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everlarkficexchange · 5 years ago

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Operation: BREAD (Bring Revenge on Everdeen to Avenge Dad)

Written by: @alliswell21

Prompt 23: Rumor: MrEverdeen crossed fence dividing Town and Seam, kidnapped Mrs Everdeen making her his common law wife. Years later, Mellark sons plan to avenge their father by raiding Seam and kidnapping one of Everdeen’s daughters for one of them to take as a wife! Does Katniss “volunteer,” does she escape, how do the 3 brothers decide what to do with her since they didn’t plan it all out well? [submitted by @567inpanem]

Rated: T for now, for language.

Author’s Note: So, I resigned myself that this prompt won’t be completed by the new dateline of May 10th, because believe it not, quarantining with the husband and children at home makes for a very busy day… everyday. I haven’t been able to write anything for days at a time, and everytime I come back, I reread what I’ve written so far, and find faults that need fixing and what I hoped to be a short story is turning into a long one shot because I’m incapable of keep things simple… and now I’m ranting about everything instead of thanking everyone— from the EFE administrators, to @567inpanem for the prompt, and y’all dear readers— and wishing all moms a happy Mother’s Day, even if you celebrate it on a different date in your country… and I a belated happy birthday to Katniss Everdeen and Also a happy Mother’s Day to her, because she deserves it… anywho…

Here’s is the very first part of this story, that can’t make up its mind on what it wants to be (it’s leaning into romcom territory right now), I’ll post all my submissions soonish (hopefully finished), and I apologize for any formatting defects since I’m posting from my cell phone, otherwise I’ll forget to post it at all.

Sorry this is messy! I love y’all! Stay healthy.

————

“Quiet, you morons!” Bannock… whispers?

Is that the right descriptor for the harsh, low sounds that comes from his mouth? I’m not quite sure, but I look at him sheepishly, since I was the one to trip on air this time around and nearly knock down a clothesline, poles and all.

“S-sorry…” I stutter drunkenly.

Rye shrugs, uncaring. Asshole!

Bannock glares at us with his bloodshot, angry blue eyes before turning around and creeping forward.

It’s a chilly night out, with no stars and just a sliver of moon casting minimal light over us, ideal to maraud and raid… if we lived any place else, that is.

If we were to find ourselves face to face with the flashlight of a Peacekeeper patrolling the streets, things could go anywhere from awkward to deadly, and I really hope we don’t have to find out how it’ll truly go. We’re wasted, outside our house after curfew, and facing our mother’s wrath would probably be as terrible as any punishment the peacekeepers would inflict on us.

The later option has me swallowing thickly.

I’m no coward by any stretch of the word… but I do enjoy being alive, so… yeah.

“Don’t mess around, no more!” Bannock chides.

As soon as Bann turns around, Rye mouths his words back, mockingly, and I wonder— not for the first time— how can my brothers be so immature? Bannock just turned 25, while Rye has the mind of a 13 year old trapped in the muscular body of a 24 year old man; leaving sweet, little me, the 21 year old baby sibling, to bring the rear.

Rye burps, mostly quietly, earning another warning glare from Bann. All things considered, I’m a little impressed at how stealthily we’ve been moving so far, being as enebriated as we are and all. But who knows? Maybe we really aren’t as slick as my alcohol soaked brain thinks we are, and I’m just too skunked to know any better.

“D’you think we’ll be back before father wakes to take care of the ovens?” Rye slurs a little, squinting his eyes at a cat trotting across the alley in front of him. A second later he’s frowning down at the cat, shushing it obnoxiously, as if it’s soft paws are the ones making the stopping sounds coming from his own boots.

Bannock shrugs, “Who cares!”

I’m about to raise my hand and respond that I do, I care, but Rye starts laughing like an idiot, already distracted by something else. We turn to catch him picking up a stick and throwing it at the poor, unsuspecting cat. As soon as the stick hits it’s side, the animal loses its balance, making it fall into a trash can, with a terrified cry.

It’s awful. And loud.

“Knock it off!” Bannock growls as quietly as he can. “You’re gonna wake up the whole town, asshole!”

The cat meows indignantly, climbing out of the trash. He jumps to the other side and it’s gone in the next moment.

I sigh, rubbing one hand over my face. “Guys, I think we should go back. I don’t think Father will approve of this.”

“Shut up, Peeta!”

“Yeah! Shut it, runt!”

I grunt in aggravation under my breath. “I’m serious. We shouldn’t be out here… at all!” I insist.

“Why did you come then?” Bann hisses.

“You dragged me out with you, jackass!” I counter, pointedly. Plus, I’m the least drunk out of the three of us, and I figured I should keep an eye on them two, make sure they don’t get hurt in this idiotic quest… but I don’t say that out aloud. “I still don’t understand why, are we stumbling across town in the middle of the night, risking getting caught outside after curfew.”

“You know why, Peeta! We’ve gone over it to death,” snaps Bann, twisting his whole body to face me and almost walking into a potted plant sitting by somebody’s back door. “Father doesn’t know how to take care of himself, let alone how to defend his honor!”

“Our hands have been forced, runt. We need to pick up the slack, that’s why!”

I roll my eyes at my brothers.

It’s true though. For the last 26 years, our father has been both the butt of every joke said in the streets of district 12, and the victim of a tragic cautionary tale, people somehow feel the sadistic inclination to bring up to us, Mellark boys, as if we needed the reminder.

“Geez… save it for Everdeen, Bann. Let the runt keep his head instead of chewing it off him!”

Bannock frowns. It’s not everyday Rye comes to my defense, which means he really must be hammered.

Cool! I love brotherly affection… even if given under the influence.

“Whatever.” Bannock mutters under his breath. “We’re here anyway.” He signals to the fence dividing our district into two unequal sections: the merchant quarter, where we live, and the Seam (our destination), the largest— yet poorest— side of 12.

It’s unclear why the government erected the fence running right through the district in the first place, but the effect of having a literal barrier separating everyone in our small district, couldn’t be any clearer: we have a huge social divide amongst our people, very distinct and hard to overcome. Both sides distrusting the other, despite there never being a tangible reason why.

Personally, I think the most logical explanation for the creation of the internal fence, was just sheer desire to create hostility and antagonism between the citizens of 12… maybe it’s easier for the Capitol’s long arm to control a podunk place like here, when there’s an unbridgeable social chasm between our own denizens; how can we band together to demand better treatment and fair representation from the mighty Capitol, when we’re fighting with each other?

Of course, I keep my opinion to myself, because speaking of such things is just a sure way to find oneself in prison, facing charges of public agitation and whatnot.

Bann cuts through my musings, “Alright… let’s find a spot to cross over.” He says determined and still very intoxicated.

The worst kept secret in District 12, is how some sections of the fence are too close to the houses in the merchant side. If one really wants to cross into the other side over the fence, one only needs to look for a low wall adjacent to the top links of the fence to climb on, and after that, it’s all a matter of gravity pulling you down. Its been done before too…

Everyone speculates that’s what happened the day our father fell into disgrace: A man from the Seam found a weak spot to exploit… and the rest is history. Never mind the fact that jumping the fence is a common enough hooligan deed; how else can teenage couples reach the Slag Heap at the edge of the old coal mines to engage in their secret affairs?

It only takes us a few minutes to find a brick wall circling the backyard of a random house, just two feet shy of the fence.

We climb it with all the grace of a pig crawling up a greased pole, but after much huffing and puffing, we manage— with great effort�� to drag ourselves over the barrier. We’re sweating and swearing, but who could blame us for that? We Mellark boys are just too broad and heavy with muscle, add to the mix the fact that we’ve drank our body weight in white liquor right before Bann had the brilliant idea of dragging us out here, and you have an uncoordinated— mostly clumsy— sad excuse, trio of vandals.

Rye goes first, then I go; finally, Bannock splatters down like a bullfrog, falling on his ass. He’s disgruntled and I suspect in dire need of a nap.

“Come on!” He commands, dusting his behind sloppily.

We’ve been walking aimlessly through unfamiliar dirt roads and dark unpaved alleys. The place is littered with produce crates set upside down in neat circles every other road… I vaguely wonder if that’s what passes as a socializing hot spot here in the Seam, like the square with its concrete benches is for us in town?

Sometimes I forget how things can be so shitty on this side of the District. It makes my stomach twist unpleasantly with guilt, realizing I take certain privileges for granted.

About five minutes into our stupid intrusion into Seam territory, Rye speaks up.

“Dude… do you know where they live?”

Bannock’s head snaps up, clearly annoyed. “How hard can it be to find the Seam’s apothecary?”

Very, actually.

First of all, The Seam consists of row after row of seemingly identical shacks, in varying states of shabbiness, arranged in a huge matrix of sorts. Each row is made of three to five houses with a slim road in between the next set of homes.

For what I gather in my limited liquor-addled brain, each horizontal row has a designated letter, and the vertical street goes by number. Other than that, there are no other distinguishing signs, telling us where we are or how to find the ‘Seam apothecary’ as Bann inarticulately dubbed it.

Rye groans in annoyance, seeming ready to overrule Bannock and call the whole thing off, himself; but my drunk ass is too stupid to keep my big mouth shut.

“They live close to the electric fence. Right before the meadow. They probably have a fence-in yard, too.”

I wince, regretting my words right away. I shouldn’t have said anything, but like an idiot, I couldn’t help spilling out the small bursts of information I’ve gathered over the years on the Everdeens.

I’m ashamed to admit it, but the Everdeens are a bit of an obsession to me… for all of us Mellarks, really. Given our entangled past with them, it shouldn’t be so much of a revelation, but this thing between our families has been a nuisance ever since I can remember and while my brothers and mother use it as a focal point of hatred and animosity. For me, is a curiosity driven thirst for knowledge on everything Everdeen. Anything that could shed light on our sordid past, I would gobble up, trying to answer why something that has virtually nothing to do with me and my brothers, still haunt us everywhere we go.

Rye frowns. “Fence-in yard?” He looks around the houses we are passing, realizing none of those have fences.

“Goat.” Bannock grunts, nodding thoughtfully. “Good catch, runt.”

“Huh?” Rye is scratching his head, confused.

“The blonde girl,” Bann says with mild irritation.

People from the Seam have a very specific look to them: dark— usually straight— hair, gray eyes, olive skin… ‘blonde’, blue eyed and pale, is more of a descriptor for people from the merchant class, like us… like Mrs. Everdeen.

The poor woman must stick out like a sore thumb in here; probably the same goes to her merchant-looking daughter, Primrose.

“What about the blonde?”

“She makes goat cheese.” Bann huffs as explanation, but since Rye still looks like the concept is too hard to fathom, Bannock grunts, expanding. “She trades the cheese in town. Mainly with Father. Which means, Everdeen has to keep at least one goat for the girl to have access to milk.”

“M’kay… goat, fences, meadow.” Rye lists clumsily on his fingers, following after Bann. “Got it!”

We quickened our steps in the direction of the electric fence. I’m still kicking myself for saying anything when we reach the last row of houses before the meadow.

I really hope I’m wrong about them having a goat, although I find it hard to believe Primrose steals milk from other people for her cheeses. She looks so sweet and innocent.

Alas, I’m too clever for my own good sometimes.

The very first house in the row at the edge of the meadow, has a pen connected to the house on the strip of backyard allotted to them. A tiny but sturdy shed stands against the back wall of the house, and if my eyes don’t deceive me, I can barely make out the snout of a goat, peeking out of the narrow opening of the shed.

“This is it!” Rye crows excitedly, rubbing his hands together and licking his chops like a hungry, humanoid wolf.

“Yeah. Finally!” Grunts Bann, “keep your voice down, doofus.” his reaction, both frenzied and anxious.

