The Masters of Magic

by Destiny Hawkins

  Beatrice glanced over at her brother, then turned back to the masters. Just as I was protective over my sister, she was protective over her brother and yet, here we were, completely agreeing to put them in danger just so we could be ready for a war…which was also dangerous.

  “What I can tell you is that you should try to preserve as much energy as you could for your battle against The Ancient Master. The group of you may have your differences, but you must find a way to work together for all your sakes.”

  Triana took my hand in hers, causing my heart to ache at her trembling. She wasn’t one to directly show fear unless she was truly afraid. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this at all. Did I even officially agree to become a master? Couldn’t I just back down now? Looking down at Triana, I wondered what it would be like to be able to protect her. Like, really protect her. Not just running and teleporting but fighting back. With the war coming, I couldn’t entrust her life to someone else. It would have to be me, but if she was a master too, would she even need my protection?

  I sighed, wishing that our parents were here to make this decision for us. My uncle had no control over the matter, and maybe our parents wouldn’t have either, but I was sure that they would share their thoughts with me and the masters. Their opinions would really help. Too bad they were nowhere to be found.

  “Are you ready? Witches and Wizards?” the Coven Green master asked.

  I didn’t nod. I could barely even move with fear spreading from my heart and inching across my body.

  The master chuckled. “I responded that way as well.”

  The two masters stepped out of the way for us to enter.

  “May you drink from the golden cups,” the orange master said.

  The group of us only stared in silence before Cristania sighed and started for the portal. Before walking through, the master from Coven Orange handed her a thick folded piece of paper and patted her shoulder.

  Beatrice and I glanced at each other before she started for the portal with Bradly following behind, then me, Triana, and Felix trailed after them.

  The Masters of Magic

  “Well, this wasn’t exactly what I was expecting,” Cristania said as she gazed up at the incredibly tall trees.

  “Well, they said it was a forest,” Felix said as he circled around slowly.

  The Magical Realm was a green misty forest with tall trees, hanging vines, and thick magical air. It almost confused me with the warm weather, but the heat surrounding me was magic. Uncle Sam was right. The air here was different. It was thicker and harder to inhale, like there was more magic than oxygen, but it was breathable. Once my lungs adapted, I would be able to take less deeper breaths. Hopefully.

  I held Triana close as I looked up at the blue sky. It was just like the sky at home, only when I spotted a large green and sparkling reptile-like creature flying through the sunlight, I quickly remembered that this place was nothing like home.

  “What was that?” Triana asked.

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure.”

  The ground beneath us slightly vibrated as something gave a deep, low growl. It sounded like a hum at first, but as we listened closely, we came to realize that something powerful and dangerous was nearby. Very nearby.

  “What…what was that?” Triana asked, referring to the growl now.

  I slowly shook my head, my eyes darting from left to right. “I’m not sure.”

  Felix stepped up beside me. “We all need to hide,” he whispered.

  “I have invisibility,” Cristania said.

  “It won’t last long.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe I won’t need it for long.”

  The growl sounded again somewhere from behind and we all stilled before slowly turning around to look.

  I expected something big and monstrous to jump out at us, but there was nothing. Just a fallen tree leaning on another, hanging vines, thickening mist, and the silhouette a man walking towards us in the distance.

  My eyes widened, and I slightly raised my chin. “Do you guys see that?”

  “The g―giant spider walking towards us?” Bradly asked in a squeak. “Yeah, I see it.”

  “Giant spider?” Cristania blurted. “I see…”

  Felix released a breath. “The hunter that killed my parents.”

  Triana gulped. “Whatever it is, it’s what we all personally fear.”

  I looked down, wondering what Triana saw. Everyone seemed to know what they were looking at but me. In the distance, I recognized the form of a man, only he walked like a barbarian and had long thick hair that hung down to his waist. I couldn’t see much, but even as a silhouette, I could tell that this man was built like a body builder and was apparently so heavy that with every footstep, the ground shook.

  Then suddenly, he stopped walking towards us.

  We all stood in silence, facing our fears. It seemed as if we were each holding our breaths until the beast started a sprint towards us.

  A world of fear fell over me and I tightened my grip on Triana’s hand as I burst into a sprint to my left. No one made a sound as they scattered for cover, tripping and jumping, and not even paying attention to their surroundings. It seemed that nothing could be more dangerous than the thing that came running for us, so we ran blindly into the forest.

  The heavy footsteps warned me that the monster was close, but it wasn’t behind us, and when I heard its footsteps start to fade, I realized that it wasn’t after us either.

  I stopped before running too far and yanked Triana behind a tree, then held her back against my stomach with my hands wrapped around her. She was panting with her trembling hands over mine, and I couldn’t help but wonder what she may have seen. It was as if she was even more afraid than I was.

  The monster pounded off in the distance now, chasing after something that squealed in fear in the distance.

  Swallowing, I peeked further around the tree to see if I could spot any of the others and found Felix pressed against a tree a few feet away. Further down was Beatrice and Bradly, tip toeing in our direction with wide eyes, and finally, Cristania, who removed her invisibility mode a few feet to their left.

