Young Writers Society

A questionable amount of years ago (depending on which reality you're going by) a group of kids met in a strange clearing in a strange set of woods. The children all had their differences - most were from unimaginable worlds in the eyes of the others - but they struck up a short-lived friendship.

Time has passed. The kids have grown older. Some are adults. Others, not so much. But when fate - and some stray, chaotic magic - brings the group together again in beautiful golden castle, they're forced to confront the truth.

Everything that happened in that forest was real.

Kaito was being followed.

His follower was terrible at being inconspicuous. Kaito had noticed the cloaked mob the moment that he left the center of town. He had even taken the extra precaution of circling around the village to make sure them going the same way wasn't just a coincidence. Considering that he still had someone following him, Kaito was pretty sure it wasn't.

Kaito hadn't ever been followed before. Not since he was little, at least - and definitely not here. Not looking like this. Maybe he had watched too much anime growing up, but he couldn't help but get the worst feeling in his chest. What if this was some kind of creepy stalker? He knew that people had crushes on him! He had heard some of the girls in the village chatting about it when they thought he wasn't there.

Kaito didn't want a stalker. He didn't even want to look good enough to get a stalker! He just wanted to enjoy his day without having to worry about some crazy fan.

Kaito was so busy thinking about his follower that he didn't notice that he was suddenly in a completely different place - right up until he walked into a golden wall.

"Toto," Kaito whispered to himself, "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."

Where was he? This didn't look like the village. This didn't even look like that weird base he had seen off in the distance for the past two years. The walls were all made of gold, and this place was absolutely enormous. Plus, it had guards - he could see some of them coming down the hallway-

His eyes widened in alarm.

Guards?

He was trespassing, and there were guards. He could have tried talking to them, but what if they tried killing him the moment they saw him? He wouldn't have enough time to attack back.

So he improvised.

Before either one of them could see him, he ducked into the nearest room. The room was just as ridiculously big as everything else, but it had an added bonus: spare guard uniforms. Kaito quickly slipped it - and its mask - on. When he was sure the pair of guards had passed, he slipped back out into the massive hallway and stared his search for some kind of explanation.

He hoped this wasn't like the thing with the lockets again. He just wanted to get back home - even if home meant a weird creepy hooded stalker-

A door opened a little further down the hallway.

There was a giant person standing there, with a sheet draped over their entire body. Something about their body looked wrong, though. Maybe it was the huge bulge on their back, or the way that the cloak was moving in places their hands definitely weren't. And there was something about their teeth, too. They were almost like shark teeth-

The person looked up.

Kaito found himself standing at a face with horns. And scales. And sharp teeth. And eyes that were golden. And hair that looked like it was on fire.

Kaito had seen a lot of strange looking players during his time on Minecraftia. He had seen some interesting looking mobs, too. But none of them had looked like the man in front of him, and Kaito was honestly terrified.

Because the man looked like a...

"D-D-Dragon!" Kaito exclaimed, eyes wide in horror. He opened his mouth to say more - though he was too panicked to figure out what he was going to say - but he never got a chance to. Suddenly the dragon man was right in front of him, tail (!) wrapping around Kaito as his clawed and scaled hand pushed up Kaito's mask and covered his mouth.

Shari has her hands folded over her stomach, walking at a brisk pace down the hall, Sable at her side, and two guards behind her. She turns the corner to see two people, a guard, or rather a citizen in guard attire, she can tell they don't have the force, and someone covered in a sheet. She's about to walk past them when something tells her not to. She stops and looks at them. Their force signatures seem familiar. It takes her a second of contemplation before it clicks in her brain. Sable seems to know too, shoving her head into the hands of the person dressed in guard attire.

"Liz? Nen?" Shari's guards share a sigh.

Queenie rinsed off her blade in the hotel sink and stuck it back in its sheath. The last of the cleanup done. This one was supposed to be just a bit messy. A fingerprint on the doorknob, namely. A mistake that could be missed if the authorities were as incompetent as the mayor liked to sneer from his podium as he demanded whatever it was he wanted this week. More funding, probably. What for didn't really matter.

She straightened herself out in the mirror, adjusting every hair back into place and making sure her blades were hidden. Once all was in order, she turned and walked out of the bathroom.

And she wasn't in the hotel room.