“Let’s do this!” Rye’s smile is deranged.

“Great!” I hiccup with fake enthusiasm. “What are we doing?” I deadpan, staring at my siblings with all the aggravation I can muster.

My brothers speak excitedly at the same time:

“Taking one of the girls back home with us!”/“Beating the shit out of Everdeen!”

My brothers look at each other, perplexed, and go, “”What?!” At the same time.

“Fuck!” I groan to the skies, noting its near dawn. “You better be joking! We came all the way out here, and you idiots didn’t plan what you were going to do once we arrived?”

“No… I mean, yes! No. it’s simple,” Slurs Rye trying to stare me in the eye and failing miserably, “We’re dragging Everdeen out here. Then, we’ll beat the snot out of the bastard, and have you doodle the whole thing out for Father… you’ll finally use that art talent of yours for something we’ll all enjoy… not just you,”

“No, no, no, no!” Snaps Bannock. “We’re taking one of Everdeen’s daughters, bring her back home with us, and avenge father.”

“What? Why?” Rye whines much too loud and even I shush him. “I thought we were just gonna jump the bastard and rearrange his face a little,” Rye sounds disappointed.

Bannock answers right away, sounding like our mother when she’s chiding us for some thing or another. “Dude… the guy stole Dad’s girl! You know what they say about repaying a slight with the same coin and all that shit. It stands to reason, the course of action here is to take one of the girls home with us, sleep with her, and get her pregnant or something, then she can’t come back to her daddy.”

I throw my hands up in the air, “That’s it! I’m out!” My brain practically short circuits with the outrageous shit my brothers are spewing out of their mouths.

Sure, beating the lights out of an unsuspecting man in front of his house in the middle of the night is already crazy, but Bann’s idea to take a girl away from her home, it’s beyond preposterous!

Instead of lashing out, I turn around and stalk away as fast as my legs can carry me. I’m still tipsy, so I stumble a little, but I’m determined to leave.

“Hey! Where are ya going?!”

I get grabbed by the bíceps and pulled back to ‘hide’ behind a scraggly bush overlooking the house we assume is Everdeen’s. My brothers push me down by the shoulders roughly, until I’m sitting on my ass.

“The hell is wrong with you two?” I snarl, trying to punch and kick either one of them.

“Shut up, runt! They’re gonna hear you!”

“Good! Then someone will call the Peacekeepers over.”

“Wha— No! Why would you want that?” Rye whines.

“I didn’t sign up for any of this crazy shit!” I spit enraged.

“Dude, you can’t bail on operation BREAD,” Rye scrunches up his face.

“Operation Bread? What in the hell, is operation Bread?” I wrench my arms free from them at last, glowering up at both.

“Bring Revenge on Everdeen to Avenge Dad!” Rye says proudly, a lopsided smile brightens his face, and all I want to do is punch his nose.

“You’re insane!” I sputter.

“No… I’m cle-ver!” Rye grins, tapping a finger to his temple.

“Come on, Peeta. You know this needs to be done!” Bann cuts in.

“No! It doesn’t!” I argue. I still feel woozy from alcohol though, so it’s costing me too much effort trying to get up. “This is just insane, Bannock! What you’re proposing is just… heinous!” I hiss.

Bannock’s face hardens, “Nobody will see it like that.” He assures, “An eye for an eye, baby brother.”

“So what? We’re gonna kidnap and rape an innocent girl in revenge, and you think that’ll fix anything? Will it bring peace? It’ll help you get Madelynn’s parents to back off and let her marry you?” I’m so pissed off, I’m pretty sure spittle is flying out of my mouth. “It won’t do anyone any good! Not us, nor father, and especially not Katniss or Primrose!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Bannock flies at me, and all I have to do is lift my arms to shield my head.

Rye is an equal opportunity asshole most of the time, but in this moment, he’s the one stopping Bannock from breaking my face in two, and I’m very grateful for my middle brother manhandling our eldest for me.

“Rape is a strong word, runt.” Rye gasps with the effort of keeping Bannock from kicking my ass. But if the wrinkling of his nose is any indication, I think maybe my words are chipping away some of his complicitness in this mess. “Maybe, what Bann meant, was, one of us will… you know… spend time with the girl, and then… make her his common law wife or something?” Rye looks at Bann expectantly.

Bannock nods. Rye lets go of him.

We all stay silent, breathing heavily for a moment.

“Same coin. Simple as that.”

If the stories are to be believed, Sorrel Everdeen crossed the fence dividing the merchant quarter and the seam, kidnapped my father’s betrothed— Lily— and made her his common law wife, despite being common knowledge, that the woman in question was engaged to our father since they were very young.

It’s an old rumor, really, with no real way to fact-check the events that led to this moment in time, but there’s always been some nasty whispering churning around town; tales varying in height and perjury, sometimes scandalous, others depraved, always with add-ons and full of conjectures flavored by the speaker in turn, but never the whole truth.

The worst thing is that the stories die down for a while when something juicer comes up, but then resurface, like a persistent oily stain on cement… It’s been 26 years since the real events leading to the Everdeens controversial marriage took place, yet the old gossip mill in District 12 has waxed over and rewritten the sordid story through the lense of judgemental people over and over again, until even our mother has started to repeat the outlandish tales, as if she wasn’t an active participant of the story herself.

Still… “I just can’t!” I say both exasperated and grossed out. “We should just go home—“

I get cut off when the door of the Everdeen house opens spilling faint candlelight into the almost blackened-out street.

My brothers rush to huddle around me, crowding on top of me like a pair of boulders… or worse: a pair of sweaty, heavy, alcohol doused men. Disgusting!

The door of the shack closes softly and to our shock, a very angry looking Katniss Everdeen stomps in the direction of the sad excuse for a bush we’re hiding in.

“Hmm… guys… I think she sees us.” I mumble calmly, yet terrified. Katniss Everdeen, eldest daughter of Sorrel and Lily, is coming our way with fire in her eyes.

TBC on AO3…

#Springtime Edition 2020 #alliswell21 #567inpanem #prompt 23 #submission

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thrashff · 7 years ago

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This is how it happens.

Title: This is how it happens.

Word Count: 5,454

Synposis: Jung Hoseok's life, and everything in between.

Pairings: Hoseok/named female OCs, YoonMinHopeKook love square (??) and a dash of OT7 brotherhood

Warnings: Mature for (very) mild cursing, minor character death, substance abuse, and a lot of angst

Setting: Run Era madness, a soulmate timer AU and koi no yokan concept with a twist

A/N: I’m baaaaack! Sort of.

Dedicated to @chamabolmanhae! I’m two months late with your birthday present, but thank you for always kicking my ass and getting me to write again.

That said, I sat on this for days and wrote it out in a rush so feel free to come yell at me. I love you, Hoseok and I love you Bangtan. What have I done.

In another life, this is how it happens.

On the morning of Jung Hoseok’s 16th birthday, he wakes up to the timer on his wrist starting to count down.

What he should feel is elated—even in a world where everyone (almost. everyone?) has their timers appear at some point, numbers a digital, violent red the color of fresh blood signaling the amount of time before one is supposed to meet their soulmate—having yours start at 16 is practically unheard of. There are stories of people’s timers starting in their 50s, 60s, even a couple of cases of people going through their whole lives with their other halves missing only to lay on their deathbeds to have the countdown finally start. A week, a day, maybe even scant seconds that they never get to see because their hearts are no longer strong enough to keep waiting.

So when Jung Hoseok wakes up on the morning of his 16th birthday, an unpredicted cold snap making the February air frigid even in the stuffy confines of the orphanage dorm, the branches of the tree outside the window brittle to the point that a strong gust of wind will break them off, what he should feel is elated—but no one warned him that having your timer appear hurts.

When Jung Hoseok wakes up, he is screaming. This should have been his first warning that things don’t always go the way you expect them to. The way you want them to. The way you hope.

Hoseok screams, and he wakes up everyone in the room. As he sobs in the tiny kitchen, one that is in no way equipped to handle the demands of feeding a house full of twenty-five orphans of every age, the people who run it congratulate him. As he cradles his aching wrist, stabs of pain still shooting up his arm and straight to his chest, the younger kids all pushing and shoving to get a better look at the numbers, barely visible over the angry red of his skin, he wonders why having a soulmate hurts.

He wonders what he or she will be like. If they are the same age. If they will like dancing as much as he does, if they listen to the same music. If they will look at him with pity or with understanding for his lot in life, deposited at an orphanage by a mother that considered him a burden but he still holds out hope will return; too old for adoption and too young to be on his own. He wonders and hopes, fiercely, naïvely, if his soulmate will be his new home.

It isn’t until three years later when he finds out. Three years and an unceremonious exit from the orphanage later, when he is living with a boy named Kim Namjoon in an abandoned train car on a stretch of unused tracks, putting food on the table by busking in Hongdae and Namjoon’s occasional tattoo clientele.

All things considered, he’s lucky to have met Namjoon. When they’d met on the wrong side of early morning, Hoseok exhausted and defeated behind a club in Itaewon where he’d thought no one would mind if he would just sit for a couple of hours and gain a little reprieve from two straight days of wandering with nowhere to go, Namjoon had had no reason to take him in. No reason for him to share the tiny home he’d carved out on the fringes of a city with no room for the likes of them.

Sure, there were things that Hoseok has had to turn a blind eye to, like Namjoon’s well under-the-radar business of tattooing over timers, illegal in a day and age when the government uses them as a way to keep people in line. When timers are vaulted, valued. Paired mates are considered first-class citizens—tax breaks, more opportunities for work, the works—because paired mates are submissive, docile. They want for nothing more as a completed set. After all, how can you rally and rise against an oppressive system when you have everything you could ever want tied to you, bound to you for life?

But on the other side of it there are those whose timers have yet to start, like Namjoon. There are those whose timers have begun their countdown but refuse to submit themselves to the hands of fate, like Namjoon’s friend Yoongi; who believe that love is more than red numbers on your wrist. That it should be a person’s choice who to love and live with—not the seemingly random process of selection that no one, not even the best scientists in the world, have been able to figure out.

Because of course, of course there are horror stories. Good people who are bound to bad ones. People who follow the rules their entire lives, who celebrate when their timers start and wait for the numbers to tick down with bated breath only to be disappointed. Only to suffer, sometimes die, at the hands of people they are told are their better halves.

On the day that Hoseok’s timer starts to count down from hours to mere minutes, Hoseok is walking. Namjoon tells him that he should, that wherever he is when the red lights finally stop shifting and stay steady at 000:00:00, whatever unearthly light powering them finally bleeding out to leave those zeros tattooed on his wrist forever, a sign, ideally, of nothing but better things to come, that Hoseok’s soulmate will find him. That fate will take care of the details. That Hoseok will know, somehow, where to go and what to do.

But with minutes left, Hoseok’s feet don’t know where to take him. He wants to run, wants to go back to the train car where Namjoon and Yoongi are waiting, to ask Yoongi how he keeps his timer glitching at 546:23:58. To ask Namjoon if he knows what will happen when his timer ticks from 000:03:23 and no one finds him. If it will hurt, physically or spiritually, if no one does.

All of Hoseok’s questions come back to him, all of the hope-fueled musings that he’s never voiced to his jaded companions. Will they be pretty? Will they be kind? Will they have a home to offer me? Will they love me? Will I be enough?

000:00:12

Hoseok learns that the answer to all of the above is yes.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Jung Hoseok, all 19 years of him and his gangly limbs and the stress-induced smattering of teenage acne on his cheeks, meets Kang Nayeon outside of a record store in Hongdae. She is 22 years old, fresh out of college and living on her own, a stranger in a city she’s never known but whose language she had grown up with. She is beautiful and she is kind, and when they meet Hoseok expects fireworks but feels like he is underwater instead. Not in the push-and-pull kind of way that he imagines tides must feel like because he hasn’t been to the ocean yet, but in the way that being submerged in a warm bath must feel, like that one time Yoongi had sold a song and treated him and Namjoon to a day spa. Comforting and warm, with the promise of coming out cleaner than he’d been coming in.

