Young Writers Society

The woman awkwardly pulled away at this question. Maahes looked imploring between his friend and the ship's ghost; what had she just said? It must have been something to upset James. He had been doing so good this time around, too - Maahes hadn't expected there was anything that could achieve an effect like that.

Sune relaxed a little bit beside him, and color began to return to Runi's cheeks. It wasn't like they were dealing with a ghost who was intent on harming them, so why be afraid of her?

The woman a hand on her chest, looked rather proud and said something to James. Cue another frown immediately afterward as she stared down at her hands, followed by what Maahes was pretty sure was a groan from the way her expression changed. Her posture slumped, and she threw herself down on the ground beside one of the walls, continuing to stare dismally at a hand that she raised up.

She looked over the hand at James and sighed before saying something else.

While this later part had been going on, Sune had decided to check her form on the other planes. He doubted that she was a spirit like him and Maahes, but something was up with her and wanted to figure out what. He straightened a bit. Then he really focused, flipping through each plane in quick succession.

It was only after the woman had finished talking to James that he came to the final plane. And, once there, he immediately stiffened and stared at the ghost with wide, wide eyes.

"M-Maahes," he whispered, "there's nothing there! I-I can't see anything when I look through the planes!"

"What do you-" Maahes started to say. Then his own eyes widened, and he stumbled back into the wall behind him. He had come to the same discovery that his friend had - the woman grew more and more difficult to see, right up to the seventh plane. Once there, she was no longer sitting in front of them.

In fact, she was nowhere to be found.

"J-James?" Maahes hesitantly called out, not sure what would happen if he addressed this. "Remember how I can do that thing where I can see past illusions. S-Sune and I just checked."

He raised a shaking finger at the woman.

"And there's nothing there."

Taber stared out into space, having ignored the conversation around him. Sure, he picked up some details - something about dead people and reading lips - but the rest faded into the back of his mind as he scanned the stars.

Finally though, he realized he was in a place with other people who were probably wondering what he was doing. He turned around, eyes not focusing on anything and smile weak, and growled out something incomprehensible. After a couple seconds without a response, he blinked. His vision and smile instantly returned to normal.

"Oh!" Taber said. "I'm not there! Sorry about that, you guys!" He laughed briefly, before his eyes landed on the pale woman.

"Hello!" he continued. "I didn't notice you. I'm Taber - it's nice to meet you!" The wolf held out a hand.

James stared at the woman with an accusatory intensity until she answered, and as she continued to speak he looked gradually more and more unimpressed, or rather, just annoyed. He sighed when Maahes and Sune began to panic, and looked over at them.

"That's probably because they're the literal physical manifestation and personification of the intangible concept that is magic itself. But apparently, they're stuck somehow like this." He shrugged with a half-roll of his eyes. "However that works." He looked back at Magic, who was being greeted by the wolf-man.

"You wouldn't happen to know why we're here, would you? Is this just another thing we'll have to wait out?"

"Neat!" Taber said, hand still extended. "I can use magic, but you're the personification of magic, so I dunno how that works. I hope that's not weird, because I can stop using magic if that's the case?"

Ari took his hand and shook it boisterously, since it was still there, and no one else was. "Whoa are you like a really weird werewolf?" he asked, oblivious to how rude this could be.

Runi was trying to do her best to keep up with what was going on, honest. But it was a bit hard when there was something about people being able to see past illusions, and the ghost being the actual personification of magic. Was something like that even possible? Even more interesting was the reaction that Maahes and Sune had - she hadn't ever heard of a race that could do that, and was pretty sure the paladins didn't share that same ability. If they had, they would have noticed her watching some of their coalition shows, and things would have gotten tricky fast.

It looked like something was up here, and she was going to find out what.

In the meantime, however, she had a different thing to focus on: Magic. Who currently very, very sheepish as they started to open their mouth and reply to the question being asked. But then they suddenly up their hand and darted over to a small panel beside where Runi was standing - giving a little wave in the process, which Runi wasted no time in returning.

They stared at the panel for a moment, nodded to themselves, then turned right back around and pointed at Runi.

"Me?" she said.

Magic eagerly nodded.

"What do you need me to-"

They started to flicker out of view. Panic-stricken, they started to frantically gesture at a series of keys on the panel. Runi, guessing that they were trying to get her to hit them, did as requested.

And then the personification of magic was gone.

Just as she tried to figure out where they went, the wall right above the panel pulled away to reveal a screen. Maahes and Sune hesitantly joined her in front of it, only to jump back several feet in surprise when it suddenly turned on.

Magic was standing there on the screen.

"Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3," a voice said, coming out of the speakers. "Can you guys hear me? The hologram route wasn't working that well, so I thought I try this out instead."

"I'm not sure what that means," Taber said, pulled around slightly by the large man's hand. "But probably!" He was happy to find someone friendly and nice, so disagreeing with that man would be too rude.

