Young Writers Society

You open your eyes to discover you're on a road. Rolling hills spread out to either side, lush green meadows to one side, fields of crops on the other. The road is composed of packed dirt, dotted by the occasional patch of wildflowers growing along the edge of the path, reaching in like brightly colored Christmas lights on their twisting green stems, as thin as threads. The flowers glow faintly, their pulsing light playing on the pebbles around them.

The sky is clear and the wrong shade of blue. The sun beats down on you from above, and you realize there's a building in the distance. The sign above the door is adorned with strange twisting letters that you cannot read. Through a window, you can see candlelight and movement, hear faint voices carrying out to where you are.

You begin to realize that some things are different. Your clothes, your body, they've changed. You might have the telltale pointed ears of an elf, or the draconic features of a dragonborn. Your clothes might have been swapped out for armor or robes, and you may feel something different. Some connection to a force you didn't have before, or just the weight of weapons that you didn't have before, or that changed in some way.

You're just different, and you don't know where you are.

Rules

1. Please don't post multiple times in a row; make sure everyone has a chance to respond. It can become hard to keep track of when one person posts too many times in a row, so one post at a time would be ideal.

2. You can pick a character from anything, be it a character from a work of yours, a storybook, roleplay, or even fanfiction you've written.

3. Please include a description of your character in your first post. You can put this in a spoiler if you'd like, which you can do by selecting 'full reply' and clicking 'spoiler'. Your character will look like some kind of D&D character in this, by the way, so you can make them a drangonborn, tiefling, ranger, paladin, anything goes. If they're already one or multiple of those things feel free to change it up all you want

4. Please don't write for other people's characters without their expressed, explicit permission to do so. It's hard for you to predict what someone else's character would do or how they would act, and it could draw away from the fun for other writers.

5. Try not to have your character make any plot-altering decisions without telling me first. You can have them guess at the plot or make predictions as much as you please, but if you have any ideas you can PM me or we can chat in the spoilers. I'm always up for some scheming! I just want to make sure that whatever you have planned doesn't clash with what I've already got planned out.

6. Have fun!

Something was off.

He knew it the moment he opened his eyes. It wasn't just the sight of the unfamiliar scenery, or the sky that was somehow the wrong shade of blue. That was something that didn't exactly surprise him. What did surprise him was the way that his horns felt, and the way that he felt his tail ending. And his outfit was all wrong, too - it was black, and uncomfortable, and weird.

He tried to conjure up a flame at his fingertips to feel a little more comfortable, but the flame didn't start.

He stared.

He stared at both the space where the flame should have been, and the hand that was supposed to be making it. His hand was red. Why was it red? It looked almost like it had been burned, but he never really got burned because of his magic. So why-

Before his panic could truly set in, he realized that he wasn't alone.

There was a man standing nearby.

A human man.

Eyes widening in horror, he frantically reached for his hood. The man hadn't noticed him yet. He was too busy staring down at himself. If Mage hadn't been so busy panicking, he might have wondered why the man looked so familiar.

And then the man noticed him.

Blue eyes widening in horror, the man went stumbling back in what was clearly fear. Mage felt a pit in his stomach. The expression had been expected; that was how people usually reacted to seeing him. And the magic that filled the air a second later wasn't that surprising, either.

Lightning burst from the man's fingertips. It didn't get that far, but something about the way his blue eyes glowed looked familiar.

"Soul?" he whispered.

The magic died.

"Mage?" the man whispered back.

They stared at each other.

After a moment passed, both walked over to the other - each staring at the other like they were meeting for the first time again. "You're human," Mage said. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. Soul wasn't supposed to look like that, even if his eyes and hair were mostly the same. "What happened to you?"

Soul shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "...But, uh, I think you're the one we should be worrying about more."

Mage blinked.

"...My hand looks weird," he said. "But it feels fine. We can worry about it later."

Soul shook his head.

After a moment, he reached his hand out and touched Mage's cheek. "It's not just your hand," Soul quietly informed him. "Your entire face is different, too - I didn't recognize you when I looked at you. Everything about you is red, and your eyes are gold."

"...So I'm not..."

Soul gave a tiny nod.

"I don't know what you are," he said, "but you're something different now."

