Erage #3 Together

Jostahim is a nine-year-old boy. Him and three other kids were taken to a stone structure set into a wall. One of the girls of the four surviving kids left to go inside the building. There were police guards in the way. She hadn’t cared. She went through them. Through them! Like a ghost!

The police were really scared by this and he thought that they might shoot them. Then the girl came back after a few minutes with another little boy. This only aggravated the police more. It didn’t help that the girl proceeded to just walk through the police again like she was a ghost and the little boy panicked and tried to run away.

That boy had a gun but shot at the ground before dropping it. He ran to the wall, tiny explosions following him. He slammed his hand into the wall as the police shot at him. A tree grew out of the side of the wall and carried him to the top of the wall.

The ghost girl rejoins the group of kids, but Jostahim isn’t so sure if he wants a ghost to be near them. Strangely, the ghost girl stares at the ground. What is she looking at? Is that a seed? The seed burst into a giant blooming flower. Just the flower head, not the stem or anything else. The petals spread out across the ground, tripping him and the three other kids, including the ghost girl somehow. Then the petals rise and close around them.

It goes dark. When the petals open. They’re in a forest. There is that little boy the ghost girl had brought out of the building. He is bruised and bleeding. How is he so hurt? Those don’t like gunshot wounds.

————

Untoltelage feels like a fool. What was he thinking? He completely lost it back in there. He soured his chances at staying in the city by making an enemy of their military. Well, that’s not an actual problem. He didn’t want to be there anyway. But then he ran off and got lost in the maze-like tunnels and had a panic-attack.

He endangered the lives of those kids. The military probably thinks that those kids are like him. Magic-wielding psychopaths that grew up in this city. Now, those kids are either going to live a miserable life or get killed or… they’re here. What?

Untoltelage looks up from where he lays bleeding on the grass. There are four little kids. They’re staring at him. Ah, he must be a sight. He may have healed from the gunshots, but slamming into the canopy for no good reason. That really hurt him. He’s got broken bones. Luckily, this is Erage. He should be back to perfect health in a day or two, assuming he doesn’t get attacked while in this weakened state.

“Who are you?” One of the little boys asks him. The boy is shorter than him. The boy wears a leather jacket that is in remarkably fine shape for having been through a tornado. He doesn’t have the same blank stare that most of the others do. Instead, his eyes indicate that he is aware of his surroundings. His facial expression indicates that he is absolutely terrified.

The boy cringes and steps backward away from you now that you have been staring at him for about ten seconds without saying anything. “Um, you know what. Just forget I said anything. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“I’m Untoltelage.”

“Ah, um. Did you bring us here?”

“I… probably?”

“What? How do you not know?”

“I… I am insan-I mean it just doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why I would bring all of you out here?”

Then the girl he hadn’t encountered before says, “Weren’t you trying to save us?” This girl has black hair that goes down to her shoulders. Untoltelage thinks that is an odd hairstyle for a nine-year-old.

“Save you? I made things worse.” Untoltelage says, “I panicked, I got scared, and made some mistakes. Now they’re going to think you are all insane and dangerous.”

“W-what? What could you have… why would they think we…? The girl asks, having trouble forming her question into words.

“The danger is a little kid wielding magic and losing their mind.” Untoltelage tells them.

“Magic? They think we have magic?” The boy with the leather jacket asks.

The other boy looks at Quastiffany, the girl that led Untoltelage out of the maze-like military base. He has short dirty blind hair. He says, “I’m thinking that at least some of us have magic.”

The other three kids look at him. “Really? What makes you think any of us could have magic?” The girl with shoulder-length black hair asks, “We would have noticed something strange if we had magic.”

“Like surviving a tornado that killed everyone but us?” The dirty-blonde boy asks, “Or maybe walking through people like a ghost?”

That makes them all silent for a while as they consider that they might have magic. It hadn’t occurred to Untoltelage that any of them had magic. And he thought he had just imagined the girl, Quastiffany, walking through people like a ghost. But it makes sense. Not that they would have magic. But it explains how he got them here.

“You wanted to know if I brought you here?” Untoltelage says, bringing the attention of the children back to him, “I did, sort of. It’s not possible for me to have brought you all here by myself. I think you, four, might have made such a feat of teleportation possible.” Oh dear. Untoltelage is still in quite a bit of pain.

————

“Are you saying that we used magic to get here?” Kekister, the boy in the leather jacket, asks. The unconscious, bruised and bleeding boy, Untoltelage, doesn’t answer. Kekister still doesn’t know the name of anybody here. They all went to the same school, but they didn’t have the same teachers.

“Um, are you okay?” Kekister asks the boy.

No response.

“Oh no! Is he dead?” Kekister asks.

Quastiffany, the girl that had previously walked through people like a ghost, says, “Check for a pulse.”

A pulse? What does that even mean? When nobody reacts to her suggestion, Quastiffany crouches down next to Untoltelage and presses her index and middle finger against the side of his next.

“He’s fine.” She says, “I don’t know why I even bothered with a pulse. He clearly still breathing.” Sure enough, his chest moved up and down as he slept. Is sleep the right term for this? He is unconscious, but it’s not like he is taking a nap.

“Just because he is breathing doesn’t mean he’s going to make it.” The other girl, Hyethra, says, “He’s bleeding. If you bleed enough, you die.”

“No, he‘ll be fine.” Quastiffany says.

“What makes you so sure he’s going to be okay?” Kekister asks.

