Young Writers Society

Things are about to get a little weird.

Okay, so let me back up a bit. The multiverse tends to have a mind of its own. I'm sure you know what I mean by multiverse - a good amount of you guys have been through a series of strange events taking place across a variety of different realities. That normally wouldn't be a problem, but this has been happening a lot. So much that the multiverse has decided to act just a little bit funky, and has decided that creating this weird rift place - although right now it just looks like a really nice library - is the best way to do some damage control. And, unfortunately, you've been brought along for the ride.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but it looks like you're going to be stuck here for awhile. Don't worry about it, though - you've got me here, and I'm at your every beck and call. (Mainly because I feel just a little bit guilty about you being trapped here, but, hey, at least you get to enjoy the experience!) All you have to do is say my name, and I'll appear!

So, uh, be prepared for some pretty weird stuff. Starting with this message you're receiving in your head. It's an automated one, so I can't answer any questions you might have. As a warning, you're probably going to see yourself - or versions of yourself - soon. I'd explain it more, but it's honestly just better to see this sort of thing in person.

Once again, sorry about this whole mess! Hopefully things should resolve themselves soon. In the meantime, try to have a little fun?

He was standing in a library.

He blinked. Hadn't he been standing in the throne room? He remembered standing there, remembered going to sit down in the throne because he had been so exhausted from his travels, and then, suddenly, he was here. He blinked again. The library, bizarrely enough, was still there. Even more odd was the fact that this definitely wasn't his library.

Okay then. So someone must have kidnapped him-

No, that couldn't be right either. He wasn't against the idea of someone betraying him; he honestly expected it. But he would have heard if someone had even entered the room, much less if they had walked up to him and done...well, he didn't know what exactly, but they had to have done something.

As if answering his queries, a voice suddenly rang out in his head. It was hard to put a gender to, and even harder to determine the age of. There wasn't even much of an accent - if anything, it sounded like a combination of every single one he knew and a little more.

He listened carefully.

Then he took a deep breath and promptly flung himself onto the nearest chair - a nice, comfy sofa - because he was still completely wiped from returning to the kingdom. He could figure out if what that voice said was true later. Right now, he just needed to rest.

"Hello?" a voice suddenly called out.

He looked up.

There was a boy standing at the very end of the aisle. His clothing was bizarre - some sort of collared shirt, with bizarre black pants and strange leather shoes. A pair of glasses rested on his nose. He pushed them up as he stared at them.

"Oh," the boy said, "that's an interesting outfit."

He stared.

The boy shrugged, then started heading over to him. Thrusting his hand out in his direction, he wasted no time in giving an introduction. "My name's Levi Quinn. You?"

He looked down at the hand, then back up at the boy. Didn't he knew who he was talking to?

He (reluctantly) got to his feet.

"I am King Kartiel," he said. He went to go shake the boy's hand, but Levi suddenly pulled it back and stared at him with wary eyes.

"I don't know what game you're playing at," Levi said, taking a noticeable step back. The air was beginning to grow warm. This boy was obviously a specific magic user, and it seemed like the name had finally clicked. "But you can't be King Kartiel."

"I am," he insisted.

Levi shook his head. "You can't be," he repeated, green eyes suddenly flashing purple. "I'm King Kartiel-"

"Oh f***."

The two turned to look several feet away from where they were standing. There was another man there, one who had a disturbing resemblance to him. If he wasn't so certain that he was an only child, he would have even gone as far as saying they were twins.

"Just great," the man said, in a voice that sounded disturbingly just like his own. "I'm stuck in an interdimensional rift with myself - times two. Wonderful."

The moment modern!Bo found himself standing in a library was the moment his heart stopped. It was sudden, and jarring, and there was nothing leading up to or that seemed to cause this moment, but the immediate thought that popped into his head was Kartiel.

