Young Writers Society

At first, there was only darkness. And then the setting before began to fill in like the creeping of a haunted memory. It started with the toll of a bell, deep and reverberating. It was a sound deeply familiar to him, one he'd heard more than once throughout his life, but something about this rang differently in his ears. The tone called him back to one day. The day he'd made a promise to himself that marked the course of his life forever.

They were in his hometown. Rows of buildings with pointed roofs and wood-slatted windows stretched out before them and they stood in the middle of the main street that cut through the town towards the center. Crowds of people were further up ahead, uphill, to the galley. All of them walking too slow, too close together. Too congested for him to get through in time. He wasn't supposed to be late to this execution - not this one - the justification for a deeply personal betrayal. His parents were expecting to see him, and not just in the crowd, but by their side.

An ominous fog filled the air, smelling like old rain and muddied cobblestone streets.

When the creature had promised them they would see meet monsters and fearsome creatures, he'd never imagined in the slightest that it would result in something like this.

His heart began to race. The moment the smell of mud and rain filled his lungs, the others were all but forgotten. His hand gripped his sword tightly, and he rushed forward, running into the crowd, pushing people aside regardless of their resistance.

Minra blinked at their surroundings. After the gloom of the shadowy dreamscape they'd just left behind, the brightness made her eyes water, though the light was muted somewhat by a creeping fog.

They stood in a quaint town in an ancient stlye of architecture, the kind Minra only recognized from the faded illustrations of Luce's history books. It was a sharp contrast to the dull grey tenement buildings of the concrete jungle she lived in with her daughter.

A bell tolled somewhere, ringing through the fog and the crowd of townspeople, and Carter stepped forward. His eyes stared forward in utter shock and his hand was clenched over the hilt of his sword.

"Carter?" Her voice came out sharper than she'd intended, but he didn't seem to hear her. Minra had never seen him look so shaken, and she was surprised at how much it concerned her. The man was always a commander, confident and controlled.

Not now.

He started to run.

"Wait, Carter!" she yelled. With a growing feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, she started forward after him.

"Come on- we have to follow or we'll lose him in the crowd!"

Second wasn't entirely sure what was going on. He had never been in a place as bustling as this - it reminded him of some of the places on his own world, but the streets were as busy as the ones in Charlotte's world.

Part of him wondered if he stood out. The people here didn't look like the players he was used to, and Charlotte had said that his hair made him stand out in a crowd. But he didn't get a chance to find out the answer - they had to hurry after the member of their group that had just run off.

Second joined Minra is rushing after him.

Vanya relaxed only slightly as the general familiarity of their new surroundings. Medieval. At least she knew some general things about the landscape.

And then the knight took off.

On instinct, she followed. One or two of the people he shoved away stumbled and fell, and she paused momentarily to give an apology on his behalf and help them to their feet. His armor blended only slightly better in this crowd than it would in a modern city, so she picked him out easily. The hurry he appeared to be in definitely helped.

She took off after him, much more careful of the civilians than he.

The sound of the bell was ringing through his ears with the pounding of his heart. He knew the moment they stopped it would be too late - they would begin the execution and he would be too late. Again.

He could see the gallows up ahead. They hung above the thick of the crowd on a platform of stone, the dark, foreboding support beams holding up the rings of rope. He could see heads of figures gathered around it. One covered in a hood.

Anne.

He could see his parents step up onto the platform before everyone else. Ascending up the steps with the grace of royalty, even though they were murderers. People who took pleasure in the pain of the innocent. People who had no respect or understanding of true power when they were looking it in the eyes.

He faced them every day. He pretended to love them as bitter hatred broiled on the inside for years, but now, reliving this dreadful memory, it wasn't something he could mask so easily. Because he knew what was going to happen next.

Finally, he broke through the crowd. At this point, he'd pushed so many people out of the way and knocked over so many bystanders that he knew all of their eyes were on the soldier who'd barreled through them. The guards at the base of the platform started to form a wall between himself and the stairs. Behind them, Anne was blindly being led up them, soon to her death.

