Young Writers Society

A wise man once said, “People die if they are killed.”¹

This rule has generally held true over the centuries of human existence. When a person is killed, their soul is collected by the nearest reaper and brought to the administration. After a decent amount of paperwork and usually a little bit of confusion, the soul is brought to its proper afterlife where it lives out the rest of its eternity.²

But, for as long as the reapers have reaped human souls, there's been a bit of a...problem. In the relative scheme of things, it's a quite a small one, but most reapers like to ignore this because it's one of the few things they don't understand about souls and death.

Not every soul makes it to the administration.

There have been theories for years about why this happens. Some believe that the occasional soul just fades after death. Others believe that the missing souls have become ghosts that haven't ever been found. Others still think it's a recording error.³ But while all of these theories pass from reaper to reaper, the true explanation is the one they all know is true but don't want to accept: someone has been stealing souls.

And you are one of the stolen souls.

These souls – though you don't know it – have been stockpiled over the course of humanity's past. It's only now that they are finally being released into the world.⁴ A common misconception is that the souls would return to their original world upon being released, but you are no longer on Earth.

You are on Arium.

The rules of Arium are simple: everyone there has died at some point over the course of human history, everyone has been granted a special ability of some kind, and, like Earth, you're generally supposed to follow the rules of the ruling group in whatever part of Arium you're in.

But, also like Earth, no one had the thought to tell you anything important before thrusting you into this strange, new world, so it's up to you to figure out the rules of Arium yourself.

And finding yourself in a desert, laying atop hot, desert sand after your supposed death certainly doesn't make things easier.⁵

¹ That wise man was actually a viral internet joke that came from an episode of 2006's Fate/Stay Night, but the principle holds true.

² Alternatively, the soul is put back into the flow of life and is reincarnated – only the highest tier of reapers is aware of how this is done, and sadly aren't fond of sharing.

³ The most stubborn believers will even deny the accounts of humans that knew the deceased, though these reapers also the ones who rarely interact with humans – their word means little to them.

⁴ The souls have actually been released over the course of a few decades. This could be compared to a gentle, trickling stream leaving a vast lake and running through a forest, bringing a steady yet small supply of water to the ecosystem. The current flow of souls, however, is more like a dam breaking and covering the entire forest floor.

⁵ You could be optimistic and be grateful that you aren't truly dead, but pessimism makes far more sense in the desert – and death does change a person, contrary to popular belief.

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I screamed.

It wasn't a quiet scream, either – it was the type of scream that ricocheted against the rock formations that dotted the landscape and reached ears far, far away. But even though I wasn't one for screaming much, I still found myself screaming the loudest, most ear-piercing scream I had ever heard or uttered.

I had just been hit by a speeding truck. It wasn't the sight of the truck that made me scream, but the pain that followed. Pain that I hadn't had a chance to scream at earlier, since everything had gone black-

...There wasn't any pain.

The scream ceased as the world came into focus around me.

The streets of New York City had been traded for endless sand, and the dark night sky had been replaced by a burning sun.

(I tried looking for Juliet – I had pushed her out of the way; she should have been safe – but she was nowhere to be found. I was alone.)

I could already feel the beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Deserts were hot as they were, but I was dressed for New York City on a day that had been surprisingly cool. The heat was nearly unbearable – the string of cool weather had definitely spoiled me. It wasn't long before I relented and slipped off my leather jacket, tying it around my waist as I got to her feet.

My fingers touched something wet.

I drew them away.

My fingertips were stained red.

My gaze dropped down to my body.

All of my clothes were covered in blood – my jacket, my black tank top, my ripped jeans, and my combat boots all had their fair share of it. I was sure it would have been on my beanie, too, if I had bothered to check. There were a few tears in my clothing here or there, but I couldn't find a single one of the injuries I had to have gotten from getting hit by a truck.

...If it wasn't for the fact that my blood was still very, very wet and messy, I would have guessed that someone had kidnapped me instead of killed me. But my blood was definitely there, and I definitely had been hit by a truck.

“Hey!” I shouted to a desert devoid of people.

I shouldn't have been so surprised when there was no answer, but I still fell back into silence when I heard no response. I was alone, in a desert, and was pretty sure I had died via getting run over by a truck.

(August 17th, 2001 to August 23rd, 2019. I hadn't even lived a week after my eighteenth birthday. I should have felt sad about that. I know I should have.

