Young Writers Society

When Alsari and I entered the room, Quint was already there. The walls were made of large, granite bricks and held torches like the rest of the Eternian Academy, but these walls were in much worse condition. The bricks were cracked, scorched, chipped, missing, or twisted out of their original shape. Weapon racks were propped against them. Swords, spears, axes, maces, bows, and shields cluttered the room.

Quint stood with his back to the door, dressed in a dark, loose fitting robe. He turned around and smiled. “You’re here!” he said. “Good. We have a lot to do.”

I grinned with anticipation. I’d decided to abandon my restraint about practicing magic. I’d already been taken by the Eternian Academy, what else could happen?

“For the remainder of your time in the Academy, you two will work together,” Quint said. “So you’re going to be trained together as well. As you both sport a variety of very different talents, your education may be... unconventional.”

“Unconventional in what way?” Alsari asked, eyes narrowed.

“There’s a vast gap between your experience and Thørn’s,” Quint said. “So you’ll often encounter obstacles that ask you to find counterintuitive solutions or challenge you in unusual ways.

“In a few moments, Thørn, you will be presented with a riddle. You will have to answer it as quickly as possible by any means necessary.”

“That’s it?” I asked. “What does Alsari do?”

Quint gave me a knowing smile. “Good luck.”

He walked through the door, which slammed shut behind him. The noise faded from the room until it was nothing.

“That was… vague,” I said, but Alsari wasn’t listening. She gave the weapons lining the walls a cursory glance before selecting a sword.

“I assume you have little to no experience with a weapon?” she said.

“No, but Quint said this was going to be a riddle, not fighting,” I pointed out.

“I’m willing to bet the amount of things the Academy doesn’t tell us would fill a library,” she muttered. “Look at the rocks. There’s been a lot of fighting in here. You can’t see it, but the walls aren’t solid. They’re filled with doors that will pull up and let something else into the room. This is a place for combat, not riddles.”

“Something?”

“I suppose it could be someone, but we won’t know until the doors open,” Alsari intoned.

As if on queue, there was a grinding noise and a section of the wall about three feet by three feet was pulled up. I strained to see what was beyond it, but I couldn’t see through the inky blackness. The sound of something large and leathery being dragged across the ground came from the darkness, drawing closer to the opening.

“Grix!” Alsari cursed, and readied her sword. “Get behind me. We have a problem.”

“What kind of problem?” I asked.

“Large. Reptilian.”

“Reptilian?” I asked before realizing what was coming from the hole in the wall. “That’s not good.”

“You need to make as many illusions as possible,” Alsari said, keeping her eyes locked on the hole.

“Right,” I said. “Illusions. How do I do that?”

“Gods above,” Alsari muttered. “You can’t make illusions? Figure it out. Fast. And figure out the riddle.”

The creature slid out of the wall, smooth as water. First it’s massive, scaly snout poked out, followed by it’s head and long, twisting body. A gargantuan snake with slid out of the hole in the wall. Its body longer than the airships flying over Archora and thicker than the tree trunks used to build them. The serpent’s dark scales overlapped like a phalanx and curved designs swirled across its slippery hide. Its slitted eyes were dull and dispassionate, but its pale fangs flashed in the light of the torches lining the walls.

“What is that?” I gasped. The snake was flicking its whip like tongue through the air, not yet accustomed to its surroundings.

“Albarian naga,” Alsari growled, eyes fixed on the snake. “Large. Female. Not native to Archora.”

“Native to Albaria, I assume,” I said. “So the Academy managed to transport it here some how? Between worlds? Is that even possible?”

“I don’t think so, but it’s hard to tell with the Academy,” she replied. “We can talk about this later. We need to focus on killing the snake. I’m guessing a riddle will appear when we finish that.”

A part of me wondered if the naga’s egg could have been brought to Archora by a Flicker, but Alsari’s steely expression advised me not to bring that up.

This thought was banished from my mind when the naga’s massive head swiveled in my direction.

“Run,” said Alsari. “I’ll hold it off.”

I was about to argue, but the snake lunged at me like a reptilian bolt of lightning. I didn’t have time to react, but Alsari’s reflexes were better than mine. She pushed me out of the way, and the snake recoiled a moment before its head would have slammed into the stone floor.

Alsari looked at her sword, wishing she’d chosen a different weapon. I felt helpless. What could I do against a snake bigger than a tree?

Why would the Academy make me fight something that I had no way of fighting? I pondered this for a fraction of a second, shuffling behind the naga’s head. Alsari was distracting it by yelling and waving her sword in the air. They wouldn’t. Which means that there’s something I can do.

I’m a telepath, I thought. Animals must have minds, too.

I closed my eyes, extending my consciousness outside of my own head, stretching it towards the naga, but I found nothing. I could sense Alsari’s mind, but the snake had as much of a mind as the stones making up the walls of the Eternian Academy.

At that moment, Alsari lunged at the snake, stabbing it with incredible speed, but her sword just skittered off the naga’s scales. When this didn’t work, she pulled a smooth stone spike from the floor. It passed all the way through the snake with a sickening squelch and fell to the ground.

I grinned with relief and Alsari’s eyes flashed with victory as the massive serpent went limp.

“Wow!” I said, walking over to the lithomancer. “That was-” I was cut off when I saw something that stopped me in my tracks.

Violet magic the color of poison was streaming from the sides of the hole in the massive snake. Where the magic was spreading, its torn organs and shattered bones repaired themselves. Soon there was no trace that the wound had ever been there. With a slight shudder, the naga’s head reared back and it turned to face Alsari and I.

“How is it doing that?” I murmured.

“It was never alive at all,” Alsari growled, confirming my suspicion. “This naga is being animated by a necromancer.”