"Lagertha!" Ryke screams — his hand grasps at the empty air in front of him — as he appears on a road full of cracked dirt. His knuckles tighten as his breathing becomes sporadic.

Something is unfamiliar, not just about the place but also about how he feels.

"I must gather myself," he mutters, still panting.

He begins to observe the setting he has found himself in. The sky has the color of a saturated shade of blue. But it has to be noon since the scorching sun is set right over him.

Kneeling down, he examines the soil on the road. It doesn’t seem to have anything special about it.

On one side, there are fields waving and stretching out over to the horizon. He doesn’t recognize any of the corps. Ryke takes a deep breath and stands up.

There’s nothing notable around, except a building in the distance — he sees movement through the windows but the heat of the sun makes it impossible for him to confirm any signatures. That’s odd because he used to have the sharpest sense of heat in the… in his realm, even if he had been walking through a wildfire.

For all he knows, he’s alone in this vast land — the sound of crickets and the occasional chirping of birds reinforces the loneliness. He spreads out his arms — catching the sunlight in his dark-skinned palms — and feels a surge of energy bolt through him. With his eyes closed, he slowly inhales — carmine auras resembling dragon-wings appear on his back — and this time, exhales a fair bit of fume — the auras fade out just as the smoke does. His red, overly wide eyes open with a newfound focus.

The logical plan of action is to search the house, he thinks. So he begins to approach it. And then…

Two figures appear out of nowhere, not too far from where he stands. Ryke adjusts his hood to make sure enough shadow covers his face and observes the two interact.

Bobby opened his eyes and immediately his heart jumped into his throat. Not good not goodnotgood...

He took a shaky breath, looking wildly around his new surroundings. Not again... Everything was off somehow, even beyond this place definately not being the city. There was grass and fields and...and people. Strange-looking people.

Trying very hard not to cry, Bobby walked up to the least-scary-looking one. Trying not to look the red-skinned one in the eye, or look too closely at him at all, Bobby approached the one with the wild hair.

He bit his lip and forced back the tears that were pricking the backs of his eyes. A headache began to throb in their place.

"H-hi," he said, then swallowed the lump in his throat, "Do you...where am I?" His voice shrank as he spoke, becoming more of a squeak by the end of his question than anything.



Rizzo blinked out at the fields. A moment passed, and she sighed. She should really stop trying out new spells. Whatever had caused this, she wasn't quite sure she could reverse it.

Looking up, she noted the color of the sky. Blinked. Her eyes went wide and she looked around, her gaze locking on the building in the near distance. She adjusted her hat, trying to make herself look a little more presentable, then did her best imitation of a confident stride in the direction of the building. There were other travelers on the road, but she didn't pay them much mind save to say, "Excuse me," as she wove her way past them.

When he realized they weren't alone, Soul froze.

He could feel Mage stiffen beside him as the boy approached. Soul didn't know what to think when he looked at him - he looked too young to be in any kind of religious institution, but his outfit was something that angel worshipers wore.

Still, he looked just as scared as Soul felt right now.

Soul wasn't used to his body being like this. It felt almost right. It had some of the right parts, but it wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Soul could never put his finger on how it was actually supposed, but he knew it was closer than it ever was right now.

He tried to remember what Zogin did to calm herself down. Mage, too, to some extent. But Mage usually had his face hiding behind a hood when he got nervous, so that didn't really help.

He took a deep breath.

The air felt strange rushing down his throat. He felt a weight press on his chest, and then felt the weight grow stronger when he acknowledged it. He was terrified. He never thought he would miss an inexpressive face and a brooding black helmet, but he desperately wished he had either one right now.

"Hi," he managed to get out. His own voice squeaked a little at the end. He wanted to shrink and hide away, but he wasn't exactly small. His height was one of the few things that was the same right now. "I'm, um, not really sure where we are, either?"

He managed a look in Mage's direction. His friend was hiding his face behind the shadows of his hood, but he could still see Mage's weirdly red skin. Soul wasn't sure what to do. Mage usually had an act he liked to follow, but Soul wasn't getting any of the usual cues.

A second later, Mage ducked behind him.

Soul gave an awkward, hesitant smile. It had to be obvious that he hadn't ever really done one before - the corners of his lips were twisting, and he was doing it for far too long.

"I'm Soul," he said. "Soul Error Arwitch."