  I sighed before making my way back over to them with Triana. She was silent.

  “We need to start creating some distance between us and whatever that thing was,” Beatrice said.

  Cristania pulled out the folded paper that the coven master gave to her and opened it. “Good, we can. This map says we’re at our landing point, and The Mythical Tree is in that direction.” She pointed in the direction that the monster had appeared a few moments ago.

  “What if that’s towards its home?” Bradly asked with a shaking voice.

  “Bradly, stop acting like a wuss,” Beatrice sighed.

  “A wuss? Did you just see a giant spider run by? I think not, and until you do, you can’t judge me,” he replied.

  Her eyebrows furrowed with a smirk. “I can’t believe you’re afraid of spiders.”

  “They’re creepy, crawly, bite your ass at night―”

  “Guys,” Cristania cut them off. “We need to get moving.”

  Triana let out a slight laugh. One that caused Bradly’s attention to move to her before he cracked a shy smile. It was weird since the first time they met, he decided that he was going to name her vomit hair because of its green color. He was also raised as a hunter, but I guess after leaving them, something in him might have changed. He still had his Bradly attitude, but he seemed more like a kid to me than he did before.

  “Let’s go,” Cristania commanded before walking ahead.

  “Looks like we have our new leader,” Beatrice said as she rolled her eyes and followed behind.

  Felix balled his fists and started ahead. He was quieter than any of us as we continued along, and I wondered what he was thinking. I was sure that I knew the subject, but I wanted to know exactly what was going on in his mind. What caused him to keep his fists so tightly balled that the muscles in his arms flexed?

&nb
sp; By nightfall, I stopped wondering about him and started worrying about what kinds of creatures hunted at night. We were doing well not coming across anything so far. Most of our walk, we only encountered natural creatures. Well, whatever was considered natural here.

  It was always a creature that didn’t pose a threat. Like something that looked like a bunny jumping into the woods, glistening silver centipedes crawling over trees, birds scattering when we approached ― or what I thought were birds, and other small creatures that I had to yank Triana away from petting. I made sure to remind her that something cute and cuddly here most likely had the fangs of a shark. I didn’t have to worry about her petting anything since.

  Chapter Eight: The Black Fairies

  After miles and miles of walking, it was time to set up camp. It required little magic, and of course, Cristania was the only one skilled enough to create a small protective barrier around us. Bradly managed to spark a small warm fire, and Felix pulled out a small backpack from his pocket that he kept minimized for traveling reasons. We all did the same and pulled out our tiny backpacks, then with a quick squeeze, it instantly inflated like a Puffer fish, and we went through our things. The coven masters granted us this one favor since it would require magic to keep our packs minimized, so they used their own magic to help inflate and deflate our bags.

  Triana and I placed our sleeping mats beside each other with her closer to the fire and me being a protective shield on the outside. At least that’s what I told myself.

  As talkative as we naturally were, as everyone placed their mats down, we were quiet. Felix sat beside me in silence and pulled out a few snacks like granola bars and fruits, then passed them out. I knew he would remain quiet for a while because of his stone hard face, but Cistania’s silence was confusing.

  What did she see?

  I looked up at her across the fire and caught her staring down at the map. A moment later, she looked up at the sky and my eyes followed. Soon, I noticed my mouth dropping open awe. For a dangerous dimension, the sights here were beautiful.

  The sky was filled with millions of colorful stars in a purple darkness. Blues, yellows, pinks, and many more sparkled before our eyes. What really caught my attention was somewhere out in the far distance I spotted what looked to be other planets. Behind the blue and violet colored moon was a blue planet and following that on a curve was a yellowish-green planet, a reddish-pink planet, a black planet with flashes of lightning, and another that looked like boiling lava. It reminded me of the sun but was pure gold and had dark patches that looked like black holes.

  “They’re beautiful,” Felix said in barely a whisper.

  When I turned to him, his eyes lowered from the sky and went back to the fire. Although his eyes flickered with firelight, they were filled with darkness. I could practically feel the resentment and anger radiating from him, and I wished that I knew how to comfort him. He just looked so lost.

  Sighing, I turned from Felix to find Beatrice watching me from across the fire. There was no expression on her face, nor could I read her eyes. She just stared at me, and I wondered if she could read minds or if she just trying to read me? Since meeting each other, we never got along, then after I learned that she was a hunter, there was no thought that we’d ever end up on the same team. I had my mind set that she was the worst kind of person to ever exist after the hunters attacked us at Ms. Jones’ orphanage, but now I wasn’t sure what kind of person she was. It made me curious about her, and I was sure that by the way she was looking at me now, she was curious too.

  “We should get some rest,” Cristania said, laying only a about a foot away from Beatrice.

  Beatrice lay down next to Bradly and drew her brows into a frown before turning to face him with her back to me. When I turned back to Felix, I found him already laying on his back with his head near the spot I would be resting mine.

  I sighed before lying on the mat, then stared up at the sky in hoped that counting the stars would make me fall into a deep sleep soon.

  “Hey, Raven,” Felix said in a whisper.

  Surprised to hear his voice, my eyebrows shot to my forehead. “Yeah?”