But part of me was surprised that I had even made it that long.)

That in itself was a hard thing to digest, but there was too much going on for me to think about the implications.

I looked around again.

I was in a desert, but it wasn't as endless as I had initially believed. Some kind of enormous, sandy rock out on the horizon. If I squinted, I could make out what looked like man-made structures – vague pillars and holes peeking out from the rock. I couldn't see any people in front of it, but I started heading towards it regardless.

(I needed a shelter, anyways.)

I was about one minute into her trek when I tripped over something that had been hiding behind a rock. I tried to regain my balance, but there had never been any chance of me avoiding the fall. I gave a startled yelp – one last, final hurrah – before my face was covered in the hot desert sand.

I shot back up.

That hurt! I frantically wiped away the sand from my face, spitting out bits of it here and there in a desperate attempt to get my mouth to taste less sandy. But there was still an after taste even when all the sand was gone, and my face still hurt after burning it with the sand.

...Today wasn't a good day.

I should have kept moving, but I glanced down at what had caused my tragic fall – I wanted to know what to blame.

And what I found wasn't what I expected in the slightest.

There was a skeleton.

It had little bits of dark hair clinging to its skull, and what looked like rags clung to its bones. They might have been something nice, once, but they certainly weren't now.

I stared.

The skeleton stared back.

...And then I realized that it was touching my foot.

A jolt of fear – childish as it was – shot through me, and I frantically started to pull away. But suddenly I wasn't pulling away from the skeleton; I was pulling away from a girl who looked eerily like myself. She had fallen backwards into the sand, a look of terror on her unmoving face. She was still breathing, though – I stared at the rising and falling of her chest just to make sure.

“This doesn't make any sense,” I said, pulling my legs close to my chest.

Then I paused, because my voice didn't sound quite right.

It sounded older, and deeper, like I was a man in his thirties instead of a girl in her teens. Already having a sinking feeling in my gut, I glanced down to find that I didn't have a gut to have a sinking feeling in.

I was the skeleton.

“This doesn't make any sense,” I repeated, weaker and more confused than before.

(Part of me was hoping that addressing my confusion would make things more understandable.)

(...It didn't.)

Partially horrified and partially confused, I leaned over and poked myself with a skeletal finger. My body didn't move at all – it just stayed there, breathing softly in the scorching heat.

I looked back up towards the rock in the distance.

Juliet had wanted to hang out with me. I had died. Now I was skeleton. All of these were impossible things, but all had just happened. I could sit here and just wait for my actual body to die out here in the desert, or I could head towards that building and hope I'd think of something inside it.

I weighed my options.

I awkwardly crouched down beside my body. Skeletons weren't meant to pick up anything, but I still managed to get my body off of the ground.

Or, mostly, anyways.

I ended up dragging my body behind me, feet trailing in the sand and arms draped over my skeletal shoulders. It was weird, and definitely nerve-wracking, but I made it just a little more bearable by belting out “Livin' on a Prayer” as I made my long trek towards the horizon.

The fact that today, of all days, things would go even weirder struck her as both unbelievable and infuriatingly predictable. Hilde certainly held a record for unfortunate events happening over a lifetime, and her own was quite a short one. Thanks, no less, to the giant bus explosion that burnt her skin to crisps and dropped her off in this forsaken desert land.

She wanted to be a good daughter to both of her parents, estranged they may be, and decided to just catch a ride early from her college up in Flagstaff. How Hilde loved the snowy days up in northern Arizona and not the filthy hot garbage her world had become. At least she was alone now – no need for awkward small-talk.

Hilde had walked along this desert for a week now – she remembered it being a Monday, so it had to be the 19th right? That was the last day she had lived on the Earth. Unbelievable. If there was anyone else in this forsaken place that she could argue why she deserved to be alive and not dead, but that was the bad side of seemingly being the sole person in existence.

Her journey through this desert climate brought a few interesting sites. The first that there were countless cacti sprawling everywhere. She even named a few of them since she clearly had nothing better to do. Another odd event was that some glimpses of the sun made it look almost purple or blue at times – but the moment she looked back it looked yellow as ever.

Was it strange? Yes, but so was everything else here. Not to mention the fact that she did not feel the heat that had to be surrounding her completely. But she did have to blink away every time the wind carried sand directly into her eyes. Hilde had been walking towards this rather large rock for most of her days here – besides trying to find different kinds of plants.

