Young Writers Society

Sweating, exhausted, and bruised by the flat of Laryn’s blade, I sat next to Nyx on a log near the arena.

“So, we know what the Alok looks like,” I summarized. “How does that help us?”

“Oh, it helps us plenty,” Nyx said. “We know that he’s humanoid, for one thing, but not an elf, and he’s definitely got a non-human backing him.”

“How do you know there’s someone backing him?” I replied.

“Teleportation magic is absurdly difficult, not far from impossible,” she said. “In fact, the only race ever to have achieved it were the Eternals, but since they died out, a few people have scavenged their artifacts. Of course, it didn’t take long for the most powerful artifacts to be taken by the most powerful people. Anyone who owns an Eternal artifact is one of the most powerful people in the multiverse.”

“That still doesn’t explain why he couldn’t have it,” I objected.

Nyx gave me a disappointed look. “Please,” she said. “These are the things that are hidden in the darkest corners of the lairs of the most powerful dragons, the things that gods battle over. Humanoids just don’t get that powerful. But you’re right, we need more information. And you need more training.”

I considered this. “I guess so,” he said. “But we could get more information by looking at the other places the Alok attacked?”

Nyx gave a thoughtful frown. “Maybe,” she said. “I’ll have to check later today.”

“And I’m coming with you,” I said.

“You have to train.”

I grinned. “You’re not going to go to yet another kidnapping sight without me.”

“Fine,” she said. “But sword fight or light things on fire first.”

“Which one?”

Nyx shrugged. “Both?”

“I’ll need a candle,” I said. “And a sword.”

Nyx paused. “I need you to try something.”

I raised an eyebrow, suspicious of what Nyx might be asking me to do. Her requests tended to be dangerous or ambitious. “Try what?”

“Make a fireball.”

I thought for a moment. “How do I do that?” I asked. Nyx’s teaching method seemed to consist of her telling me what to do without telling me how to do it. “When I’m lighting a candle, I have a target. Something to focus on. What do I do without that?”“You need to remember that you still do have a target,” she said. “You just can’t see it. There’s still air, still fuel. But if you really need a focal point, many mages will hold out a hand and channel magic through that.”

“So, you’re basically asking me to shoot fire from my hands,” I said.

“Yep. Let’s give it a whirl.”

I glanced around. “Er, what do I aim at?”

Nyx shrugged. “Whatever looks particularly flammable. For starters, let’s set that bush on fire.” I breathed in and extended my hand. “Magic is energy. You’re just moving it.”

I closed my eyes and willed a jet of flame to shoot from my hand. A tiny puff of flame flickered from my palm.

Nyx arched an eyebrow. “Well, that was pathetic,” she said. “Try again.”

I tried again. Again, the flame was tiny. “This isn’t working.”

“No it is not,” Nyx agreed. “Can you tell my why?”

“Maybe I’m just not good at magic.”

Nyx laughed. “That’s not it,” she said. “You’re strong enough to do this; you’ve already done it. So what’s holding you back now?”

I shrugged. “I just haven’t had a lot of experience with magic before now. Any experience, actually. I don’t know how to use magic, but we’re still going to have to find and defeat the Alok. We have no idea what he is or how to find him or how to fight him and we have to beat him. I don’t know how to fight! It’s been a week since I left my village! Now I have to defeat something that I don’t understand and I don’t have any weapons to fight it with.”

“Look, your magical abilities are not the problem here,” Nyx said. “Magic has strong ties to emotion and yours are holding you back. You don’t think you can do this, so you can’t. If you don’t resolve that, there’s nothing I can do to help you.”

I thought about this for a moment. “Did you just tell me to believe in myself?”

Nyx looked horrified. “I would never say that! Now, get back to lighting things on fire.”

For the third time, I raised my hand in the direction of a leafy shrubbery. This time, though, I didn’t think about the complex, somewhat scientific explanation Nyx had provided for how magic worked. I tried to remember what it had felt like when I’d first discovered I could use magic. This made me think back to my Ascension. When I’d Ascended, there was a feeling of utter elation, of freedom, of wonder. Nothing was comparable to the feeling it had given me to gain access to the Myriad. As the memories of Ascension flashed through my mind, something sparked inside me. A column of flame flared out of my hand, incinerating the bush.