On the day when his timer blinks 000:00:00, the red numbers settling, permanent on his skin, he learns that Kang Nayeon listens to Dynamic Duo, that she can’t dance but wishes that she could. That she’s allergic to shellfish and can’t stand spicy food, that she loves dogs and all things soft and fluffy. Nayeon cries over every movie—she likes horror the least and animated ones the best—and maybe most importantly than the compendium of all these tiny tidbits and maybe useless facts: she looks at Hoseok like he’s the sun.

That first day ends too soon, Hoseok untangling himself from her comfortable limbs on her comfortable couch in her comfortable apartment that smells like pine cleaner and fresh laundry. With anyone else the skinship would be strange but they’re soulmates, after all, and the physicality of them falling into each other like they do is nothing more than the gravitational pull of two halves finally becoming whole.

It’s hard, for Hoseok to leave now that he has her. Now that they have each other. Nayeon feels it too, the wrongness of distance now that fate has allowed them to be together. She asks Hoseok to stay the night, so Hoseok stays. For the next week, Hoseok stays and doesn’t leave, cocooned in happiness, this all too beautiful bubble of completion. They learn more about each other, they learn everything about each other. She watches him dance on the streets, her face beaming with he’s mine, and Hoseok tucks her into bed, his heart full of I’m hers.

But the thing about bubbles is that they burst, and it isn’t until the following week, when Hoseok moves his meager collection of worldly possessions from the train car and into her apartment, that she tells him the truth. That she is sick, and there’s nothing she nor Hoseok, nor the slew of world-renowned doctors that her parents in the United States have found, can do about it. It’s only been a week, but Hoseok learns the most important thing about Nayeon:

He isn’t allowed to keep her.

Eight months later (eight entire months of Nayeon refusing chemotherapy, of Hoseok watching his other half slowly wither away, of holding her brittle bones and bruised skin so close to his chest so that he can memorize how she feels in his arms) and Nayeon’s body is sent back to her family. In the way of all transitory, fleeting life experiences, the last eight months have been beautiful, and Hoseok wants to feel lucky. Wants to, but understandably has a difficult time accomplishing it.

Saying goodbye to her body, nothing but an empty shell now of the girl he had loved, the girl who had made him finally whole, is easier than the goodbyes they bid in her hospital bed. Hoseok unleashes a seemingly endless supply of tears and snot that he is unashamed to show her, to drown her in, because this is not how the story goes. This is not the Happily Ever After that either of them deserve.

“Who says I didn’t end my life Happily Ever After?” Nayeon asks him, letting him hold the birdlike bones of her hand hard enough to bruise. (One last time.) Not that it had mattered then, not anymore. The pain would be over soon for her, and Hoseok was no where near cruel enough to point out that it would only begin for him. Nayeon doesn’t even cry. Instead she smiles. (One last time.)

The other thing that no one had told Hoseok about soulmates is this: how to live after you’ve lost them.

“Chase the sunshine,” Nayeon tells him. For parting words, final ones, they make sense to no one else but the two of them. Nayeon loves (loved) the summer, always said that sunshine made her feel healthy and clean. She’d called Hoseok her sunshine in turn, that his smiles and enthusiasm for life even in the face of it ending were her endless season.

Not that Hoseok had a choice. He’d showered her with as much love and life as he could, rending his own self empty just to keep both of them from going under the swell of sadness in both their souls.

Hoseok hopes that wherever she is now is bright and sunny, full of life and the season she loves (loved). Wonders if she’s waiting for him. Wonders if she isn’t the only one who died that day in the hospital.

It isn’t until a month later, thirty days that Hoseok spends catatonic on the spare futon in the train car having crawling back to his friends, the only family he knows, with his tail between his legs and more broken than he looks on the outside, that he musters up the courage to return to the apartment. Nayeon’s family has been kind enough to let him keep should he want it.

He doesn’t. Doesn’t know if he can live in rooms where he still expects to see her curled up on the couch watching Pixar films or singing off-key to G.D. in the kitchen. But he comes back because in the time he’s spent away, Namjoon has made a new friend in the form of another lost boy named Kim Taehyung, and Yoongi has adopted a dongsaeng in the form of a wide-eyed boy named Jeon Jeongguk, and for some reason another man named Kim Seokjin has joined their motley crew of outcasts, too handsome and too put-together to really look like he fits in but at the same time too fragile to be anywhere else.

See, Kim Seokjin’s timer has also run out. The red zeroes on his skin have settled, sunk in, permanent, just like Hoseok’s, and Hoseok knows, even after all this time, that it’s no work of Namjoon’s. Namjoon’s, whose timer still hasn’t appeared, and neither has Taehyung’s or Jeongguk’s. Yoongi’s is static, eternally in glitch either by force of his fucked up fate or sheer stubbornness on the musician’s part, so Hoseok knows Seokjin’s soulmate isn’t one of them, and he spends far too much time on the tracks to have one waiting for him somewhere.

(It’s one of the few things Hoseok now knows about soulmates: time apart is painful. Tenfold, when they are gone.)

Even though Hoseok doesn’t ask, he knows. Understands the sadness behind Seokjin’s eyes, the brokenness he hides under the pressed collared shirts and perfectly-coiffed hair. Hoseok doesn’t ask because he knows and he understands completely, so when Seokjin tells him he needs to get out of bed and get clean clothes from the apartment, he goes. Because Seokjin knows. Seokjin has survived, and Hoseok knows that Nayeon would want the same for him.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Hoseok returns to the apartment where he’d lived an all-to-brief life with his soulmate Kang Nayeon and finds her left-over painkillers in the bathroom cabinet. He packs his things, allowing himself to keep a single framed photo of them together, and lugs the bags into the living room where Yoongi and Jeongguk are fawning over the entertainment system and Seokjin is sitting politely on the edge of the couch. Namjoon is digging through the bookcase even though there’s barely anything on it, and Taehyung is blinking wide-eyed at the room, the demand to know why Hoseok would prefer a cramped train car over a nice, clean apartment on the tip of his tongue.

“If you aren’t going to stay here you might as well rent the place out,” Yoongi grunts, flopping onto the couch and kicking his booted feet up on the coffee table. His heels are muddy and Hoseok should tell him off, but it doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does.

“Sell it,” Hoseok says, tracing Yoongi’s gaze back to the entertainment system. “Sell everything.” Everything is in his name now, after all, and dead people don’t miss things. They don’t anything, period. “I don’t care.”

And it’s wrong for Hoseok not to care. So very, very wrong, but none of it matters anymore. Nayeon is gone, the apartment is his but he doesn’t want it, and Hoseok is too fuzzy from the painkillers he’d taken while no one was watching to have any of it touch him in the way that they should.

“Okay,” Namjoon says, dimpled grin behind the lollipop stick in his mouth. Hoseok came back and he was in the middle of trying to quit smoking, so he’s always talking around candy these days. Hoseok’s happy for him. Is glad for the reminder that life goes on, that his friends are changing.

Hoseok could do with a little bit of change. Could do with a lot of it. What he needs is them to be loud and raucous, for their lives to be big enough to fill up the void that his soulmate has left behind.

He needs and he wants, still, but he doesn’t know what, exactly. Wanting Nayeon is a dead end, and death just another. The pills help. They blur the edges until they almost fill the gaps. They help Hoseok pretend that the life that had upended to make room for his other half still fits. They help the curb the growing emptiness, they help fill the chasm.

They use the money to rent a house. On the wrong side of town, still, dilapidated and run down, but it’s not like any of them would fit in any other kind of place but this. (It’s not like any of them would with in with anyone else but each other.) Namjoon continues to work out of the train car because now he doesn’t have to shit where he eats, and Yoongi and Jeongguk move in from wherever the hell they had been staying. Jeongguk looks at the house, still too small for the four of them, like it’s a palace, so Hoseok doesn’t bother asking what kind of hole Yoongi had dragged him out from. They’ve all got demons, pasts that are best left behind all of them. A group of lost boys just trying to get to the end of the day, except at least now they have somewhere to come home to.

Hoseok thinks it’s the only good thing to come out of losing Nayeon. Considers it her way of helping him, still, by letting him be with the only people who give him a semblance of the kind of comfort and sense of belonging that she had given him.

Seokjin, always working behind the scenes, does his best to make the house feel like more than four walls and a place to sleep. Slowly, Seokjin fills the place with furniture and pots and pans and most nights with the smell of freshly cooked food, and the few times he’s sober Hoseok wonders where Seokjin’s money comes from. If Seokjin works. How he pays the bills for his own empty apartment, neglected with how much time he spends with them.

Most days it doesn’t matter how much Seokjin cleans up, really, even though Hoseok appreciates the effort, because Taehyung is always over, spray painting walls and leaving a mess in his wake. A mirror image of the chaos inside all of them, buzzing with violence that they learn resides within his own home. It’s refreshing, and Hoseok falls in love with all of them in a way that he would have bet money on his inability to, not after being paired and all-too-quickly unpaired, but he loves them. No one understands except Seokjin, and even at four in the morning when they’re the only two awake, Hoseok numb and high out of his mind and Seokjin’s eyes dark and haunted, they don’t talk about it.

They don’t talk about it, because there really isn’t much to say. They’re all angry, all broken, fallen through the cracks in a system that doesn’t even see people like them. What is there to say except fuck it? What is there to be, really, but this?

In the end it’s Yoongi who finds him. Yoongi, the angriest out of all of them, hair dyed a radioactive green after losing a bet with Jeongguk. Jeongguk, who has started to look at the hyung that had dragged him out of hell and given him a home with them with the same kind of eyes that Hoseok had seen Nayeon through. (It’s the only reason he knows what those eyes are even supposed to look like.) Yoongi, who is oblivious to it all, too concerned with how his timer has finally started ticking again, whose wrist still bears the marks of him trying to scratch the now-days off in a drunken rage.

It’s Yoongi who finds Hoseok, ditched cigarette burning feebly in the sink, voice like smoke as he tries and fails to wake him from his bed in the bathtub.

In Hoseok’s defense, he hadn’t actively been trying to drown himself. He’d collapsed somewhere along the Han (going where?) and had woken up at home (how had he ended up back here?) aching with emptiness like he always does these days. He’d taken a couple more pills and gotten himself into a bath, desperate for the same comfort he’d felt on the day he’d met his soulmate; that easy submersion, senses stretching past his skin into oblivion.

Yoongi finds Hoseok and Yoongi screams for Seokjin, who drives them to a hospital that Hoseok spends the next week comatose in. The whole time a boy screams in the bed next to his, his wrists carved up from his own nails as he pulls against his restraints, again and again and again like clockwork, like a metronome, and it’s the sound of complete and utter agony that drags Hoseok from the other side of the river Styx and back into the land of the living.

Jimin. The boy’s name is Park Jimin, and he becomes the seventh addition to their family.

Hoseok likes Jimin. He’s…something else. One second his eyes are happy little crescent moons on the milky white sky of his face, and the next he is screaming, screaming, screaming. Hoseok likes Jimin, because he gets it—how easy it is to switch from one to the other, to ride that in-between. The boys like Jimin, too, because while they don’t understand the switch as well as Hoseok does, they all have a need to protect. So when Hoseok takes Jimin and gives him a home, Jimin becomes theirs, too. To have and to hurt, to love and to destroy.

