Oh my."

Having no other choice, Achernar began to sprint as fast as his short legs could take him, feeling the power within him growing ever stronger and more vicious, resisting harder his urges to hide it. The air crackled with energy in a charged frenzy the farther he proceeded into the depths of the forest. He ignored the sounds of surprise, and perhaps the feet trampling the ground behind him. Achernar ignored the howls and growls and strange noises of the local wildlife. A frenzied panic in his eyes, he had to remove what strength he did have, and do so quickly.

When he could finally take no more, he collapsed to his knees in front of an empty, grassy clearing, surrounded by tall trees. Shouting, staring at the sky, Achernar conjured his energy to release it. The air around him exploded in a burst of light and heat, lightning shooting from all about him into the surrounding landscape. Bark and wood flew off the nearest trees, and some of the tallest even burst into flames, providing an eerie, but beautiful, illumination in the midst of the island. Whatever was in the vicinity fled, screaming and running away frantically. Even the toughest of monsters dared not go near.

Achernar, outfit lightly singed, collapsed and passed out.

Schadel Kueper:

Upon coming to the realization that she wasn't the only one left behind, a grin spread across her face. "Please protect this boy for me," she told the Mythopal (Joe, was it?)

"Where are you going?" the human boy questioned.

She pointed towards the cave. "I'm going there. To fight. I can't just stand by while people are possibly dying." Without giving either of the two a chance to respond, she ran off.

She couldn't lose the people in the cave. Instinctively, she reached her hand into her shirt and withdrew Adam's cross. She fingered it as she ran in an attempt to reassure herself that everything would be alright. But the thought of Adam made her heart ache, and made her worry grow into a horrible fear that she would be faced with seeing the ghosts of whoever died in the battle against Celina.

But then, the yelling and the magic blasts stopped. Had Celina already been defeated? Schadel skid to a halt as what appeared to be an enormous strike of lightning filled a nearby clearing. She could smell smoke - some of the tallest trees surrounding the clearing were on fire.

There was no doubting it; that hadn't been a normal lightning bolt. She made a split second decision and reverted to her original form before taking on the form of the young woman the ones in the cave knew her best by.

She entered the clearing to see someone laying unconscious on the grass, their outfit lightly singed. Upon further inspection, she realized she was staring at a child.

She had packed smelling salts that morning before she left with the knowledge that they might come in handy (she liked to be prepared). Schadel reached into her bag to grab them, only to realize she had left her bag back up in the cave.

A German swear escaped her lips. Though Adam hadn't been one for swearing, he had been quite fond of the word when she was around.

It appeared she would have to make do with waking him up the normal way. She roughly shook his shoulders (Blanx was a heavy sleeper. It was an art she had perfected when she had first come to live with him.) several times before he seemed to be regaining consciousness.

He slowly opened his eyes.

"Hi," she kindly said. "My name is Schadel Kueper. I'm an amateur detective. If you don't mind me asking, what exactly happened? I saw the lightning, and I know it's not normal." She grinned. "I'm guessing you don't come from Earth. I don't know anyone who can do magic like that, but we do have magic. I can see ghosts, for example." When he stared at her, she realized she had been rambling (again). "Okay, I'm getting a little off topic. Let's start with something simple: What's your name, what are you, and what just happened?"

Luke shuffled nervously in the sand. Nearly all the monsters were defeated now, and now one of the people protecting him were long gone. Luke hated this feeling. Feeling like he was some little child to protect from scary monsters on the island. He wanted to stop it.

Joe beat the last monster upon the head, then turned around. He was absolutely covered with blood.

"I need to go there." Luke decided, staring determinedly at the cave.

Joe Collins

"Well, that's the last one!" Joe said with relief and turned to face Luke. "Sorry for not answering your question earlier, I was a little distracted because of these beasts."
"That's fine," Luke replied staring at the cave.
Joe was covered in sticky red blood and that didn't make him comfortable at all. "Ugh...now I need a good shower, but first, let's go and check whether everyone's okay."

He tried to sound calm, but his heart skipped as he remembered Celina.
"Come on!" He urged taking quick steps towards the cave.

Achernar:

The boy blinked. Black spots danced in front of his vision, and being shaken in order to wake him up made him feel slightly dizzy. On top of the fact he was sitting in front of somebody he had never seen before, while the trees above his head continued to burn incessantly, spreading ashes onto the ground and noxious smoke into his nostrils. Nothing about his surroundings made sense, and it took almost a minute to realize the girl was asking who he was and what had happened.