Nyx’s eyebrows rose. “Huh. Maybe I should do motivational speeches more often,” she said. “We should probably put out that fire.”

***

Nyx and I strode along the crowded walkway. “The other houses shouldn’t be too hard to find,” she said. “They sort of stick out because of how much everyone ignores them. Of course, it would be easier if I could find… Ah! Hello, Nara.”

An old woman hobbled out from next to a house-like section of tree. Her hair hung from her scalp in stringy clumps and her haunted eyes were sunken into her head.

“Nara is Fay and Laryn’s mother,” Nyx said.

“Nice to meet you,” I offered. Nara ignored me.

“Nara, we were wondering if you could lead us to the other houses where the Alok attacked,” Nyx said. The elf gave a distressed look back at the house. “It will be fine. You do know where the other houses are, don’t you?”

I frowned. There was no doubt in my mind that Nara had an estranged relationship with her sanity. Even if she was related to one of the taken people, I wasn’t sure how helpful she would be.

“This way,” Nara said, leading the way across the bridge connecting two trees.

The next house was closer to the first than I expected. It had the same eerie, empty aura about it as Fay’s former home.

Nyx walked in the door, ignoring the stairs of people in the surrounding area and I followed her. The inside was dark and had one room. The room had few furnishings; it had two chairs, a hammock hung in one corner, and a shelf filled with books grew from the wall. Like all the other elven houses, it was made of a living tree, so the walls were decorated with swirling designs and patterns, so it was like being surrounded by one large abstract painting.

I uncertainly searched the house and so did Nyx, but I found nothing. Nyx crouched down near the middle of the room and passed her hand over a point about two feet from the ground.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Some types of magic leave residual energy,” she said. “Apparently the Alok’s artifact is one of them. This is where he appeared, or maybe where he left the building.”

“Does that help us?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Did you find anything?”

“No,” I said. “Should we go to the next house?”

“Alright.”

Nara greeted us as we exited the house. “Did you find anything?”

“No,” Nyx said. “Can you lead us to the next house?”

She did, taking us past shops and other houses. The third house was the same distance from the second as the second was from the first. This struck me as strange, but that was the least of my worries as I entered the deserted house.

The third house had the same results as the first two, so did the fourth, the fifth, and all the other houses that had been attacked. We visited thirty two houses and every crime scene was identical. There was no sign that anything was out of the ordinary except a slight magical distortion that Nyx picked up on. All of the houses were the same distance apart.

“This is not good,” Nyx growled. “This is very, very bad.”

“What is it?” I asked. “I haven’t found anything new.”

“No, there’s nothing new in the houses. Aside from the teleportation remnant, they’re not helpful. But the location tells us a lot. I need a map.”

“Why?”

Nyx ignored me, rushing off to the tree where Taanyth lived at the center of the grove that made up the village. I trailed behind her, annoyed that Nyx was leaving me oblivious to what she had discovered.

“What is it?” I pestered.

“Taanyth!” Nyx called, ignoring me and barging into the tree. “Taanyth!”

The old man emerged from a secondary chamber, striding into the room with the pool of water where I’d first met him. “Yes? What is it?”

“I need a map of the village,” Nyx demanded.

“I don’t have one. There’s no reason to in a village this small,” Taanyth said. “But I can make one.”

“Do it.”Taanyth pressed his hand to the wooden wall of the tree and the bark shifted reshaping itself into a map of the circular village of elves. Nyx produced a charcoal pencil, marking positions along the outer edge of the village.

“The Alok has been doing this to send a message,” Nyx said. “These are the positions of the attacks.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Something lurched in my gut as I realized what Nyx was drawing. “Oh no.”

The dots were arranged into a familiar symbol, a circle with two lines twisting towards the center.

“The Harbinger made the same symbols,” I said. “And you mentioned the Eternals…”

“But it’s not finished,” she said. “There’s still one more attack needed to complete the symbol.”

“Here,” Taanyth said. “I’m the Alok’s next target.”