Young Writers Society

Ravelen stepped forward as all this unfolded before her eyes.
"Will someone please explain what is going on!?"

Millie stood in the back with her mouth wide open. She had watched the fight play out with increasing terror, and was now confused as everyone seemed to be on talking levels again. And there was a skeleton? She fought the urge to run away, reasoning that she had more of a chance of survival if she was WITH the freaky skeleton people than without them.

"Hey um. I agree with her," she gestured to the girl with pointed ears (which, honestly wasn't even the weirdest thing she'd seen in the past thirty seconds or two years, so she just went with it), "Would anyone care to explain?" For the most part, she was pretty brave; her voice only trembled on first sentence. Which was honestly an improvement.

Auryon glanced back at both of them, eyes glowing a little. Her head cocked to the side in an animalistic manner - a manner that wasn't exactly human. Slowly, she raised a finger to her lips. "Watch. Listen. All will be made clear."

"Annnd that's a little creepy," Sam said, taking a deep breath. This one sounded a bit more steady than the last couple, so Leon decided that it would be safe to assume that they weren't feeling as exhausted as before. "I'm not sure exactly who they are, but you might want to tone back the spooky demonic stuff, Auryon--you could scare the other people here. Or was that what you were trying to do?"

Leon once again tried to wiggle out of the skeleton's grasp, but his attempts once again proved fruitless. He let out a sigh and resigned himself to his fate of being stuck in the arms of the pseudo-skeleton. "We both work for a group called Perseus," Leon said, desperately trying to ignore the skull on his shoulder. "It hunts anything that isn't human. But neither of us apparently joined it for that reason--we're both getting information--my best friend Thor is a person-turned-snake, I'm a shapeshifter because I'm half faerie, and Sam apparently has magic."

Sam let out an unsteady laugh. "Oh, you have no idea."

He gave them a look, but they didn't explain their response. The two partners turned their attention to Auryon, who still looked vaguely creepy. They glanced down at Thor, then at each other, and Sam reluctantly placed him down on the ground.

Ravelen took this all in. "Interesting." She said. "Anything that isn't human. That explains your reaction to me."
There was a growl from behind her and she turned.
"I told you to stay at home!" She said as a huge panther stepped out of the shadows and came to her side.

Auryon glanced back at Sam and shrugged. "I don't know, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't me. She sure likes scaring them, though, and I don't care enough to fight her on it."

Before either of them could answer, she raised the flute to her lips, a few long notes beginning the song. An eerie waltz began to drift through the carnival - an enchanting, beautiful melody that painted the stars across a midnight sky. There was a sorrow to it, too, that told of endless pain, of darkness that could swallow even the sun in its abyssal maw. As the song began her eyes slowly started to luminesce with a dim energy. This time, however, it wasn't the usual crimson that told of Apophis' presence - no, this time it was a deep titian tinted with the palest of greens.

Thor's form began to change as she started to play. He began to change sizes, the once-small rat snake soon the size of an anaconda. Viper frowned. That wasn't what she'd meant to do.

The combination of suddenly growing larger and seeing a panther popping out of nowhere made Thor lose the little calm he had left. He went to glance down at his hands out of habit--still frustratingly nonexistent--and promptly swung his now much larger tail out as he gave a terrified hiss.

There was a crashing noise as Lok-Leon went crashing down to the ground behind him, limbs all tangled up in the skeleton. Thor spun around even more wildly than before, knocking Sam off of their feet as well as he turned to see if Leon was alright.

Leon screamed.

Thor couldn't tell if it was because of him or being wrapped up in the pseudo-skeleton, but he frantically tried to calm his friend down. "It'ssss okay," he said, knowing that it would come out as little more than a hiss-

Wait.

That wasn't right, and he didn't need Leon and Sam staring at him to realize that.

"There'ssss sssomething wrong," he said, trying to bite back a scream. Leon stared at him with wide blue eyes. "My voiccce is all wrong. It'ssss deep and it'sssss-"

"I-I can hear you," Leon said, eyes widening even further. An absolutely enormous grin began to spread across his face, and a second later Thor found himself being hugged by his friend. "Thor, I can hear you! We can finally talk to each other!"

She flinched back as Thor's tail swung and winced when the skeleton clattered to the ground, her concentration wavering. All it took was a single wrong note to turn Thor several very bright and very peculiar colors before she looked to the ground, forcing herself to hear the music.

She took a breath and started again, Thor's colour returning to it's former white hue. HIs form began to shrink once more, then froze as her magic caught. She felt herself tense and she fought it back. No. She just had to concentrate. That was all.

"You have to feel it, sweetheart, or nothing's going to come of it," the voice of her demon lilted softly as she held a single note, a kind of place-marker until she could figure out what she was doing.

"I am feeling it!" she retorted sharply.

"Here. Let me help you. And don't you come after me for this. It might hurt, but as you like to say - no pain, no gain. I'm doing you a favor."

"No, wai-!"

Her eyes flashed crimson as Apophis seized control, her spectral fingers tearing through the vaults of her vessel's mind and wrenching open the door that the human fought so hard to keep closed, the flood of memories hitting her like a brick wall.

The blazing inferno devoured everything around her, turning the walls a beautiful, terrifying titian tinted with an unearthly green spark.

