Young Writers Society

Chapter 27.2: James.exe Has Stopped Working

James swayed where he was sitting, feeling his head starting to spin. He grabbed his knees and rooted his feet in the dirt to ground himself, but he still felt light-headed. None of this should have made sense, but it was starting to.

"Blackfield wanted an army of mages," Bo started. His voice felt far away, and yet so loud. "That's almost funny, knowing that that's basically what they were trying to do with me. Make me more powerful than I already was."

Bo stepped away from the hay bales and started pacing the length of the hay bales, a few feet in front of James.

"I never found out who exactly it was that held me captive, because I was a child, and no one really told me anything, but what you're talking about - what Blackfield and your people found - that had to have been where I was kept. They were trying to strengthen my magic. Experimenting with it. Their motives were probably really similar to the king, though I'll never know for sure."

He paused, and swiveling on his feet, starting to pace the other direction. He kept his hands in his pockets.

"What happened with me was, they knew I had magic, I was just terrible at getting it to work. I couldn't make sparks for the life of me. So one night they strapped me to a metal beam in the middle of a thunderstorm, and I ended up lighting the whole place up."

He turned again, pausing in his steps to look at James, even though James just stared at him with a blank expression.

"Traumatic experience," he said, somehow sounding both casual and serious in his tone at the same time. "I was the only one who survived. I thought everything inside had been turned to ash and everything that happened there would be forgotten, but apparently I was wrong."

He stood there for a moment, looking out into the barn with a sigh, and shifted his weight to one leg.

"The problem with magical experimentation is that, well, that's not really how magic works. You can't make something more magical than it already is. Sure, there are potions and things, but really all that is is knowing plants and medicine. That's not infusing something with greater magical power."

So the experiments would've failed anyway. That's what Bo was saying. That what James had done was pointless.

"So many misconceptions about magic came out of the calamity, though, and after the destruction of all of the mage guilds, I can't blame you or anyone for not knowing the difference."

That didn't help. James could feel his heart sink into his chest, resting heavily at the bottom of a deep pit.

Five years. He'd risked his whole livelihood, thrown everything away by keeping that experiment from happening, and the experiment wouldn't even have worked.

James bowed his head and held his face in his hands.

"But... if he would've gone through with it, and it sounds like he would've, a lot of kids would've died," Bo said, his voice growing quiet.

"...I only made it because I'm an inheritor. We have more... magical resilience. Among other things."

The pit in James's stomach grew bigger, and he understood.

Blackfield would've failed, but he would've hurt a lot of innocent lives in the process.

That alone could make the sacrifice worthwhile. That meant it wasn't a waste.

Still, James wished he'd done more. He wished he'd been smarter. He wished he'd been less hasty, and that he'd thought it through. He wished he'd played his cards right, and went about things a different way. That he could've figured out a way to blend in and play the long game and change things from the inside-out. But how many little compromises would he have had to make that happen? How many more times would his conscience have had to been seared as he let things continue to happen when he could've done something to stop it?

He felt Bo's shadow fall over him and he looked up. Bo was standing beside him and squatted down. James inched back, and Bo, thankfully, didn't pull closer, leaving a little over an arms' length between them, thought it was still closer than James wanted.

Bo looked James square in the face.

"You're a good man, James," he said, with no sense of irony in his words. "You've got a good heart. I'm glad you're here, and I'm glad we found you under that tree." His mouth upturned into a smile.

Everything Bo was saying felt like rocks pelting a brick wall. They were nice words, but they weren't sinking in.

Bo only knew part of the story. He didn't know what happened after. He didn't know how quickly things unraveled. How quickly James unraveled.

"Together, we can do this. We'll save Clandestine. We'll make sure both of you are safe."

James found himself nodding, slightly.

That was their first priority. But what happened after?

Bo extended his hand and James stared at it for a moment before he took it to shake it. But instead of a handshake, Bo stood up and pulled James up with him.

James rocked on his feet for a moment and tore his hand away - regretfully so - as his head began to spin again.

He'd had soup, but his stomach felt empty again. A persistent hunger reared its head out of nowhere, and a bubbly moan gurgled in his gut, loud enough for even the horses to hear.

Bo looked down at him with a grin.

"Good. You'll need your appetite. You'll regain your strength."

James nodded again, barely.

"When do we leave?"

"Well, I was thinking--"

The ground rumbled faintly beneath their feet, and just a foot away, the ground opened up, and for a moment, James had a flashback to the sandworms on the farm. Things didn't get better when he saw a little goblin hop out.

Many things happened at once.

James backed away and took on a fighting stance. The little goblin skittered away from the hole and sunk to the ground, making herself look smaller. Mickey came up out of the hole a second after, rising through it with ease, and the hole closed under his feet thereafter. The little goblin immediately attached herself to Mickey's leg. Bo was completely unfazed.

"Oh!" Bo chirped. "Who's this?"

Mickey looked down at the little goblin with a smile. "Her name is Dinny. It seems she's without a home at the moment."

Bo smiled down at her. "Nice to meet you, Dinny!"

"Ah, she doesn't speak common," Mickey said.

"Oh! Sorry." Bo cleared his throat and then started speaking fluently. In goblin. James stared as Bo and Dinny started to have a conversation he couldn't understand, still feeling like his head was a spinning top.

As he looked more closely at Dinny, he tried to place what was so familiar about her. Goblins didn't all look the same, and she was exceptionally small.

She had been there, in the caves and tunnels under the farm. She'd been the one who'd stabbed Clandestine in the leg, and then run off with the others.

His heart began to race, and he felt a shiver run down his spine.

All conversation stopped, and suddenly all eyes were on him.

"James?" Mickey said. "You look pale."

Bo looked between James and Mickey, down at Dinny, and back to Mickey.

"We talked about a lot," he said quietly. "He probably needs a break."

Mickey was watching James closely and nodded. "And some rest."

"Some water, probably," Bo added.

Mickey approached James and put a hand lightly on James's arm. He pulled away, but the movement made him stagger on his feet, and Mickey came with an arm around his back to support him.

"Let's get you back to your room," Mickey said. "Bo and the others can take care of travel preparations for you."

There was a silent interaction between Bo and Mickey where they met eyes and nodded. James didn't know what they came into agreement on, but it was decided. Bo looked down to Dinny and asked her something in goblin, and Dinny nodded. But it was only then that James realized Dinny had been staring at him the whole time. Eyes wide, and full of fear.

Mickey started to turn James around, leading him out of the stables. James didn't know if he was ready to leave yet. He turned to see Elliot and Billy, watching idly from their stalls.

As Mickey pushed open the doors, James wanted to protest, but he couldn't. Too many thoughts were rushing through his mind at once, and he could feel all of them compounding at the front of his head in a headache.