Young Writers Society

Chapter Seven- A World in Which I Do Not Belong

Deer Valley Unified School District

Boulder Ridge Middle School

Student ID #: 960044

Student: Bering, Emily R (F)

Grade 8

DOB: 6/7

Bus #: 231

Date Issued: 8/24

Expires: 5/29

If the voice can be trusted, just about everything on this little plastic card is a lie. I am not student #960044 of good ol’ DVUSD. I never rode on bus #231 and endured the taunting and the daily “let’s all throw things at the ugly girl” routine. I was not born on any June seventh and never saw Boulder Ridge Middle School. And maybe my name isn’t “The (insert derogatory adjective of your choice here) Emily Rachel Bering.”

But... can the voice be trusted? More importantly, who and what is it?

Well? Are you listening, voice? Who and what are you?

Nothing.

Okay. Well. If I assume the voice and the marionette strings to be one and the same, that means there’s something in my head randomly taking control of me, presumably for a purpose, and a purpose that somehow involves me slicing apart the entire village of Yoake. This purpose must have involved keeping me alive, at least until after I left Yoake, at which point it apparently stopped caring. And in Chiren, when I fought the nedra, there were no strings at all to help me. Just before that, it caused... whatever happened to me at the gates.

Something that helped me against Hanorans but attacked me while I was helping them would be someone who would want to hurt Hano–

Sareil.

It’s the only logical explanation. The thing controlling me is using me as a weapon against Hanora, using me to fight for Sareil. I remember what Koreth said yesterday about beast manipulation magic...

Oh, God no.

If I’m controlled by Sareil, they could force me to kill Iarin, or Koreth... but I resisted before, I can resist again. All the more reason to eliminate them now, right?

It’s odd, before I couldn’t have cared less. Sareil, Hanora, both were as far removed from me as... well, anything else in this upside-down little world. But somewhere between Yoake and Chiren, when this world became my world, my indifference towards Sareil has shifted into disarming hate. I even hate the name.

I remember the way the guard at Yoake spoke the name of Sareil, with an anger and disgust that made me flinch. Am I becoming like that? part of me wonders. I dismiss the thought with little concern, before swinging my feet to the floor and standing up, running my fingers through my hair in a vain attempt to smooth it, which didn’t work at home and certainly doesn’t work here. The morning sun is shining through the spiffy crystal windows, sending little rainbow dots dancing on the floor, and for some reason defeating the entire country of Sareil seems like a ridiculously easy task, and in the back of my head I think damn, girl, you’ve finally lost your mind.

So what else is new?

With something that resembles a cheery whistle on my lips (barely, I’m the most musically challenged person in the universe) I head out the door and down the stairs with their expensive-looking mahogany rail. Koreth and Iarin are waiting for me at the bottom of the steps.

“Morning!” I call, surprised at the cheeriness in my own voice. “I guess we’ve got to go stock up on supplies and the like before we get going, huh?”

“Done.” Koreth says.

“Really? Guess I must have overslept, huh? Sorry.”

“O-only by a little.” Iarin says gently.

“Well, I wouldn’t have been much help anyway. Haven’t got a cent on me.”

“Actually, the Chirenians sort of just g-gave us all this for free.”

My eyes widen. “Seriously? Wow. I could get used to this. “

“Enjoy it while you can,” Koreth warns, “keep in mind that the people of Chiren are first and foremost politicians. They may be helping us now, but their liable to turn on us the second a more profitable alliance presents itself. For the moment, though, we shouldn’t worry too much. Chiren– and by association, most of the Hanoran Republic– is with us, and the Council can’t do a thing about it. Only for the moment, of course.”

“Yeah, true.” I say as we step out into the early morning sunshine. Chiren is like a freaking inferno once again, all the pillars and gables glowing and the reflective pools making it worse. A couple of people on the street smile fakely and wish us well in false, cheery voices as we pass.

Of course these smiles and greetings aren’t real. Even before Koreth’s warning, I could tell these people want us dead. Their expressions just carry that element of, “you know, we’re happy you decided not to let us die, but couldn’t you have opted to kill yourselves, too? Is that so much to ask?” I can’t help but shudder a little at the realization that the group that represents most of our allies is so terribly fickle.

