Young Writers Society

Chapter 7 Part 3: I Miss My People and I Missed Their History

Matt leaned forward and looked at her closely, resting his hands above his knees. The movement intimidated her, and she wanted to shrink back under the scrutiny of his gaze. In that moment, she wished she could swallow back all of the words she'd said in the last minute if it meant she could be invisible. The moment she met his eyes she looked away. He didn't seem like he was judging her in a cruel way, but she was terrified he wouldn't understand.

"Has no one told you? That they're gone?" he asked. His voice was worlds kinder than she'd anticipated, and for some reason that made her stomach drop.

He had never seemed to be a very harsh person in the first place, but he seemed like he was being very intentional to be gentle about it, and that made her nervous. What if he knew something she didn't? But she had to know for sure.

"I -I know that they're gone," she confirmed with a nod of her head. "I mean, of course they are. I checked. I know they're not around, and I mean, I guess I wouldn't expect things to be exactly the same after 100 years. But I'm just wondering like - well I guess I've never really gotten the whole story. It's not like there are classes for this stuff. Or I mean, well, there weren't for me. No one sat down and explained it all to me. I just know bits and pieces from what I've heard. Like, people hate mages now but I don't know why? What did they - o-or I mean we - ever do to people? And why exactly did the guilds shut down? I know the what but I don't know the why, and I mean, I've always been kind of afraid to ask... everyone seems to have a slightly different perspective."

She stared down into her lap and twiddled her thumbs, restlessly wishing she had a way to rid herself of the nervous energy coursing through her. She didn't think she had to tell Matt how nervous she was. He could probably just feel it radiating off her or something.

When she looked up, Matt was the one staring into his lap, down at the ground. She waited for what felt like ages, but in reality, was only a few seconds.

"Do you - do you know? What happened?"

Matt looked up at her, slowly. "Yes. I just... well, all I know is just what I've been told in history books and what's been told by word of mouth. My parents were born at the tail end of the calamity, so they didn't remember much of the details, but my grandparents told 'em a lot. Books filled in the details."

Clandestine watched him closely, already hanging on to every word. He stopped, and she couldn't tell why. She met his eyes with a desperate insistence.

"You wanna know everything?" he asked.

"Everything," she said, without hesitation. "Well - everything you know, anyways."

Matt raised his eyebrows and leaned back on the tree with a sigh. He lifted up his hat and ran a hand through his messy hat hair, and she briefly took note of how fluffy and soft it seemed to be despite being in a hat all day. When he set his hat down beside him she noted how his hair was longer in front than in the back, with bangs that almost fell over his eyes.

Then she remembered again how he was about to tell her about the guilds, and she felt the need to shake her head as if to clear it, but instead just held tightly to the corners of her jacket, releasing tension in the tightness of her grip.

"I guess... it's hard to talk about the guilds without talkin' about the calamity, 'cause it was like the trigger that brought about a lot of the change. About 100 years ago, there was a massive forest fire that spread for miles and miles. It burned for close to a month 'r something before it finally died out naturally if I remember right. No one really knew how it started for sure, but people 'round the earth all agreed it was unnatural. That's about when it got pinned on some fire mages, but the devastation from the fire was just the start of it. After the fire there started bein' earthquakes all over the continent. Tsunamis washin' over the isles, volcanoes erupting in the east, filling the air with ash. Lakes and well-water was gettin' contaminated by magical substances making people sick, along with all sorts of strange new magical plants growing out of the earth. Monsters seemed to get more powerful and hostile too. Everything was just a mess from what I hear in the stories. In a matter of months, civilizations collapsed, and humanity fell into mass confusion. People were thinkin' it was the end of the world. Started saying that the mages who started the fire doomed the entire world, angered the magic within, brought its wrath to the surface. The idea that mages were responsible for it started really spreading, and soon it came to be that mages were hated among most people.

"The calamity lasted almost 20 years before it started to die down. Another 20 somethin' years later, Blackfield - now King Blackfield of the Moonlight Kingdom in the South - started gaining influence. He was young at the time, but very charismatic. Humans were finally starting to inch towards recovery after years of being scattered and struggling to survive, and there was a lot of pain and anger amongst them. It was hard to unify them around something after two decades of lawlessness and chaos. But he managed to rally most of the surviving humans together to further the cause of what he called justice. He believed to make things right they had to eliminate the wrong... and that meant punishing the mages who everyone at that point, believed were the reason for the world's pain."

Clandestine could feel her heart sink deeper and deeper into the pit of her stomach as Matt continued to speak. She could tell that Matt was spoon-fed the information and probably only given it from one side. But to hear that mages were demonized and blamed for the woes of the world - which in all her understanding sounded like they were out of everyone's control - she couldn't wrap her mind around it. She didn't want to believe it. If there had been that kind of mob mentality... that rage and pain pinned on the mages... then...

"Since the Monster Hunting guilds were schools for mages in their own right, the guilds were targeted. From there, it was pretty simple. Mages either vowed to never use their magic or were killed, or imprisoned. They fought back, of course, but after the waves of disasters, they were far outnumbered. Many, many lost their lives. Mages who weren't killed or captured went into hiding, and after the crusades, continued to hide and fear for their lives because that's when the people who hunted them created their own guild. Instead of being called Monster Hunter Guilds... it was Mage Hunter Guilds."

Matt paused for a long time, and the two sat silently in the weight of the loss.

Clandestine wasn't sure how to feel. On the one hand, it wasn't new to her that they were gone. But it was new to her that they were massacred for being mages, and that they didn't just die over the past 100 years due to old age like she would've assumed.

Yet at the same time, it was as if it confirmed everything she knew. She should've died with them. Not just because she was never supposed to live for 100 years in the first place, but because she should have been killed with them. And if she hadn't been killed with them, she should have died with them in hiding.

She wished she could cry, but there were no tears coming to her eyes. All she felt was a hollow emptiness in her chest, and her face felt frozen into a solemn frown. You asked for this, she tried to remind herself. You wanted to know why. Now you know why! But the truth wasn't anything like she'd hoped for. She began to turn away.

"I'm sorry," Matt whispered quietly.

Clandestine stopped and looked back at him. She reached out and pat his knee. "Thank you... for telling me," she whispered back with a voice void of emotion. "Maybe... you should go to sleep now for a bit. Then I can sleep again if goblins don't wake us first."

Matt was quiet, but he nodded ever so slightly. He slumped down at the base of the tree and stared out into the forest. Clandestine looked away before he closed his eyes. She just wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

And she wasn't just being dramatic.

--

Clandestine has known great loss.

It is a wonder in this world, that someone as innocent and pure as she would still exist in spite of such a tragedy.

If ever I thought my life unfair, I was wrong. Nothing can compare to this.