Young Writers Society

Harry managed just in time to see one of the shadier residents of the forest go flying off, clearly dead from what he could see of its energy signature. The slightly more concerning thing was seeing their new friend also go flying, and flying right into a tree with a very distinct noise that was most definitely not a good sound...well not a good sound outside the Fields of Punishment down in the Land of the Dead...

He swooped down towards Mage, moving down towards him as a large collection of darkness. He wasn't concentrating on being any sort of shape, not realizing he was still in his regular form and so the darkness promptly took the shape of his last though...which was a certain shady creature of the forest.

Mage looked up.

He had been so focused on finding blood that he hadn't noticed that someone had approached. That something had approached. He didn't know why the others hadn't done anything yet, but his body and mind started moving on autopilot. All he saw was shadows and darkness; all he thought of was fire.

Flame Sin covered the shadow before him.

Body still moving on instinct, he rushed to his feet. Everything still hurt, but the adrenaline numbed him to the feeling. He tried to move away from the tree. He got all of a foot away.

Then his leg, which was innately aware of his pain when the rest of his body wasn't, gave out.

With a startled, pained and panicked yelp, Mage went crashing to the ground.

Harry suddenly found himself on fire and frowned. Why on Earth had Mage just blasted him in the face with fire, especially right as he was simply swooping in to help him? That' couldn't possibly be right, could it? And then it hit him. He facepalmed, probably creating quite a scary shape in the fire.

He'd forgotten to turn back into a corporeal form. Shaking his head, he allowed himself to transform back into himself. The fire surrounding him immediately turned a brilliant dark cyan. After willing that to die down, he bent down and offered a hand to Mage.

"Looks like a bit of a nasty situation in that leg there...want me to take a look and see if its broken?"

Mage's eyes widened when he realized the shadow had been Harry.

"You're-are you-" he stammered. He had lit Harry on fire. The turning into a shadow thing was shocking on its own, but Harry had been on fire and was okay. That didn't make any sense. None of this was making sense. Mage knew that he was on another world now, but he couldn't fully process what that meant for the people who lived that. "Are-Are you okay? I set you on fire. You should be burnt-"

While he had been talked, he had grabbed onto Harry's hand and tried to pull himself up. But his leg immediately gave out the moment he tried putting pressure on it, and a tiny, pained noise suddenly left his lips instead of what he had been trying to say.

"You're asking me if I'm okay?" asked Harry, almost cracking a smile. It had been a while since someone besides his sister had asked him that question. Then he realized Mage was in quite a lot of pain at the moment, judging by that rather unfortunate sounding squeak.

"Oh that leg is most definitely not okay, don't bother standing. Wait. I'll just levitate you over to Vankous and he should know the spell to fix this us really fast. Think that's okay with you?"

After a moment of hesitation, Mage nodded.

"That would be okay," Mage whispered. He wanted to try standing again, but he knew it wasn't good to stress an injury if he didn't have to.

Harry nodded and waved his hand, thinking of what he needed. Mage was soon floating beside him, surrounded by a very faint blue glow. He floated him over to where the other three were recovering from the fight.

"Ahh there he is, were you napping or something?" asked Vankous.

"Clearly, I should be asking that question, this poor guy has a literal broken leg by the looks of it and the three of you were doing what exactly?" demanded Harry.

"Heat of the moment," supplied Stean, "sorry, we probably should've been a bit more careful with the way the fight was going. He got himself a little injured right off the bat and that escalated from there.

"Well, no harm done, I can fix that in about two seconds," said Vankous.

"We'll do our best to look out for him a bit more in the future. He's good...just not quite good enough to forget about in the middle of a fight. I know that now," said James.

"Yeah, good job there Mage, that thing is no joke, surviving that in just this state is a pretty big deal, considering you're wearing zero armor, not to mention I can't imagine you have even a decade of experience while everyone else here has...well....let's not get into that. Just heal up quickly. Vankous."

With a nod, the magician worked towards the floating Mage and muttered a couple of quick incantations. A warm green glow spread towards Mage.

He was torn between being grateful for finally be treating as capable and being frustrated that they assumed his age again—even though they were right about him not having much experience. But he was in too much to decide, so he settled for giving a little nod right before Vankous used what Mage guessed was healing Sin.

He hadn't ever seen it before. He had heard stories of healing Sin. It wasn't really Sin; it was more of a Blessing. Only angels ever really had it, with a few humans being given it as a gift from time to time. Mage wasn't really sure he believed in it being a gift; Kiera had always said that Sin was something you were born with. And she always said that the ability to heal was a dangerous one—you could only use it so much before it drained you.

But this was a different world, and it seemed like the ability to heal worked completely different than it did back in his actual world.

As the surprisingly warm green glow spread across him, Mage could feel his leg (and his ribs) healing up. It was the strangest feeling he had ever experienced, and he wasn't really all that sure he liked it. But it still healed, so he knew he couldn't complain.