A small part of his mind reminded him that this was a dream. This wasn't real. This wouldn't change anything in the end. If he saved her now, he wouldn't wake up and find anything else different. But why go through the torture of witnessing it all again? Why pretend to go along with it if it was a dream? He had the freedom to choose, and he was going to choose to push back. He couldn't save Anne before. He was only a child, and his efforts would've made the situation worse for everyone if he'd tried. But now, as a soldier and a commander of an army, he had the power and authority to whether or not they thought he did.

He drew his sword, and with no hesitation, sliced one of the guards down and stepped over him and onto the steps. The guards behind him froze, momentarily, in shock. At the top of the steps, his parents stood, staring at him with eyes that burned through his skull.

Suddenly he felt very small, though the fire inside him felt very big.

"Carter," his mother spoke, her words dripping in cruel disgust and disappointment. "You're causing a scene."

"Sheath your sword," his father commanded cooly. "We can fix this later. Do not make this harder than it already is."

Second had never seen an execution before.

He had seen them mentioned in Hero's books, back when they first met years ago. He hadn't really understood the reason for it then, and still didn't really understand the reason for it now. Taking a life away as some kind of punishment felt wrong.

He didn't know what the punishment was. He didn't know who was even being punished. All he could tell was that Carter - that was what Minra had called him, even though Second had been convinced his first named was Commander - cared a lot about her, and that the man and woman beside her seemed like they knew him.

Second didn't have any weapons to slice down guards. He didn't even have the ability to change forms. But he did have the ability to sweep the guard closest to him offer of his feet with a well-placed kick to the legs.

Second followed him up the steps.

"Carter," he said, stopping beside him, "this isn't real. This is some kind of puzzle or test - there has to be a way to get through it. What's going on?"

Vanya cut down the guards who stood in her way, careful to only wound them. There was no telling what here was real and what wasn't here. Those people could easily be alive, and therefore possibly innocent in...whatever was going on here.

She stepped up, taking the space by Carter's side and keeping her sword drawn. If her gut was correct, they were here to stop the execution. And if her instinctual dislike of the woman who spoke was correct, then she and the man beside her would be the ones to get in their way.

Minra watched as the others forced their way through the guards to reach the platform. Instead of following, she slipped into the crowd and pretended she'd been there all along. With her drab and harmless appearance, no one even glanced at her.

It seemed they had their objective. Stop the execution.

Her mind began to race for a solution, some kind of plan.

Minra had quickly realized something when her companions charged forward, weapons ready. She would be utterly useless if she joined them in trying to fight off the guards directly. No, worse than useless. She'd only get in the way and they'd end up having to protect her like she was some damsel in distress.

But maybe there was another way Minra could help them. She looked up at the platform and saw that it was now surrounded on all sides by dozens of angry guards and hundreds of townspeople. Maybe Carter would be able to change the minds of the man and woman without using force, but she wasn't hopeful. If the guards tried to stop them from rescuing that woman from the gallows, they'd need an escape or some kind of distraction.

Minra's eyes settled on a horse-drawn cart full of hay bales behind the crowd, then kept looking until she found a torch in a sconce on the side of the nearest building.

That might work.

Carter's head twitched in Second's direction. He didn't need a teenager here, but he knew Second has as little choice in the situation as he did. He was just following along.

"It's not a puzzle," he said sternly.

"Carter, who are these people?" his mother asked in annoyance.

"It doesn't matter. You're not my mother," he shot back, returning her icy stare with a fiery glare of his own. "And you're not killing Anne. Not this time."

"What do you mean, this time? Carter, clearly you're unsettled," his father answered. "You need to calm down. Let's talk about this la-"

Carter didn't want to talk about it. He lashed out with his sword, slicing across his father's chest. The sheer exhilaration of finally being able to hurt him was so satisfying, he could feel his mind beginning to clear. His heart rate calming down, and his breathing slowing. His eyes lit up with something that landed between pleasure and excitement and he struck again, crossing the other way, making a bleeding "x."