It seemed like today might when she finally arrived there. She probably should pick up her pace just a little bit so she can make it before the sun really settled down since the dark was eerie regardless if she was alone or not. Hilde swore she could hear someone singing off in the distance, but there was no way someone else was out here, right?

She got close enough to the rock to see an actual moving skeleton. Holy heck what was that? There could not be another person out in this darn desert. No way. Hilde was not ready to have to converse with another stranger that did not know anything of her idiosyncrasies. She probably wanted to get here before that other person could have anyway so she might as well get on moving over there.

It was her awful, rocky place. No one else deserved to get there first. Hilde frowned, shaking her head at how irrational she was acting yet this was happening in a desert for dead people. Things were going to get crazy one way or another after all. With that thought, she walked ever so closer to her destination – the random rock.

Howard Moore

Howard's eyes snapped open. He sat up, the cold and damp streets had faded away, being replaced by miles of burning desert. He glanced around quickly, his survival instincts kicking in. Those plants were cacti, he remembered that French explorer had shown him pictures of cacti from Algeria. They... they contained water, didn't they? Yes, if he conserved his energy, and drank from the cacti, then he could survive here.

Wait.

Where on earth was he?

The last thing he remembered is lying against a wall as his body bled out and his vision melted into darkness. He saw the blood on his shirt and knew that it had not been a dream, knew knew he must be dead. But where was he? If this was heaven then God must have a sick sense of humour. Hell? No, hell would have demons, and damned souls screaming in that had been what the minister had always said. Was this purgatory? Howard yelled out, begging God for mercy he screamed 'Please have m-rrgh' the words caught in his throat. He cried again and this time his words came out as 'Please don't have mercy! Don't give me another chance!' Howard gasped, what was happening, why couldn't he speak properly? He tried to speak again, to say anything 'I am H-H... Albert, I am Albert Moore. Now Howard understood. To pay for his life of lies, he would be unable to speak the truth ever again.

Howard began to wander the vast desert, unconcerned with survival after finding that he was already dead. As he did so, he reminisced about his life. His life that amounted to nothing but a body on the side of a street for the police to find in the morning. Howard began to think of his parents, he hadn't spoken to them six years, they couldn't even look at him when they heard about how he'd been making money. At least they wouldn't hear about his death, he thought. It was a relief that took his mind off his situation. As he looked out at the distance he saw great ruins of ancient-looking structures. But he also saw two figures in the distance.

Howard stumbled over the dunes after the two, and noticed how strange they looked, they dressed completely different to anyone in Leeds. He wondered, who we they? Perhaps they were in purgatory as well, maybe they were from some foreign country, he'd met some strangely dreesed people from America and Spain, or could they be from China? He spoke some Chinese that he'd picked up from that trader. Nice bloke, Howard almost regretted stealing his wallet.

Howard suddenly felt a strange compulsion to continue travelling to the large structures behind them, like he would find his answers there. Like he needed to go there. He shambled slowly towards the ancient ruins and the curious people in front of them. Perhaps there was hope after all.

Valentine awoke spluttering, trying desperately to expel the water from her lungs. She flipped to her hands and knees and coughed up the last of the liquid, and blinked her eyes into focus.

She had been expecting to see the dark sands of the river beneath her hands, but instead, she found sun-baked sand of a yellowish golden hue, like those pictured of rolling deserts that bounced around on Nancy's old screensaver before Valentine taught her how to change it.

That thought gave her a sudden burst of urgency, and she looked up, frantically scanning her surroundings for her sister.

What she found instead was sand. Sand and sand and sand.

She was breathing hard, panicking, but then she heard something. Just a whisper at first, an echo over the unforgiving dunes of the endless nowhere she'd washed up in, but then it got louder. A song. Someone was singing.

She clambered to her feet and fell, immediately, back into the sand. She grunted, a horribly painful sound to make while her throat still felt as though she'd tried to breathe gravel, and tried again. With a pitiful wheeze, her body went limp.

She couldn't do it.

There wasn't enough strength in her limbs to even try.

The sun beat down on her from above, slowly drying her drenched clothing. A thought sprung into her mind. A confusing, awful thought.

Where was the river?

