Young Writers Society

Chapter One

Azulith lay awake in the darkness. The cold stone walls seemed to share his excitement. They shivered. His heart was beating so fast and loud it was like hoofbeats.

The sound of a couple dozen footsteps echoed down the hall. The monks had finished their nightly meeting. Soon, they would all be asleep and Azulith could make his move.

After what seemed like hours, the last light spilling from under his wooden door went out. Azulith sat up. He had light brown hair that had barely started growing back after the rest had been cut, due to the customs of the Zushira.

His striking blue eyes seemed to brighten the room when they hit the moonlight. A small window in the top of his room let it shine through. The white light illuminated the rest of the room. A small desk sat in the corner and a mirror sat on the wall next to it. His bed was across from the mirror, so his reflection was staring back at him as he contemplated what he was about to do.

This is stupid, this is so stupid, he thought.

Azulith then steeled himself with determination, he was going to do this. The young man stood and kneeled down, looking under his bed. There lied the satchel. Azulith grabbed the leather handle, and pulled it out. He checked its contents. Bread and cheese wrapped in cloth. A small pouch of coins that took him months to collect, and of course the small black dagger that he was given on his 14th birthday, exactly 2 years ago.

The dagger was undulated, and looked as if made of pure obsidian, but much too resilient for that. The pommel held the symbol of the Zushira, or Nature Monks. They had raised him since he was abandoned in the woods. Azulith had questioned why they felt the need to give him a dagger with a nature symbol on it, but it was merely symbolic. In this case however it was practical, the stories he had heard from the Zushira about the outside world were not exactly appealing. But Azulith couldn’t stand the curiosity anymore. He had never left the Sanctuary. Whenever he tried the Monks got all panicked and seemed to appear right before he left the Boundary cautioning him not to go further, lest he be punished.

The 16 year old boy gathered his thoughts again, and slung the satchel over his shoulder. Then he slowly cracked the door. The hallway looked clear. He stepped out and tiptoed down the passage. Suddenly a light turned on behind him and he froze.

He quickly jumped into the closet set against the stone. It was mostly empty, except for a few extra robes, and a washboard.

Azulith peered out of the crack in the door, he had a direct view of his room, which he had forgotten to close the door. He silently cursed himself, willing himself to stay silent and still.

“Yes, tonight is the night, the boy is ready my lord. Of course. No your majesty, he knows nothing of what has yet to transpire. His knife? But we have many just like....as you wish.” Elder Branhi’s voice filled the hallway and his shadow elongated and bobbed as he walked with a torch.

My knife? What? And who is he talking to? There’s no one else in the hallway…

Branhi reached Azulith’s door, “Azulith, we think it’s time you join in the rituals. It’s your 16th birthday after all!” The bald monk began to knock, but the door creaked open.

“What in Vond’s name!” the Elder yelled.

Vond? Never heard that name before.

Branhi flung the door open, and it actually flew off its hinges and shattered. Azulith watched in amazement. Branhi’s eyes searched the room, and when they didn’t find Azulith, he punched the wall, and created a window to the outside.

His eyes flicked toward the closet, and Azulith almost stumbled backward. The monk’s eyes held something that he had never seen before. Rage. There was something else...fear?

Torchlight came from behind Branhi, “What is it, Elder? Me and the other Monks heard yelling and…” he saw the open door and the hole in the wall.

“The boy has ‘escaped’, though he couldn’t have gotten far. We just walked these halls no more than five minutes ago, and the door was closed. Have Skirosh get some men and search the Boundary,” Branhi ordered the monk that had just arrived, his name was Veryin, one of the newer monks at the Sanctuary.

“Right away Xe...Branhi.” Replied Veryin right before he hurried off.

Branhi glared at the monk as he walked away. Branhi walked the other direction and Azulith waited for a moment. If he escaped now, then he would be free, but if he stayed and awaited punishment from the Elders when they found him, then he could put them at ease.

His mind wandered back to that look from Branhi. He shuddered and decided it would be better to live. Something felt wrong, with the anger from Branhi, and the conversation he had before that.

Azulith creaked open the door, and slipped out. He was on the 3rd floor, so he had to get down two flights of stairs and out the entrance. This would be tough, but Azulith thought that using Wisp would get him out safely.

The boy crept around the bend and down the stairs. A voice up ahead stopped him and he tapped his Wisp. Now he wished he had thought to use his Wisp earlier with Branhi.

Azulith named it wisp because when he used it he looked like wisps to himself.

Three monks were walking up the stairs…wait. Two monks and a stranger? No, Azulith had seen him before, but now he wore black robes that Azulith had never seen. The Zushira didn’t wear black...it was considered the opposite of what they stood for. Dark, and unnatural.