A pair of guards like something out of Star Wars were walking toward her. She painted on a slightly flustered expression and gave them a little wave. They barely glanced at her. Not in some kind of locked facility, then. No one could possibly mistake her for personnel unless they had a casino or something here. If that was the case she could just as easily be a waitress, though. She'd work it out.

Cautiously, she made her way down the hallway. As she shifted her gait to something more casual. Walk like you own the place and people will believe you do. Until she ran into the boss, of course. That rarely happened, though.

She ran through what might have happened in her head.

Briar?

No, she wouldn't interfere with a job, would she?

No, no, it had to be something else.

Maybe Queenie screwed up and the guy wasn't really dead when she left him. He somehow got up behind her and...what? That bumbling fool wasn't capable of sneaking up on her, and he definately wasn't capable of overpowering her. If he'd knocked her out with something she'd have a splitting headache right now, and a lump on the back of her head.

She checked. Nothing.

She was still deliberating what might have happened when she came across a strange sight.

A kid wearing a...bedsheet? Another in a crown who appeared to be the master of the small-horse-sized dog-looking-thing, and a kid in a guard uniform.

She blinked.

Hallucinogenics, then.

Nendros didn't know what was going on.

The last thing he remembered was being in the library with Aska. The two of them were sprawled out in front of the fire with books stacked everywhere. If Tieth had been around, she would have had a fit at the mess. But Tieth had just come for her visit, and wasn't supposed to come back for another fortnight. He hadn't seen a problem with it then.

Then he found himself in a place that definitely wasn't the Castle of Blood.

The walls were practically made of gold. He didn't see what the guards looked like before he ducked into the nearest room - which turned out to be a supply closet - and grabbed a sheet to cover himself with. But when he came back out, he found himself staring at someone wearing a uniform unlike any uniform he had seen before.

So he panicked.

He grabbed onto the guard with his tail and made sure to cover their mouth, grateful that he wasn't dealing with another Aska. He had learned the hard way that you couldn't silence someone like him.

Then a woman - a queen? - appeared nearby. This had to be her castle and they must have met before. She felt familiar. Even before she uttered his name - how had she recognized him when he looked like this? - he was sure of it.

She hadn't just called him by his full name, either. She had called him by his nickname. Only Aska called him that these days, and only Az called him that in the past. How was she so familiar with him?

And why the name Liz - weird as it was - sound so familiar?

The man he had grabbed wiggled in his grip a little, trying to scoot away from the creature trying to nudge his hands.

He couldn't help it. The creature seemed so familiar and friendly, and Nen just had to pet it. He let the man go and looked the creature over. It didn't seem scared of him. Most weren't, but it still made him feel happy. He reached out a hand to pet it.

The guard, meanwhile, made a beeline for the other woman who had appeared.

"Queenie!" the man exclaimed. He took off his mask as he skid to a halt at her side. His face was flushed, and his strangely blue hair was a complete mess, but he didn't seem to notice or care. "It's me. Kaito. We met with the lockets. I don't know where we are, but a dragon man tried to kidnap me-"

Queenie. Liz. Why did those names sound so familiar? Why was he getting such a feeling of deja vu when he looked at the two women and the creature present? He screwed his face in concentration, trying to pinpoint the source of the familiarity.

And then it clicked.

"Queenie?" he repeated, eyes widening. His makeshift cloak finally fell back, revealing the draconian features he had been trying (and miserably failing) to hide.

The blue-haired man's eyes widened.

"She's not an actual queen," he hurriedly said. "It's just her name. Please don't kidnap her-"

Realization suddenly dawned on Nendros.

"Liz?" he managed to get out. Kaito, in response, just stared at him with wide, wide eyes. Nendros looked down at the creature he was petting - and then over at its owner, who was just a short distance away. "Sh-Shari?"

Shari smiled.

"Yeah. It's me." Sable barrelled down the hallway at Queenie and Liz, rolling on her back and pawing at them. Her tongues hanging out the side of her mouth and shes wriggling on the ground. "Hey, Queenie." She turns to her fully, flashing her a smile.

Queenie stepped away from the whatever-it-was and looked over the people around her. Too close. The blue-haired kid was too fucking close, and she couldn't breathe.

She fixed him with a heated glare. "Get the fuck away from me before I make your pelt into an ugly rug."

Someone slipped something into her drink. One of them. But that wasn't possible. The bartender worked for her father, and there were plenty of people keeping an eye on her, nothing she consumed should have been able to alter her mental state. Maybe she missed a warning?