"So, how are you feeling? It probably wasn't the nicest feeling, that was a very raw, general healing spell, Vankous here is a combat magician, not really a healing specialist, but his spells have so much power, it usually doesn't matter," said Harry. "think you can stand now? We should continue as soon as we can. This place after dark...well...let's say not many people dare go in here, and that's not even considering the fact that this place is very much haunted and none of the ghosts here are nice."

He offered Mage a hand.

He grabbed onto Harry's hand.

"I can stand now," Mage confirmed. It felt weird when he did. It had been hurting so badly just a minute ago, but now it felt like it hadn't been broken at all. He put weight on it to check that it really was healed. He didn't feel any pain when he did.

"Are we spending the night here?" Mage asked, absentmindedly giving his ribs a poke to make sure they were healed, too. He wasn't all that worried about the woods being haunted; that's what humans had said about many places he had stayed in. He wasn't used to having a choice.

"Uhh...nope, that is very much the last thing you want to do, unless you build a straight up stronghold or something to protect yourself, I think I can kind of see where we're headed at this point, its murky but...not too murky...the mist is not as bad as it could be. There's a good chance we make it to our destination before the night is too dark," said Harry.

"And we're just gonna ignore the fact we might find something potentially much worse inside that place?" asked Stean.

"Yes," said Harry," I mean, its just one thing, and we don't really have to kill it to get what's inside. All we need to do is get to the location and make a plan. We should have what we need in absolutely no time."

"Like any of our plans ever work out," said James.

"Yeah...our track record for plans going wrong is...ridiculous," said Vankous.

"Well..." said Stean.

"...that is kind of the best part, " finished Harry.

"So let's do this," said Stean.

"Yup," said Harry. He turned to Mage.

"So yeah, no, we're not staying the night here...we just gotta get to the location here and maybe we can do something about the night once we're there. It depends on how long it takes to get this item outta there. So then...are you ready to go?"

He tested his leg and ribs one more time.

"I'm ready," he hesitantly confirmed. He wasn't all that comforted by the knowledge that plans that Harry and the others made usually went wrong, but he knew they didn't really have any options. If Harry said they couldn't stay the night here, he was probably right.

"...How wrong do your plans usually go?" he asked--not all that sure he wanted to know the answer.

Harry had to stop himself from laughing out loud. Stean and the others weren't much better.

"Well..." began Harry, but he was laughing so hard, he could hardly get a word out.

Stean was the first to recover.

"Sorry about all of us just breaking down like that, but its just such a running joke at this point, our plans always being messed up," said Stean. "Let's just say, its so bad that everyone else on the council basically thinks that cause our team is usually able to handle anything thrown our way, we just like the extra challenge of never having a usable plan."

"Yeah...they seem to think that we actually plan to fail," said James," which to be fair to them, it does kind of seem that way sometimes."

"But ehh...you should be fine," said Vankous.

"Yeah...we are also famous as the only agency to never have lost a team member to a mission," said Harry, a sudden shadow crossing his face at the thought of memories long past, "Fatal mistakes won't ever happen...not on my watch. Ever again." He said the last part as a low whisper...barely audible.

"Yeah...you know...for example, once we infiltrated this secret science society thing, we had some plans all set up for infiltrating, these was ballroom dancing involved, hacking into security systems...and we ended up fighting to the death with kitchen appliances.

"Oh that was an excellent day, I had the wok attack, and then Vankous did that salt shaker attack move," said Harry.

"Yup, double whisk attack for the win with me," said James.

"And I had the tried and tested frying pan to the face," finished Stean. "Yeah...that was a crazy day."

"Yeah, today's probably going to be a lot less crazy, we're just going to go in, distract that thing, get what we need and get out."

Mage's ears twitched a little at Harry's whispered comment, but it was too soft for him to really make out. Instead, all he could think of was his own experience with plans gone sour. It had happened a lot before; he didn't really think he was the best at strategy.

But the time that first came to mind was back during some of his earliest days in Medium.

"That does sound like a failed plan," Mage agreed, giving a little smile that he immediately tried to hide behind his hand after he realized he was giving it. He looked at the forest ahead of them. "My worst plan was when I tried to...um..."

He faltered, suddenly realizing that mentioning his history of mugging might not be the best thing to do. It was all he could do back then, but they didn't know that. They didn't know what it was like to leave Infernum when you weren't even ten.

"...threaten people," he settled on. "I went to threaten this one woman, but she disarmed me and threw me against the ground. But it wasn't really that bad--she knew how to speak my language, and she let me stay with her when she realized I was looking for a place to live."

There wasn't much fondness to the first part of the story, but the amount of care he had for Kiera was clear by the time that he finished speaking. He had an almost bittersweet smile on his face now; it hurt thinking of her most of the time, but he still liked thinking of those older, nicer memories.

"Hmm...well...you definitely seem to care a lot about that woman," said Harry, not entirely sure he should point that out, but the look on Mage's face at the moment was definitely an interesting one. He recognized that bittersweet. Mostly because it would have been on his moments ago if he hadn't managed to distract himself with another much happier memory.

Stean seemed to have understood this too because he quickly shushed Vankous' probing questions and stepped in.

Harry stepped in and put a hand on Mage's shoulder, silently offering support.