It’s Jimin, with his easy smile and hair-trigger, who gets Hoseok back into dancing again. For Jimin, the dance studio is the only place he can stay himself for longer than a couple of hours at a time. For Hoseok, it’s the only place where he can move quickly enough that the face that stares back at him in the mirror looks less like a stranger.

Weeks pass, months. Hoseok stops asking Yoongi what he’s doing watching them in the studio. Stops asking where the hell Jeongguk is. Stops asking what happened when his timer ran down.

Hoseok thinks he knows, but Jimin, who keeps his wrists and his scars and his own red zeroes covered up by the sleeves of his sweater, looks at him the way Jeongguk looks at Yoongi. The way Yoongi looks at Jimin. Hungry, and desperate, and angry. And Hoseok is still getting used to feeling so much so soon that he doesn’t want to touch that hive of bees with a ten-foot pole.

Hoseok is allergic to bee stings. Hoseok is allergic to feeling anything.

In another life, this is how it happens.

Namjoon comes home with Taehyung under his arm, nothing more than a broken baby bird under Namjoon’s equally broken wings, and for a second Hoseok thinks that a spray paint can must have exploded on him again before the red that stains the boy’s arms and chest registers as what it is: blood.

Namjoon comes home with Taehyung under his arm, and Taehyung is covered in blood.

This is different from the days that Jeongguk comes back with his face and knuckles nothing but open nerve-endings, from the nights they have to hold Jimin down to keep him from hurting himself too badly. This time the blood isn’t Taehyung’s own, even though it might as well be for all the life that’s already bled out of his eyes.

A day after the mess is sorted out by the police, a day after Taehyung says goodbye to the sister he’d sacrificed himself to protect, Taehyung moves into the house. He moves into the same room as Namjoon, because Namjoon has the same blood on his hands. Namjoon vibrates at the same wavelength, speaks the same language of weighted silence and necessary violence that Taehyung has learned overnight. Hoseok moves out of the room and into Jeongguk’s, which probably isn’t the best idea because Jeongguk has his own ways of coping that clash with the new ones, better ones, healthy ones that Hoseok is trying to get into the habit of, but it’s better than the alternative.

It’s better than the poor kid having first row seats to the Yoongi Pining Show, featuring Jimin Pining for Hoseok.

It’s a mess. A goddamn mess, and Seokjin, the only house of cards left standing in a room full of jokers, valiantly tries to pull their frayed ends back together.

The beach is as cold and as empty as it is in Hoseok’s dreams. The beach Seokjin takes them to looks like it’s never once felt the hands of summer, the kiss of the sun. It’s desolate and echoing—the entire shoreline might as well be one they’d find under the waves instead of running parallel to it, but Taehyung is singing and he is running, his long limbs a blur of motion through the air. Jimin’s smile is sincere, and he hasn’t once turned it to Hoseok the entire time, which Hoseok wants to take as a good thing. Namjoon is dancing, is trying to, valiantly; Seokjin’s trashy, shameless pop music his backing track as it fries the speakers of the pick-up truck. Jeongguk is quiet, he always is these days, and goes missing for a bit until Yoongi returns with him in tow, both with the same secret smiles that had been missing since the day Jeongguk punched him and Yoongi had broken the only mirror left in the house.

The beach Seokjin takes them to looks like it’s never once felt the hands of summer, and Hoseok loves it. His friends are loud, their lives and their beings big enough to fill up the empty space left in his, and when Jeongguk and Taehyung dunk him under the water, Yoongi screams, still a little traumatized, and Hoseok laughs and holds the water in his throat until it burns. When he comes up, Yoongi and Seokjin are in the water, the only two people who understand; whose brains are still sharp enough to fear, whose hearts are still big enough to hurt for him. Hoseok laughs again, maybe the first real one in years, and he coughs up saltwater and eight months of Nayeon and two years of missing her.

When Hoseok comes up and Namjoon wraps his battered leather jacket around his shoulders and Jimin places his red beanie on Hoseok’s head, Hoseok leaves the hurt and the ache and the pain and the longing in the ocean—a sacrifice to the gods of tide and timing, a final goodbye to summer and all the good things in it.

When they are camped out in their favorite lot behind the house a couple of hours later, Yoongi builds a bonfire to help Hoseok get rid of the remaining chill left in his bones. They’ve left the ocean behind them, as well as trashed a restaurant like the uncouth, uncultured, malcontent misfits that they are, and Hoseok likes to think that they’ve also dropped some baggage in their wake.

In another life, this is how it happens.

A week after their trip to the beach, Seokjin goes missing. Jeongguk is inconsolable, and not even a crowbar can pry Taehyung from Namjoon’s side. Yoongi and Jimin are sitting side by side on the couch, both buzzing with the need to break, but they’re holding onto each other’s hands in a way that Hoseok can see both their timers, their tattoos set to zeros.

About time, Hoseok thinks, through the Seokjin-sized hole in his vision. About time, he thinks, through the Seokjin-sized hole in his heart.

About time. It’s a funny thing, and it’s Taehyung, with his voice broken and his lips chapped, a boy when he’d met them but a man now with a lifetime’s worth of regrets, who points it out to the room at large.

“Hyung,” says Kim Taehyung. “Hyung, your wrist.”

Hoseok looks down and his first impossible thought is that it doesn’t hurt this time. Hoseok looks down, and the red numbers on his wrist are lit up like the bonfire, like the stars behind his eyes back when the pills had made everything simultaneously better and so much worse, like the sun setting over the shore, burning everything its light touched.

About time: it’s a funny thing.

Hoseok’s world comes crumbling down because Seokjin is the last lynchpin holding them all together. He’s disappeared without a trace, and without him Namjoon retreats back to his train car, Yoongi and Jimin vanish, Jeongguk dissolves back into the shadows he came from, and Taehyung goes back to what’s left of his other family.

Seokjin takes every picture and video he’d taken with him, and without those it’s easy to pretend that he’d never existed. Seokjin, with his windshield wiper of a laugh, with his broken hands struggling to cook them fresh meals, with those dark, dark eyes that carried the weight of a thousand lifetimes lived, is gone. All Hoseok is left with is an empty house full of broken things, paint and blood staining the walls, and an unbelievable, improbable, impossible countdown on his wrist that should feel like death coming.

Hoseok knows all about death. Has seen it, lived it, brought himself back from its clutches more than once, so when the miracle of his timer blinking with a new countdown happens, Hoseok knows that it should feel like death. Should feel like another ending, because his life is full of those. He is surrounded by it on all fronts in the form of the cigarette butts Yoongi leaves in the ashtray on the coffee table, the legs of it broken by one of Jimin’s fits and put together by his spit, duct tape and prayers. In the form of Taehyung’s last piece of work on the inside of the front door, a dark, nameless thing with wings that should have stayed in his nightmares but he’s brought to life with no heed for how his housemates will feel about it. In the water rings of Seokjin’s cups of tea on wood of the kitchen counter, in Namjoon’s forgotten sketches still taped to the living room walls. In the bomber jacket, a birthday present from Yoongi that Jeongguk probably couldn’t bear to bring with him, still hanging on the back of a kitchen chair.

It should feel like death but in the wake of so many other things ending, Hoseok (fiercely, naïvely, blindly) hopes, and that takes root in the cavern of his chest.

Will they be pretty? Will they be kind? Will they have a home to offer me? Will they love me? Will I be enough?

Will I get to keep them, this time?

In another life, this is how it happens.

Jung Hoseok is 23 years old and he has lived through a thousand heartbreaks. He has stared death in the face and lost his soulmate to it; he has stared death in the face and come back to tell his tale. He has been left behind by everyone who has ever mattered to him, but still, he is stronger than even he himself gives him credit for because he is still trying. He has been called sunshine by the most important people in his life, has been loved to the ends of the earth and back around by a group of lost boys who loved each other so much that they couldn’t bear the weight of it. He has been battered, bruised and left broken, and he is alone in a house full of ghosts.

But none of this matters to Na Ri, because she’s in the middle of a game of hide and seek with her nephew when the timer on her wrist blinks to life. None of this matters to Na Ri, because she has lived 22 years on this Earth and given up hope that she is one of the lucky ones blessed with another half.

None of this matters, because Na Ri screams when her timer blinks to life, not with pain but with joy. She cries not with hurt but with relief.

Because when the timer on her wrist blinks to life, it reads 000:29:38, and it means that her soulmate is finally ready to meet her.

#BTS #bts fanfiction

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ignitingwriting · 4 years ago

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Igniting Writing Fantasy Roleplay Contest 2020, Submission by Alex Harvard

Living in a world of magic, you are a talented young magician. In this fantasy world magicians act as adventurers, peacekeepers, advisors and more to the citizens. As you travel from place to place you solve problems, seek out new magical knowledge and keep the people safe from harm.

One day you are walking towards the nearest town to top up on supplies when you spot an out of control magic carpet careering through the air. It’s elaborately designed but seems to be badly damaged – it has noticeable holes and its edges appear to be covered in ice crystals. With a shock of recognition, you realise that you’ve heard of this carpet before – it belongs to Alexus Ignitingus, a famous sorcerer known for being the guardian of the biggest magical library in the world. As you look closer you see that in one of the carpet’s tassels there is a scroll – is it some sort of message from Alexus? What do you do?

Option one – you chase after the carpet to see where it’s going.

Option two – you try and grab onto the carpet and climb aboard to regain control.

Option three – you try and use your magic to blast the carpet out of the sky.

Chapter One – Option One

You decide to chase after the carpet. It’s going at a fast pace, but you manage to keep up and you see that it’s heading towards the town. But it seems that the damage the carpet has taken is too much for it to stay airborne for much longer and it finally crash lands, right in the middle of the town’s bustling marketplace. In the chaos of the crash, a stall of potions is knocked into the neighbouring stall, which sells exotic carnivorous flowers. A potion bottle cracks, spilling onto several of the plants, and to the horror of the townspeople they come to life, bursting out of their plant pots and attacking and eating anything in their path. You must find a way to protect the townspeople and either destroy the plants or revert them back to normal, so that you can retrieve the scroll. This chapter will end when you pick up the carpet’s scroll.

I ran into town, following the carpet’s careening flight down, but was pulled up short by sudden crashing and screams. Frozen for a second, I stood empty-handed and empty-headed, before the terrified wail of a child sent up like a flare and I jerked back into action, haring off to find the source of the chaos.

What on earth could have happened in the moment between the carpet disappearing, beyond the line of shingled roofs and chimneys, and now? It hadn’t looked dangerous – it was a damaged rug, for goodness sake.

Finally, I found the town’s centre, emerging from an alley in a whirl. I came upon rather an extraordinary scene, even for a travelling mage like myself.

If only I hadn’t dumped my bag racing after that damned carpet, the Comb of Cinders Master had given me before I set off journeying sure would have come in handy right now.

The townspeople who remained cowering in the square set up a cry when they caught sight of my coloured robes, denoting my status as a magic user.

“Please!” one woman shouted, cowering under what I assumed had been her market stand. “Help us!”

Allowing myself a single second to wonder at the absurdity of my life, I sighed, then sprung into the fray, mind racing through scenarios and possible solutions.

Plants. The plants were alive and enormous, and creeping over the town, vines sinister tentacles, capturing townsfolk and caging them in like a cat with a mouse between its claws. Prising open shutters and doors, indiscriminately knocking over stalls and generally causing havoc – this was not good. So far, I saw no corpses, but that couldn’t be trusted to remain true.

I brought out my knuckles, slipping them onto my fingers in a familiar motion as I ran through all the spells I knew for dealing with plant life (or maybe magical creatures? I couldn’t say yet). But then, a touch on my ankle and I jumped straight into the air like a startled horse, shouting the first thing that came to mind.

“Thalla!”

