Young Writers Society

You find yourself in a dark room. It appears endless, mostly because it is so, so dark. The ceiling above is nowhere to be found, the sides can't be reached even if you ran at them with super speed, the only constant is some sort of solid floor. Not that you can see that either. Its a black void that for some reason you can still stand on.

What lurks in the darkness. Well you'll just have to visit and find out

A dream.

A nightmare?

It was too soon to tell. Lissa laid face-first on the ground in the darkness. She let her fingers uncurl and placed her palms again the smooth, cool floor. In some ways, the sensation was eerily familiar, but what was most familiar was how vivid it felt. So, so close to being real.

She opened her eyes - or at least, they felt like they were open. But all she stared into was deep, deep darkness. She couldn’t even see her own hands on the floor in front of her as she sat up, legs curled under her.

The air felt too thick, and the void was too empty.

Nightmare, then. It was a nightmare.

Her breath hitched in her throat as her heart began to beat a little faster.

“Please,” she whispred, but couldn’t muster any more.

A voice called out from the darkness. "Greetings, traveler."

A voice.

“Wh…what?” Lissa asked, turning to look around into the empty void, unable to tell where the voice came from. “Who’s there? What do you want?”

"Kate would you please stop trying to scare the poor things?" A different voice echoed through the space.

"That was a greeting. A greeting. Tell me how that's scary." It was the first voice again.

"Now you two are just making it worse." A third voice joined the mix sounding a little annoyed.

This was not how her nightmares usually went. Maybe this was more neutral. A weird dream, as opposed to a bad one.

She kept looking around, trying to figure out where all the voices are coming from.

“You didn’t answer my questions,” she said, hugging herself uncomfortably.

"You might want to answer her there."

"Well you're the one who called out first."

"What If I scare her again?"

There was audible huff from the distance. "You two will be the death of me one day. Hello! We are.... uhh. Long story. As for what we want? That's. Yeah there's not much there either. You might want to try some slightly different questions perhaps."

That was only more confusing.

“Am I dreaming?”

There was a chuckle from the distance.

"Dreaming. Been a while since I heard that word. And no you are not. Sorry. Definitely do not treat anything that lurks in here lightly because it can and will hurt you in a very real way."

There were things lurking in the darkness? Oh no. So this was a nightmare.

Lissa held herself tighter, trying to do her best to be quiet, and small, so the monsters wouldn’t notice. When she spoke again, it was barely audible, and her voice shook.

“How do I get out of here?” Or better yet— “How did I get here?”

There was a more nervous sounding laugh and the first voice spoke up again. "So.. about leaving. We kind of don't know. This was an experiment you see and its kind of not finished yet. We perfected the spell to get people in, there was a little glitch which is why you're here, to answer that question, but unfortunately we kind of haven't gotten around to writing a way for you to get out. We also might have not patched it all completely so you might see more people showing up. And more umm... things. Just. Tread Lightly."

Zeda was perfectly used to magic going wrong. When he first earned his powers, he accidentally wiped out Theopius Latium’s power supply. But this…

He was not used to other people’s magic mistakes affecting him. He was untouchable. The only people strong enough to do this was a god. And he didn’t feel any familiar presences

Well, he felt Dima’s presence. Which made sense. Nothing in this universe could separate them. He opened his palm, a spark of pure light popping to life and illuminating some of the gloom. Only to reveal more gloom once the light faded. He groaned. This was not how he planned spending his day. He felt Dima in his head, knocking gently on his frontal lobe with her presence.

I have no idea where we are.

Zeda scoffed. “I don’t think Raz knows where we are.” He really hoped this god showed themself. He was ready to punch them in their stupid, smug god face.

As if in direct response to the mystery voice’s prediction, something, or someone else appeared.

They weren’t that far off. She could see that, just outside of her reach, a person had conjured a light, illuminating a circle around them. As the obly source of light forbwhat coudld’ve been miles for all she knew, she could make out two figures.

Her eyes were still adjusting, so she couldn’t make out much else, but she remembered the warnings of the voices before.

Beware what lurks in the darkness.

Wary, she remained perfectly still and quiet in her corner of darkness.

Dima let her influence spread until it bumped the edges of a new mind. Zeda. New person. Human.

Zeda followed the silent directions of Dima’s influence. “Oh. Hello.” He started to approach this new person, Dima close behind him. “Do you happen to know why we’re here?”

Dima kept her influence over the person’s mind. Not enough to infiltrate, but enough to hopefully reassure them that Zeda and Dima weren’t a threat.