Young Writers Society

Leon and Kane looked at each other again, the expressions on their faces saying that they did. But neither one of them immediately offered a response. It wasn't the easiest question to answer, given what Leon had done in the relatively recent past.

There was an answer they could give, though, that wasn't a lie. It was just as truthful as the one they probably should have given, but avoided all of the past he really didn't want to bring up right now.

"We do," Kane confirmed.

"We're actually friends with some people like that," Leon added. He started to count them off on his fingers. "There's Ari, Zion, Shadow, and Sam. Ari's a sorceress, Zion's her sentient shadow, Shadow's half sentient shadow and half human, and Sam's..."

He faltered.

"...Sam's complicated."

Emily shrugged, then regretted it as another wave of dizziness hit her. She blinked it away and looked back at the newcomers. Not knowing which of the six people she saw to focus on, she settled on looking in their general direction.

"I get complicated," she said. We're their heartbeats getting louder?

She was running out of time. She didn't know what was going to happen, if she would pass out or snap, or even something else, but she wasn't too keen on not knowing if the fae and human before her would be threats before it did.

Tossing away the caution she couldn't afford, she asked, "How about vampires? Or vampire hunters? Have you ever met any of them?" her nonchalant tone remained through some unknown miracle that she was thankful for nonetheless.

They both stiffened.

"We haven't met any vampire hunters before," Kane finally said after a moment passed, his tone somewhat nonchalant.

"Definitely not," Leon agreed.

Kane shot him a look.

"We have met vampires before," Leon added.

Kane, in response, nudged Leon's shoe with the tip of his foot.

"The vampires were very nice," Leon continued on. Kane resisted the urge to sigh, giving him another nudge in an attempt to get his point across. Leon, apparently, got it this time - he froze up the moment Kane drew his foot away.

But then he started speaking again, and Kane knew all hope was lost.

"We didn't have that long to chat, but vampires are definitely, totally okay in our books," Leon said, giving a shaky smile.

Well, they were either incredibly dishonest or incredibly inept. Or both. Their awkward glances, unsteady expressions, and constant nudging made it hard for Nubes to trust anything that they were saying. Still, if they were already starting to crumble in the face of Emily's questions, maybe Nubes could help break through their cover story.

"It seems remarkably odd that you know so little about the necklace you're wearing, Kane," Lunis said. "How did you acquire it?"

Emily squinted at them, her eyes still flitting between the different versions of the pair that bent and swayed in her vision.

"You are aware of how untrustworthy you sounded just then, right?" she said, out of energy and patience for mind games, "Could I please just get the truth here."

She couldn't even hear her own words anymore. The collective pulses of everyone around her were deafening at this point, hammering inside her skull like battering rams. Her venom pressed at her fangs, begging to be used to immobilize her prey, and to turn them if they weren't drained of every last drop of their blood by the time she'd fed.

Emily shivered. She wasn't used to those thoughts coming in tandem with her conscious mind. It was wrong. Like greasy bacon on a vanilla cake.

"But that was the truth," Leon weakly said. He scooted a little closer to Kane. It hadn't really been a question, but the girl was definitely a vampire. And even though he was physically older than her, he was sure he was the youngest one out of the entire group. Even Kane was probably younger than everyone besides him.

Instead of trying to offer another useless protest, Kane turned to the panther man. "It's a gift from one of our friends," he said. He thought a moment. "Two of them, technically. Ari was the one who found it, but Zion's been using it more recently. We just know what it does, and it was useful for what we're currently doing."

"Which is looking for my mom," Leon blurted. He usually kept that secret, but that would make his past seem a little better when he inevitably was forced to talk about it. "She's the fae side. Ari, Zion and Shadow were busy helping with a rebellion, so me, Kane and Sam have been traveling through the fae realm to find my mom-"

He suddenly fell silent, hearing someone approaching from behind. Both Kane and him spun around to get a look at the newcomer, only to feel a wave of relief when it was revealed to just be Sam.

...Who had apparently hit up the food court, if the almost entirely eaten chocolate bar in their hand was anything to go off of.

It was moments like this that Leon had trouble believing that they were who they said they were, but the world was a very strange place.

They took one last bite of the chocolate before slipping the wrapper into their pocket.

"Oh, hey!" Sam said, giving Leon and Kane a wave as they joined the two. "I didn't realize you had ended up here, too - that definitely takes some of the pressure off."

Sensing the tension, their gaze wandered over to the three before them.

"...What happened?"