The Chiren guard steps aside as we walk by, copycatting the Yoake version’s patented pitbull growl. Koreth gives him a false smile to beat the Chirenians’, and we pass through the high gates.

I glance back for a second, just to make sure Chiren guard over there isn’t planning on stabbing anybody in the back on the way out, when I feel a sudden wave of dread.

This won’t end well. Says the back of my head, high, nervous, and singsong.

I turn away, leaving the alabaster city at my back.

* * * * *

“Koreth? You okay?” I say at last, anything to break the almost total silence. Iarin is walking a bit away from us, her nose buried in a thick book that she doesn’t even look like she should be able to hold up, let alone read while walking ten feet ahead of us. “You’ve been pretty quiet all day. And you’re walking slower than normal, too. Are you sick or something?”

Koreth gives me a noticeably strained smile. “I told you not to worry about it, right?”

“Yeah... but, you know, if you’re suffering, or something, and there’s something I can do to help–“

“Thank you. But there isn’t. Sorry.”

“Oh. Okay.” I don’t have anything to say for a minute. Then, I add, suddenly, “What the Councilors said back there... It has something to do with that, doesn’t it?”

“Sort of. Like I said, you shouldn’t worry about it. I made a stupid decision, even though I didn’t know it was stupid at the time. But what’s done is done. There’s no way to fix what’s happened.” I understand this to mean that this conversation is over.

“So...” I say after a minute, “the Narothians... what are they like?”

Koreth laughs a little. “Um... where to begin? Well, they are good at fighting. I suppose they have that going for them, but...uh... well, most of their coherent generation is the end result of the Council’s new ‘education’ initiative. They’ve all but lost the ability too think for themselves, in most cases.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Trust me, you’ll get the idea once we’re there. In any case, there’s no need to be afraid of them. As long as we aren’t helping the Sareilians, they won’t want us dead. We’re bound to get a better welcome than we did in Chiren. Which, admittedly, isn’t saying much.”

I glance out at the countryside surrounding the path with vague interest. It’s late afternoon, we took a break for lunch a few hours ago, near a river a few miles north of the city. The silence of the road is almost oppressive. We spotted a few other travelers while we were still near Chiren, heading in from the few small villages we noticed off the road, clinging to the golden city like leeches. But once we stepped out of the city’s blazing halo, we began to see less and less people along the road. We haven’t seen anyone in over an hour now, though there have been more and more animals, especially those of some sort of squirrel-mouse variety that keep running out of our way, across the path and up the trees that have begun to speckle the fields. The ground has lost its former planar-ness, the land rising into taller and taller hills as we go north.

“How far is it to Naroth, anyway?”

“About five or six days, walking. We might reach the mountains by tomorrow afternoon, if we make good time. These are good roads. It’s a bit of a different story once we get to the mountains, the terrain is a bit rough. There’s a good underground passage we can take that might help us make better progress, though.”

“Wow. You know a lot, don’t you?”

“The Spellweavers traveled often.”

“Traveled? Past tense?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. …Ok. Are the Council sure we can get help in Naroth? Because that does seem like a lot of work, for something that won’t make the slightest difference.”

“If not Naroth, then where? We’ll ask for the head of Naroth’s guards, Attaraya D’Nar, who reports to Kagami and is pretty well favored among the higher-ups. If we can’t get help there, we’ll never get to Sareil.”

Attaraya. I memorize the name quickly. If this Attaraya guy is our only hope, I’d better know who he is.

“We’ll probably walk another mile or so today, then we’ll stop. It’s starting to get dark, anyway.”

That reminds me of something. “Hey, I’ve got a question. You know, back in the tower at Yoake?”

“...yes?”

“If you wanted to escape from the tower so badly, why couldn’t you have just used... you know, the spell?”

“Huh? Oh. The walls. And the door. They’ve got special kind of wards on them. Impervious to magic. “

"Oh.”

“Things like that dragon are there to keep people out, and the door doesn’t open from the inside.”

“Why all these precautions?”

“The Council considers Spellweavers to be... very dangerous... at a... certain point. Very dangerous... and...” he sighs. “I’m sorry. I...”

