Young Writers Society

"But it says, 'save my life or lose your own,'" Rea said absently, peering down at her paper. "I assume they want us to..." she frowned, then made a quick notation. "Interesting...calligraphy... Humm. Yes."

This was frustrating Pratik. He threw the papers down and started pacing again as the others started talking. Someone was toying with them. And he didn't like it. He passively listened to the chatter, glancing towards them as he paced.

A hint of something glinting red on the edge of one of the papers caught his attention. He walked towards the table again, pointing at the paper, "Hey, what's that?"

Jay pushed past the big man's arm to see what was on the piece of paper, and he flipped it over, but he didn't see anything.

He shot the man an annoyed glare. He couldn't believe he fell for that.

"Obviously, there's magic involved," Ophelia said to the glaring man, "So maybe only he--" Ophelia pointed to the tall man--,"can see."

Pratik was vaguely aware he was getting a sour look from the man, but couldn't be bothered to care. He pulled his ad closer to himself. It appeared to be the top right corner of a map. A sparkly red border ran along two sides. Within it, he saw various markings that were standard for a map, but they meant very little since he only had a small part of a clearly incomplete map. "It's a map. Well... part of a map."

Nikolai slowly took his own advertisement out of his bag.

He didn’t see what the tall man was talking about. A map? He couldn’t make anything out on the back of that paper. Then again, everyone seemed to have read the ads differently somehow.

Nikolai couldn’t think of anyone he knew who could leave messages on paper that only the person it was intended for could see, but since he’d heard of a lot of strange abilities— and still learned about more all the time— he thought it wasn’t all that unlikely.

And when he turned it over, he saw that there was a section of a map printed on that he hadn’t seen earlier. Maybe it hadn’t appeared until now. Not the nicest map, Nikolai admitted to himself. He wasn’t too impressed as an artist. It seemed a little plain to him.

Nikolai hesitantly approached the table. “I have one,” he said, setting it next to the one the tall man had set down. “I don’t know if these line up, but I’m hoping these are both adjacent corners.”

Rea let out a great squeak of excitement. "Another charm!"
She scrabbled for her own ad, then flipped it over. her eyes shone with delight. "I can see something, too! A part of what looks like a map! Maybe we're all supposed to find different things? Or maybe this is like a jigsaw puzzle?"

Ophelia turned her ad over and stared, "That's a really uncreative way to make a map though. And it looks like mine is a corner piece as well."

Jay begrudgingly pulled out his ad again and looked at the back. Finally, he could see what everyone was talking about. He did, indeed see a map, with a shining red line on the bottom.

“It looks like I have a side piece,” he said flatly, setting it on the table face-up. “I guess we’re just going to have to piece this together blindly.”

"Ooh, no we don't!" Rea said enthusiastically. "Wait - I've got some paper right here-" she pulled out several blank sheets, then laid them out on the table. Then she made a quick, rough sketch of what her piece of map looked like on one of the sheets. "It's one of the middle pieces. Okay, so the ones with corners can copy their sections down onto these sheets, and then we can fill in the blanks with our own parts!"

She beamed at everyone.

That was... a really good idea, actually. Not that Pratik would ever admit it.

"Yeah, sure," Pratik said. He stepped forward and stretched his piece out on the table, then drew it on the sheet the girl laid out for them. His sketch was a bit sloppier than he meant to make it, but clear enough. He grabbed his ad again and stepped back -- making sure he was near enough to watch, but out of the way of whoever wanted to go next.

"I think that's a great idea," Nikolai agreed, deciding it might be better to be friendly rather than reserved around these people. He took his own pen out from his backpack, and sketched his own map on the sheet of paper. His work was much neater and more detailed than what the other two had done, but he reminded himself that although he'd thought he was encountering competition for a commission a few minutes ago, these people weren't artists. No need to judge their work.

Sliding his finished sketch across the table, Nikolai set it with the other finished ones. "There."

Lisbet took to the map sketching with almost fitful vigour. The end result was... pretty scribblish to say the least, but it matched up enough to adjacent pieces.

"How many was that?" she asked, bobbing up and down as she looked around.

"Four pieces!" Rea peered at them. "Hmm. It's a bit clearer now, yes?"

Pratik looked at the pieces of the map and grunted, silently acknowledging that his sketch was one of the worst ones so far. Whatever. It's not like drawing was one of the skills he needed to be a good mercenary.

He looked around. "Who else?"