  He hesitated to speak. “I’m glad you’re here.” He sighed. “I don’t think I’d be able to do this without you.”

  I smiled, butterflies swirling. “I haven’t even done anything.”

  “Yeah, I know, but if I didn’t have your voice to anchor me, I think I would’ve drifted off by now.” When he swallowed, I began to worry. “There’s something wrong with this place. I think it feeds on negative emotions and knows just how to cause them. The real bad ones with the haunting memories attached.”

  “Yeah, you might be right,” I said, thinking back to the monster I saw earlier. It made sense since it was bringing about everyone’s fears. Maybe it was only me that didn’t have some deep penetrating fear, or maybe it was just that the one fear I had could only be brought to life if I failed at protecting Triana. It wasn’t something that could be placed in front of me to face, but something that had to actually happen, and I would never let that happen. I’d die before I lose my little sister. “But don’t worry. We’ll be out of here before you know it, and then everything will go back to normal. Well, if you consider our lives normal.”

  He smirked. “It’s about as normal as it’s going to get for us.”

  “Yeah,” I chuckled. “But even that will change, and then our normal will be something else.”

  “I hope so. I don’t think I can handle losing anyone else. My parents’ deaths…it hit me hard, and that thing earlier brought all those feelings back to life.”

  I bit my lower lip, not knowing what to say next. Triana and me were only separated from our parents, never truly knowing if they’d died or not. When they didn’t come looking for us after the raid, I thought that they abandoned us, but Triana didn’t seem to think so. She thought that they were captured, but the thing was, they were nearly masters at using magic. What hunter had the strength to capture them?

  “What did you see?” Felix asked.

  I lowered my lids with a sigh. “I don’t know. Just a monster.”

  The Masters of Magic

  I can’t say that I was sleeping peacefully, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be awakened so soon. It felt like I had only closed my eyes for a second when something small and hard cracked me on my forehead. At first, I thought something had just fallen from a tree and turned over on my side, but then something popped me on the back of my head followed by a low snickering that almost sounded like a million tiny squeaks.

  “What the hell!” I heard Beatrice grumble.

  The two of us were the first to sit up and look around, but there was nothing.

  Cristania sat up. “What is it?”

  Only a moment after she sat up, a small pebble cracked her on her forehead followed by another squeaking laugh.

  Triana was awake now and staring upwards, then she gasped. “Fairies.”

  When I looked up, I spotted a faint violet glow within a tiny blue fairy with black eyes, black hair, and black wings. “Are those…” Two more joined the one fairy, but as I continued to scan the area I realized that we were surrounded by hundreds of them.

  “Black Fairies,” Triana said in a wary voice.

  Now that all of us were awake, we were all sitting as still as possible and waiting to see what the fairies would do. At one point in time, stories of the Black Fairies were used to scare children from wandering out of bed at night, and now we were actually facing them. I couldn’t help but wonder if the stories of the tricksters were true, especially since they were said to trick you into your death.

  The Black Fairies smiled down at us maliciously, the reflecting light from their black eyes intimidating.

  “We the bloody hell are those?” Bradly asked.

  That’s when one Black Fairy began to speak in squeak language. None of us could understand the squeaking fairy, but when he turned back around with a small pebble in hand, followed by
all of them raising their pebbles…well, we got the idea.

  “Oh, crap!” Bradly yelled before scrambling to his feet.

  We all did the same, but just as we stood, the Black Fairies began to fire.

  Tiny little rocks dropped down on us like raindrops, and it wasn’t drizzling. This was like the kind of pouring rain that you couldn’t see through, or the kind that soaked your clothes in a matter of seconds.

  How I wished it was only rain.

  “Triana, run!” I yelled, unable to look directly at her in fear of a rock hitting me in the eye.

  “This way, this way!” I heard Bradly yell.

  I could hear Triana’s footsteps scramble off. “Come on, Raven!” she called.

  Getting cracked on my forehead again, I was slightly dazed. That wasn’t a pebble, and when I looked down I noticed a palm sized rock at my feet. “Oh, hell.”

  Glancing up, I got a quick look at Beatrice grabbing my forearm before running in the direction that she pulled me in. When I looked up, I didn’t see Triana but figured that we were all running in the same direction and would meet somewhere nearby once we were far enough from the fairies.

  I wasn’t sure why I thought that when we started running, the fairies wouldn’t chase us. The little demons grabbed and pulled at my hair, latched on my arm, and dug their nails and teeth into my flesh.

  “Get off!” I yelled as I swiped at my shoulder.

  Beatrice was experiencing the same annoyance as she ran, only ice froze over the parts of her body where the fairies were attached and had frozen them. One by one, they stilled and dropped to the ground.

  Grunting, I frowned. It was frustrating that she could use magic even better than I could. Not once have I teleported since being here, and besides that, my other specialty apparently couldn’t be used unless I wanted to seriously hurt someone.

  Hopping over a log, that’s when I thought of something.

  I quickly grabbed the fairy on my arm and ripped his teeth and claws from my arm, then tried to dig deep down to my inner power. I wanted to do to this fairy what I did to Beatrice on the day we reunited.