He didn't care if it was really Kartiel's fault. At this point, Kartiel was just the default scapegoat for weird, not-supposed-to-happen events. But it was then that the strange little voice began to speak a message to him in his head, and he knew... it couldn't be Kartiel. Kartiel didn't talk like that, and didn't sound like that. In fact, he didn't know anyone who sounded like that. He didn't recognize the voice at all.

He was about to try to talk back to the voice in his head when the message ended, and for a moment he began to wonder if the message was somehow automated, only for it to confirm it was so. So did that mean it was like... a voicemail? But in his brain? And what was the name of the person who brought him here this time? The voice said to say their name but he didn't know their name! How was he supposed to ask for help!

Bo looked around the row of bookshelves he was in, seeing nobody else yet, but was already starting to prepare himself for seeing an alternate version of himself. The voice, after all, had warned him. He began to walk down the aisle, and peeked out the end. At that moment, he was looking face to face with himself, peeking out from the other aisle.

Both of them jumped back.

"Woah!" they said in unison.

Modern!Bo laughed, looking at... himself. It was, oddly, a feeling he'd felt once before, when he was in Nadira's body. But it was still strange nonetheless. He noted his alternate self's different attire. He was dressed in all black, and almost looked like he'd hopped out of a fantasy-medieval RPG or something, with all the leather and the boots. The other Bo was giving him a similar look, and for a moment, he wondered what it looked like to his other self to see himself wearing something so... seemingly boring, with just a big grey sweatshirt, jeans, and tennis shoes.

The other, canon!Bo spoke first.

"So this is what the voice meant by alternate versions of myself, huh?" he laughed.

Modern!Bo laughed with him. "I guess so!" He gave another look at himself. "You look... so much cooler than me, haha."

Canon!Bo looked down at himself, surprised at the compliment. "What? You think this is... cool?" he laughed again. "I'm literally wearing one color. I put zero thought into this."

Modern!Bo chuckled. "Well that's something we have in common."

The other Bo smiled. Only to hear a frustrated groan come from the next book aisle down. Coming around the corner behind him was James... but he didn't look like the James that modern!Bo knew. He looked... much more rugged, and worn down.

Canon!Bo whirled around and gave James a smile. "Oh! You're here too! Meet uh -" he gestured to the Bo in the sweatshirt with a bit of a helpless expression.

"How about we call me Andrei and you Bo," modern!Bo suggested.

Canon!Bo's eyes lit up and he nodded. "Yeah! Meet Andrei. Who's uh, apparently an alternate version of myself from some other universe or reality. Ain't that neat?"

James, who looked rather annoyed and disheveled, furrowed his brows. "Wh... what in the-"

"You uh, you heard the voice in your head explaining stuff, right, James?" Bo asked.

"Yes but -" James huffed running his hands down his his face. "Never mind I just. Dragons above, I'm sick of this," he muttered.

"Already?" Bo asked.

Andrei chuckled. "Wow, I'm friends with a James in my reality too."

"Oh really?" Bo smiled up at him. "You think he's here too?"

"Hmm. Maybe?" Andrei looked down the aisle as if to search. It was then that the three of them collectively heard voices. Namely, the f-word.

"Hmm, I don't know, but it sounds like we're not the only ones here," Andrei replied, leading with Bo and James following right behind as he walked towards the source of the sound.

There were three other guys, and at least two of them looked like alternate versions of each other. Bo and James were relatively unfazed by the three strangers, but Andrei was surprised that he actually recognized one of them - but that person wasn't really his friend. But at this point, he didn't really consider Kartiel his enemy either. More just like... that annoying frenemy he still had a salty grudge on.

It was Kartiel. He pointed to the Kartiel in question, assuming the others might've been Kartiel too. He had no idea.

"Kartiel!" He found himself smiling. "Oh my gosh! HAHA! You're stuck here too! BAHAHAHA!" He... he couldn't help but laugh. If Kartiel was a victim of this multiverse trap, that meant Kartiel was at least, in some form, getting a taste of his own medicine. He knew he shouldn't have been so pleased by that, what with him always saying vengeance was pointless and not gratifying - but if the universe somehow arranged this for him?

