Young Writers Society

Mage froze when Harry put his hand on his shoulder.

"I...I did," he managed to get out. His gaze fell down to the forest floor as he clenched his hands into fists. He dug his fingertips into his palms in the hope that it would make the urge to cry go away, but he could already feel tears forming at the corner of his eyes. "She's..."

His voice caught in his throat.

"...been gone for awhile."

Harry was seriously debating the merits of pulling the now clearly distressed Mage into a giant hug.

"Gone?" he tentatively questioned, not really wanting to know the answer to that question. It didn't sound like it would be a particularly happy one. He gestured to Stean to take the trio and scout ahead.

Mage bit his lip. When he spoke again a minute later, a fang had caused a little pinprick of blood to form there; he could taste something metallic in his mouth and feel something wet on his lip.

"...Dead," he clarified.

Harry simply nodded. He knew all too well what it was like to lose a close friend. A little too well he sometimes thought...there'd been so many deaths that he was almost numb to it sometimes, and that generally worked out well for maintaining who he was. He wasn't really supposed to have emotions after all.

He didn't say anything, just continued to silently provide support while his mind worked rapidly. There was a small chance he could pull just the right set of strings and take Mage to a place far better than just a big library after this quest...although he couldn't tell if that was actually going to a) work or b) actually make things worse. There was a very good reason that being dead was usually a permanent thing and contact really wasn't allowed for the living.

He took a deep breath.

Wiping away the tears that were stubbornly still forming, Mage looked back at Harry. The others had gone off further into the forest. He wasn't sure when they were going to get back, but he didn't want to be caught crying in front of them. They were already convinced he was younger than them.

But the realization that they were by themselves made the question Mage hadn't fully acknowledged suddenly appear on the very tip of his tongue.

"...Harry," he hesitantly started, "who...who are you?"

Harry couldn't help the slight tear that worked its way down as he saw Mage give into his own tears. Of course, a simple glamor spell meant Mage would never see it, but he felt truly sympathetic for the young demon in front of him. Whoever this Kiera was, she had probably been the most important person of his life.

And then he asked a question that countless others had asked him over the course of his life. 'Who are you?'. It was a question that had never really had one answer, although unlike most times before this, this time he felt that Mage deserved to know a bit more than what he usually told everyone.

"That...is a question that has...too many answers," said Harry, "far too many. Well..I'm quite tempted to say the one I always so but in some way I kind of feel like you deserve more of an answer, now that's an interesting conundrum."

"But well...on the surface I suppose...everyone knows me as "The Darkness"...and that's what I always tell people anyway...and much like the darkness...I'm just a shadowy figure through history, a myth or a legend to most...just a story told around a campfire, that sometimes appears to be real but ultimately just isn't."

"On the other hand, I'm also Harrison Harvard Hardy, the celestial with far too many titles to keep track off but hmm...I suppose most people would know me as The Prince of Darkness, which is my official title I guess. I suppose that's who I really am...the physical embodiment of all of darkness...its a bit too much for most people to wrap their heads around...so I'll just say...I have been around for a very, very, long time...and I'm currently just roaming space and time with my trusty team, solving problems where I can. Yeah, I'll just stick to that explanation. Does that answer your question?"

Mage thought for a moment.

"I think it does," he hesitantly said. He hadn't ever heard of celestials or physical embodiments of things like darkness before, but it just...fit. It explained why Harry had been able to turn into shadows and why all of his friends followed him.

"You're like a hero," Mage absentmindedly commented.

Then he realized what had slipped out.

Face turning bright red, he grabbed his hood and pulled it over his face. He stared down at the ground with horror. He was sure Harry wouldn't be offended by the compliment, but it was the kind of a thing someone Mage's supposed age wasn't really supposed to say out of nowhere.

"Uh," he stammered. "You're like a hero in one of the books that Kiera used to read to...with me. She was the woman I tried mug-intimidating. She...she taught me how to read and understand the human language, and one of the ways she taught me was by sharing some of the stories she had collected. You and your team feel like they could be in one of those stories."

"Heh," said Harry, laughing lightly. "You could go with that. Nothing to be embarrassed about there...I know I read my fair share of comic books every now and then. Fun fact, pretty much all of those aren't even fiction...as long you know to look in the right parallel dimension. Although, whether I'm an actual hero, well that's always been very debatable. After all, you don't usually associate the darkness with being good eh?"

Mage didn't know what a comic book was, but stories being true was something that he knew very well. Kiera had always told him that many of her favorite stories described things and people that had existed once—like how dragons really had existed long before either one of them was born.

"I think you're a hero," Mage commented. He looked down at his hand, summoning a tiny ball of darkness and watching as it shifted. "I've always liked darkness."

"Well, that is one of the nicest things I've heard all day, thank you," said Harry, with his first genuine smile at Mage. He offered his hand, willing a tiny ball of darkness to appear on top of it and flit about like a tiny moon orbiting his hand.

He gave a tiny, shy smile back.

He wasn't really sure he was doing this right, but it felt like the right kind of thing to do when Harry was offering his hand. He moved his hand a little closer to Harry's, letting the ball of darkness in his own hand shift so it was bumping up against Harry's.

His smile grew a little bigger.

Harry's smile grew even bigger if that was possible when Mage offered his hand in return. As he studied the balls of darkness slowly bouncing off each other, he couldn't help but feel this was going to be the start of a beautiful friendship, as terribly cliche as that thought sounded.

Mage started to grin more, too, but then he heard footsteps coming from nearby.

He made the darkness disappear from his hand. Once his hands were both free, he quickly shoved them into his pockets underneath his cloak. He was embarrassed to show other people something like that, but he also liked whatever that moment had just been. His smile became a little more hesitant and hidden; he hoped Harry could still read it.

Harry heard the rest of them returning from their scouting trip but paid it no attention, still focused on Mage. And then Mage quickly shoved his hands back into his pockets and Harry realized he was probably shy about the rest of them seeing and then he realized Mage's plan was actually very good. Giving a smile and a wink at Mage's sudden hesitant looking smile, he wipe the smile of his face and turned to face the rest with a tired look.

"Did you guys find it?" asked Harry.

"Did you..." began Stean, but Harry just nodded, clearly indicating they'd take later about this.

Stean got the message and sent a warning glare at Vankous at James, though it was definitely more towards Vankous than James.

"So let's get to this place then, huh," said Harry, "not too much light left in the day now. We wouldn't want to be late."

Mage wasn't really sure why Harry suddenly winked at him and made his smile go away, but he decided it wasn't the most pressing thing to figure out right now. They really did need to keep going. Even if he wanted to stay with Harry for a little longer, he knew that he needed to work on finding his way home. As horrible as it could be sometimes, Medium really was where he belonged now.

Mage gave a tiny nod.