His father stumbled back, being caught and steadied by his mother. As he stumbled, Carter marched over to Anne, who was still being held by guards on either side and ripped the hood off her head.

His brow twitched from anger to pity. The euphoria of seeing her again combined with the gut-wrenching sadness that none of this was real was more than he'd ever thought to anticipate. Seeing her face to face again made him want to wake up. Now.

She looked just like he'd last remembered her before the life drained out of her face. Fair-skinned, short-cropped hair, plain features, with faint crows' feet by her eyes from smiling, though she wasn't now.

Behind him, his father was still standing, though blood stained the front of his clothes. Smokey steam was starting to leak from the wounds on his chest where blood should've been.

"Uhhhh," Second managed to get out, watching as smoke poured out of the man's wound. Blood was something he was used to. Little specks of white floating up into the air, too. But what he had never expected was smoke to come out of a wound - even in something like this.

He glanced back at the guards. Had the same thing happened when Carter attacked one of them? Was it just what happened to those who were injured here, or was it a sign that they were doing something right?

He looked back at Carter, making sure to keep a good distance away from the guards. Carter wasn't giving him anything useful as an answer - it still had to be a puzzle of some kind because they didn't know how to solve it. So if Carter wasn't going to give the context, he'd have to make it for himself.

He was trying to rescue the one who was being executed. That part made sense. Then there was his parents. It seemed like he was supposed to fight his dad, but what about his mom? Were both of them guilty? Just one? Would attacking the wrong person make them lose this strange trial, or would it be inconsequential?

The woman was still being held by guards. Second had no weapons, but surprise never hurt.

He rushed over to her and pulled the first guard off with every ounce of strength he could muster, pushing him right into the other guard holding onto the woman. They still had to get away from the platform and all of the other guards, but at least the woman was free.

"Carter," Second said, "you have to tell us what's going on here! This is a memory, right? It's based on whatever happened, and we won't know how to win until you tell us. We need to rescue her, but what else do we need to do?"

Vanya rushed to the gallows. This was evidently something connecting to Carter. The guards who got in her way were quickly evaded or cut down by her blade. For a moment, she considered that perhaps Carter was mistaken and the objective was truly something more subtle. If that was the case, they'd deal with the consequences of doing it this way later.

With a few swift strikes, the 'braided necklaces' as a former companion of her would call them were cut. She would have just done one, but it was better to be safe.

Minra shoved her way through the crowd. A few people cursed her or shot her annoyed glares, but no one tried to stop her. They were all craning their necks to follow what was happening on the platform, their faces shocked and confused, but transfixed.

Minra resisted the urge to turn and look too. She grabbed the torch first, then headed for the cart. With a quick check, she confirmed that its owner wasn't anywhere nearby. The draft horse hitched to the cart, a huge dusty-colored beast with rolling brown eyes, gave a nervous nicker as Minra came close with her fire. She ignored it and finally looked back at the platform behind her.

It was difficult to make out details from this distance, but she saw smoke curling up from the man on the platform, and Vanya standing next to the now-freed prisoner. Minra wondered if it was time to put her plan into motion. They'd freed the woman. Now they'd need her distraction to escape, right?

But what if that wasn't the true objective? What if they were supposed to stand and fight?

She decided that, either way, distracting the guards and causing some chaos and confusion couldn't hurt. Anything to even the odds.

She lifted the brand to the stacked straw and watched the flame leap across. Fire hungrily devoured everything it touched, creeping up the sides of the bales at an alarming speed. The straw curled and darkened, sending up sparks and coils of black smoke as it burned. The draft horse smelled the smoke and shuffled anxiously, then lurched into a barreling run.

Straight for the crowd, the guards, and the executioners.

Minra backed away from the cart, then tossed the flaming torch into the nearest open window, reminding herself that it was only a dream and all that mattered was getting out of it. None of these people were real.

The thought was small comfort when the screaming began.