Dante straightened a little at the voice, and turned to stare at the screen. She knew that the ghost had most likely been a hologram!

"We hear you loud and clear." She responded, eyes glittering at the prospect of getting some of her questions answered. "Where are you broadcasting from?"

"Uh..." Magic slowly said. Cue a sheepish look, though Runi couldn't figure out why they'd have that expression on their face. They even went as far as nervously rubbing the back of their neck. "I'm actually broadcasting from this ship."

She heard Maahes give a relieved sigh from behind her. "I'm still trying to understand how someone could be the personification of magic," he admitted, "but if you're here, you can help us back, right?"

Magic bit their lip. "Uh."

"Uh?" Sune hesitantly repeated.

"Imighthavegottenmyselfstuckinsidetheship," Magic hurriedly said, face growing more and more red as they spoke. They averted their gaze, though, since they were on a computer screen, there wasn't many other places to look. "I mean, it's not like I wanted to! It's just that I had to fix something and then one thing led to another and I found myself stuck inside the ship's databases. And, uh, I can't get out."

Oh.

That explained the sheepish look, then.

"So this is your ship?" Runi questioned, peering down the hallway. It was a pretty impressive ship from the little that she had seen; it would make sense that it belonged to someone important like the personification of magic itself- "Wait, why do you have a ship? Can't you just, like, poof somewhere if you want to go there?"

"Technically, yes," Magic replied, briefly glancing up to meet her gaze. Then they quickly looked away again, their face growing even redder than it already was. "That's what I do most of the time, but sometimes I get bored. There's only so much that I can do without messing up the flow of the universe and stuff. But apparently I'm messing up the universe anyways..."

Maahes stepped closer to the screen. "What do you mean?"

Magic took a deep breath. "I'm stuck in this ship, right? I'm the physical embodiment of magic, and my entire being is stuck in this ship. So that means this ship is going to start doing some weird stuff. Like really weird, reality-ripping, people-kidnapping stuff."

Magic sighed.

"Which is the reason why you're here right now," they reluctantly concluded. They finally looked back up. "And until I can get out of this ship, you're stuck here. And rifts in reality might not be our only problem, if my guesses are right."

James approached the moving picture that was Magic. What was once 3D had become 2D, and that was something he had yet to see much of. He tilted his head curiously as his only sign of confusion as he asked his question.

"Do you mean to say our lives are or could be in danger?"

"...Yes," Magic hesitantly replied, hanging their head down. "I'm really, really sorry, James! I know you hate stuff like this, and that you're probably thinking I'm like that goddess right now. But I'm trying my best to fix things right now. I really am! I just need to figure out how. And that's not really that easy when I've never been stuck inside of a ship before."

"Oh no!" Taber said, spotting Magic on the other side of the window. "You're stuck, and we're all in danger? I'll save you!"

He shook himself free of Ari's grip - rude, but there were lives at stake - and charged the window. Taber slammed into it and immediately fell to the ground, clutching his head. Normally windows were more fragile than that, right?

Picking himself back up, he grabbed the edges of the window and peered in. "Sorry!" Taber said. "This is a really weird window."

Magic let out what suspiciously sounded like a giggle, at least to Runi.

"I guess some of you guys are from worlds with a lot of technology," they said, a small smile beginning to spread across their face. "Don't worry about it, Taber. I'm not stuck in a window - this is called a screen. It lets people display things, like stories or information. What I'm stuck in isn't this screen. It's the ship itself; I'm just using this screen so you guys can hear and see me."

"I'm still not clear on how someone who is literally Magic gets stuck in a ship. I'm not familiar with your limitations, but I'm assuming you pushed them too far this time," James replied with a cool sort of apathy. "But regardless of how you go in there and whatever you're using to communicate - do you have any idea on what we can anticipate we'll be facing in the near future so we can prepare ourselves to the best of our ability?"

Maahes cast a glance over in James' direction after he finished speaking, noting the tone that his friend had used when addressing the person who was apparently the personification of magic - something he was still having trouble trying to grasp. (But, at this point, he had dealt with a lot of strange things, so this bizarrely made some sort of sense.) James had replied with an apathetic tone, but he knew James. It didn't mean that he didn't have any thoughts about the conversation. It meant that he was upset and displeased, and just wasn't outwardly showing it.

Magic seemed to pick up on the hidden meaning to the tone. Their giggle died on their lips, they frowned and they tried their best to look everywhere but at James - which was more than a little difficult, considering that James was right in front of the screen.

"I'm not really sure," they said. Seeming to decide that there wasn't a good place to look up at, they dropped their gaze down to the bottom of the screen. "Remember, I'm the Personification of Magic. So, uh, if something magical exists, then I have the ability to use that magic."

"Which means anything is possible?" Sune hesitantly asked.

Magic gave a nod. "Yeah. I guess the one thing that I'm certain about is that we've got some dimension and reality-hopping in the near future. The ship was already supposed to do that, but now with me being in it, it'll probably be more random and more sudden."