“Back to whatever it was you didn’t want to talk about?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Ok. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“But still... despite all the precaution... it was such a flimsy door, wasn’t it?”

“...no.”

So... being able to push down the door... this creepy power again? I can’t help but shudder. I should be happy that I’ve got all this, I guess, but I can’t help but admit it’s still a bit scary. Some weirdo power that comes from nowhere, the voice, and then what happened at the gates of Chiren... it’s like I’m not even me anymore.

Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, I remind myself.

* * * * *

We make camp when the sun sets. I eat some of the bread from my bag. Stepping away from the struggling embers of our pitiful fire, I roll over on the ground and fall asleep.

* * * * *

What are you doing here?

I jerk awake.

I must be here alone, even the air is still. The stars in the black sky go out one by one. I can feel the sensation of grass prickling on my skin, and then it is gone. I’m standing up now, although there is no ground beneath my feet, there is not even air around me, so what am I breathing?

What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? The sound of a voice, my voice but not my voice, on and on in endless litany. What are you doing here? The void around me is filled with light, the light is from the windows, the windows are on a wall, the wall is attached to a cheap corkboard ceiling and a checkered tile floor, the floor holds up rows of desks. I’m sitting in one of those desks and my arm is in a cast, a stark, neon, glowing white cast that no one has signed. I listen to the chant of my voice (not mine); and to the cold, cold voice that WAS NOT HER (yes it was) that would not could not be my friend, the cold voice that just says, all on its own, “whatever.”

Who are you? My/not my voice says all the sudden. The room disappears, the void is back. The voice rises in pitch, it sounds panicked, panicked and angry. WHO ARE YOU?

I want to say that I am–

I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. I can’t. I can’t remember. I can’t remember my name.

She is no one. says another voice, the marionette voice. No one at all.

The owner of my voice/not my voice steps out of the gloom, a pure white silhouette bright against the blackness. Liar! it shouts. Then it turns on me. I know who you are. I know what you are. You are not welcome here. I am here, and you do not exist. You don’t belong in this place. Go away.

I can’t move.

Go away!

But I can’t–

GO AWAY!!!

* * * * *

The dream ends. And it was, in fact, a dream. Now I’m awake, sitting up, startled, a ways away from the fire. At least I didn’t wake everyone else up.

I lay back down and try to forget about the dream. Usually, this sort of thing comes easily to me. I don’t believe, I prefer not to believe, in any of that fancy-pants, dream-interpretation, messages from the dead stuff. But for some reason, I just can’t forget it.

It means something. And I know it.

I shouldn’t be so stupid. Believing this crap is like believing the crap you see in horror movies is real. It was only a dream.

But... I still can’t get to sleep.

Well, the sun’s on the edge of the horizon anyway. It’s technically morning. I get up, walk over to the others, and begin to build up the fire again, glad I know how. Hurrah for Girl Scout camp, even if I had bruises for weeks afterward because of the whole rock throwing incident.

The fire crackles merrily in the stillness, dispensing a bit of the chill of the misty morning. Even though it’s the middle of May, the air still feels damp without the sun, which is why I’m shivering, I tell myself firmly. I’m not scared, or anything; it was only a dream. Just a stupid dream.

Pulling another piece of bread out of my bag, because there’s no way I’ll be able to throw together anything better, I eat breakfast. There’s just too much stuff to worry about lately, too much that doesn’t make sense. I just don’t see how all the pieces fit together: the voice, the powers, the control, the dream, Koreth and Iarin, the Council, the mysterious beast-manipulator, and Kagami. The fire, and the other me. I don’t see how it fits together at all.

Or maybe I’m afraid to find out.

* * * * *

The tunnel stretches ahead of us, impossibly, ridiculously dark and ominous, so that I half expect to hear the low, booming peal of a bell just to make the almost comically dramatic moment complete.

“Lets stop to rest here.” says Koreth quietly. I jump in surprise. It’s the first thing he’s said all day. “Once we get into the passageway, there’ll be nowhere we can stop safely.“

“Why’s that?” I ask casually, leaning against the side of the entrance.

“Caves here are inhabited,”

“By what?”

“Rats.”