"They asked about vampires and vampire hunters," Leon whispered.

"...Oh," Sam said.

"Thisss is not good-" Kane started to mutter, only to cover his mouth with his hand when the accidental hiss came out.

Emily tilted her head, trying to see the newest member of the group by finding the constant tilting of her vision nauseating. She closed her eyes and took an unnecessary but steadying deep breath.

She couldn't find the strength to speak again, nor the words to say. She used what little energy she had to curl her knees into her chest and press her hands over her ears, forgetting about subtly as she willed the pounding to stop. Everyone's voices had become but echoes and vague vibrations in the background of their deafening heartbeats.

She wasn't supposed to heart them this loudly. She wasn't supposed to feel this hungry. She was supposed to snap and wake up well-fed and back to normal. That's how it worked.

There was some irony in that. She was going to starve to death surrounded by blood. It wasn't unlike dying of dehydration in the middle of the ocean.

Lunis was right there, she could just....

She shook her head, "No," she muttered, "no."

Sam studied her for a moment. They had come to the same conclusion that Leon and Kane had come to - she was a vampire. And if it hadn't been obvious before, it was now.

She was hungry.

They crouched down in front of her.

It was hard to tell what being a vampire was like for her - it varied depending on the reality and the world. But if the way she was covering her ears was anything to go off of, she was trying to drown out the sounds of their heartbeats.

They tapped their neck.

"You can feed on me," they said.

Emily's eyes snapped up, locking on where the vein would be. She shook her head. She couldn't. It would kill them. She...wasn't a paragon of self-control.

She latched onto the offered neck and sank in her fangs. She was sure not to use her venom as she drank. Their blood tasted...odd, but she wasn't going to complain.

She took much less than she needed and shoved them away, "You shouldn't have done that," she said, picking up a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth with her finger and licking it off, still hungry but no paralyzingly so.

"It's fine," Sam reassured her with a dismissive wave of their hand. "I got my immortality back, so I'm not worried about dying. If you're still hungry, drink some more."

"Immor-" she squinted, "You haven't been messing with the gods, have you? Because I'm already going to probably be barred from the afterlife and I don't wanna screw up my chances even more..." she lost her train of thought.

She drank again, taking as much as she needed and then some, just in case.

She backed away, surprised to see him not-dead and fully conscious. "How...What kind of immortal are you?" she asked, studying him.

Well, that had just happened. Nubes had no idea how to respond, though he was a little happy that Emily had gone back to normal.

"I feel like that might be something you might want to investigate?" Nubes said, trying not to look at the gaping holes in Sam's neck. He had suspected that the process of draining a person wouldn't exactly be pretty, but he found himself very relieved that neither he nor Lunis had fallen victim to it. "I wouldn't trust myself to wear a necklace whose origins I don't understand, even if I haven't had any problems with it in the past."

It took a few more seconds than it would have before this for the holes to close up, but it took less than a minute for their neck to return to normal.

"I haven't been messing with the gods," they reassured her. "Or, at least, not recently - although I think you probably mean that in a bad way, and not in a hanging out kind of way."

They faltered.

"And, well...It's a little complicated," they admitted. They rubbed the back of their neck. "But I guess I have to explain it if you already know that I'm immortal. I'm the Personification of Magic - or Magic for short. You can also call me Pom, but I'm not a big fan of that one."


Kane tore his attention away from the conversation with Magic and the vampire to focus on the comment about the necklace. "We didn't have any other options," Kane said. "The fae aren't always welcoming to humans, so it helps when I don't look human."

Emily nodded, "Alright, I guess that makes enough sense..." she hopped to her feet and took out another candy bar as she walked back up onto the wall, "Anyway, I'm Emily, y'all can call me Tate, and I'd really like to know how the heck I ended up here."

She took a bite of the chocolate, using a bit of her venom to dissolve it to relive a bit of the pressure on the back of her fangs.

These people were interesting enough. The personification of magic was a new one for her. She was suddenly hit with the realization that she probably wasn't the oldest once there anymore. She had no idea how to feel about that.

If the holes in Sam's neck had been disturbing enough, watching those holes disappear was even more so. To say nothing about Sam actually being immortal and the personification of magic.

"Understandable," Nubes said slowly, edging away from Magic.

In the meantime, Lunis threw up his paws and rested his back against the wall next to Emily. "What are we going to do now?" he grumbled, crossing his arms. "Just wander around? Find something? Pick a fight with whoever dumped us here? I'm also out of snacks, so today sucks."