He was... so pleased. He slapped his knee with his laugh for extra measure.

"Good to see you, my man!"

The youngest of the Kartiels - though he hadn't figured this out yet - stared blankly at the bizarre group before him, then promptly squeezed his arm to see if he was dreaming. This had to be a dream, right? Reincarnation was one thing. Magic was another. This was a completely different can of worms, and just couldn't be real.

Then again, he hadn't exactly thought he'd be reincarnated like this after getting stabbed, so maybe this really was happening? It felt too real for it not to be.

That didn't mean he didn't squeeze his arm again.

In fact, he squeezed it harder.

I'm really not dreaming, am I?

Kartiel - no, he couldn't call him that, not when he was Kartiel! - groaned upon hearing the man's laughter. "Hello, Bo," he drily said. He looked far from happy about this apparent reunion.

The other - no, that name didn't work either, because he was still the original Kartiel - Kartiel, the one that he had spoken too for a longer period of time, was in the middle of giving a similarly blank stare at the group assembled. Then he blinked, turned and started to make his way to a door only a short ways from where they were standing.

"I'm going to leave now," he slowly said.

"Leaving the library isn't going to do anything," was the reaction from the miserable of their odd trio, uttering another groan and folding his arms. The king (a little better than calling him by his name) paused but refused to turn around. "We're stuck here until the multiverse figures this all out and fixes all the little problems the recent rift opening has done."

This caused the king to turn. "The what?"

The miserable man let out a third groan and massaged his temples. "The rifts. The things that bring you to a place like this. The things where your reality and other realities overlap." He threw himself down into the chair that the king had been sitting in only minutes before. "Why do my counterparts have to be idiots?"

"Hey!" Kartiel interrupted. "First of all, don't dump me in with that imposter over there."

"I'm the older one-" the king indignantly began to reply. Kartiel ignored him.

"Second, I'm not. I just don't get this alternate reality stuff yet. What, so like magic brought us here or something? And the only way we can get back is if we wait this out?"

"Sounds about right to me."

Kartiel turned around and immediately found himself staring at, well, himself. Only this time it wasn't a man who bizarrely shared his own name.

He was look at an identical copy of himself, down to how wrinkled his shirt was and the way that one of its collars was sticking up ever so slightly. Even his hair looked exactly like his own.

Kartiel promptly let out a startled cry and went stumbling back into the chair that the miserable man was in, and, much to their shared dismay, ending up falling right into his lap.

"Oh wow," Andrei marveled. "Kartiel. You have so many different versions of yourself."

"You know that guy?" Bo asked, leaning in.

"Yeah. He uh... well it's a long story," Andrei replied with a chuckle.

"Ahh, I see," Bo nodded. The two shared a look and nod of agreement as James began to drift away from the group already, ducking into one of the many aisles of shelves. Andrei looked over Bo's shoulder, noticing James's sudden absence.

"Woah- wait, where'd he go?"

Bo followed Andrei's gaze and shrugged. "Eh, somewhere in the library I suppose. If we're stuck here for an indeterminate amount of time he's probably just gonna try and catch a break. Take a nap. Read a book. I dunno."

Andrei nodded. "Mm. Sounds like James. Though uh, your James looks like uh..."

"He's been through a lot," Bo said, completing Andrei's though.

"Ah. Yeah."

Mmm. Books. A wonderful smell. Calming, in fact.

But then again, I was nowhere near any place that had this strong of a smell of paper.
I was inking. I should be smelling art supplies. I should be inhaling pencil, with my left hand smelling like a putty eraser - which admittedly isn't the best of smells, but none of this should smell like this. Like, am I even sitting down? No! No I'm no-okay wait who's speaking to me? eXcUsE mE, WhAt tHe hECc?!

...
Alright, is that supposed to be Bo? And...less cool bo. And who are those other dudes?

Waaaiiittt if this is some multiverse stuff then it'S OBVIOUSLY KARTIEL'S FAULT!!!