"Magestorrow Rian," came the quiet comment from behind him. His voice was steady, but Soul could feel Mage trembling as he peeked around at the boy in front of them.

There was a pause.

"We should probably go follow the woman who just passed us," Soul hesitantly suggested. He gestured over at her as she approached the building. "I think she might know than we do."

Soul wasn't sure who he was talking - the boy, the person watching from a distance, or Mage.

But it seemed like the kind of thing that Zogin would do, so it had to be a good idea.

A couple things happen in quick succession: two people appear on the road and then two more — all of them equally perplexed, except a witch, as Ryke assumes from her hat, who’s carrying a twisted staff. The witch immediately walks off towards the direction of the house. Ryke’s attention is fixated on her — he has come across witches before and it would be modest to say they had been less-than-trustworthy.

Something in his peripheral vision forces his attention to shift to the other three.

Is that…

One of them is carrying a sachet-bag on their back. Ryke recognizes it to be a dimension-device — the same one that Lagertha’s father had forged.

Ryke stomps on in their direction.

“Boy!” he shouts. “Hand over the child. Now!”

Bobby jumped, a bolt of fear rushing through him as he realized the scary hooded man was talking to him. He stuttered out something that didn't really qualify as English as he stumbled back a few steps. Those tears came rushing back and he couldn't get himself to breathe right.

"I-I don't know-" he was cut off by his own whimper as his instincts kicked in. Stay quiet. Let it end. He shrank into himself and stood still, not sure what the figure wanted or why he was mad at Bobby, but not wanting to make it worse by saying something wrong.

Rileni shouted as he opened his eyes and fell forward, hitting the ground face first. He rolled over quickly and threw himself into a standing position, preparing to block any sort of attack that might come. When the blow didn't come and he finally took in his surroundings he was quite confused. Hadn't he just been fighting?

Where was he? He hadn't seen dirt for months, and the building he could see in front of him was not a style he was familiar with. He turned to look around, noticing the glowing flowers first and the fact that he wasn't alone second. There were several people down the path behind him, and they looked different than anyone he'd ever encountered before. He was interrupted from studying them by the feeling of something softly hitting his leg. He turned sharply and discovered, amongst other things, like the change of his outfit, that he had suddenly sprouted a tail. He froze and glared at it for a few seconds before pulling a sharp dagger out of its holster with one hand and his tail with the other.

Soul had always had a theory.

A theory that had never been truly proven, but a theory he was convinced had to be the truth. People could have two different kinds of Sin. That was normal; Mage had two kinds. But Soul had always suspected that he was only supposed to have one, and that the other was because of his body.

He wasn't really thinking when he took a step in front of the boy he had been talking to. It was clear that the boy was scared, and clear that the person - who didn't feel entirely normal, either - was threatening him. Soul couldn't tell what exactly the man was talking about, but it felt like a fight was about to break out.

What he hadn't thought of was how he was leaving Mage completely unguarded. A quick glance back, and he saw that Mage had found a knife somewhere. He was holding it like he didn't know how to use it, both hands wrapped around its hilt as he pointed it at someone slightly farther away.

"There's someone who looks like me," he said, "and he's armed."

Soul looked in the direction the knife was pointing at.

This wasn't going to end well.

He took a deep breath - painfully aware of how human he was - and tried to give an awkward, calming smile. "I don't think any of us know what you're talking about," he said. "Maybe we can just talk about this-"

Sin ran on emotions. Soul was stressed, afraid and worried. That was never a good combo. But if you couldn't just heal someone without intending to, so he didn't expect anything of it.

Right until the lightning burst from his fingertips.

Mage gave a startled yelp from beside him, nearly dropping his knife in his surprise. The lightning didn't do much - it was just a few sparks - but Soul still panicked.

And, of course, that only made the lightning get stronger.

"I'm sorry!" he apologized. "I know this looks bad, but I promise it wasn't intentional. I really do want to just talk."

The lightning, which had grown mostly still, gave another little spark.

“Your actions contradict your promises,” says Ryke.

He extends his left hand forward. Sparks begin to conjure up from his downward-facing palm. They grow to be more sporadic and violent as the hand forms a fist, and with a crackling sound the sparks morph into an ebony long-sword. It seems to have a red cross-guard.