She somehow found it in her to flip over and look in the one direction she hadn't checked, where she had previously assumed she would see the banks of the river, or maybe the shores of a lake if she'd drifted far enough. But there was only sand.

A sob built up in the back of her throat and tears pricked her eyes.

Where was she?

She had to get home.

She had to...

She wiped a hand over her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. With a shaky breath, she forced the tears away. Don't cry. Don't cry in the desert.

The song was louder now, seeming to come from just over the dune to her left. She couldn't stand, but she managed to crawl. The shifting sand made for a horrible climb. It was impossible to get a good grip or half-decent footing because the ground would just give way beneath her, sending her sliding back down two or three feet of hard-won progress.

Finally, finally, she made it to the top.

She didn't have time to see what was singing before the unsteady ground under her hands fell away, sending her tumbling down into the valley below.

When she came skidding to a halt in a pile of loose, burning sand that stuck in her damp hair and on her wet clothes, she looked up to see the source of the sound.

It took her a second to process what she was seeing.

A skeleton, scattered locks of black hair still clinging to its decrepit skull, dragging the bloodied body of a girl with it.

Valentine screamed.

Walking to the library? Completely ordinary.

But being squashed in between two cars coming from different sides? Not ordinary. Well, if you look at it from a different point of view, everyone does have to die.

That's what Sasha was doing on that sunny day. She was walking to the library to go and study for the upcoming exams. Her brother - Jax - had told her that it wasn't the best of ideas. She should relax for once.

But nope. Sasha went.

Sasha let out a scream when she saw the two cars coming from different sides. Her scream was ear piercing. "Help!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.

But it was too late.

The cars came zooming towards her. And before she knew it, she was squashed. Blood was oozing out of her flesh and onto the front of the cars. Her eyes were closed, and she had died.

Her eyes fluttered open.

She screamed when she saw that she was suddenly in the desert. Okay, yes, Dubai is basically a desert, but she was on the bridge! Where had this come from? The desert is a long ways from where she was.

She looked around. She brought her thumb up and bit her polished nail. She did that when she was nervous.

She perked up. Singing. Welp, this desert thing wasn't too bad.

But... the desert. Where had it come from? Why was she here? Who was singing? Were there other people here? Or was her imagination going wild again? Her thoughts were going this way and that, but she grabbed them all and tossed them into a box, locked it, and threw it away in her brain.

She stood up and brushed off the sand. It was so hot. And she was wearing a sweatshirt. She sighed.

Then she saw figures. Of... people. They were shaped like people. It wasn't a group. Just one person over here. And the other over there. And a couple scattered over there.

When she squinted, to take a better look, she screamed for the third time that day, "A walking skeleton!"

Sometimes, the only solace you can take in life is belting out your favorite Bon Jovi song in a seemingly endless desert while carting around your own body. The song really isn't that special, and you actually like "Carry On Wayward Son" more than "Livin' on Prayer" thanks to a brief Supernatural obsession that will never be spoken about ever again, but it's a great distraction from the scorching hot sand burning into your now skeletal feet and the literal dissociation that follows being thrown out of your own body.

So when my very dramatic rendition of "Livin' on Prayer" was rudely interrupted by the arrival of other – screaming – people, I wasn't exactly in the best mood. I crossed my arms out of habit, glaring down with eyes I no longer had at the girl who had just gone tumbling down towards my feet. Sand was clumped to her clothes, and not in the way that I'd expect from a desert. It was like her clothes were wet, but that didn't make any sense in a place as hot as this.

“I should be the one screaming!” I said. “I'm the skeleton right now. You're just the one who has to see me bony and naked-”

There was a thump behind me.

I turned.

An angry, irritated swear left me. With my arms crossed, I had stopped supporting my body – it had gone tumbling down into the sandy dunes behind me. Throwing my hands up in defeat, I spun around on my bony heels and gave my body a strong, hearty tug. There was a brief moment of victory as my body was lifted off of the ground, but the smugness immediately faded when my arm popped out of its skeletal socket.

I stared at my shoulder.

“Come on,” I said. “I'm a magically walking, talking skeleton! Can't whatever stupid magic that's holding me together let me just keep my arm-”

I suddenly remembered that the dirty girl at my feet wasn't the only one who had started screaming midway through my song – there was the girl who had yelled about me being a walking skeleton. I swerved around, grabbing my fallen arm and sticking it back into its socket, and gave her a glare that I wished she could see.