"Hey! Kartiel how's it going...uhh...you two??" I heard a voice say. I looked up. Is that...Raiden? My character, Raiden? N a n i?

I hid behind the shelf of books I was already behind. Nope. I'm on drugs. That's it. I'm actually high right now. I'm lying somewhere, high as a flight attendant, drooling probably. Yup.

Andrei's face lit up as another familiar face entered the scene.

"Raiden! Hey there!"

"What? No, I'm not-" Kartiel's doppelganger started to argue, only to fall silent when he realized that the conversation had turned to the arrival of more people Bo apparently knew.

He let out a sigh. With a flick of his wrist, an armchair suddenly slid over to where they were. He promptly plopped himself down on it. He waited for a moment, then, seeming to grow impatient said, "Are you all really going to ignore the fact that I just appeared out of nowhere?"

"Yes," the miserable man said, abruptly pushing Kartiel up and off of himself. This, of course, caused Kartiel to give an indignant cry, but he really wasn't in the mood to get into an argument with him over something like this. "We're in a rift generated by the multiverse. I'm not going to be surprised by seeing myself appear again."

His doppelganger straightened. "I'm not you."

The king returned to the group and studied the doppelganger. "You look like the smaller version of myself-"

"I'm actually quite tall for a human-"

"You might be for a human, but you're short for an enderman."

Kartiel glared at the miserable man, and then at the king for good measure.

The doppelganger suddenly hopped back up to his feet, the chair going back to wherever it had come from as he walked over to the group gathered. "I'm not a Kartiel," he said, stopping in front of Kartiel. "I just decided to use this form since you're-" Here he poked him. "-the one who said my name."

James appeared out of the woodwork, coming up from behind the new arrival. “And what would that name be, exactly?” he asked.

His doppelganger - who apparently was just using his appearance - turned and looked at James with a furrowed brow. "I thought I-" Understanding dawned on him. "Oh. Shoot. I knew I forgot something! It's a good thing Kartiel over here mentioned it, or else I don't know how you would have found me."

Suddenly, he was standing behind the man. There was no indication of any movement; one moment he was standing in front of Kartiel, and the next he was standing behind the man who had asked the question. And then, to his horror and surprise, his doppelganger's form glitched out. It was the only way he could describe it - small white particles appeared in front of him, and his form itself seemed unstable. Then, in his place was an exact copy of the man who had appeared from around the shelves.

"I'm magic," he said, straightening and puffing out his chest ever so slightly. He even went as far as resting his hands on his hips.

"We all are," the king slowly said, confusion flickering across his face.

"No, I'm-" The man sighed. "I'm Magic. With a capital m, not a lowercase one."

"I don't understand," the king hesitantly commented.

The man looked visibly deflated. His shoulders slumped, and his proud grin turned into a frown. "I'm the Personification of Magic."

"So, Pom," Kartiel concluded.

He shook his head. "No, it's Magic. The first part is just a formality-"

Kartiel smirked. He knew he shouldn't, but he just couldn't resist. "Okay, Pom."

James turned to look at Magic, eyes widening ever so slightly when he saw that Magic had taken his form. It was... not how he had envisioned seeing himself - he had thought he would see an alternate version of himself, not an exact duplicate. It seemed that Magic was able to unironically magically clone people. He wondered if Magic had a true or original form, or if he only ever stole the forms of others. Or if he was doing so intentionally, to mess with them, for some kind of shock factor. There were multiple possibilities.

He faced Magic, looking him in the eye, showing no outward signs of disturbance, though in his gut, he was unsettled.

"So - let me just clarify. We have no control over getting home faster, as it's all up to presumably you or someone else to fix whatever rifts in space and time and different realities have gone wrong. So we're stuck here indefinitely, and just have to wait it out. Am I correct?"

The man's copy shook his hand from side-to-side. "Sort of?" he hesitantly said, clearing trying to think through the question. "It's more than fifty percent correct - maybe a good eighty, or an eighty-five. You're right on the bit about being stuck here for a bit, and having it to wait you. But there's not really a specific person responsible for fixing things. The universe just kind of, I don't know, fixes itself? It's hard to explain to someone that's not like me."

