Young Writers Society

“Orna,” Cedrick looked at her directly in the eye, his face solemn.

“Keep Serafina safe. I’m going in.”

She nodded, holding her baby close to her chest. And he knew she meant it. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt their child.

Cedrick rolled away, closely dodging the the tiny, fanged creature that was zooming past him in thin air, leaping from the floor of the Archellian forest right past his left arm. Its skin was a transluscent thick layer of smooth flubbery skin, glossed with a natural moisture. Its beady, glowing eyes, were large in proportion to its face, a deep emerald.

He remembered that Orna had promised she would protect Serafina, and that’s what kept him going.

The creature, Cedrick recognized, was an Exon. Alone, they were harmless, but you wouldn’t want to be within seeing distance of one swarm. Tiny, yet immensely quick, they zapped around with their little tails trailing behind them and coloring the air with a smoky white. Crouching down flat on his stomach, Cedrick was armed with his sword at his side, and some magic salt in a pouch that hung from his belt, which he had purchased from the Sorcerer’s Guild earlier that morning. He turned his head as he looked around him, staying low. The lone Exon’s swarm was nowhere in sight, so he knew that he was safe for now.

Cedrick crawled forward. He was getting closer. A little more searching and he’d find the portal. He could tell because of the dusty blue markings on the trees, dimly sparkling with a fading glow. These trails were made by the creatures of Archellon, a group of beings from nymphs to humatriacs, or supernatural humans, who lived on the coastline bordering the sea of Cressantris, filled with magical salt. It was as if they had been marking the path not only for their dictator to know the route, but in the hopes that someone could follow the trail. The dusty glow of the turquoise blue marks were faded, but he could make out the shapes of letters in the seaside creatures’ language. It was most likely a call for help, which their dictator hadn’t noticed them writing on the tree bark. If Cedrick could last a little longer, he could find out what was going on, and send a message to the gods. Clearly this was an attack from the dark side, which was why the gods seemed not to know. Cedrick guessed it was the work of the Frydemians, specifically, because he had seen glimpses of this mysterious dictator, who’s skin was a dull gray. The Frydemians, in particular, went through death like transformations when they joined their clan. After that, the sequence was nearly hypnotic- they had a deep craving for what they wanted and it was immensely difficult to turn back to the good side.

It was by the great blue leafed tree that Cedrick had seen the portal. A tree with blue leaves was a symbol of luck and fortune, which the dictator had seemed to overlook when placing his portal there. Cedrick assumed he was not from Archellon, being that he didn’t seem to know that. Luckily, that led him closer to discovering who this dark one was.

Cedrick’s determined expression faded into a solemn dissapointed look as he looked ahead. Down a gradually declining slope, he saw the great blue leafed tree, and next to it was the portal, which nearly relieved him a great deal, except for one thing. Before the portal there lay an enormous swarm of Exons, zapping rapidly through the air. The lone exon bounced right over his head and zapped over to its swarm with a shrill, echoing shriek, it’s smoky trail leaving Cedrick wanting to keep his head down, protected by his inner elbow, so he didn’t choke on any of the smoke.

“Oh frick,” he muttered under his breath.

He couldn’t dodge them all off with his sword alone, so he’d have to use magic. His hand searched for the pouch of magic salt that he had hooked up to his belt. Exons were not eaters of the humans that entered their forest, but they were hungry for their vital energy. In the smoky trails produced by a swarm of Exons, a human could feel strangled. The trails of smoke would become solid and thin, yet immensely strong, before fading away within minutes. But their strength was just enough to choke a human if it wasn’t cut off fast enough. Though one Exon couldn’t suck out enough energy from a person to make a person feel remotely weak, a swarm of them could suck out enough energy to make several die.

Cedrick’s heart was thumping deeply within his chest like a large, heavy stone. He scrambled over to a tree nearby, away from the slope, for protection. Unhooking his pouch of magic salt from his belt, he whispered his individual magic code word that had been bestowed upon him by the Sorceror’s Guild, in the language of the ancient natives of Astricka.

“Sartellicka symporion,” he whispered, rubbing the magical salt into his hands. He could feel it sinking in, stimulating the magical nerves within him. Within moments, a pure energy was rushing over his entire body, a pale blue aura around him that was shining brightly around him like a mist, causing his skin to be tinged with a glow of the same color, which meant he had gained an abundant amount power from the Great Divine.

The Exons could attack in the blink of an eye, so he had to think on his feet. He knew that they’d try to find him based on his warmth, so he conjured up a fireball, and wove it into an orb, where it would be embedded enough to seem human. As a Sorceror, Cedrick wasn’t the quickest or the best with ideas, but when it came to defending himself, he could fight well enough. Sending the orb rolling down the slope, he watched the Exon crowd’s emerald green eyes.

But the orb wasn’t enough, and to Cedrick’s dismay, the worst had occurred.

He’d been spotted.

Cedrick sighed bitterly, a caustic smile forming on his face as he let his teeth grit with frustration.