Oh. Well, that’s okay, then. Hairy rodents don’t bother me. I mean we’re past the Victorian age, people. No more jumping onto a chair and squealing, unless you want to make yourself look like an idiot. I mean, It’s not like they’re six feet tall, right?

* * * * *

Wrong.

“Holy...” I mumble, staring at the towering and rather pissed-off looking rodent pacing the ground only about five yards into the tunnel. “What the hell is that?”

“Um... a rat?” says Koreth in a “duh” voice.

“But... it’s ... like... six feet tall!”

“Uh, yeah.”

Okay, this is the weirdest thing I’ve encountered so far in this world. Hands down. No doubt about it.

“D-didn’t you... I dunno, expect that...?” Iarin asks.

“No, actually. In my world, rats are like... two inches tall, or so. Maybe a little bigger, the point is, they aren’t any taller than us.”

Iarin and Koreth exchange a look like, yup, she’s crazy.

“So... what do we do? Can we just, like, walk past it?”

“Probably not. They’re rather territorial. These things aren’t very strong by themselves, but if we alarm one, it’ll call the rest.”

“How many others are there?”

“Th-thousands, probably.”

Why can’t these people from Naroth take better care of their tunnels?

“Can we… try to sneak past it?” I ask hesitantly.

“Dunno.”

Well… okay. I take a few careful steps in the direction of the rat.

It hears my footfalls and whirls to face me, making a very loud hissy-squeaky rat sound. I draw my sword automatically, jumping back.

The rat leaps at me, and—not knowing what else to do, I hold the thing up in front of my head as an attempt at self-defense, pointed outward.

There’s a rather sickening sound and I open my eyes to see that the rat, being the intelligent rodent it is, didn’t pull out of its leap and has managed to get speared on the point of my sword.

Pleasant. Real pleasant.

I pull the blade free, and Templeton falls to the ground. It doesn’t get up to move again, so… I guess that’s done.

“Okay. What now?”

“I g-guess we just keep going…”

So we head into the tunnel.

I’m surprised, it’s easier to pass through than I thought it would be. The path beneath us is rather smooth, and, weirdly enough, there’s light. We aren’t that deep beneath the surface, and odd shafts of illumination fall across the ground and walls at various angles. Beneath these shafts, small piles of pebbles and crumbly dirt have gathered.

“Odd,” says Koreth, “looks like the tunnels are getting weak. Another good rainfall, they’ll collapse.“

"Really?”

“Yes. Bad news for Naroth, that. They’re isolated. Without this tunnel, more popularly known as the Arael Mountain Pass, the only way to get there will be through directly going through the mountains. It takes more time. Teleportation magic might work, but that’s almost out.”

“Shouldn’t they have strengthened the place, then?”

“Yes. Naroth’s too busy, though. They’ve got to defend Hanora, and complain that there aren’t enough people defending Hanora. No time to worry about this place.”

I can’t help but want to walk faster, now, the same nervous dread from yesterday enveloping me again. Something, something’s not right.

We come to what looks like a crossroads, about and hour’s worth of walking later. It looks like a circular room, with two paths leading off just ahead of us. A bigger shaft of light than usual comes from the ceiling, leaving a pale circle on the grey-brown floor. Even I can see the weakness of this part of the tunnel, the uncertain trembling of the rocky ceiling.

“What now?” I ask.

“Well, that path there,” Koreth points to the left, “leads straight out. There’s only about 20 feet of tunnel left from there. This one,” Koreth points right, “still leads out, but it’s a longer path. The left is an escape route in case the tunnels should collapse. The right is the path that takes us further in the direction of Naroth. Better take the right. It’s easier to get lost in the mountains than in here.”

"Okay, makes sense to me.” I say, striding across the room with an odd false confidence, feeling a slight shudder pass over me as I step beneath the light.

“Oh. So much for that.” Koreth says from behind me.

The tunnel leading further on has caved in. The dirt and the rocks form a new wall, about a foot away from the entrance to our path.

“W-well, we could just go the other way, right?” Iarin says from behind me, whispering for some reason. I can sense her nervousness and I don’t blame her. If we’d come through just a few days ago, it would have been us underneath those rocks, trapped and crushed to death.

