Young Writers Society

Emily chuckled, "If we can find whoever dumped us here, I'd be up for a fight. I have a life that I was so rudely plucked out of. Whoever did that deserves whatever I can give them." She said it with a flat threat. Removing her from the picture was, among other things, child endangerment. If Kivvien and the others couldn't keep the kids safe without her....well, consider the royal courts of Ryvor a slaughterhouse.

Kane crossed his arms. "Leon and I tried looking at the cameras earlier, but we couldn't see anything noticeable. Most of them were just static. If the person or thing that brought us here is here, we're going to have to search the mall for it."

Leon nodded. "It might be a good idea to swing by a hardware store, outdoors store or a store that sells kitchen supplies," he suggested, counting off the places on his fingers. "We don't know what brought us here, so we should be prepared for fighting."

"Hmm," Magic muttered. They looked over at Lunis and then back in the direction that they had come from. "Well, there's a food court we could go to back that way - Lunis can get some food there, and we can raid their kitchens for knives."

Emily shrunk back sheepishly, "The, uh, camera thing might have been partly my fault," she admitted, "I mean, I'm definitely not undoing it, but still."

If the others were getting weapons, she shouldn't. She might know how to use a knife, but she'd never really been much good at it. If the time came for combat, it was safer for her if she kept to the walls and ceiling and depended solely on her magic.

Personally, Lunis had been planning on taking a nap in Nubes's bed when he'd been dropped into the mall, but the panther didn't want to mention that. If he did, he'd have to answer stupid questions like why he was breaking into Nubes's house (again) or why he couldn't just sleep in his own bed.

"Ugh," Lunis said, rolling his shoulders, "Why would someone stick us here just to hide from us? Food sounds nice, though."

Nubes nodded. "And Lunis and I are already armed, but extra protection would also be nice," he said.

Emily nodded sharply, "It's decided then, you guys lead the way to the food. I may not technically need more sustenance, but I'm going to run out of chocolate here soon and may the gods forbid that dark tragedy from coming to fruition." She took another bite of her candy bar as if to emphasize the point.

"Chocolate is always a necessity," Magic agreed, cheerfully beginning to lead the group towards the food court. Kane and Leon fell into step behind her, the latter clinging more closer to the former. It didn't surprise them - after all, the two did have a past that would make certain members of the group heavily dislike them. But that past was shared with them, too, and they luckily could deflect all suspicion just by sharing their true name.

And they'd use that to protect those two, no matter what.

After all, Leon had been their partner for a time, and Kane had always been the third member of their unofficial trio.

Lunis and Nubes glanced at each other; Nubes knew Lunis was thinking the same thing he was. They had no reason to trust Leon, Kane, and Magic, but they didn't have much reason to distrust the trio either. Leon and Kane could've been incompetent or bad at hiding secrets - probably the latter, and they hadn't done anything openly malicious, so Nubes had the feeling they were likely nice people. And Magic was, well, the personification of magic. It felt like a bad idea not to fall in line behind them. They had also saved Emily.

So Lunis and Nubes walked behind Kane and Leon, though the panther quickly started walking beside Kane. "If fae clothes make you look like them, because of that necklace, would you look like a panther if you put on my shorts?" Lunis said casually.

Nubes snorted, ignoring the glare from Lunis. So much for good conversation.

Emily came up beside Magic, well, as close as she could get without stepping down from the wall. She was never going to step another foot on the regular floor again if she could help it. Good things never happened on the floor.

"So, you're the personification of magic, yes? Well, does that extend across dimensions? Like, do you embody the spells of the Ancients on Earth as well as the spells of the Rykvorian casters? Sorry if I'm being rude, it's just a confusing concept."

Kane nodded, absentmindedly fingering the necklace dangling over his chest.

"It would," he confirmed. "I'm not sure exactly what I would look like, but I would probably look like a panther - unless the pants belonged to someone else first."


"You're not being rude at all!" they reassured her. They gave her a big grin. They weren't the first person to ask about magic in a situation like this, though the other person was notably closer to them now than he had been when they first met. "The concept can be a little confusing for people new to it."

They paused.

"Now that I think about it, you're doing pretty good," they realized. "You're right - it extends across dimensions, or whatever you might call the multiverse. I'm magic here, but I'm also magic there, and I'm theoretically the magic that runs through my own veins. I'm all the magic there's ever been, and theoretically ever will be, but I haven't used time travel magic enough to check that out."

"Hm," Emily thought for a moment, "So...you magic way back when the old gods were still respected as they should be? Back when I first got turned during the reign of my mother, Nefertiti? Why did you do something about everything that happened then, or even now? Like, world war one, for example. It was so pointless and deadly, even I lost friends in it, why didn't you, you know, make it stop?"

She didn't ask with any malice or ill will, simply curiosity, a desire to understand.

"Keep your shorts on," Nubes said, before Lunis had the chance to say anything. And, before Lunis could react, the leopard moved over to where Magic was.

"Time travel magic?" said Nubes. "That doesn't sound like it's real, but I imagine you have the experience to say otherwise?"

Magic was silent for a moment.

"...I'm normally supposed to do things like this," they said. "Hang out with the regular old people of the multiverse. I can occasionally, as long as I'm not doing anything too influential. The multiverse has a balance - I want to break it, sometimes, but I can't because things like this happen."

They gestured down at themself.

"I lost my magic for awhile," they said. "I'm only just getting it back. I was tired of sitting around and watching terrible things happen, so I decided to interfere with something bad that was going to happen in one reality. I've wanted to do it before. I promise. But I..."

They faltered and trailed off, falling back into silence before Nubes's question registered.

"I do," they confirmed. "You can't interfere too much with the past or even the future, but most realities have rules set in place that makes it work like a paradox - do something in the past, and that's how it's always supposed to be."

"Hm," said Emily, "Fascinating. I have to say, the use of time travel magic is awful tempting, 'specially for someone like me. Been around for centuries, got centuries worth of unanswered questions, you know the drill. Like, if I could go back and find out what happened to that bastard who turned me way back when, that would be incredible. Or something a little less serious, like where Nathanial disappeared to during Woodstock that he came back covered in glitter with a pet giraffe and no idea how he came to be in that situation."

She shrugged, "I don't know, that last one still baffles me."

"Emily proposes some lucrative uses for that time travel magic," Nubes said, smiling in her direction. He'd have to ask her about the giraffe incident when the conversation took a lighter turn. At the moment, his smile faded away as he thought about what Magic had said. "But it doesn't seem particularly useful, given how much you cannot do with time magic. Or with magic in general. It would be much nicer if reality gave you the leeway to deal with atrocities."

"...Yeah," Magic agreed.

They studied the ground for a minute before looking back up with a small smile on their face. "It's probably because it would be really bad if I somehow went evil, and decided to use the powers of magic to make a catastrophe of my own."