“You can stop it, too,” I said. “Of course I'm a walking skeleton. Stating the obvious really isn't helping me right now, especially since "Livin' on a Prayer" was the one thing that was stopping me from having a mental breakdown!”

Normally, I'd keep more of that to myself, but I was getting just a little stressed about this whole thing – there wasn't anything quite like the existential crisis that followed possessing a skeleton and lugging my own body around. I would have probably been crying at this point, if I had the tear ducts to give tears with.

I took a step towards the second offender, but was foiled by one of the most underestimated things of mankind: my own two feet. I stumbled, tripped, and went tumbling into the sandy wastes in front of me. There was the feeling of sand, of panic, and of flesh touching bone before I felt the reverse: I was covered in flesh and was touching something bony.

Something like a skeleton.

I let out an almost maniacal laugh, hands frantically touching my sandy but alive face. I wasn't stuck as a skeleton anymore! I was still dead, still in the desert, and still very much confused, but at least I was me again.

Except I felt like something was wrong.

Actually, a lot felt like it was wrong, but I was focusing more on what I really didn't have an explanation for. There was some kind of resistance to me trying to get to my feet, and to me triumphantly kicking away the skeleton. I couldn't really explain it. It was like being tired, but somehow worse and even more draining. My irritation steadily growing, I went to take a step towards the second screaming girl-

-and heard another scream ring out.

That one definitely belonged to the first screamer. I spun around, looking for her as she started to panic even more, and came to the very startling realization that I couldn't see her anywhere. All I could see was the skeleton at my feet, and...

I stared at my own body.

Again.

I groaned and threw myself down into the sand, ignoring her panicked, desperate cries for freedom and answers – neither of which I could easily give right now. I wasn't even sure how I had gone from my body to the skeleton's. How was I supposed to get out of hers?

The second screamer watched us from her spot on the dunes, and I could see two other people wandering in the distance of the desert landscape. I just wanted to be back in my body. Was that too much to ask for? I was already dead. I didn't think life was supposed to get worse than that.

I eyed my body.

Then I reluctantly got to my feet.

Giving the skeleton one last kick to the face, I marched over to where my body laid clumped in a heap. I gave it a strong tug, glared at my own, seemingly permanently terrified face, and decided I'd have to figure this out right now. I got about one minute into my unofficial staring contest when I realized I couldn't focus on actually thinking about this – I was too busy getting distracted by the girl's screams.

“Would you shut up?” I hissed. “I'm trying to do a thing here.”

She immediately fell silent.

“Thank you,” I said.

I stared at my face again.

How had I done it before? All I remembered was feeling panicked. I was frightened by seeing a dead body the first time around, and the second time I was startled by the trip. I glanced over at the skeleton. After being stuck in it and nearly finishing a song with its somehow great singing voice, it wasn't exactly the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. I was so done with everything I couldn't even feeling worried about that – I was just frustrated.

I took a deep breath.

Maybe if I just imagined myself as me again-

I suddenly was looking at the girl's face.

I blinked, glanced down, and then promptly wiggled out of her grip.

“I'm me again!” I said, a downright wild grin on my face. I gave myself a tight hug. Who knew being myself could feel so good? I stormed back over to the skeleton and gave it another kick, this time much more triumphantly than before. Take that, stupid skeleton.

While this was going on, the two onlookers kept, well, on-looking. I was too caught up in my euphoria to realize that they probably had a lot of questions, especially when the second girl hadn't seen the first's girls lips move when we were having a heart-to-heart in her body.

“Nice chat and all,” I said to both of them, “but I really need to be on my way now. You know the drill: go to a mysterious rock in the middle of nowhere, question why I'm in the middle of nowhere, and agonize over the death that should have permanently killed me but instead sent me wherever here is.”

I turned around before either one of them had a chance to speak and started heading off towards the rock on the horizon.

Val was reeling.

Death.

She was dead. She was dead. She drew in a shaky breath, then held it. If she let it out she knew it would be another scream.

Drowned. She'd drowned in the river and...Nancy. Gods, Nancy...

She swallowed.

When she exhaled, she didn't scream.

It took a moment for her to realize that the girl was walking away from her. Then her comments registered.

"You're dead!" she called dumbly after her, "I...I'm dead too! I drowned!"

