Young Writers Society

Author's Note: If there's anything I took out of writing this chapter, it was that I've committed a horrible crime by forgetting how emotional Inuyasha instrumentals can make me when I'm listening to them and writing. (If you want some musical accompaniment while listening to this chapter, this is the song I listened to while writing most of it.)

This chapter does involve Aldonius give Cass a large amount of incredibly important information, so I suggest making sure you take note of every little detail when reading through it!

Words: 1,870

Last Line(s): He took another deep breath, glanced at the street around them, and then said, “We need to talk about this somewhere else.” Cass wanted to point out that no one was present in the street, but Aldonius had already turned around and was heading in the direction he had come from. She briefly looked over her shoulder at the outline of the palace in the distance, then hurried on after him. She could retrace her steps when she needed to return.

Aldonius led her down a series of long cobble streets. She was able to remember the path they were taking, but it occurred to her just as they were about to reach their destination that she was putting a surprisingly high amount of faith towards someone she barely knew. It had been easy to ignore before – she had been caught up in the moment, and had been overcome by that slew of powerful feelings she still frustratingly couldn't understand. She had just followed his lead, despite only just having had their first true conversation.

Now she was following him to some unspecified location, and she knew that alone should have been enough to alarm her. But she didn't feel worried. She felt safe around Aldonius, no matter how much she tried to remind herself that she wasn't really supposed to. It was that realization that brought her fear. Even when she tried her hardest to change her mind about him, she found that she couldn't. The wise thing would have been to run back to Aspen and Lira as fast as she could; Lira wasn't leading her through dark, abandoned streets, and Aspen was a familiar face in a unfamiliar place. Aldonius was just Aldonius. Her soul told her to trust him, but she wasn't sure she would have been so eager to do so if it hadn't.

But even though she knew that the best choice would be to leave him, she also knew that she had to stay. Aldonius had the information she needed. She couldn't ignore that. If she had to take a risk to understand why she felt the way she did, then she would.

“We're here,” he said.

She looked up and stared in awe.

They were standing in front of an enormous park. Beautiful, unfamiliar trees dotted the landscape, and picturesque wooden benches glowed in the light of hovering lanterns. There were few stars in the sky above, but there were also few clouds. If she had her phone on her, she would have snapped picture after picture of what she saw. But, since she didn't, she tried to do what she had done back in the street: she memorized every little detail she noticed, hoping that would be enough when she wanted to look back on that memory in the future.

Aldonius led her to one of the benches closest to the entrance. The benches were surprisingly large, but he took up relatively little space on the bench. Rather than sitting in the middle, he opted to sit towards the side. Cass decided it was best to follow his example and sat down on the opposite side. An awkward silence settled upon the two – and it certainly didn't help that he wasn't even looking in her direction when she glanced over at him. It quickly became apparent that Aldonius wasn't going to initiate the conversation, so Cass mustered the little courage she could and – voice hesitant – started it.

“You said that I was someone's contracted,” she said.

A nod.

“But what does that mean?”

He folded his hands and placed them in his lap, opting to stare down at them rather than over at her. Cass wasn't sure if she should have been grateful for the sudden lack of attention, or if she should have been wishing he was clearly listening to what she had to say. After another awkward silence passed, he took a deep breath and asked, “Does your world have gods?”

“It does,” she confirmed.

“What about the fallen?”

She tried to remember what she had seen in the painting on Lira's wall. The only thing she could easily compare their visual aspects to were dragons, but that didn't quite fit with what Lira had told her about them. But while there was nothing visually similar, she could think of multiple religions where the bad were cast out from the good. The fallen were the Lucifers of this world, forced out of their Heaven for committing crimes against their brethren and the humans.

“It's not exactly the same, but we have fallen angels,” she hesitantly replied.

He mulled over this answer for several seconds. “Old texts from other parts of the world have called the gods 'angels' before, so I won't be surprised if ours and yours were similar,” he said. He slowly raised his head and looked over at her, his purple eyes peering out from underneath his hood. “Contracts are when a god or a fallen favors a human, and decides that they want to share their power with them.”

She stared at him.

“Someone like that likes me?” When there wasn't an immediate response, her gaze dropped down to her lap. She went to finger her necklace, but caught herself just before she could. Aldonius had already seen her with it, but she didn't want to risk him leaving when he remembered that she possessed a golden locket.