King Kartiel IX had been growing steadily overwhelmed by this conversation, having long ago given up on trying to fully understand it. The young boy who was apparently him seemed to be taking this in somewhat well, and the other, adult version of himself listened to this whole thing with a bored expression on his face.

(He thought that it was rather rude, but it wasn't like he was going to interrupt and point something out.)

"If this isn't too rude of a question," King Kartiel IX said, crossing his arms as he rejoined his counterparts, "do you have to keep copying u-"

Just as he was in the middle of asking the question, Magic disappeared. It was only when he felt his breath on his neck that he realized Magic had appeared next to him. To make matters even more startling, he had taken on his form instead. He let out a surprised cry and bumped into his adult counterpart, sending the two of them to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

This resulted in said counterpart giving a frustrated groan.

"Can my other selves please stop falling on top of me?" he said, pushing Kartiel off of him and getting to his feet. "Also, from this point on, I'm Kartiel, you're-" Here he pointed at King Kartiel IX. "-Aldonius, and the kid over there is Levi. Good? Good."

"I'm not a kid!" Levi indignantly replied.

"And Aldonius was my father's name," Kartiel added, annoyed that he didn't get to use his own name when he had to be the oldest one there. "It's not a name that I would go by-"

"Oh, please," his counterpart said, sighing and marching over to him after they both got back to their feet. "Don't play games with me right now. I'm really not in the mood. I know you use the name Aldonius when visiting anywhere outside your kingdom."

He turned around and pointed at Levi. "And you are a kid, compared to me. You're what, thirty-five? I'm in my ten thousands."

He turned to the rest of the group. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to go off and find myself a nice book to read while I wait for this to end." He gave a casual wave and promptly disappeared into the aisles before either the newly dubbed Aldonius or Levi could argue with the decision.

Not that he would have - he was a child compared to how old his adult counterpart was. He had been the oldest person he knew for a long time; it was hard to suddenly accept that someone was even older than him - much less technically being the first Kartiel.

Magic abruptly cleared his throat. "Now that that's all over, what were you saying, Aldonius?"

He turned back to look at his exact copy. "Do you have to look like us?"

Magic looked down, then back up at him. "Nope. I just do that to get people past the whole disbelief stage and right down to business. Speaking of that, let me just make a quick adjustment to my form."

"Well," James muttered to himself, "then I'm just going to go read a book." He made eye contact with Bo from across the room as his way of communicating before he departed, turning back into the row of shelves he'd come from.

Bo, however, had a question.

"Wait, so, Magic! If you're the personification of magic, does that mean you exist in several different realities simultaneously, or are you the personification of only one world's magic?"

Andrei looked over to Bo, a little surprised at his question, but after having heard it, nodded his head in agreement of interest.

Raiden nodded. He was also interested.
I laid on the ground behind one of the bookshelves. If they found me, it would be awkward as heck. I know their creators. Or at least I think I do. Beyond that, this carpeted floor smells funky. Sheesh, would it hurt to vacuum once in a while?

"It's the first one," Magic said, checking his appearance over in what Aldonius guessed was an attempt to make sure it looked alright. He readjusted his strange dark glasses, and then pulled the small gray thing up to somehow close his jacket shut. "Basically, I personify any type of magic that exists. If someone or something has it out there, I can do the exact same thing. And while it might come at a cost for them, I can do it without any price at all. Pretty convenient, right?"

He thought for a moment. "Wait, I got an idea. Just give me a quick sec so I can remember the specifics - there, I got it!" Magic held out his arm. Electricity coursed up and down it, dancing at his fingertips as he gave a large grin in Bo's direction. Then he turned, looked at Levi and promptly made darkness come shooting out of the floor at his feet. "This is how you do it, right?"

Levi stared, wide-eyed, and managed a nod.