She blinked, "I drowned..." she whispered to herself. She wanted to cry. She should be crying. What were people supposed to do once they were dead? No one had ever told her. No one said anything because no one knew that this - whatever it was - existed. This dessert.

The afterlife is a dessert.

She stared dumbly into space. I've gone to hell. I died and I went to hell. I'm in hell.

She joked about it all the time with her friends, We're all going to hell, she would say, I'll get us a good room, the devil owes me a favor, one of her friends would say. The devil owed them all favors, according to them. A dumb joke.

And now she was in hell.

VERUCA SALT


Veruca Salt had no idea what the heck was going on but that wasn't reason of her anger.

Nope! What really infuriated her was that nobody came running up to her to soothe her and offer a decent explanation. Despite all the screaming and shouting she had been actively involved in from the moment she had woken up. Her throat was terribly dry and there was no trace of water but that hadn't stopped her from screaming. Nothing could stop Veruca from screaming. Screaming and throwing tantrums and basically being a spoiled brat were somethings she excelled at. It was her power move.

Her costly Scallop dress was wrinkled and dirty. Its once glossy sky blue colour had lost all its sheen and would never be mistaken for an Armani brand ever again. Her golden curls stuck to her neck and forehead in a manner very unlike her own. She glared at her heels hatefully. It was impossible to walk in high heels especially if the place is a desert. She expressed her newly found hatred for Brian Atwood by honouring his forefathers with words that could burn ones ears off. She almost wished she hadn't let her mom pick out her birthday dress.

It was burning hot all around. The sun blazed like a giant fireball ready to fry everything. Veruca had never sweated this massively. Drops of sweat kept rolling down her back making her shudder. She despised the way her dress stuck to her body and the way her feet kept sinking in the scorching sand. She had considered aggressively throwing her shoes a few meters away but was smart enough not to do so. Finally unable to control her rage she angrily stomped her foot and proceeded to shout again,"This is the most ugliest desert in the universe. I hate it! I will make sure daddy gets it destroyed when I get back."

Breathless, she glared at the miles and miles of sand around her as if daring it to contradict her. She ruefully looked at the bloody spot on the left side of her dress. Veruca knew she was dead. It wasn't a hard arithmetic problem that would take ages to solve. She had felt the pain of her soul being ripped from her body and the bullet when it had pierced her heart.

It had been her birthday. A unicorn themed birthday party. Half of her school was invited. Everything was perfect from the extravagant decorations to the delightful delicacies. Veruca was over the moon it was her best birthday yet. She was getting her personal Lambourghini Veneo. It was the first time she didn't feel like frowning at anything. She felt alive, almost magical with all those unicorns surrounding her. A favourite companion in those lonely evenings when her parents had to attend some parties or meetings or functions. Everything would have been fine if she hadn't overheard her classmates trash talking the party.

"Gosh! Unicorns are soo passe," one said, simultaneously stuffing her face with cupcakes.

"I know right! I would have tolerated the unicorns if there was some chocolate around but apparently little Veruca is afraid of chocolate. I mean seriously chocolate is better then ambrosia," was the reply.

That turned Veruca on. "How dare these lowly peasants? Not only they insulted unicorns they also praised chocolate and criticized me." Determined to teach the peasants a lesson she shot towards them. Before she could reach them, a searing pain hit her left side and she gasped. Instantly, she collapsed moaning in pain. Her head was spinning and everything was a blur. A crowd of people rushed towards her. Her mother screamed, face twisted in horror. There was so much screaming, shouting and confusion. She felt giddy the last voice she could perceive was of her parents shouting in unison and then she fainted.

Tears stung her eyes as the horrible events replayed in her mind. She harshly wiped them away. Veruca had never been the kind of person to cry or at least she tried her best to act like that kind of person. She got up hastily trying to shut her emotions away.

"It isn't the time to be a whiny damsel in distress," she sternly told herself. She wasn't a weakling she was Veruca Salt the terror of her household and school alike. She squinted up at the sun and looked firmly at the desolate land surrounding her like a valiant heroine ready to conquer the universe. Various anime songs played in her mind rebooting her imagination. In a flurry of emotions, she tore the silver pendant imprisoning her neck and threw it as far as she could. The moment she threw the pendant, a sudden gust of air burst in front of her causing her to fall backwards. She blinked in confusion. "What the heck had just happened!"