Get away.

My brass knuckles glowed warm on my right hand and my feet touched the ground with a sound much too loud for my weight. Dust rose in a ring around me. It seemed every living thing in the vicinity flinched back.

I felt humans and plants alike staring at me in confusion and dismay.

“Oops. Sorry?”

“Is that it?” A child’s voice was sharp in the momentary calm I’d created, although I could tell they hadn’t meant for the words to carry. My ears grew hot. At least the vine was gone. But now my desperate spell had worn off… and there were plants with teeth? Where in all hell had they come from?!

“Air a spìonadh leis a ‘ghèile!”

This time it was purposeful, determined, and I felt the calluses on my fingers blistering again under the searing heat. A tearing gale blew in, ripping away enormous leaves and unanchored vines.

“Help!” The voice from before, the snarky youngster – it came from the centre of the madness and it was high and desperate and very young.

I left the eye of my storm and ran blindly through whipping hair and leaves. There. The child – they couldn’t have been older than ten – hidden away under a fallen sign, a fern as big as a tree looming above. It was bending and rising again and now the kid was out in the open and vulnerable. They screamed, but it was drowned out by the crash of the discarded sign hitting the cobbles.

“Sgiath! Losgahd!” I commanded without breaking my stride, spells directed at the child and plant monster respectively.

Within a moment I was there, scooping up the child and turning my back on the plant. It steamed and seemed to creak and whistle in confusion. I tried not to use this spell too often – it was messy and dangerous, especially in a cramped town. I only heard the spell’s effect. The crack and whoosh of the creature bursting into flames, like the fire had come from within. Ash snowed down upon us, making my hair almost as pale as the blonde kid’s.

“I’ve got you, buddy.” The child’s cheeks were tear-stained, but the belief in their eyes was all-encompassing, despite their earlier disenchantment.

Damn kids and their innocence.

I was ripped out of my relatively safe bubble by a roar – but not of pain. This was anger. The townsfolk had mobbed together and as my gale had died, they threw themselves upon the remaining unfortunate plants with the desperate force of a cornered vixen.

All I had to do was sit and watch, holding the child, and before I knew it everything was still – a graveyard silence.

“Is everyone alright?” I called tentatively. One woman came out of nowhere, barrelling down on me at a run. I handed the child over without trouble, recognising her expression.

“Oh, Riven! Thank you, ma’am, thank you,” she sobbed, clutching Riven so tightly I was almost wondering if I’d have to save the kid a second time today.

“Don’t mention it,” I returned, averting my eyes with an awkward smile and shaking the ash from my hair with my unadorned hand.

“But, hold on a moment –” I finally had a moment to gather myself, and found formless emotions rising within. “Could anyone tell me what the actual hell happened here?” I spun around, discovering I was asking empty air, the townsfolk having immediately lost interest in me now there was no immediate danger. I sighed, removed my brass knuckles and tucked them away, almost resigned to not knowing. But the woman was still there, kneeling by Riven. She answered me.

“Ma’am, something flew outta the sky. I didn’t see what it was – ‘cuz someone ran off again,” she shot an unimpressed look at Riven with her words, and they returned a sheepish grin, “so I was a lil’ busy, but I think it knocked over a couple stalls.”

“And created… all of these?” I nudged a random severed vine which lay still and dead on the cobbles, surprised.

She shrugged. “Coulda been Marita’s plants. And the potion stall of that traveller was right nearby. He seemed kinda sketchy – I guess it coulda caused all this.”

I was a bit incredulous at this improbable sequence of events but nodded anyway.

“Alright, thank you. I don’t suppose you saw where that flying thing went?” I asked.

She looked at me harder then, squinting. “Why, is it yours? That why you appeared just now, outta nowhere?”

I blushed when her child looked up at me, made bold once more by curiosity. “That flying carpet’s yours?”

“No!” I answered quickly. “No, I saw it out above one of the farms. I followed it in.”

Riven pouted. “That’s a boring story,” they told me, unimpressed.

I shrugged – I didn’t know how to respond. Kids weren’t my forte. Or people, generally.

The youngster popped up suddenly, wriggled out of their mother’s grasp and in one quick motion grabbed me by the hand. I flinched. It was the burnt one – my casting hand. Riven didn’t notice, dragging me along as their mother’s chastisements and warnings fell on deaf ears.

“I can show you where it went, though!” They grinned back at me, gap-toothed.

Now I was interested. I was tugged across the square, almost faceplanting a good few times. Riven just scrambled over the debris like a goat. Absolutely unfair, really. I swerved violently when Riven hopped right on over a well – water and I were not good friends. As soon as we were past it, I was grabbed once more and given a look which assured me I wasn’t getting away so easily.

“Ta dah!” We halted suddenly and I almost bowled the child over with my momentum. But they were right – here was the flying carpet, torn and icy and attached to the scroll, just as I’d seen it before. It reminded me…

“Hey, kid,” I turned to see a small herd of children had somehow amassed behind me whilst I wasn’t watching. Riven cocked their head.

“Yeah?”

I shuffled a bit under their stares. “Umm – could you do me a favour? If your parents don’t need you home yet.”

The youngster grinned crookedly, hardly resembling the one I had rescued maybe 15 minutes before, save for the ash in their hair and tracks on their cheeks.

“Name it, lady. Ma will live.”

I coughed. “Well – I dropped a satchel just outside of town, on one of the farm tracks. I was wondering if you could find it for me? It should be near a copse of stunted poplars, to the south-west of –”

“I know the place,” Riven asserted. With not a moment of hesitation, they turned to their gang. “Old Man Grey’s farm, got it? Spread out, bring me the bag.”

Like royalty they were obeyed instantly, children shooting off down alleys and pushing at each other as they raced to be the favoured subject.

It made me raise an eyebrow, but I turned back to the carpet, shaking my head. If I’d tried that as a kid, well… I took the object in once more and without touching anything tried to discern what had happened – even using my brass knuckles at one point to scan for any trace magic. I realised not quickly enough that it was useless – this was a flying carpet. Of course, there would be spell residue. If there wasn’t, then I should be worried.

I must have been working for a while, because before I knew it, my satchel was being dumped beside me and child-sized shadows were skulking away again.

I checked my bag. Everything intact, even the Comb. Good job those kids didn’t know value when they saw it. That had been a risky ask, even for me. If I could find them again, I decided I’d give Riven a thank you gift before I left.

But now I was stalling. I took a breath. And another. Another. I opened my eyes and took the scroll in my hand, taking care not to touch Alexus’s carpet.

Well done, you’ve managed to claim the scroll. As you pick it up, you unfurl it and read the following words:

‘To whomever reads this message,

Greetings, fellow sorcerer – I apologise for the unorthodox means of transporting this message, but I am in dire peril. I have been imprisoned within my library by Zarix, a cruel and greedy elven warlock intent on gathering all the world’s magic for himself. Zarix has somehow gained control over a mighty frost dragon and with its freezing breath it has encased my quarters in a block of unmelting ice, leaving me trapped – all I can do is hastily scrawl this message and command my trusty magic carpet to bring it to a worthy magician.

I know that my own magic is not powerful enough to break frost dragon ice, as it magically refreezes whenever I try to dispel it. My library’s charms prevent entry to anyone that means harm, but Zarix is resourceful and I am sure that he will soon find a way to undo my spells and steal the library’s magical secrets for his own. This knowledge must not be allowed to fall into his hands – please, come at once to put an end to my captivity and Zarix’s schemes!

Yours humbly,

Alexus Ignitingus’

With his message Alexus has enclosed a map and you immediately head towards his library. Soon you come to the first major obstacle on your quest – a wide, deep valley of water known as Howling Lake, so called because of the sound the fierce winds make as they whip along the water’s surface. It’s surrounded on both sides by high sand dunes, making it the only way through, but it’s rumoured to be home to all sorts of dangerous creatures. At the side of the lake there is a rickety old raft, which seems to be the only way across the water – the only other possibilities are to swim or to skirt around the shore through the sand dunes. What do you do?

Option one – you swim.

Option two – you take the raft.

Option three – you walk along the shore through the sand dunes.

Chapter Two – Option Three

You decide to travel across the sand dunes on the shore of the lake. The wind picks up and before long it’s a raging sandstorm, nearly blinding you with every gust. Through the sound of the whistling wind you begin to hear something new; a voice, singing soothingly to you and encouraging you to come towards it. You stumble after it, almost hypnotised, but as you follow your foot slips into a pool of quicksand. As you struggle to pull yourself free the source of the beautiful singing reveals itself to you – it’s a sand siren, who has lured you into the quicksand to eat you! You must free yourself from the quicksand and defend yourself against the sand siren’s attack. This chapter will end when you defeat or escape from the sand siren.

I took one look at the lake and immediately turned off the path that led to the pier. Sure, the sand dunes were rumoured to hold creatures I would much rather avoid, but at least you could trust a desert to be free of water.

I mean really, the entire situation was a series of improbable events. Me, the one to attract Alexus’ favourite carpet as the ‘worthy sorcerer’? A frost dragon enslaved and Alexus trapped? A lake put into my path just to make the entire ordeal more unpleasant?

The universe hated me – I was sure of it. The irony of the carpet having found me, of all people. I knew Alexus from long ago – he accompanied my parents and I on our expedition – but anyway, it was safe to say we had never gotten on particularly well. I would make him eat his words when the ‘silly little hatchling’ arrived to free him.

Stomping along the ridge of the sand dunes, I kept finding myself blinded by the sun glinting off the surface of the Howling Lake (as it was labelled on my map). It wasn’t bringing back pleasant memories. Deciding on the spot, I stepped away from the slope that led to the sparkling water until sandy dunes hid the lake from view, the ridge of the valley’s edge becoming the new horizon. I’d just make sure to keep that in sight and I wouldn’t stray off into the rolling dunes.

So, onwards I trekked. The sun was low in the sky – it still being early in the day – but was cruelly hot, beating me down until I had to take my outer robe off to create a makeshift headscarf to keep my dark hair and skin from soaking up the heat. But nearly as soon as it was completed, the sun’s rays seemed to dim. Had I wasted so much time already?

But no, the sun was still hanging in the same place.

It was a dark, roiling cloud rising from the far away horizon and masking the sunlight. That’s why it was getting darker. I looked at the violently looming mass steadily rising higher as it approached. I looked towards where the lake surely hid, still and indifferent.

I’d brave the sandstorm, thanks.

Wasn’t much further to go until I would join the path once more.

Onwards I trekked. It grew dimmer and now I felt the wind pulling at my headscarf, picking up sand to sting exposed skin. My eyes felt gritty, imitating the familiar feeling of not having slept for many days.

But I’d slept well last night in the town’s inn, having gifted Riven a box of sweets as promised.

I smiled distantly.

On I went.

Now I couldn’t hear myself over the roar and whistle – could barely differentiate the ground from sand-filled air as I stumbled ever on. Now my only thought was escape – get away – you’re not safe here. I could feel something – someone – there with me. I couldn’t stop.

I hummed, although I couldn’t hear the tune over the din – they were familiar notes, playing away in my mind. A song for travelling. But actually, now I could hear it – whisked to me on the wind, the melody lilting, soaring, sweet and steady and my mother’s voice. I’d stopped. The song continued. My feet moved without my consent. One step and another, and her voice grew louder. On and on and I was running, sprinting – I felt the end of my headscarf tear free but didn’t dare stop to fix it. It fluttered and I ran and the song was so familiar, voices joined together in harmony as the wind carried me to her.

The ground sank, but her song rose above that and I scrambled forwards, on hands and knees, shin deep in sand, elbow deep, and it sucked and – from the sandy air came a figure silhouetted, and she was there, right there.

