Young Writers Society

She pulled her legs closer to her chest.

"But Codix is gone," she whispered. "They took Codix, Bo. The wraith took him, and they're going to f-"

She cut herself off before she could finish her sentence, her gaze dropping down to her lap.

"Even if we do escape from here," she said, "I won't have my best friend."

“We will do everything in our strength to find him,” Bo said softly, pulling her close as his voice fell to a whisper. He only wanted her to hear. ”I will do everything I can. I’m not giving up on finding him just yet. I’ll be fighting for him too, okay?”

He rubbed either her back or her arm - pretty sure it was her arm.

She managed a little nod, but she didn't really feel it.

"But they took him and Maahes," she protested. Her voice cracked a little as she spoke. "They-they must have taken them to feed on them. Why else wouldn't they be here with us?"

Bo kept rubbing her arm. “Maybe cause they can shapeshift and stuff. None of us can do that or have magic in that kinda way,” Bo offered, though he wasn’t super sure hinself, he was surprised by how reasonable and confident his response sounded.

Of course, he didn’t know what the implications of that meant. Like, how would the wraiths know that, or whatever else.

“But uh, let’s focus on the first thing we gotta figure out. We gotta get outta this cell. Does it look like there’s a way out of this cell? What’s it look like? It feels strange.”

She didn't know how the wraith would know that about the two of them, but she gave another nod - one that she realized Bo couldn't see - and turned her attention to the only entrance to the cell. If she could push aside her grief, she could help the ones of them who remained escape. And then she could...

...She didn't know what she was going to do next.

"The cell has a front to it," she confirmed. "It...It looks almost organic. I'm not sure how it's supposed to keep us inside. It might be durable, or have some other kind of defense to prevent from breaking out or breaking in."

After a few more minutes of despairing over the certainty of excruciating death, the futility of all he had survived, the loved ones he had abandoned for nothing, the catalogue of sins he would soon pay for that had bought him nothing, the injustice that would forever go unanswered, Boris soon grew tired of it. More than that, he was furious.

Boris calmly stood up, walked to the other end of the room, and took a running charge at the webbed ‘door.’ He threw his body at it with the full force of his weight.

It was like throwing himself at an elephant. A perplexingly one dimensional, vaguely rubbery elephant.

He repeated this act four times.

Between the third and fourth time, he wondered, why he felt wet, and why it was stinging. Surely it was not blood. He was weary, bursting with desperate adrenalin, and dazed with it, but he should not have been bleeding. Or smelling vaguely of freshly burning flesh.

Boris took a moment to pause, and observe his flesh. It was burning. Holes melted through his shirt from the sleeve to the shoulder, splashing his left side from the wrist to the chest and the cheek, leaving red, bubbling skin. He yelped, jumped away from the entrance, and attempted futilely to brush off the acid. This only irritated his burns, and spread the acid to his hands and forearms.

He backed violently into a lone patch of wall, convulsed a little, and sank to the floor, clutching at nothing, barking curses in a different language with every scrap of breath he had as he waited for the sound of sizzling to fade out.

In between the flashes of red and black spots that dotted his vision, he looked to the webs. They were secreting acid, from something akin to glands, all over the surface. Of course they were. Of course. At this point, whyever not.


“We’d better… ghrrgh… think of something else.” he croaked. “Because if we don’t… I’m trying that again.”

Sitting in the corner of the room, Aegeas had spent the last few minutes keeping his eyes shut and trying not to think about what felt like taut skin pressing against his back, or how the villagers had been so kind as to wrap bandages around both his arms and keep him from moving either of them. It wasn't being shoved into a burning closet, having to duck under a sword, or nearly being smothered in a hay stack. But it wasn't much better.

The otter wasn't keen on opening his eyes and look at the person who'd led them here. Sure, he could smell Boris (he could also smell Boris burning, which he didn't like thinking about), but seeing Boris felt like acknowledging him a little more than Aegeas wanted to.

And Aegeas couldn't even blame Boris. Boris had brought them to the villagers, but Boris couldn't have known what the villagers would do. Boris couldn't have seen that ritual or this strange prison cell coming. Which made Aegeas feel even more bitter - he couldn't find anyone to be angry at.

So here he was, trapped in some disgusting room waiting for...something he also didn't like thinking about. He was getting a little tired of waiting.

Opening his eyes, Aegeas nodded in the direction of the bars (or, the equivalent of bars in this pink nightmare). "If someone can get me over there," he said, "I can try lighting it on fire." The most magic he'd ever used was lighting a candle, so "try" was the key word in that sentence. But this was a life-and-death situation - it had to be worth a shot.

Boris propped himself up and sat up a bit, without unscrunching his eyes, and attempted to distract himself from the steady burning sensations by holding onto the words that Aegeas said. He pressed and unpressed his lips. He nodded.

"We set it... on fire. Onnn fire." Boris wheezed softly. "Good." He nodded a few times more, until the third nod, whereupon his eyes flew open.