But she seemed trustworthy, didn't she? The odds were likely that he could've burned in the forest had she not come, and he was thankful for that. Besides, she said she was an amateur detective - even if she didn't understand the present situation, hopefully explaining it would allow her to come to more sensible conclusions than he could.

"I'm...Achernar," he began in a shaky voice, not out of fear, but out of the absurdity of his own situation. The world started to come into focus the more he continued, however, and his next words had hints of assurance and the confidence that his memories were correct. "And I'm not human...not exactly. It's hard to explain really. I can...turn into a snake, basically. Or...I'm a snake that can turn into a human."

He tried to stand up. Nausea struck him, the ground in front of him seemingly wobbling as he made to take a few small, anxious steps. He fell to his knees, coughing while he continued. "You're right - I'm not from Earth, wherever that place is. Magic is...fairly common where I come from, but it's something that you have to spend a lot of time to use properly, and you have to be talented. I am, I'm told, good at it, even though I'm young? But how do you see ghosts where you come from?"

Achernar felt a hand on his shoulder, and breathe a sigh of relief as Schadel helped lift him up onto his feet, before the two began to make their way towards the green depths of the dark forest, the flickering shadows of burning trees illuminating their shadows. "What you saw," said Achernar, still coughing, "Was me using too much power. Magic is based on the energy within everyone. It can also be borrowed from other people, but that's not easy to do, and more likely to destroy things. I took some energy from a friend...and tried to use my own...against the green monster that showed up at the cave. But she stopped fighting and gave up. All the energy I had...wasn't going to go away, not when it was so close to being released...so I had to run away and release it."

"I feel better now," he concluded with more confidence, walking a few steps ahead to prove it. Turning around, smiling, Achernar seemed to be rapidly returning to his state of ease, the nausea fading away as they distanced themselves from the fire. "Should we head back to the cave? There's still an injured man there."

Schadel Kueper:

"I know about Faustus," she said, falling into step beside Archernar. "I was in the cave earlier." She stared at the ground. She would have to come up with some sort explanation for her sudden disappearance; not just to sate Archernar's curiosity, but to also not seem like a jerk to the group in the cave. "I was looking for food," she lied. "I wasn't able to find any, though. I mean, we have some that I had with me before I ended up here - it's a bag full of dead bread. Dead bread tastes good, but it's not the most filling and there's too many of us to get good sized portions."

They were getting closer to the cave, and Schadel was dreading the confrontation with everyone else. "To answer your earlier question about being able to see ghosts...well, that's complicated." Especially since I'm pretending to be a human... "It's hereditary. Genetics and things like that. I'm not sure how the first people who could see ghosts got the ability to do that, but that's how it is now."

She hated lying. It made her feel horrible, like she has contracted some sickness she couldn't get rid off. She knew that if she ever wanted to follow in Blanx's footsteps and open her own business among the humans, lying would become a necessary part of her life.

But she wasn't sure if she could ever do what Blanx had done nearly a hundred years before if it meant she had lie her way through life.

Soul Error Arwitch:

He really hated being the center of attention. Zogin seemed to thrive when the focus was on her, shining as brightly as the sun that had set. On the other hand, he didn't know what to do when a large group of people decided he was interesting enough to stare at.

He gulped.

"You can't be an automaton!" Mage exclaimed. He didn't sound mad at him. That was a major relief. He had been worried that Mage would hate him for lying about the truth the entire time they had known each other. "From what I heard, automatons are magical weapons or vessels for the creator/user's soul. You can't be an automaton. You have feelings, and Zogin's your creator, right?" Soul nodded. "She's not controlling your actions. Plus, you have Sin of your own."

"There's exceptions," Soul replied. He and Zogin were equally clueless about why he was different. Why he was more human than any other automaton. He removed his helmet for proof. He lightly punched his face with his hand. There was the sound of metal hitting metal. "See?"

After a moment of hesitation, Mage nodded. Soul's gaze traveled around the room as he put his helmet back on. He stared at the unconscious man. "Is he wounded?"

The strange dragon-human hybrid he had fought with spoke up, "He is. Magestorrow stayed behind to guard him while we went off to fight. I think he did good job, seeing that Faustus is just asleep."

Underneath his helmet, Soul smiled when he looked at his friend's face. He was blushing in embarrassment in response to recieving the praise. "I didn't do much," he muttered. It was moments like these that Soul saw how obvious it was that Mage was just a kid.

Then again, he shouldn't be talking. They were almost the exact same age.

He quickly spotted the man's leg injury. He sat down next to the unconscious man. His eyes were closed, so making eye contact was out. He could hold the man's hands, he guessed, but the best option was the most awkward one. "I'm going to heal him," he told the group behind him.