Carmine auras appear on his back as he brings the sword closer to his chest and right shoulder. He grips the hilt with both hands, keeping it perfectly horizontal — his knees relax into a lower stance.

Ryke knows he could take two of the adversaries out without blinking. As for the lightning-bender, Ryke has decades of training behind him that has taught him to analyze and defeat the unlikeliest of marks — he has confidence that he would find a weakness. But he hesitates to initiate combat considering the possibilities that he could be putting Lagertha in harm’s way — he is known to show no mercy when he’s on the attack.

But also, despite their horrified faces, Ryke does not trust anyone in the road — to be exact, he does not trust them to be honorable. They have Lagertha and that means they have the high ground. It makes things worse if they are really afraid of him. It’s when we are afraid that we are prepared to do anything, to make the goriest choices, all for the sake of survival.

I have to play it smart.

The sword disintegrates into a mesmerizing flurry of sparks and Ryke returns to a normal stance, but the aura remains subtly visible.

“Yield and we shall talk,” says Ryke hinting at the lighting. He speaks as calmly as he physically can. “Yield.”

Rizzo glanced back when she heard the commotion and froze. Blinked. That was unexpected, if she was to think up gross understatements.

She rushed back and planted herself between the two groups, looking wildly between them. Magic pulsed in her veins, but she kept it under control. These people were volatile, unpracticed in their powers as far as she could tell. No practiced mage would use lightning and flame as threats like they did.

She held her arms up in such a way as to show both her own unwillingness to fight and as a signal for them to calm themselves. "What's going on here?" she asked calmly, or, it sounded calm. Beneath her practice-tuned facade, her nerves boiled, and her eyes flicked to the building that stood so very close by. She prayed that no one would happen to glance out the windows.

He attempted to reach his hand around to cut at the base, failing since he still seemed to have the god-forsaken body proportions he was born with, short arms and all. He muttered a few choice curse words while he attempted to twist himself to reach properly, managing to nik his arm in the process. Rileni looked up towards where he'd seen the others before and begrudgingly started walking towards them. He didn't like asking for help and he would've preferred to avoid having anyone touch him but he didn't have much of a choice as far as he was concerned. A tail was a weakness, a place for someone to grab him from behind. He didn't like having weaknesses.

He looked over the group for the least busy individual, wanting to cause as little of a scene as possible. He walked up to the scraggliest of the individuals, seemingly a teenage human, ignoring everyone else.

"Hey kid," He began, trying to sound as friendly as possible, the kid already looked frightened out of his mind. He held out a knife. "Do you mind helping me get rid of this appendage?" He gripped the end of his tail for emphasis.

"Just a misunderstanding," Soul hurriedly said. The lightning wasn't growing worse, but his hands were still sparking. He was more worried than usual. As long as he kept panicking, the lightning wasn't going anywhere.

There was movement beside him.

He turned just in time to see Mage slipping his knife away. A second later, Mage was pushing Soul's arms behind him - effectively hiding the lightning from sight. The static in the air definitely didn't help hide it, but it was a start.

"Everyone knows Sin is affected by emotions," Mage said. "He's just confused about ending up here, and worried that this conversation won't end well. He'll stop using it once he calms down."

Ryke acknowledges their attempt to yield and the gesture of putting away the knife. He nods and remarks, “Very well.”

Although he does not understand what sin is supposed to mean here, he knows it can be difficult to use magic — or to just have minimal control over one’s powers — if one has not learnt to have their emotions in control first. Ryke has been having trouble with some of his abilities himself, since arriving on this godforsaken road. Besides, de-escalation is in everyone’s best interest, he wonders.

“I only mean to retrieve what’s mine,” says Ryke. “You have no reason to panic, unless you mean to stand in my way.”

He directs his eyes, and subsequently theirs, to the boy dressed like a priest — the sachet still hangs from the back of his shoulders — but then he notices something strange going on there: a horned creature holding a knife stands not too far from the boy — that means not too far from Lagertha either. A million possibilities frequent Ryke’s mind — unbeknownst to him, sparks begin flying from his hands. In quick succession, he slaps his palms together in front of his face, conjures up a non-lethal-sized fireball and unleashes it at the horned creature — it still sends the creature flying a couple feet back.

So much for de-escalation.