"Oh. We're trapped in a, in a box. Maybe the box... maybe we shouldn't set the box on fire."

Bo slowly let go of Nadira as he heard the sound of someone pounding themself against something dense. The smell of burning flesh alarmed him, and it wasn’t until Boris spoke that he knew who’d been injured.

Apparently the wall’s defense mechanism was to burn on contact or under pressure. He turned his head towards Boris.

Boris did not sound okay in any sense of the word. In his gut, he knew it was because Boris felt guilty for leading them to the village, but none of that was his fault. There was no way he could’ve known what it’d lead to. None of them had imagined this.

“I mean, at this point, I’m not against trying,” Bo said, wishing he had a weapon, or something to offer besides brute strength - which it sounded like Boris already tried, and failed. Even if he did tear it open, depending on how much force it required and how long he had to hold it open... he could die. It would be a very painful way to go, with no guarantees for the others that they could find a way out even if they did escape.

But wouldn’t it be better if he was gone? Wasn’t he a usueless dead weight now without sight? All he might be useful as now would be a human shield. Dying was probably just in the cards for him if he was going to make sure the others got out safely, if at all. He had to accept that now.

Dying was inevitable for him. They just had to try their hardest to get out now.

“Can you control the fire once you make it, or if it sets would it be out of your control?” Bo asked.

He imagined for a moment that possibility. Getting swallowed up in flames together. Would that be better than the wraith? He didn’t know... he didn’t know.

Seeing Boris injured snapped Nadira out of her daze.

She needed to focus. Codix could be dead right now, but she couldn't let her attention stay on that. There were other things that demanded it more. Other people that demanded it more. She was going to get them out of here.

She just had to figure out how.

"We should try coming up with another solution before we set the door on fire," she said. "There has to be some way to trigger the cell to open..."

She got to her feet and walked over to the door, careful not to touch it as she investigated the strange, living material that it was made of.

Bo nodded. Nadira was right. They should explore other options before resorting to fire.

“True. Okay, uh, can you see anything out the wall? Or... bars? Whatever it is.”

She peered through the living material.

"It's hard to make anything out," she admitted. "The breaks in the door are small."

She shifted her view, stepping a few feet to right before returning and moving a feel feet to the left. She was still struggling to make anything out, but there was the lack of something important: a keyhole.

She turned back to the others.

"There has to be some way they trigger it to open," she said. "I can't find a place for them to put a key."

Bo nodded, shifting his position so his legs were in front of him instead of under him. He could feel his feet bump up against the very edge of something, but at the same time suddenly became aware of a rock - or something small and hard - in his shoe. It was caught between his shoes, in his sock.

While he was aware that removing a shoe would be stinky, he didn't think it would do anything compared to the smell of Boris's burnt flesh that filled the cell. So he slipped his shoe off, not bothering to untie it, and reached into his shoe.

Sure enough, there it was. He felt a nickel-sized rock in the palm of his hands. If it wasn't a rock, there was no way of him knowing, but it didn't feel like anything soft or alive. He was surprised he hadn't noticed it, but then again, he had been pretty preoccupied with, well, everything else.

He tossed it to the side, only realizing afterward that he didn't know where he was throwing. He heard the faintest click-clack sort of noise, and tilted his head to the side. It sounded like he hit someone or something. Nadira?

"Oh, sorry," he apologized.

A sound followed, but Bo didn't know how to describe it. Like... someone slurping a noodle? But a lot of noodles and a lot of someones? His head tilted to the other side, turning his ear toward the source in further confusion.

Boris remained hunched over in his spot, and let the voices of his comrades fade out. He was too preoccupied with breathing very slowly, in the hopes that if he breathed slowly enough, it would somehow heal the thin, tight, raw casing that was his skin.

The clatter of the pebble drew his listless eye, just in time to behold the strands of flesh withdraw into the frame, embellished with appropriately visceral sounds.

Boris slowly stood up, and froze, in utter bafflement.

It opened. Bo blindly tossed a stone, in the literal sense, and it opened.

"Bo! You've...? You've done it." praised Boris, confused.

A grin stretched itself across his face, and in his elation for their freedom, he was unable to suppress it, nor could he suppress the indignant disbelief that twisted his brow. Thank Christ Bo would not have too see this expression.

He had burnt half his flesh off in a pointless display of defiance, so that a blind man could serendipitously free them with a pebble.

Boris threw his hands in the air.

"You're a bloody godsend!" he praised furiously.

Bo was shoving his foot back into his shoe. His heart was beginning to race again, but this time he didn't feel adrenaline come with it. Just anxiety.

If he'd freed them somehow that meant the cell was open and they could very quickly be exposed. They hadn't even taken the time to see if there were regular Wraith patrols, or anything. There was still so much they didn't know.

"Okay, that's great," he said, his tone stiff and flat, keeping his voice quiet. "But let's keep it down. Stay calm. Someone look out and tell me what you see. We'll have to figure this out step by step, but let's be as careful as we can."