Monday, October 17, 2005

  

I'm at school! b00! like my new bg??? n_n lol
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Sunday, October 16, 2005

   Cosmo's awesome story from chapter 1-13!!!!

Hey guys, just wanted to say this! Read Cosmo's story!!! It's awesome by far! she spent a lot of time on it & best of all I'm in it along with other myotaku members! But if you don't want to read it now, just copy & paste it onto a document sheet & read it in your spare time! yay! Here it is so far, but the rest you have to go to her site for:

Chapter 1: First Memories
(I left out a foreshadowing here in the beginning and also at the end of the chapter. If you are interested in reading them, please pm me and I'll send it to you.)
“It’s time to practice archery,” a small, gentle voice twittered in Pen’s ear. The small boy closed the picture book with a slam and got to his feet. In the process, he came face-to-face with an elf-girl a year older than himself. She had golden hair that went to her waist, tied back with a red ribbon, and big, dark pink eyes. She was dressed in short, baggy pants and a t-shirt, over which a light armor vest covering her chest was pulled tight. Her feet were bare. In her hands she held two bows, the longer that she handed him once he had put the book back into the shelf he had been sitting against.
“Thanks,” he said. The girl smiled and ran out of the huge library of the Archives. Pen took a moment to adjust his own practicing armor before he followed.
The library was the oldest building of the Archives’ campus, and the most well known. What many of the elves living in Nydia did not know about the Archives was the system built behind it. Not only was it a historical archive as the name said, but it had become, over many generations, a hospital, a gathering place, a school, and an orphanage. Pen had lived all of his short life—seven years—in the care of the elvish wisemen and wisewomen of the Archives. The elf girl, who everyone called her Tory, was also one of the few kids who didn’t have a real home and had to live in the orphanage.
Archery and swordsmanship was taught in large field in front of the library. The rest of the class, consisting both of orphans and kids of the nearby village, was already gathered between the large-leafed trees. Pen took a place beside Tory.
In the group of young, pale-featured, longhaired elf-children, he stood out like red on gray.
Pen was not like the other kids. Basically all elves had light colored eyes and hair; both got lighter with age. Hair was always grown long since it was painful for them to cut it off. But Pen had black hair that got slightly lighter gray in the dark, and it was cut short by his own hand. His ears were barely pointed and he liked swords over bows, the opposite of most elves’ opinions.
As if his hair wasn’t already enough to set him apart from the others, his most strange feature was his eyes. They looked like black pits, and even the white was missing in them. Nearly invisible eyebrows did not help the fact that it didn’t look like he had eyes at all. They didn’t sparkle when light hit them—the darkness absorbed it.
The elves believed that his strange eyes were the cause of magic of some sort. Pen no longer let it bother him. He accepted that he was different.
“We’re going to practice shooting in the forest,” explained the archery wiseman who taught them. Instead of the practice armor of the children, he wore a plain cream-colored surcoat that covered chain mail. His bow was sleek and nearly as tall as himself.
It made Pen take a moment to look at his own little bow. All the elf-children were taught how to make theirs. He had searched for weeks in the forest until he had found wood of a quality that met his standards. He did his best to carve it, and he succeeded in smoothing out all the knots. In his opinion, his bow was the best over all of the class.
“Will you be my partner?” Tory asked him suddenly. Pen noticed that the wiseman had stopped talking and pinched his leg as punishment for not paying attention.
“Huh?”
“We’ve got to shoot as many dribs as we can with five arrows each. We can’t use an arrow again after it’s been shot. We need partners to go in the forest, so will you be my partner?”
“I’ll be your partner,” squawked a cocky nine-year-old from the village. He took Tory by the arm and dragged her away. Pen looked on until they disappeared in the nearby greenery that was the forest. There was no one left to partner up to.
“I guess you’re all alone, kiddo,” said the wiseman. He handed Pen five arrows and went off to the forest after his students.
