Young Writers Society

James's shoulder's tensed as the warmth surrounded them and they were transported to a large building. His muscles didn't relax when Dean seemed to reunite with more strangers- though, presumably, his friends or family. He turned around to look around the room, assuming it was some kind of rarely-used warehouse.

Was this where they were going to be staying until this whole mess was over?

He sighed. Again.

The chaos of everyone around him having their own confusion and conversations seemed to fade, and he stared blankly out into nothing.

Rose leaned against the wall, trying to slow her racing heart. Everyone was confused, and chattering. She couldn't blame them, she was confused herself. She closed her eyes and focused on controlling her breathing, focused on calming herself down before she started moving around and asking questions.

She shook her head a little. No, asking questions was not going to be a good idea. Not in this group.

"Breath. Think. Plan." She whispered to herself.

Boris did not need carrying, but he was not about to protest it. He hadn't felt this safe in a long, long time. He closed his eyes, and drank in the feeling, letting his sense of time go numb.

He opened his eyes again, to find that the scenery had shifted. But he was still with Damascus, so it was alright with him. He blankly squinted at the barren warehouse, at everyone cluelessly milling about, at James, finally spent.

"Just you wait... 'til morning. I'll be useful then. So very, useful." Boris muttered, further away by the second.

"-Did I ever tell you I used to be a cavalry scout?" threatened to be the last coherent thought Damascus would get out of him.
___

Siren popped up by Rose. "I forgot what we were doing." she mused idly, the concept of worry missing from her tone completely. She had complete faith that everything would pan out just fine, for some undefined reason.

"But by the looksa people, I don't know if they know, either."

"Poor James," she said sadly, "He's the one s'done all the plan work, and now he's run out. And nobody else does it like he can."

Siren felt guilty. Only in fishing or pirate related problems had she ever been useful to anyone. And only in rare moments like this did she ever really think about how much other people did for her.

Siren squatted on the ground, scrunched up her face, and tried to think of something useful.

Rose opened her eyes as Siren's voice brought her back. She looked down and saw Siren on the ground.

"Are you okay?" she asked, kneeling down next to her.

"I'm trying to think of something," said Siren. "James has been doing all the work, and all I did was dig a hole."

She frowned at the floor for a moment longer, then looked back up at Rose.

"Maybe we can find something for people to sleep on?" She said, and pointed at a row of mystery crates in the corner. Whatever was in them, Siren was determined to make something helpful of it.

James was dragged out of his mental fog after hearing his name. Repeatedly. He glanced over in Siren’s direction, before walking over to Dean and Runi, among all of the other strangers he couldn’t bother to introduce himself to. Instead he just looked at the two in question, who’d brought them there.

“So now that we’re here, now what? We just wait?”

Dean pulled out of his brother's embrace.

"I, er, actually don't know much about what to do," Runi awkwardly said, rubbing the back of her neck. "I just offered my help if it was needed."

"Same here," Gabriel said with a shrug. "This isn't like anything I've dealt with before - by the way, the name's Gabriel. Issac is the nicely dressed one, and Quinn's the last member of our trio." He glanced back at the two in question. "I'm going to guess that both of you are just as clueless as I am."

Dean glanced down at his brother.

"That's alright," he said, giving said brother a warm smile. "I think we'll be okay with Luci. Can you reverse the magic?"

His brother surveyed the group, looking them all over as he muttered the words to a familiar spell - if Dean knew his spells right, it as one where he could analyze the makeup of a spell. That should have been the end of it; Luci should have told him exactly how to return everything to normal.

But, instead, he looked like he had just seen a ghost.

"...I-I've never seen magic like this before," he said. He looked up at Dean. "It's-It's stronger than H-Kate's magic is, and stronger than mine. And it's not just one spell - it's a mix of spells interwoven together."

"...So you can't do anything?"

He nodded. "The only way to reverse it would be to find the person who cast the spells."

Dean felt a sinking feeling in his gut.

...Just who - and what - had caused this?

James knew that under ordinary circumstances, he might be discouraged at their words. But he knew that he was both willingly and unwillingly already disassociating from the present moment, and if there was any benefit it was that it allowed him to look at their problem as objectively as he possibly could.

He lightly clapped his hands together.

"Well, that seems simple enough of a task to tackle. I don't think whoever cast these spells would leave us completely unsupervised, so there must be some way to trace them. That, or they are near us, or among us. Or there is someone among us who holds loyalty to them, and is here to be their eyes for them. I don't think we can consider someone with this much power and skill to be so deliberate in bringing us here to only let us loose and go running. And if that is the case, I suggest we explore our other options first before running on a wild goose chase - that is, unless anyone else has any better ideas, or knows who might've done it."

He looked around at the others to see who might've been listening. Rose and Siren were together, Boris looked nearly asleep in Damascus's arms.

"My only hypothesis is that it might be Kartiel or Rendra, or another god associated with them. A few of us have had dealings with them in the past, which is the only reason I think it might be them again. If not, then I have no hypotheses."

Rose looked at Siren and nodded. "Good idea. Shall we get to it?" She was glad to have something to do. All the others were in a big group, obviously discussing something, but Rose wanted nothing to do with it at the moment. She was tired, tired, tired. Her wings fluttered a little as she walked over to the crates. "Do you just want to start tearing them apart?" She asked Siren.

Siren nodded, and hopped over, her bare frog feet skittering audibly on the wooden floor.

She grabbed a crate, and held it in place with her strong legs. She pried off the lid with a strained creeeeek.
The label, though she could not read it, said 'flour.'

"I don't know what this is. But this is good," said Siren, hugging the bag to her face. A tiny leak left her with flour in her hair to go with the dirt on her dress.
She put it the bag down, and set to work on the other crates.

"What didya find in yours?" she asked Rose.

Issac - who had been busy talking with Gabriel and Quinn up until this point - noticed that two of the group were currently tearing apart crates. He slipped away from his two friends to investigate what they were trying to do, but watching them closer for a minute did little to help.

"What are you doing?" he finally asked - for once, he was completely at a loss.