It sounded like something out of a story from her childhood books: a powerful being decided to grant a seemingly normal person with magic and gifts to change the world and fight against evil. But she wasn't like those heroes. She was just Cassandra Hughes, and she couldn't even enter a room without worrying about how everyone was going to judge her. All of the times she had imagined how her life would play out in a fictional world, she had just been the sidekick. It had been Aspen who would be chosen for some noble quest, and she would just come along because she wanted to support her friend.

But Aspen hadn't been getting the feelings. Aspen hadn't been drawn to the lockets. Aspen wasn't sitting here right now, talking with Aldonius about something she had never once thought was actually possible. 

It was just her.

“They might not know you yet,” Aldonius said. At the sound of his voice, she glanced at him. He had averted his gaze once more, and was now reaching a hand up to touch something tucked underneath the clasp of his cloak. Before she could see what that something was, his hand had returned to his side. “Whatever higher power that's out there seems to know when contracts are going to be made, and the experiences you've had so far are in preparation of your contract.”

She furrowed her brow. “I don't understand.”

He took yet another deep breath.

“You've been having strange dreams, haven't you?” he asked. He closed his eyes and leaned back up against the bench. “You wouldn't be able to remember them yet, but you know that they're different, don't you? They felt real. And when those dreams are over and you wake up, sometimes you feel like a completely different person. You're acting in ways you never have before, and you're picking up new habits.”

“That's-That's exactly what's been happening to me,” she confirmed. She leaned towards him ever so slightly. She had hoped that Aldonius would give her some of the answers that she needed, but she had never expected him to know so much about what she had been experiencing. He was an endless well of information – she felt like she could ask him anything about this world, and he would be able to tell her the answer. “Were...were my dreams real?” 

He nodded.

"Contracts are built on trust,” Aldonius said, “and you can only trust someone when you know the person they truly are. Those dreams aren't dreams. They're the memories of the person you'll one day make a contract with. And when you walk through the streets and get a feeling of déjà vu, it's because you're recalling the time that your contracted did. You might not remember them after you dream right now, but someday you'll remember them as strongly as you remember your own memories.”

He paused.

“At least, that's what I've heard on my travels.”

She studied his face. She traced the scar running up his cheek with her gaze, wondering how he had received it while simultaneously realizing that she probably knew that about him, too. She felt like she knew a lot about him, even though she wasn't quite sure what that knowledge entailed. She studied his eyes as he opened them – they were such an unusual color, but she liked them all the same. Her gaze traveled to his the locks of black hair interspersed with a brilliant shade of white. That, too, was abnormal, but she liked it. She couldn't tell how many of these thoughts about him where hers or what her future contracted thought about him, but she decided that she could determine that later.

“Do you know who my contracted is?” she asked.

He looked over at her.

“Whoever my contracted is knows you,” she added, her voice so confident that it surprised even her. “They know you incredibly well. I-I can feel it whenever I look at it. I know I know things about you that an acquaintance wouldn't know about you.”

Aldonius didn't immediately answer. When he finally did, his voice was little more than a whisper. “I've done a lot of traveling,” he stiffly said, “and met a lot of people. One of them could have been your contracted”

“It's not like that-”

She fell silent when he rose from his side of the bench. He wasn't going to give her the answer that she wanted; she could see it in the way he didn't meet her eye when he pulled his hood back up, and how eager he was to turn his back to her. “Your contracted likely isn't a god – most of them tend to be one of the fallen.”

She got to her feet as well. She should have been alarmed by what he had just told her, but she was more worried by the prospect of him leaving so soon.“Are you going now?”

“Yes.”

She reached a hand out, but returned it to her side before she could grab onto his cloak. “But I still have so much I need to ask you. How do-how do you know so much about contracts? Why did you even talk to me in the first place? And why can't you tell me who my contracted is?” 

Despite her insistent string of questions, he didn't turn around to face her. He was already heading towards the exit to the park by the time she had finished speaking. It was there that he paused; he rested his hand up against the stone pillar beside the entrance, thought for a moment, and then said, “I know someone like you. He's been thrust into a world that isn't his own, and is struggling because he knows that world doesn't accept him. If I can help another person avoid what he's been through, I gladly will.”

He took a step forward, his face clouded in shadows as he finally turned to look back at her.

“Just...just be careful, Cass.” 

And then he was gone, disappearing into the darkness of the empty street. It was only when his figure was little more than a dot on the horizon that she realized that she had never mentioned her name.