Azulith held his breath as they came up the stairs. The one in black suddenly stopped.

“We need to find him at all cos-” He was saying.

“Sir?” The monk next to him asked after the pause. They were standing right next to Azulith

“We weren’t supposed to teach the boy Sharukai until tonight, correct?”

“I believe so, my lord.”

The other monk next to him suddenly stared at where Azulith sat.

Azulith started to sweat under his gaze.

The one in black spoke again, “Then why is he standing next to me...ENTIRELY INVISIBLE!!!”

The monk’s hand shot out and grabbed Azulith by the arm in an impossibly fast move, as he finished his sentence. Azulith’s Wisp faltered and fell.

“What do you think you were doing! Sneaking out of bed! You will be punished!” The monk yelled. He turned to the one that didn’t talk, “Tell the others we found him.” The monk nodded and Azulith understood what he was as he hurried off, he was one of the Silent, they took a vow of silence in remembrance of Yashu, the Nature Mother.

How can he ‘tell the others’ if he has a vow of Silence? Azulith wondered.

Suddenly Azulith’s Wisp exploded inside of him, and he stumbled for a moment, then realized he was no longer in the hallway of the Sanctuary. He was standing outside, under a sea of stars, and the cloak of night. The satchel was still on his shoulder and he looked around in wonder, trying to figure out how he got here. A startled shout came from above him, and he looked toward the sound, and saw the torchlight in a 3rd story window.

Yashu’s children! He thought.

Then Azulith turned and ran.

**************

Azulith blundered through the dark woods. Branches snapped at his face, and cut him along the cheeks and arms.

What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing!? He mentally screamed inside.

He could hear the shouts behind him as the Zushira pursued him in his flight. Branches snapped and twigs broke, yet Azulith continued sprinting. His lungs begged him to slow down, to rest. But he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t rest.

Azulith’s mind was jumbled, confused. The Zushira had been acting very strangely, even for themselves. First, Elder Branhi seemingly talking to nothing, then the superstrength, and the black cloak that...Hendall...wore, and his own strange jump through walls and down 3 stories.

Suddenly, unbidden thoughts jumped into his mind.

Why was he running? Why rebel? Everything is just fine, no one is going to hurt me…

Azulith halted, and looked around bemusedly. He felt as if something was slowly pressing against his mind, like a hand was grabbing his brain. Then there was a strange sensation, and he turned and walked back towards the sanctuary.

I don’t need to run. I don’t need to rebel. Everything is ju-NO!!! He felt the hand around his mind, then the arm and followed it like a string. There was a slender man, wearing pitch black robes, face hidden under a cowl, and he was sitting in the tree above Azulith.

Azulith tried wrenching the arm free, he was still walking, but now stopped. He knew that somehow, that man had been mind controlling him. Forcing him to walk, and putting foreign thoughts in his head.

Azulith pried the hand from its hold on his mind and reversed the grip onto the black-robed man. There was a strangled gasp above him and the cowled man tumbled from the branches and onto the ground with a final few gasps for air.

Staring, stunned, at the body before Azulith, he heard a man's voice not far off, “I hear’ som’n o’er there!”

Basic survival instinct kicked in and Azulith turned and began sprinting again.

I just killed a man…

He was in shock. He just commited the worst sin in the Zushiran religion, especially in the eyes of Yashu herself! Taking the sacred life of something, especially a human, was punishable by Silence, Banishment, or sometimes worse.

That didn’t matter now though, Azulith couldn’t go back. He thought that the man back there had been a Silent, because of the insignia on his robe, but the Silent couldn’t mind-control people....could they?

The shadow in front of him abruptly exploded into a man. Wisps still curling off of him, the man’s eyes showed...hunger. He wanted to kill Azulith.

Azulith backed away, hitting a tree. The man snarled, beast-like and swung a knife that seemed to form from the darkness.

Time looked to slow down. The man’s eyes were still piercing Azulith, but everything else had slowed to a trickle.

Azulith glanced about, and saw a strange man standing not 10 feet from him. He wore a brown tattered cloak with a golden symbol, Azulith couldn’t make out. His gloved hand was outstretched, and glowing. He gave a slight nod to Azulith and the boy slipped under the hungry man’s arms, running for the edge of the Boundary, and the woods.

A thud sounded, but Azulith didn’t look back as a howl filled the air. His heart beat so loud and fast he thought that Yashu could probably hear it from the Life Tree.

He briefly wondered who that strange man had been, he had seemed familiar...somehow. Azulith broke through the trees, and rested only a moment to glance back at the way he came. There was no sign of the wispy, or cloaked, man.

Azulith just looked out to the nighttime sky, and cried.