“Mam! Mam, you’re back! How did you get out?”

Her voice trailed off as she emerged, and stopped, still far from my reach. The wind whistled in her silence. I reached out to her with one hand.

“But Mam, I left you in Tuama Reòta with Da, how – how did you…?”

My words trailed off as my mind began to turn. “You…”

This creature was not my mother.

It hissed and my arm dropped. My hand was covered in mud. I tried to stand, to back away. My limbs – were stuck. I was stuck and sinking and in the storm I made out more dark shapes flittering through the storm.

Damn sand sirens had lured me into quicksand by imitating my dead mother?

Oh, they were going to get it.

Taking stock as swiftly as possible, I stopped writhing and lay still, trying to get the pressure off my trapped legs. I knew the drill – it wasn’t too different from escaping cracked ice sheets. Laying back and ignoring the second issue that was steadily encroaching, I used my free hand to grope for my knuckles. It was my left hand, the only one available for use.

I guessed there was a first time for everything.

Slipping the metal onto unblemished fingers felt beyond strange, but currently I had more pressing issues.

“Buadhach,” I whispered, and felt my limbs float to the surface just a fraction more hurriedly. I could see the details on the slithering, reptilian lower half of its body now. I shouldn’t be able to make those out. It was too close.

I whispered the spell over and over with growing urgency, not daring to put too much power into it for fear of doing more harm than good. Finally, my legs reached the surface, and floated there. I lay on my back, feeling the siren’s long shadow drape over my skin. I unwrapped my headscarf with haste and threw it behind me like a carpet.

With a much more forceful, “Cruadhaich! Agus Seòladh!” the material became rigid and lay primly atop the silty mud, no longer threatening to sink. A hasty flip and scramble got me onto the stiff robe, and without hesitating I put as much distance as I could between me and my almost tomb. Solid land was only a couple of metres away, I discovered. Go figure.

“Alright!” I exclaimed as I switched the hand wearing my knuckles, spinning to face the creature who I could now clearly see was not at all motherly and in fact rather snaky. I grinned and it bared its rows of fangs back at me with a hiss. A command to attack, I deduced, when the dark figures all coalesced from the sand into equally pointy-looking snake people and launched themselves at me simultaneously.

“Sgiath!” The protection spell gave me a moment to figure out the best move to make. All the creatures hit the barrier at once, making my previously warm knuckles flash hot and pulling a cry from my cracked lips.

I didn’t need skin, right? I damn well hoped not. The sirens were charging the barrier again and again – I wouldn’t have fingers left to wear the knuckles at this rate, they’d be burnt straight through.

Remembering with a touch of undeserved pride that I hadn’t dropped the bag with all my possessions this time around, I scrabbled for my Comb of Cinders.

“I really hope this thing isn’t faulty,” I gritted out. With a thought that felt more like a sigh of relief than it perhaps should have, my spell dropped. The sirens charged as one, hissing.

I pointed and hoped it would shoot. “Falbh!”

It did. Maybe the universe wanted to repent. The weapon (which was shaped like the crest of a chicken for some reason, metal as red as anything) somehow seemed to pulse in my grip. The sirens stopped dead.

Quite literally. I’m reasonably sure they were dead before they hit the sand, tails only continuing to writhe because of muscles burning away at varying speeds, pulling the rapidly disintegrating flesh one way, then the other.

The sandstorm picked up their ashes for only a moment before it all died down, having been brought on by the sand sirens for ease of access to their meal. The sand looked darker as it settled.

In that moment I thought back and decided the only reason I’d made so much progress before falling into a trap had been my distance from the lake’s shore. Quicksand needs water – it must have been harder to find a sink to lure me into out here.

Who would have thought the trauma they used to lure me towards becoming a meal was the same one that might have saved my arse?

Standing there with a red, oddly shaped lump of metal in one fist and gradually cooling knuckles on the damaged other, both weapons given to me long ago by good men, I felt entirely overwrought.

I groaned loud and drawn-out at the cloudless sky. “How come Master’s gift doesn’t burn the skin from my flesh, Da? Huh? That would have been a nice feature for yours, you know!”

The sole answer was the steady lapping of water from across the sand dunes. I felt that was apt enough.

I sighed, put my belongings back in order as best I could and set off towards the road, which I could see now that the air was clear and I wasn’t being hypnotised.

I walked and my right hand throbbed, blisters still rising; one round more on top of so many others.

Congratulations, you have reached the other side of the lake. But as you consult Alexus’ map, you realise there is one more obstacle between yourself and his library – the enchanted forest known as the Neverwoods. The Neverwoods are renowned for being a place of great natural beauty and home to all kinds of magical creatures, but also for being full of long, winding paths, which twist and turn dizzyingly to disorientate all but the most experienced explorers. As you enter, doing your best to keep your bearings through all the wondrous sights, sounds and smells, you encounter a threeway fork in the path up ahead. The left path is the brightest, with dappled sunlight shining through the leafy canopy, and seems to be leading towards a clearing of some kind. The centre path seems to be the darkest, leading deep into the very heart of the forest, but is also the most direct route. And the right path is the one which seems to be most travelled, as you spot multiple imprints on the ground. What do you do?

Option one – you choose the left path.

Option two – you choose the centre path.

Option three – you choose the right path.

Chapter Three – Option Two

You decide to walk down the centre pathway. The trail is dark and narrow, with thorny vines snagging at your clothes and dense undergrowth threatening to trip you with every step, but eventually you come to a small building. The building appears to be an ancient temple or shrine of some sort, covered in an incredible variety of flowers, shrubs, moss and other plant life. Suddenly, a figure emerges from within the building – a person with the body of a human, but the head of a majestic stag, antlers and all. The figure angrily tells you that he is the Forest Spirit, a protector of all nature, and that you have stepped uninvited onto sacred ground. You must persuade the Forest Spirit that you mean no harm for him to let you pass, either through negotiation, an offering to the temple or even combat if the Forest Spirit attacks you. This chapter will end when the Forest Guardian gives you permission to proceed.

I looked at the crossroads for a long moment. I took the centre path of the three.

No matter how dark and eerie this one appeared at first, at least I could trust it to provide what it advertised. I wasn’t being dragged into another trap, nor did I want to come across nosy travellers or any packs which may be hunting them, so – the enticingly sunlit clearing, or the seemingly well-travelled road? No, thank you.

Besides, time was running out. Who knew how long Alexus’ carpet had been searching before it came to me? It may have already been too late, the library breached and Zarix at large, armed with fatal knowledge. I needed to cross ground as the crow flew and if that meant scary little trails through the deep dark wood then so be it.

But damn, they hadn’t been selling the Neverwoods short – I was walking along the centre of the path and already leaves brushed my arms as I passed, with branches catching at my hood in warning as the path continued to narrow and twist in on itself. The sun could hardly be seen, dim light reminding me of my last run in with creatures of the land and how they’d shown me Mam, risen warm and alive from the ice – but she wasn’t alive and if I wanted to put off joining her I needed to have a clear mind.

Shaking my head, I stumbled on, resolute. I needed to deal with Zarix and his frost dragon. (But actually, let’s pause there for a moment. How on earth had he manacled one of those? Dragons submitted to no one – I knew from experience – and those native to cold climates were generally even worse. Unless… he’d somehow won its loyalty? I really, truly hoped otherwise – I would like to be leaving that library with my physical form still intact, thanks.)

But anyway, I’d make use of my newly broken in Comb of Cinders, vanquish the villain, free the poor damsel and be swiftly on my way, hopefully having finally earned some respect from that bòidheach Alexus. Not that I needed his respect – or approval! It just wasn’t good to have an influential sorcerer – even a patronising, cowardly, selfish one like him – flouncing around and bad-mouthing you if you’re trying to carve your own patch in a world full of magic users.

“Honestly, why can’t I just be left in peace?” I muttered, kicking roots (certainly not tripping, it was just my way of venting frustrations) and slapping branches out of my path. It was futile. They just closed in behind me, more often than not whipping back once I’d passed, encircling me until the foliage huddled close, trees towered reproachfully and I wondered if I hadn’t in fact strayed away from the track.

Stopping as soon as I realised the situation, I pulled my knuckles from my robes, but hesitated. My fingers were sensitive to the extreme – some of the blisters having been inadvertently popped and drained, others still taut and translucent, creating a sight like one of the poison dragon fledglings had breathed over my skin and I’d left it untreated since. Which in a way, I guess I had.

Magic backlash couldn’t be healed with any learned spell or enchantment as far as I was aware. Once, in my younger years, Master had treated me with a potion of his own creation, when the taunts of the others pushed me just that bit too far and I lashed out, overextending my magic. The potion didn’t speed up the healing process, just soothed the pain, but I was still exceptionally grateful – I was informed how expensive and lengthy the brewing process was by Mam when I arrived home that evening with the poultice. I had my knuckles confiscated that night for the following three months. Not that it changed much – I couldn’t have worn them for the majority of that time anyway, with my hand and arm in such a state.

But I didn’t have any of Master’s potion with me now and the thought of searing metal against my skin was what made me pause. Did I have a choice? I was, for all intents and purposes, lost in the notoriously inescapable Neverwoods, without even the sky to navigate by. I supposed… but I’d used my left hand last time, hadn’t I? And it’d worked, miracles of miracles. Why not do it again?

I switched hands and slowly slid the brass knuckles onto my left hand. It felt wrong, as if the item itself felt uncomfortable on my fingers. The metal was worn in and old and rejected the change. What choice did I have though? I wasn’t a masochist – after twice exerting myself in the last two days, no one (but perhaps Da) would have expected me to cast anything for a long time.

But this was an easy spell and I was being dramatic.

“Treòraich mi troimhe,” I uttered softly, the language of my childhood rolling easily off my tongue. As expected, the metal warmed hardly more than the temperature of my skin. I felt a non-existent breeze blow against one cheek, and I turned to follow it, trusting my magic.

Time passed. It became more and more difficult to forge through the branches, with mud sucking at my boots, reminding me uncomfortably of earlier in the day. I began to question.

Then, I saw a flash of white behind a veil of leaves, directly in my path. With the promise of – well, something – ahead, I kept my pace steady, dismissed my misgivings. I arrived at the spot, but the green and brown shades remained uninterrupted.

That was when I figured the stress of the day was really getting to me. I recast my spell, affirmed the correct direction and continued. Or tried to.

Within two steps, I felt a shudder against my skin and a flash of heat through my body. Well – not heat, as such. It was like sunlight warmth through my veins, the chill of deep water pebbling my skin, a sense of unwarranted, unnatural dread making my hair stand on end. And yet the air in my lungs became light enough to float me away from this plane of existence entirely, as if my soul would drift from my body.

Whatever it was, it was entirely without warning and jarred me. It was magic of some sort – I was almost entirely certain. A spell? A trap? Of what nature? I stood where the shock had halted my progress for a good few minutes.

“Nochdaidh,” I intoned lowly, the same spell I’d used on the carpet.

Yeah, definitely magical. But, so what? Until a real threat presented itself, I had no target for a counterstrike and no excess energy to be throwing around doing difficult magic anyway.

I started onwards once more. And somehow, just then, the trees thinned out around me, opening into an unlikely clearing.

With a pure white hind, standing and staring at me quite in the eye.

Right there, not ten paces ahead.

Before I could truly register its presence, I blinked and it disappeared without a trace. Not even a rustle in the bushes lining the clearing marked its departure.

This was not a glad tiding. Quite the opposite in fact. As someone who liked my life separate from the Otherworld, I really didn’t appreciate that damn deer coming to greet me.

With extreme wariness, I looked over the clearing. I wasn’t comforted.