Almost hesitantly, he lifted the man up and hugged him.
He could feel the Sin begin to flow through him from where a human's heart would be. He channeled it to his hands, and, still holding him close, began to let it envelop the injured man's body.

"It feels warm," the girl standing next to Celina said.

Celina gave a content grin. "It gives me energy I didn't realize I was missing!"

It would only be a minute or two until he finished healing the man.

Joe started to run towards the cave. Luke suddenly stood, and ran clumsily after him, his feet spraying sand as he slowly ran forward. "Wait!" He gasped, Joe speeding in front of him. "I have tiny legs!"

Julia Roberts:

The sun was just beginning to rise. Its bright crimson began to illuminate the navy blue sky, and reflected off the white-capped waves. The image almost looked like a post card, except for the thing crawling out of the ocean.

A girl who looked to be in her early teens clawed her way out of the water, onto the sugar-like sand. Her waterlogged clothing weighed her down, making the climb seem twice as difficult. Her wild curly hair was covered in sand, and she had large purple bags under her eyes.

She collapsed onto the beach, snoring. The cold water reached up, and swept over her toes. She showed no signs of waking up any time soon. She lay there, sleeping, utterly exhausted.

Joe Collins

Joe slowed down and looked over his shoulder, "Um, sorry Luke, I'm just used to running at this speed."

He halted and waited until Luke caught up. While waiting, his gaze turned towards two people walking towards the cave.
Joe was pretty sure that he'd never seen them before. One of them was clearly a boy and the other one seemed to be a teenage girl.

Why were they heading towards the cave? Who were they? Joe questioned himself as he took a few slow steps towards them.
"Luke, stay behind me.We don't know who they are, but I think they won't cause us any harm"He said in a low tone.
Joe met many new people in this island, and almost all of them turned out to be friends. And he hoped these two would be the same.

"Hello, there!" He said waving at them, and forcing a smile.

@writerkitty are those your characters?

Evion Fevalda:

His dreams were peaceful. He could tell because his uncle didn't play a role in any of them.

They were quiet, tranquil, and he spent his time within them relaxing, his unconscious mind reminding him that what he'd experienced before had obviously been some kind of nightmare. That he was perfectly fine now, except for that strange rash on his leg that never seemed to go away now matter how much he rubbed it, shuffled under the tree he was sitting beneath, or walked around by the clear lake that seemed to stretch infinitely around him.

After some time, he suddenly felt himself being pushed, forced to stand up. In the dreamscape, the air started acting a lot warmer, and so did he. It was a gentle, kind warmth, one that seemed to be inviting him to join the ranks of the awake with a renewed spirit and vigor, and he embraced it happily. For some reason, he could feel the rash gradually dissipating, watching as his imagination broke away from his subconscious mind and pulled him into reality in a complacent, dreamy manner.

Until, of course, he opened his eyes into the midst of blackness. Blinking ferociously, shaking away his dreams and pulling his senses together, it took a few seconds for him to realize that he was, quite literally, being hugged by somebody in a giant suit of armor.

If this was his uncle, Evion would've likely started using his fists, screaming in anger, or otherwise acting brash and overtly aggressive for no clear reason. But he was not his uncle, who had te mindset of attacking first and asking questions later, and he chastised himself for the prospect even entering his mind for a few brief seconds. Thus, with no other option, he did what he always did - scream in fear.

That was stifled after a few seconds, however, by the realization that the injury on his leg had vanished.

Surprised by Evion's outburst, the man in the suit of armor let him go, and Evion slumped onto the ground. Residual warmth, which he'd assumed was part of his dream, but now surmised had come from the individual hugging him, coursed through his veins and body, particularly around the spot where the bleeding wound had formerly been. Rubbing it lightly, the soldier found that what had once been the injury was now perfectly normal once again, untouched and unharmed. He breathed a sigh of relief - whoever this person was, they were obviously gifted at healing magic, although certainly not a kind he'd ever known before. While that might have scared him in other circumstances, he was happy to be alive, and happy to feel perfectly fine for a change, and perhaps even better than that, thanks to the warmth within him.

Then came a sigh of frustration. This appeared to be the healer everyone had talked about. He was not trapped in some kind of a nightmare; this was wholly, completely, real. However, it was always good to check.

Evion stood up, picking up his helmet from off the ground and sticking it squarely on his head. "Thanks...?" he said, warily. He didn't have any weapons on hand in case things turned out hostile, though he severely doubted they would, but he did have his own strength and abilities. "Might I ask who you are?"