The Exons, when together, worked as an immensely powerful team, and every last one of their emerald eyes had rested on him. Before a single second had passed, they were swarming directly toward him as he rolled down the slope. A small bunch them zapped straight to the tree, two of them falling into the portal. The rest were zooming all over the place, nearly missing Cedrick several times. Cedrick felt a bite on his right shoulder, and he whipped out his sword, fighting off the rest of them as quickly as he could. The portal was high up by the great blue leafed tree, so he continued slashing the Exons and watching their blue inner blood splatter like into the air, and then decided to climb. He used his magical nerves to create a sensation as cold as ice for his blood to be disguised as, which made him feel nearly frozen as a result, but he kept moving. The remaining Exons, uninterested in his coldness, zapped over to guard the portal, and that’s when Cedrick knew that this couldn’t be purely coincidence. There was a scheme involved. Perhaps the Exons had been hypnotized by the dark one, and that’s why this was happening.

He reached a knot in the large tree that allowed him to stand close to the portal, and he placed his sword in its scabbard, but prepared to draw it, hoping that he could slash the remaining Exons as he leapt through the air, his eyes locked on them as targets. Their eyes were cold and blank on him, and they seemed disinterested in the taste of his vital energy, but he knew that the amount of magic dust he had used would wear off in a couple of hours. With a deep breath, Cedrick kept his eyes locked on the last few targets, and sprung forward. With the last of his magic salt, he put himself and slow motion, and a slashed group of Exons straight across, causing them to die and fall to the floor with a thud, their blue blood splattering, like warm jelly, on to the ground.

Cedrick looked down to see himself lying on his side on fresh green grass. He got up and dusted himself off. There was a narrow dusty trail before him, which trailed off into the distance. He followed it.

It was obvious that the dark one wanted power from the creatures from Archellon. After all, they lived by the sea of Cressantris, the magical waters that surrounded the entire world of Astricka. They were experts who wielded magic every day, and because of it, they were extremely valuble. Not only that, but only good souls, who had been proven worthy by the gods, could be allowed to extract the salt from the water, and Cedrick knew this well, for he did it for a living. Since these waterside creatures were so good, they dwelled in abundant supplies of magic salt that only worked for themselves. It was impossible to steal another’s magic salt, for each sorceror had a magic code word supplied by an all-knowing oracle who would bless them with such a word when they became ready. Cedrick knew that the dark one was obviously looking for a way around all of this, or even, quite possibly, a way to attack it directly. But what exactly was the dark one doing? Cedrick took it upon himself to investigate.

Cedrick and Orna were new to the region of Archellon. It was a concern to Cedrick that the dark one might not be interested in just the magical creatures themselves. As their two year old baby, Serafina, grew up, she very well might interact with the creatures, herself. It seemed to Cedrick that if he didn’t fight, he wouldn’t only lose his job, along with his ties with the creatures of Archellon, but he could also put his family’s safety at stake. After all, he couldn’t be certain the dark one was purely after one thing. And he couldn’t risk letting the dark one gain power. Especially not with the new clan of the dark side, the Frydemians, multiplying secretly. It was unknown how they had gotten so many members, but it was quite clear that more of them had been spotted in Euterpolis, Astricka’s high city, which had been there since the beginning of time but had evolved greatly, and was vast, bustling with magic and life.

After reaching the end of the path way, Cedrick saw what looked like some sort of factory. There was a dark, dirty building with smoke exiting through many chimneys. It was large and went on for what looked like thousands of acres. It was on the top of a hill, and next to it, lay a small cabin. This, he assumed, was where the dark dictator resided.

As he unhooked his pouch of magic salt from his belt, he noticed something that he had never encountered before.

He had been dark marked.

There was a large, dark patch that ate away at the skin on his right wrist, purely black, like the night time sky. Around it was a smoky smudge like texture that filled the surface of the air around his wrist. It hurt like an open wound, and was strongest in the middle. But there was no blood. Just darkness.

“What in the name of Sparthicka?” Cedrick muttered under his breath, feeling guilty that he had used the title of the gods’ great kingdom in vain. Perhaps if he could fight off this being, he would have seen enough to explain to the gods what had happened by the time he had returned to Euterpolis for his job at the Sorceror’s Guild, being that Euterpolis was located directly under the heavenly kingdom of Sparthicka which floated in the pale lavender sky.

A cold wind blew atop the hill. Cedrick acknowledged that he was on the other side of Astricka entirely, being that the dark trees and bushes were the same type as the ones in the Simbaerian Glades, a region across the great hemisphere from Archellon. They were amazingly tall, and their branches spun out around them in spirals, large flat green leaves jutting out around them. The portal had sent him to a point so far away that it was next to unlikely that anyone would ever guess the location. The Simbaerian Glades, mostly vacant in the first place except for nomads, monsters, and monks, was most likely a great place for the Frydemians and other dark side clans to hide, which had just occurred to Cedrick at that very moment. He found it odd that it hadn’t occurred to him before. Most people associated the Simbaerian Glades with emptiness and nothing. It seemed like just an endless region of hills and trees with occasional nomadic clans of Simbaerian Monks wandering around and taming monsters such as dragons, or even just working to hide from the more dangerous ones.

Being that there was so much space in the Simbaerian Glades, everything was far away from everything else, so Cedrick couldn’t see any monks or monsters yet.