“Yes. The other--”

"Wait." I say slowly, “Do you... hear that?”

Pitter-patter footsteps. Tons of them. Thousands, maybe. Trailing not far behind us, not far at all.

I whirl around.

Through the tunnel we just came through, the rats run out; ten, no twenty... thirty, forty, the entire, pissed-off crowd who are apparently not too happy that we went NIMH on their buddy back at the entrance.

Okay, an angry villager mob, I can believe, but an angry rat mob? What... the... hell?

“Well, this isn’t good,“ I sigh, “can we really fight them all at--”

My answer to that comes from the foremost, most dementedly tall rat, who sends me careening up against the wall. I fight back, stabbing the thing right between the eyes. It lets out a screech of agony as it dies, and the rest of the pack doesn’t take to this too well. Looks like the seven-foot one happened to be their leader. Splendid.

After the accumulation of several more bruises and scratches that Iarin can’t get close enough to heal, I’m starting to get sick of this. If only there was a quick way to just eliminate them all at once, so that–

Oh. Duh.

“Er...Koreth? Any chance of wasting your spell for the day?” I call.

Koreth looks up from valiantly backing away from the nearest army of very angry rodents. “Right. You and Iarin should try to back up into the left tunnel, so you won’t get hit.”

“Got it.”

"R-right.”

I shove a path through the rats in the way, trying to clear a space for Iarin, too, whose best defense would probably be to hit things over the head with her book.

“Okay, we’re safe!” I call, pausing to clean some of the rat blood off my sword with the cuff of my sweatshirt as I back into the tunnel.

Koreth nods, stepping back and quickly muttering something. A point of light appears in the center of the pack. I step back again, cautiously, as Iarin stares at the ever growing doomsday light, as the space we’re standing in goes from palely lit to dim to pitch black. Soon the white light fills everything, once again, then it ebbs and fades, bringing back the rest of the world.

The rats are gone, and of course Koreth is backed up against the far wall, having gotten out of the way of the spell. In the tunnel we came through, where the spell had gone astray, the ceiling has collapsed with the force of the magic, blocking our way back.

“Unavoidable, that.” says Koreth, seeing where I’m glancing.

Something’s not right...

“Would have fallen anyway. Glad it wasn’t on us. Anyway, our path is still open.“

Something’s definitely, definitely not right, the feeling of dread is back now, but many, many times worse, something’s not right–

Koreth brushes a bit of dust from his sleeve and steps forward from the wall.

— something is going to happen and it’s going to happen now and I want to turn and run but I can’t move and I want to shout to Koreth to get out of the way but I can’t speak.

The gentle rattle of shifting stones echoes through the entire passage. Koreth looks up.

It begins with just a little swirl of dust. From that exact second, the idea seems burned into my mind, and I know, from that second, that I will never forget about it. Just that little mote of dust...

The first pebble falls with a tiny tap, echoing all through the tunnels.

An instant of silence.

With a rumble of angry thunder, the ceiling of the crossroads collapses.

I pull Iarin back with all my strength, backpedaling wildly, but Koreth’s too far away, much too far away for him to get out in time.

After I’ve shoved Iarin out of the tunnel, I whirl back, running to try to help Koreth out of the way too, but when I try to push aside the fallen rock in my way, it won’t move. There aren’t any gaps, not even at the top of the tunnel ceiling, and the rock doesn’t so much as twitch under my hands, even with all my supposed strength, it’s impossible. An impossible wall of stone, an undoubtedly there’s more, inside the crossroads room where the ceiling collapsed. Anyone beneath would almost certainly be crushed.

The only remaining path to lonely, isolated Naroth has collapsed at my heels, and it has taken Koreth with it.

-------

First Chapter

Previous Chapter

*is horrifyingly late*

You have no idea how good it feels to have these first seven humiliating chapters posted. I can't wait to move on to part three, where Emma is more sarcastic, Iarin is smarter, and Sae and Attaraya actually get to appear. I have more confidence in... just about everthing about parts 3 and 4 than I have in 1 and 2.

Anyway, go on and rip it apart! *dances with joy* I'm freeee! ...well, at least for a little while.