“I don’t know.” Quastiffany says, “I just… I don’t feel like he’s going to die.”

“That doesn’t really make much sense.” Kekister points out.

“Neither does walking through people like a ghost.” Jostahim adds.

“You guys keep saying that, but I didn’t see Untoltelage walk through anybody.” Quastiffany says, “He was lost in that building. If he could walk through walls, he probably would have done so.”

“Wait, what did you say?” Hyethra asks.

“He can’t walk through people or walls.” Quastiffany answers.

“No, that big word, it was like ‘Until-college’ or something?” Hyethra asks.

The rest of the kids nod their heads agreeing with Hyethra that Quastiffany had just said something really weird. Quastiffany thinks back to what she said.

“Untoltelage?” Quastiffany asks, “Are you asking about Untoltelage?”

“Yeah, that’s the word.” Jostahim says, “What does it mean?”

“That’s his name.” Quastiffany says, pointing down at Untoltelage.

“He didn’t tell us his name.” Hyethra points out.

“Yeah, we weren’t with you two in that stone building.” Kekister says.

Quastiffany thinks about what they are saying. She realizes that Untoltelage never did tell her his name. Kekister assumes that she learned it while she was helping Untoletlelage out of the maze-like military base. But he didn’t speak until they had all left the city through that teleportation flower.

“Uh, speaking of names, I don’t know any of yours.” Jostahim says.

Of course. They had all forgotten that none of them really knew each other. Everyone looks at Jostahim.

“Oh, I guess I’ll go first.” Jostahim says, “I’m, Jostahim.”

The three other kids wait a little longer as if waiting for more. Finally, Hyethra says, “I guess we can start with just names. I’m Hyethra.” Hyethra turns to face Kekister then to Quastiffany. After they all introduce their names. Hyethra decides that they should learn a little bit more than just everybody’s names.

“Now that we all know each other’s names, let’s get to know each other a little better.” Hyethra says, “Let’s talk about our hobbies. I’ll go first. I like…” Hyethra’s face drops into a frown. “I used to like going bowling, but I will never be able to do that again.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about hobbies.” Kekister says, “I don’t want to think about what I’m leaving behind.”

“Yes, let’s talk about what we are going to do with this magic person.” Jostahim suggests, “Quastiffany, what did you say his name was? Something like Unto-a-lodge?”

“Untoltelage.” Quastiffany says.

“Yes, Untoltelage.” Jostahim says, “What are we going to about him. I don’t think he is very safe. But we can’t really go back home.”

“Are we sure that we can’t go back home?” Hyethra asks, “I know it might be difficult to explain that we are not with this dangerous magical Untoltelage, but if we could go back home and return to our normal lives, it would be worth any difficulty.”

“I wouldn’t trust me if I was the military.” Quastiffany says quietly, “I helped what is probably a criminal to escape.”

“Yeah, that was pretty weird.” Jostahim says, “I saw you walk through people as if you were a ghost.”

“I-I didn’t notice anything like that.” Quastiffany says, “But I wouldn’t be the only to have used magic. I believe we all have used magic to have made it this far.”

“I wonder what we will be able to do with magic.” Kekister says.

“I’m not sure I want to find out.” Jostahim says, “Magic is what got us into this mess.”

“Without magic, we wouldn’t have survived the tornado.” Kekister says.

“That was a pretty strange event.” Jostahim says, “I suspect that the tornado was not natural.”

“You think Untoltelage created the tornado?” Hyethra asks.

“I think it is possible.” Jostahim, “But I also don’t know if magic is capable of doing stuff like that.”

“I think it’s kind of absurd to think that someone could conjure a tornado but also be captured by our military.” Hyethra says, “Guns aren’t too useful in a tornado.”

“We don’t know if he made the tornado.” Quastiffany says, “I’m sure we can use ask him when he wakes up.”

“When? I’d say if he wakes up.” Kekister says, “He may still be breathing, that doesn’t mean he won’t stop soon. I mean, look at him. I think his arm his broken. And his leg. And his other arm?”

“We need to go back home.” Hyethra says, “We are going to die out here. There is no food, no water, no houses. There isn’t anything but plants out here!”

The conversation soon dies out. No one has any idea of how to get back into the city. They would need Untoltelage’s help to get back in. There aren't any doors to enter. It’s just a wall surrounding the city.

So they wait for Untoltelage to wake up. They have questions they need to ask him. They can’t survive without him. They hate that they are dependent on him. They don’t know who he is. But they blame him for what happened. It seems that he is at least partially responsible for what happened. They can’t be sure that he destroyed the school, but he brought them out of the city with that flower teleportation.

“What if he doesn’t wake up.” Jostahim asks.

“He’ll be fine.” Quastiffany says, “You saw what he did. He’s got magic.”

“I wonder if magic can heal him.” Kekister says, “We don't know what it can do.”

“Even if he doesn’t heal, he is going to just die.” Hyethra says, “It’s just a bunch of broken limbs and a bunch of gashes. But he isn’t bleeding too much.”

“On the outside.” Jostahim says,  “What if he is bleeding on the inside?”

Kekister looks at the other three kids. “How do you all know so much about injury?” Kekister asks, “I know we didn’t learn anything like this in school.”

The others don’t answer him. That just leaves Kekister assuming that they must have had experience with terribly damaged bodies before. How else would they know who can survive or not. They must have seen similar injuries before. Or maybe they just really like to study medical treatment. Kekister thinks that either option is strange for kids that are only as old as him.