There was a – a structure, of some sort. So bedecked in moss and fungi and an ominously colourful selection of wildflowers that I could hardly make out the stone of its walls. In fact, the plants made it appear almost bark-like, as if four trees had grown up into walls and woven a steeple, then been petrified.

But the only possible way that could be true would be the attendance of Otherworldly beings and I had specifically requested the universe leave me out of that whole mess. A section of the wall rustled and a veil of trailing vines were pulled aside, to emit…

A man – no, a woman – a creature, as tall and lean as a willow tree, skin dark as loam, hair long and wild and framing a face unlike any I’d seen. Its eyes were pits, the green of mossy rocks and algae pools and millennia, with no pupil or whites to be seen. It stood straight, and its antlers were level with the forest’s canopy. It was still and stared, almost fading into the trees.

Apparently, I’d forgot the universe’s sense of humour when it came to my life.

It made no sound at all – didn’t even seem present by the way the breeze passed through it – but I heard a whining keen.

I swallowed.

It was me.

“Cernunnos?”

I felt like my words were soaked up by the wood itself as soon as they left my tongue. I couldn’t be sure it heard me.

I registered a response deep in my head, a hum of acknowledgement. It was like no other sensation – but I recognised it. It caused the earlier unexplainable sensation. But it wasn’t a sorcerer, that was for sure.

The reverberation in my skull was the forest itself, the trees and creatures and elements they lived with, all present at once, and listening, just as they always did.

But now I was acutely aware of the fact.

I had no delusions in that moment. I dropped my knees in an instant, eyes absorbing every detail they could keep a hold of. Its image seemed to stray and blur when I stared too directly.

But now I was pinned. How could it be my place to address Cernunnos, an embodiment of Nature itself? Beg for his favour – safe passage – my life –

My answer came, not in words, but as a sort of feeling. It was as sure as the tides ebbing and the sun rising.

It is not for you to do.

I was inexplicably calmed. I couldn’t protect against this, so why try, and fail? Opening completely, I became exposed, vulnerable, mind laid bare.

It rushed through me, a flash flood and thunderstorm and forest fire.

The icy water, Mam’s face sinking from view –

a Gaelic melody and breath-warmed fur tickling my face –

the crunch of snow boots in winter, with the hollow thud that made every instinct lay its ears back and tremble –

thin arms around my chest, caging me in, holding me back, condemning them to die alone –

pain in my hand, rain on my face, cold in my bones, fear and anguish and nothing in my heart –

I gasped. My lungs filled with relief.

I was alone, and in the middle of a path, and alive.

Alive.

I met Cernunnos and lived.

Judged worthy.

Judged necessary.

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t. I rolled onto my back, arms limp by my sides, barely feeling the knuckles chilly on my fingers, or satchel digging into my flank.

I lay there and apologised for ever thinking I’d fallen out of favour with the universe.

Good work, you reach the end of the forest and in the distance the magical library is visible. But as you carefully approach you see that Alexus’ warning was true – his house is encased in ice, with the gigantic frost dragon lying nearby and Zarix is standing at the doorway muttering incantations to try and enter. You also see that the frost dragon has a glowing chain around its neck and you realise that this chain must be what is keeping it under Zarix’s command. Weighing up your options, you settle on three possible courses of action. You could try and sneak up to the frost dragon and break the chain, to free it from Zarix’s control – there’s the risk of the frost dragon going on a wild rampage once it is freed and becoming even more dangerous than Zarix though. You could fight Zarix in a head to head duel, magician against magician – you’ve overcome plenty of dangerous obstacles to make it this far, but a magician of his calibre is a dangerous enemy, especially if he commands his frost dragon to attack you. Or you could try and find a way to destroy the ice and free Alexus so that the two of you can team up and defeat Zarix together – however, you remember that the ice magically froze again every time Alexus tried to melt it, so you’ll need to come up with an inventive way to get past it. What do you do?

Option one – you attempt to free the frost dragon from Zarix’s control.

Option two – you attempt to defeat Zarix in a magical duel.

Option three – you attempt to melt the ice and free Alexus.

Chapter Four – Option One

You decide to try and free the frost dragon from the enchanted chain. As quietly as you can you sneak up to the frost dragon. For a brief moment you panic as the frost dragon notices your presence, but to your relief it doesn’t attack you or make any noise, so you judge that the frost dragon is intelligent enough to realise you are trying to free it and has some free will when Zarix is not directly commanding it. You channel your magic to break the chain and after an initial struggle you’re able to split it open, revealing painful looking blisters where the chain links dug into the frost dragon’s skin. The frost dragon immediately rears up and roars, taking aim at Zarix in vengeance for being enslaved. Caught off guard, the evil wizard tries to resist, but the frost dragon’s relentless assault overwhelms him and he is frozen solid. But even after Zarix’s defeat the frost dragon still won’t calm down, thrashing around in pain and putting the library at risk of collapsing. You must find a way to stop the frost dragon’s frenzied attacks, either by calming it down or defeating it in combat. This chapter will end when the frost dragon stops attacking.

Creeping through the bushes, I finally came in sight of Neverwood’s edge and there, tall and stately and so very fitting for its owner, was the library; windows high and arched, walls a shining white. It glistened in the light of sunrise. A peculiar sort of reflection, so for a second, I was left wondering at the material. But then I realised – it was ice.

The ice which had trapped Alexus still encased the building, stained glass made dull with frost, creeping ivy frozen to picturesque shards, no doubt fragile enough that a glancing blow would send the leaves shattering down.

But the ice must be sustained by Zarix. From my position, I tried the best I could to make out his distant figure striding around the building, or occupied some other futile action. Was he somehow upholding the spell remotely?

An echoing thwap, like a leather crop striking the hide of a stallion, and beating wings emerged from behind the shoulder of the building, as wide as a ballroom, blue as winter sea ice. The head roared power, crest sharp and ribbed and as expressive as the ears of a cat, jaws lined with teeth longer than my forearm and glinting with gathered breath.

It soared higher and higher and I saw in that moment the dragons of my childhood, casting shadows that eclipsed the hatching house, wingtips of returning mothers grazing both our house and the sanctuary’s hospital building in a single swoop. In the shine of its eyes I saw the age of my father’s companion and the strength of my mother’s. I saw dragons I’d raised, alive now still and migrating over mountain and ocean to visit the place they’d hatched.

But this poor creature… Chains dripped from flesh rubbed raw of snow-pure scales, scars glaringly out of place in the pure expanse of muscle. And there, sitting like it was his due atop the shoulders of this powerful, timeless creature – Zarix, a tiny, frail figure, wreathed in light. I could make out no details yet – he was too far away, circling the library that stood atop the slope the wood had been creeping up for some time.

I weighed the situation carefully.

What did I know? Nothing of importance.

What could I do? Nothing, until I knew more.

How could I defeat this airborne mage, who had both a dragon and many years of experience over me? Well, I’m sure I’d figure it out if I stopped dilly-dallying and got closer already.

I’d reached 100 metres from the building itself, maybe five seconds from the last straggling trees, when I heard a yell and a bellowing roar – although it sounded shriller than any I’d ever heard at the sanctuary. I scrambled to get past the foliage and was provided a face full of underbelly, swooping so low leaves showered down, branches cracked, and a breeze snatched at my hair.

I flinched, every muscle seizing. Only deeply ingrained instincts caught the scream in my throat and then the creature was past, chains rattling, glowing, searing. They landed, or had at least halted (it seemed a precarious meeting with the ground, but who was I to judge) by the library’s entrance, and here Zarix dismounted with jerky limbs.

“Stupid, obstinate reptile!” came the reproach, over the wheeze and rattle of icy pants.

Frowning, I watched him turn away from the creature to face the doors, but not before yanking, hard, on its collar. The chain glowed more fiercely, and I heard what could have been a yelp, but it was cut short.

Taking the chance provided by his turned back, I made a break for them, abandoning any vestige of safety the foliage provided. I was in this now, no turning back.

I imagined Alexus staring down from a lofty window at my wind-torn tresses, robes flapping as I ran low, and I didn’t even want to turn back.

This was my chance, finally. This one thing, then I would have proved my abilities to an extent that the dastard would never have to interfere in my life again.

“Ireki. Urtutako. Ez izoztu!” The voice rose in pitch, conveying the number of times he’d tried to force entry to the library already, but I didn’t recognise the words of his incantation – his magic was not like mine.

“Uko ezuazu zure presoa eraikin basatia! Ugh!”

Thinking fast, I sprinted up behind the dragon’s bulk, hoping in its restrained state it wouldn’t – or couldn’t – react. And if it did, well… I was trusting my fate to Cernunnos from now on.

Some people might retort that I ‘shouldn’t try my luck’, but I believed good fortune was there for its limits to be pushed – and broken. Where even was the fun in it otherwise?

The dragon didn’t react. Unfortunately, its stillness didn’t give me any inspiration for the next stage of my brilliant plan. I predicted Zarix would be running out of patience for the stubbornly unopened doors by now. He’d soon want his dragon back to fly away in a huff (one more tantrum in a line of who knew how many so far).

This had to be fast.

I was close enough to touch the metal stirrup dangling against the frost dragon’s flank. Now was the moment. The dragon gave a gentle sway of its tail, as if it agreed.

On went the brass knuckles.

“Cruback air falbh,” I hissed, left hand grasping the closest chain to try and minimise the energy I’d need for this momentous task.

The moment the words passed my lips, I felt the magic of the restraints push back and I knew I had to succeed, or else the likelihood of my death became uncomfortably relevant. I didn’t know if Zarix or some other sorcerer had enchanted these chains, but either way, he was no doubt linked to his beast in some way more than physical. He’d feel the intrusion upon his territory soon.

My flesh burnt and blistered and the dragon’s chained glowed, and glowed, and its hide began to steam.

I made up my mind.

A whispered spell, and the ivy came tumbling down, as terrifyingly beautiful as I’d pictured. Whilst Zarix was momentarily distracted, I hunkered down for my final trick.

“Fosgail. An-is!”

Open. Now.

The chains shattered, chips of metal clinking as they littered the grass. Zarix finally spun, alerted by the noise and swell of magic.

It was too late, thank the universe.

I flung the knuckles away, but the damage was done. I wasn’t sure they were ever going back on.

Newly freed and determined never again to return to such degradation, the dragon sucked in a breath. Blew it out. The grass ahead froze.

I saw from my probably unwise position of a few steps from its shoulder, its night-deep eyes narrowing in something that, if I’d seen the look on any other creature, I might have called a lust for revenge.

But dragons weren’t vindictive. I’d never known, nor heard of, a vengeful dragon. They were honourable, humble creatures – especially for being such great predators.

Apparently, its time in forced servitude had loosened its ties to the species’ expected behaviours.

It lunged, not bothering with sounding a warning. Zarix threw up what I assumed was a protection spell, but the frost dragon broke it as easily as a spider web, not pausing when Zarix stumbled, unprepared for the brute force of the dragon’s onslaught. He hadn’t bound this dragon himself – he would have been ready for this if he’d seen it wild.

Its momentum kept it going like a bullet at his temple, but he managed to regain his footing and uttered a yell.

“Geldialdi!”

Then –

Everything just…

Stopped.

The air was still. The dragon froze, two feet off the ground, jaws extended in a silent snarl. The last of the frozen ivy halted mid fall.

Time had stopped.

All but Zarix – and I.

“Well, well. Someone comes to free the pitiable prisoner and his library, is that it?” the warlock chuckled, stepping past the claws and bared teeth not a metre away with an irreverent pat to the snout. The dragon showed no recognition at the touch, staying just as frozen and furious.

He spread his arms with a flourish.

“Pretty neat trick, right?” he grinned, referring to the way he had stopped time entirely. “I picked it up when I travelled to America. They have such cool little shops – you can find spell books on everything from teleportation, to necromancy, to domestic chores! And – as I’m sure you can tell by now – the manipulation of time bubbles.”