Upon reaching a wall of the large factory, which windowless and nearly impossible to get into, Cedrick saw the dark one pass by before him, around a turn of a wall, and nearly gasped, but held it back, his mouth protectively sealing itself shut. He stayed flat, by the wall, peering around the corner with his hand ready at his sword, just to be safe. The dark one was walking to the great arches of the factory’s entrance- which appeared to be doorless, but when Cedrick peered around to look at them, he saw nothing through the arches but a deep, dark void, which hadn’t been there moments ago. The moment the dark one approached, the void had appeared.

Cedrick felt something strike him on the top of the head, and instantly, he blacked out.

Cedrick’s eyes opened. He was tied down inside a dark lair, to a large pillar. There was no one around him, so he assumed that the person had tied him down while he was unconscious, then left to continue his work.

A voice boomed behind him.

“Thought you could break in, aye?”

Cedrick still felt a few more moments’ worth of magic salt stimulating his nerves. He didn’t respond to the voice, but instead focused on the feeling of magic within him, repeating the phrase “sartellicka symporion,” in his head over and over again.

The strength of the ropes began to wither away in the center as he repeated it. It was unconscious magic that had done it, for Cedrick didn’t have a plan ready in his mind, but his code word, as promised, had saved him. The repitition of a code word, for a true sorceror, would save the day in the end, according to myth. Great wizards in the past had used it many a time.

The ropes loosened enough for him to slowly begin to slide out of them, but if he escaped them too fast, he might be caught off guard from the owner of the booming voice, who was probably standing right behind him. He carefully lifted each rope over and behind his head, to make sure that on the other side of the tall round pillar, it looked more like he was struggling within them than escaping them.

If he could just escape slowly enough to draw his sword before he got attacked, he could defend himself well enough. Cedrick continued pulling back the ropes until his upper body was free. He grabbed the hilt of his sword, and slowly drew it.

“What’s going on over there?” the voice behind him boomed.

By the time the owner of the voice, a guard, noticed that the ropes had fallen to the floor, Cedrick was already armed and had his sword ready at hand. He leapt out from behind the pillar and spotted the guard, who was dressed in dark armor, carrying a large glowing gun, and wearing a mask over his face.

“Oh, frick,” Cedrick burst out while breathing heavily from his leap, but it was too late for regret.

He ducked quickly as a blast of red light shot through the air.

The only thing Cedrick could do was run. Flat on the floor, his eyes darted around the room. Pillars lined the middle with large gaps between them. A fireplace was near the wall. A door on the other side of the room, but it was unlikely that Cedrick would make it in time. Then, Cedrick saw what he needed to see.

A trap door.

He caught the red shots of light with his sword, which sent them bouncing across the room and fading off as they hit walls and pillars. He reached the trap door in the corner, but it was protected by a lock. Cedrick had just about lost all hope, when a person ran through the door with the dark one chasing after them.

But it wasn’t just anyone.

It was Orna.

Cedrick couldn’t be more terrified. What about Serafina?

But he couldn’t converse with her now. There wasn’t enough time. Had the dark one captured their baby? Had he attacked Orna? Could it all have happened while Cedrick was unconscious?

He didn’t know how long he had been tied to that pillar, knocked out, and what was happening while his body was at rest.

The forcefield, a giant white orb, rolled by the guard, knocking him right over. The dark one was furious, but with the guard flat on his face, Cedrick took the opportunity to take out another handful of magic salt, and whisper his code word.

“Rodsha, the intruders!” the guard yelled.

“I can’t tend to them right now, I have to re-incode the spell! I order you to tie them up immediately!”

He zoomed away at an immense speed, his body becoming a blur of color and motion before it vanished.

Cedrick used his magic to melt the metal lock and bend it with his mind until it broke, then quickly, he opened the trap door, as Orna abruptly ended her forcefield. They both jumped down the trap door, and found themselves falling. When they landed, they saw a room with a huge orb in the center. The orb was filled with what looked very much like the floating souls of the nymphs and supernatural humans from Archellon. Orna tried to decode the orb’s spell so it could be broken. She used her magic salt in the decoding process, which consisted of her performing the usual swiping motion with her hand, which allowed her to see the spell before her the way it was written or said, and began reversing it, by performing the motion of reversal, a gesture of the hand which, when used properly and with magic, could reverse nearly any type of spells.

But try as she might, the spell would not be decoded.

The orb remained strong.

Cedrick swept Orna out of the way and ran over to the corner, the guard falling through the trap door after them. Orna used what was left of her magic to create a portal.

“Where are we going?” Cedrick asked her, quickly, out of breath.

“Euterpolis.”

They jumped through immediately, and the guard tried jumping after them, but Orna had closed the portal so that he simply hit his head on the wall before him.

As they stood on the sidewalk by the great Hall of Euterpolis, the city bustling with people who were all traveling at their own speeds, some flashing by to their jobs and others strolling along, Cedrick turned to Orna, a solemn look on his face.

“I told you to watch over Serafina.”

“You told me to keep Serafina safe,” Orna replied, her eyes tearing up, “and I did.”