She shook her head. "All of you. Stop it. I don't know any of you and right now, if I hear you people call me 'Queenie' one more time, someone's going to bleed." How the hell did they know her name? And why did they think it was okay to just cozy up to her like they were best buddies? People treated dogs with more respect.

Liz was panicking at almost everything going on right now, but she was somehow managing to keep her cool.

"How do you not know me?" Liz said, exasperated. "We just met a few weeks ago! There was me, you, Bailey - you could control time. I could sing and make illusions. Bailey had the whole ghost thing. This really isn't ringing any bells-"

She gave a startled yelp when she suddenly noticed that the creature from earlier had come over to where Liz was standing next to Queenie. She wasn't sure if she was more worried about figuring out what it was, or the fact that she had never been a fan of big dogs (was this a dog?) jumping up on her legs. Even when she had a very clear height advantage now, it still freaked her out.

"Uh, n-nice doggy," Liz managed to get out, taking another step away from the creature and holding her hands up in mock surrender.

The dragon man just stared at her from across the hallway.

"It's okay," he finally said. "I think she just likes you - you pet her a lot the last time you met her."

"The last time?" she repeated. "I thought this was the first time!"

Shari sighed and called Sable to her side. Where she sat, which raised her head to be the same height as Shari.

"I think we should all go sit and talk. Because clearly some of us are confused." She presses a strand of hair behind her ear. She turns to address Queenie and Liz. "My name is Shari. You met me, what was for me, nearly ten years ago. For you, it may have been more or less. I was 12 at the time, and Sable," She gestures to the puppy. "was much smaller than this."

Queenie glared, "I don't give a shit if you're delusional, just stop involving me in the cracks of your mental state," she growled. She didn't know where she was. That was the issue. If she could find out where she could figure out what to do from there.

She was just sick of this.

Liz screwed her face in concentration.

It was starting to sound familiar, when she put all of it together. She had thought something was familiar about Queenie, too, back when they first met, but she had just brushed it off as seeing a player like her before.

The memories started to come back to her.

Back when she was ten, she had a dream about a forest. She hadn't ever been to a forest like that before, but the dream was so vivid. There had been other people there, too - Scuds, Krassie, Shari, Nen and Queenie. Scuds and Krassie hadn't looked like other people she knew, but they were nice. And Queenie had a similar life to hers, too.

"I-I thought that was a dream," Liz said, her voice jumping a little bit at the end. She glanced back down at the creature that had just gone running back to Shari's side - at Sable. Now that the memories were coming back to her, Sable really didn't seem all that scary.

She looked over at Queenie.

"And I'm not delusional," she said.

"I think sitting down is a good idea," Nen interjected, giving an awkward smile - like he wanted to show off his teeth, but was too nervous to so he settled for just smiling with his lips. He looked over at Shari. "Where can we go?"

"There's an old staff room no one uses anymore. It has some comfortable couches and things in it, and Queenie, I'd suggest you come with. I won't force you to, but you won't be able to leave and go home. I suppose you could try though." Shari turns around and beckons everyone to follow her down the hallway. Her guards and Sable follow behind her.

Liz glanced back at Queenie, giving her a smile and a thumbs up before chasing after Shari and Sable. She fell into step just a few feet behind Shari. A moment later, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Part of her hoped it was Queenie, but the footsteps were too heavy.

She looked next to her.

It was Nendros.

He was currently watching Shari's back, so Liz didn't feel too awkward about staring. He had changed a lot since the last time they met. Liz knew she wasn't one to talk. She looked like a digital pop idol right now; she didn't even look her age or gender, and the dark blue hair was something she would have never been able to have before all of this.

But Nendros had been human - Scuds had been the one who looked like the cross between a human and dragon.

Nendros's eyes, hair, clothes - all of it looked different now. Liz couldn't even make out the boy she had met two years ago when she studied his face.

Nendros suddenly glanced over at her.

Liz hurriedly looked away, hoping he hadn't caught her staring. Maybe he was staring at her now, thinking the same thing that Liz had been thinking about him.

Queenie considered turning and finding her own way out of this....whatever this was. But no. No, that wasn't an option. It would take her too long to figure out where she was, what was going on, and how to leave. The people she was with - or, one of them, at least - already knew those things, presumably.

So she followed. Quietly, and reluctantly, she followed.