"SARAH!" the high-pitched voice of her sister screamed, and she turned, looking at the other girl through the wall of flames that separated them. She felt herself running forward, reaching through the fire, trying to wrench the still-falling debris out of her path.

Em...

"All you've got to do is sign right there, darling," the woman was saying, holding the contract in front of her. It was dark, dark as it could be, and the words she spoke were dull and rang in the small cell.

"That's it, then?" she felt herself murmuring. "I sign this, and you get me out of here, and they pay for it? All of it?"

"Yes, sweetheart. All you've got to do is write your name and all will be taken care of."

"In exchange for my soul."

"That's right. You'll be damned, but you'll have dragged those sorry bastards down with you, now won't you?" She passed the child a pen. "Your real name, mind you. Full one. Sarah Sterling."

The paper scratched under her unsteady hand, and she finally lifted the pen, looking up into the golden-eyed demoness' gaze. "That's it?"

She smiled to reveal long, pointed teeth and ran a few fingers down Auryon's cheek. "Just one more thing to...seal the deal. Give me your arm."

She hesitated, then did so, extending her left hand to the demon. Cold fingers clasped her forearm and she watched as its eyes began to glow.

Agony shot up her arm like lightning as the mark was burned into her flesh and a scream left her lips. She'd thought she knew pain...

She looked down at the blood on her hands, crimson staining her skin. Her fingers shook as she stared down at herself. Is this...is this what she'd wanted? Truly? She still felt the anger there, burning, the sick satisfaction, even the twisted desire to do it again. But that didn't change the horror at her own sin. Maybe, even then, her aunt had been right. Deal or no deal, she really did have the devil in her...

She closed her eyes and let her head drop before anyone else could see the emotion on her face, her breath shaky on the flute.

"Use it."

Her song shifted at that moment, the once-swift beat slowing down into that of a waltz. The tone changed to a more sombre one, a quieter one, without the fire. It grew stronger even as she played and though she was oblivious, the metal began to luminesce dimly with the heat emanating from her fingers. Thor's form twisted and began to stretch and re-create itself: two legs, two arms, a humanoid head, a torso...

Ravelen backed away as Thor's tail swung around. She reprimanded the panther, who just blinked at her, all innocent. She gave up and turned to watch the chaos.

Leon's form changes had always been quick and tidy; if an observer blinked, they would have been able to miss it. If they hadn't they might have been the slightest bit grossed out, but it was nothing compared to how he felt when Thor turned from snake to human in his arms It was like something out of the Animorph series he had read as a little kid--but even the covers didn't look half as disturbing as this did.

And then Thor was a person.

Leon's breath caught in his chest when Thor's appearance finally registered. He was young. Like, really young. Leon would guess that he was right around his age. Maybe fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old. His eyes were a dark brown, and his hair was a nice shade of black. It looked a little messy and fell in front of his eyes, but Leon guessed that was what happened when you got stuck as a snake for a couple of months.

"H-Hi," Leon stammered.

"Hi," Thor replied, and it was then that the two of them simultaneously realized that Thor was completely naked. Thor's face turned bright red, and Leon hurriedly looked away from his best friend.

That was when Sam stepped forward.

"Since Auryon's taken care of your form, I can take care of the clothes," they said. They paused and muttered "I think." under their breath, but Leon tried to ignore that part. No words were spoken as part of the spell. Sam just looked intently at Thor, took a very deep breath, and warmth began to fill the air. Fabric started to wrap around Thor's body. It was slow at first, but then there was a sudden pop and he was standing there in a plain black t-shirt, jeans and sneakers.

"Thank you," Thor said to both Viper and Sam, the latter of which looking like they were about to pass out.

He turned back to Leon. "Now we can talk to each other."

"Y-Yeah," Leon managed to get out.

Thor pulled out from the embrace and held out his hand. "I'm Kane Thompson.."

"I'm Leon Thorne," he said, shaking it, "but you probably heard Sam say that."

Ravelen watched with awe as the snake became a person. She quickly turned her back upon realizing he was totally naked. The panther chuckled. "Shut up." She muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

Kane and Leon both froze when they heard a chuckle from nearby. It didn't sound like anyone who had spoken so far, which left them to both come to the same conclusion:

It was the panther.

Their eyes simultaneously widened as the two teenagers stared in disbelief at the gigantic feline; Leon was desperately trying to convince himself that it was just a figment of his imagination.

"Oh," Sam weakly said, leaning up against the nearest piece of carnival equipment, "your panther just laughed. They're magical, I'm guessing? Or maybe I really have used too much magic for today, and I'm getting delirious..."

"Yes, My panther chuckled." Ravelen said, her mouth twitching a little. "And yes, He is magical."

Auryon swayed a little as the song ended, unsteady on her feet. The voices around her were a bit fuzzy and even Apophis' murmuring was unclear. She was pale and her gaze was a bit unfocused, as though she was on the edge of consciousness. That'd been a lot of magic, more than she'd deliberately used before.

Ravelen sat down on her panther, watching and observing. "There is one thing I want to get clear." She said. "One of you hunts fey. I'm not exactly fey, but if you intend on fighting me, or hurting me, let's get it done. I really don't want to fight though."

She ended this with a sigh, and suddenly she seemed to appear extremely weary.