I scowled, feeling wrong-footed. This was not in the plan. That was not allowed.

“What do you want with Alexus anyway?”

His eyebrows raised into what would have been his hairline, had he not been sporting a thoroughly bald, tattooed head, ink curling around his tapered ears. “Alexus, is it? Not Master Ignitingus? No title whatsoever? Don’t you have any respect for the man widely regarded as the most knowledgeable mage on this side of the world?” he inquired, eyes wide and mocking.

“Or perhaps…” He squinted at me, despite the sun being behind the building at his back, “you are here out of something more than duty? Do you perhaps know Alexus Ignitingus, personally?”

I shifted, uncomfortable with his implications and my continued lack of ideas. ‘Now would be a fantastic time for a stroke of genius, brain!’

“No, it’s just – I got a distress message. He sent it out to the closest magic user. That’s – that’s why I’m here.” I had no clue as to why I stuttered over the words, but I did, and I hated myself for my lack of social skills under pressure. This was my damn enemy! They’re not supposed to make me anxious – they’re supposed to make me angry!

He was grinning again. “Funny. It’s been a while since I froze the library. I suppose he only remembered to send out a message on day three of imprisonment? Because I know for a fact there’s a very active trading village not so far from here, and those never come without a mage or three.”

I frowned. At this rate I was definitely getting wrinkles. “How am I supposed to know what the bòidheach meant by it? All I know is I’m here, and you’re going to be stopped.”

He laughed, outright. “Language, language. Oh, aren’t you just super! I never get interesting people anymore – your type is why I even bother with all this these days. The masses, they’re just so dull, y’know? Them – you wouldn’t be able to see a difference even if they were telepathically connected to a hivemind and enslaved! Not… that anyone would plan to do something like that, of course.” He grinned boyishly, every aspect of his appearance at odds with the rest. Deep blue tattoos snaking over near every exposed centimetre of skin, bright purple knee-length cape, black woollen fabric around his legs looking like the skin-tight suit of an acrobat, curly-toed leather shoes that looked decidedly foreign and no-longer-glowing chains draped over each arm with metal cuffs at elbow and wrist.

“So, did your Mam forget to dress you this morning, or what?” I asked aloud, forgetting we were having a serious (or at least important – I’m not sure I could call this guy serious, terrifyingly powerful warlock or not) conversation.

His brows drew together, and for a second, I cursed my lack of self-preservation instincts. But then, he did something I wouldn’t have believed if a true seer told me of it. Zarix’s lips pursed and his eyes became shiny, as if he were holding back tears. He sniffed, then spoke tremulously.

“Fine – but you’re off the list of those-I-might-maybe-think-about-sparing! Obviously, I misjudged your level of interesting-ness.” He turned his back, content I’d been put in my place, and I watched him muttering as he shuffled back towards the building’s still tightly sealed doors.

Utterly perplexed, I looked around, as if to discover someone were standing just out of sight and cackling at my gullibility. Because what else could this be but a practical joke? But then – there. Movement in the high windows of the library.

Alexus? He… wasn’t frozen?

It seemed not. And if it turned out he was, well – I figured hallucinations weren’t sounding too unlikely after the last few days.

But real or not, it saw me looking and started waving frantically, only just visible through the frosty glass. I cocked my head, not understanding what it was getting at.

There was a long moment more of this flailing before it must have figured out that I was quite useless as a collaborator and took matters into its own hands.

Just as Zarix reached the building, most likely to start up a new round of useless incantations, the doors gave a click and creaked outwards, standing ajar enticingly. The warlock was understandably awestruck, seemingly rooted to the ground, previously inexorably busy jaw hanging slack. An unfortunate situation for him, in the circumstances. He never even got the chance to take a peek inside.

Alexus sent a bolt down. It shattered the window he was standing at before dissipating with a boom and blast that made Zarix and I stagger, releasing time from its confines. Life was moving once more.

And now, it was taking no prisoners.

The dragon jolted to the ground empty-handed, strongly displeased at the momentary escape of its prey. In a moment, it had zeroed in on the figure standing in the library’s doorway and was on the move once more, the wind its great wings created as it sprang blowing my hair across my face so that I spluttered and had to scramble to clear my eyes and mouth.

I took notice once more when I felt heat on my face for the first time since the desert and was faced with – Zarix, standing amidst a ring of fire. He must have cast that whilst I was occupied and couldn’t hear over the wind.

It was certainly effective at fending off the dragon. It seemed to dance, frustration frank in its snapping teeth and deep, rolling growl. If Zarix ever came out of his little fiery fortress, he was dead.

I watched the light play on his face as he watched the beast jitter before him. He must have felt his control over the situation returning and been bolstered by its addicting rush, because he flashed a wide grin (much too smugly for the situation, in my opinion).

“Oh, how easily the tides do turn,” he tutted, crossing his arms over his chest, as if he had any right to be calm in this moment.

He obviously wanted my attention – and thought this situation had provided him the perfect captive audience – but I was determined not to be that. Fulfilling his wishes could never be in my best interests, I knew that much.

Zarix continued to monologue, but my attention was elsewhere, watching the dragon readying itself quietly, and the glassless window, standing empty high above our heads. Alexus had definitely been there a moment before, so where was he now?

My question was answered with uncommon promptness.

The door banged against the wall, startling me. A palpable iciness was carried on the gust of air that had rushed from the doorway, and in a moment Zarix’s fire had been extinguished, the wind appearing to move with form.

The frost dragon took this as its chance. It lunged, and this time the warlock was too distracted by Alexus’s appearance to cast even a meagre shield.

The warlock fell to his knees. His hands thumped to the ground. His chest sounded hollow against the grass.

The dragon roared to the cloudless sky.

Zarix was very, very dead.

Ice was creeping from his corpse to coat the grass surrounding.

I stepped back – once, twice, perhaps twenty paces. The grass crackled under the dragon’s pads; turf thrown up by its claws.

This wasn’t over yet.

The chains falling away had revealed skin rubbed raw of scales, blistered and burnt and weeping.

“Oh, darling. I’m so sorry,” I whispered, looking on as this enraged shell of a creature spun circles, wings held high as if bracing for punishment.

Ice spread, crawled, and it took the leather of my boots creaking with cold for me to snap back to the moment.

I stood straight. Shed my robes, discarded the Comb and every other possession still carried on my person with equal disregard.

This poor dragon. The shards of my heart cracked.

I whistled then – a tune so old I thought I’d forgotten it. It seemed familiar company awakened many memories.

I heard my parents in the notes, the wordless song of comfort and understanding having reached many a terrified dragon. They were called dragon tamers, masters of beasts, the greatest dragon breakers in their own land and the next.

Our family knew the truth – had for all the centuries we had been in the business. Dragons were not to be made into pets or labourers or servants. They were so much more than we could ever be. If only you acknowledged that – gave them your respect, your service, your trust – they could be the greatest companions known to our kind.

And now, I paid my homage, as my parents had done so many times in the past, an awestruck me of yesteryear looking on from the side-lines with amazement and envy. I supposed I had finally got my wish.

There I was – a dragon tamer myself.

My melody rang clear, sounding even to my own ears deeper than anything a human could be assumed to produce, sung at a frequency all dragons could hear.

Its frenzied movements didn’t slow, but it turned to face me and met my gaze, challenging. If this didn’t work, I was now the prime target upon which to vent past injustices.

But I went on whistling, and tried to look as entirely opposite to its previous master as was possible when we shared a species. I advanced towards the swaying jaws with its curled lips revealing bone-white teeth, and in one movement dropped smoothly to my knees.

I tipped my head back to meet its gaze, neck long and arctic-goose graceful and oh-so delicate. A half-hearted swipe would be enough, like swatting a fly, brushing away a stray hair.

It stilled, eyes fixed upon me with an intelligence no animal possessed, and I kept on with my melody. Slowly, slowly – it dipped its snout towards my skull. Its head tipped. Mine tilted back even further, tendons tight and tense, eyes sliding shut. Sure, I was kneeling there, but that didn’t make me brave. If I’d drank more recently than at a stream of questionable origin the night before, I’d have quite literally been wetting myself.

Its breath washed over me. My own breath caught, and the song cut short.

I felt it touch my head, skin hard and leathery, but no colder than a stone wall in winter. I felt it, projecting to me.

Fapadh leat, piathar bheag.

Thank you, little sister.

And we stayed there, no longer at odds, my knees pressing into the hard, frosty ground, the dragon standing quietly, finally at peace. We were interrupted by shoes shifting on marble floor, and with a collective sigh we parted, now understanding each other better than many life partners did.

“Is… is that you, little hatchling?”

I turned, eyes still closed, unwilling to address the man I’d come here to save.

“It’s been a long time, thu beag cac. No free moment to spend visiting your brother?”

“Half.” I gritted out. “Half-brother, you bòidheach.”

He smiled sadly. “Harsh. But… fair, I suppose.”

I saw it all then –

Rippling icy water, Mam’s face sinking from our view, the shriek high in my throat replacing lilting notes.

The crunch of snow as Alexus ran to wrap his thin arms around my chest, caging me in, holding me back, leaving them to sink into the icy seawater – all to keep me from following them.

The pain in my hand as he crushed me to him in a shuddering embrace, rain – or were those tears – on my face, deep, ocean-cold in my bones, fear and anguish and nothing in my chest.

“You left them.”

The words were a croak, my throat dry and cheeks wet.

“But I looked after you, just like Mam told me. And your Da would have given everything for you to be safe, even if he’d never say it.”

“I can look after myself. I don’t need your pity.”

“Oh, little hatchling, you never would accept I meant you well. I love you, you know – now as I did then.”

I spun, and spat, “Give up the act already, bòidheach! All you ever cared about was your dragons – and books – and precious reports. You didn’t even turn back with me after Mam – Mam and Da – ”

“The dragon still needed help.”

“You’re a dragon! All duty and honour over the real people in your life… You are heartless.”

His hand covered his face, bony fingers clasping the bridge of his nose in an all too familiar habit. “I won’t argue with you. I love you. But we can’t put ourselves over every other living creature.” He looked up at me, eyes pleading for something – pity, or agreement, or compromise, perhaps.

“Besides,” he continued, glancing over at the frost dragon who stood as calmly as Stonehenge, just where I’d left it, “this dragon wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t gone on when I did.”

That caught me out, not because it meant anything to me, but because it didn’t.

“What?”

Alexus softened and walked over to rest a hand on the dragon’s neck. His eyes closed for a split second, the dragon’s eyelids flicking simultaneously, and I knew they were sharing memories, a skill I hadn’t mastered before I withdrew from the dragon business bequeathed to my older half-brother.

He turned to me with exhilaration curving his lips and crinkling his eyes. “This is the dragon we were going to help, on that journey up North, when it happened. You, my silly little hatchling, have rescued your first dragon.”

And he looked at me with the pride of my entire family behind his eyes, and I felt it wash over me. The feeling that had kept them working in such a risky business, for so many years, despite all their close calls and unfortunate ends our ancestors had met pushing them to leave.

The fulfilment – satisfaction – joyful thrill. The knowing you had made a difference, and that the universe would remember.

And damn, was I thankful.

Excellent work! With Zarix defeated and the frost dragon no longer under his spell, the ice is dispelled and the library is safe. Alexus is so impressed by your skill he offers you the position of co-librarian and agrees to work in partnership with you to grow the library’s magical knowledge even further!

#igniting writing #teen writers #writing for teens #fantasy #fantasy roleplay #dnd #Dungeons and Dragons #creative writing #writing club #writing group #writing contest #writing competition #writing challenge

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