The dark-haired boy ran between the trees as quickly as a rabbit. It felt good to be out of the sunlight and in the shadow where he belonged. The woods were full of the voices of the students as they went around, looking for signs of dribs. They were to Nydia what mice were to Earth—pests that were very numerous. They looked very much like birds with fur instead of feathers; their wings were like a bat’s. He knew a good place to find dribs.
Pen fitted his first arrow when he saw the leaves twitch above. Once the long rat’s tail of a drib dangled under the perch, he aimed and shot. With a squeal, the ugly creature fell to the ground a few feet from where Pen was standing. He picked it up and continued on to the place where he had last seen a colony of dribs.
It seemed that he was not the only one who knew of the colony. Tory and the village boy were there, too, looking up into the sky hopefully. When the older boy spotted Pen between the trees, he started laughing.
“The early bird gets the worm!” he bragged, holding up two dead dribs with arrows sticking out of them. Tory didn’t have any kills yet.
“Don’t be that way,” she whined at him, looking at Pen hopefully. He felt nothing from her pitiful gaze. Instead, he notched another arrow and aimed for a drib high up over her head. His arrow was sent flying with so much force behind it that it went all the way through the worthless life. But before he could pick it up, the village boy did.
“Thanks for the help,” he said, smiling an evil smile.
“Give it back. I shot it,” Pen ordered calmly. There was impatience stirring in him.
“You want it back? You’ll have to take it from my cold dead hands!”
Pen, who was short-tempered, dropped his bow, arrows, and drib to the ground. Fights between boys were common in Nydia, but Pen had never been in one. Here was his chance.
The village boy was slow and clumsy, but strong. Pen was strong too, but his waist and upper body was skinny and he lacked height. But Pen had the advantage of a sword at his side—the Archives supplied it to all of their kids. The other boy had only a dagger to keep him company. And Pen knew his swords; practicing with them was one of his favorite pastimes.
Pen drew the sword and the village boy his dagger. There was a time where Pen thought he remembered Tory’s voice begging him not to fight, but the feel of the blade drove him into auto-mode. He ran up to the older boy and knocked the dagger out of his hand by spinning around with his sword vertically before him. In mid-turn, when his back was to the boy, he flipped his sword horizontally. The next moment, the older boy lay on the ground in his own blood. Pen’s sword, having driven through both weak armor and flesh, stuck out of his chest.
He felt only a spark of pride as he pulled the blade out of the older boy, the life meaning nothing to him. Tory was screaming her lungs out, her face ruined by tears and fear. He didn’t seem to hear her; his mind was still on the great feeling of the sword as he turned away.
But even before he could put the sword back in its sheath, the archery wiseman came running to Tory’s side. When he saw the dead boy and Pen with the bloody blade in his hands, he reached for a red stone that hung from a chain around his neck. He stared into its depth for a minute—calling home for more wisepeople, Pen knew.
“Did you do this?” he asked with a shaky voice.
“Yes,” Pen answered, without regrets. The man then knelt down beside Tory and forced her to look into his eyes. He was using elvish magic to watch what the girl had just seen. After a minute, he straightened up again.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he asked.
“I taught myself.”
“I see. Well, you seem to have some skill, but you can’t just kill people because you don’t like them...”
“He took my kill and said that I would have to get it back from his cold dead hands.”
“Now, is that a good reason to kill someone?”
“What is a good reason then?”
“That’s not the point...”
The poor wiseman did not know what to say to the seven-year-old murderer.

Chapter 2: Future (part 1)
“It’s Tory’s birthday.”
“Happy birthday to her,” nine-year-old Pen remembered saying. The wisewoman pulled the book out of his hand and sat down in front of him.
“When’s your birthday, anyway? You’ve never celebrated it—why?”
“I don’t want to have people do things for me,” he answered. “It makes me feel—I don’t know... strange.”
“You’re weird.”
“Do I look normal?” he asked sadly.
The women sighed and fingered her golden hair that was draped loosely across her shoulders. “No, but I don’t think that’s why people stay away from you.”
“Why, then?”
She pulled up a chair and sat down. Pen waited without looking up. When he was younger, the wisepeople would act sweet to him and try to tickle some reaction out of him. It had embarrassed him before, in front of the other, normal boys. Now, he hated them deeply for it. Very, very deeply, for wanting to make him stupid like the other kids. He hoped that this wasn’t another of those lectures—he wasn’t sure if he would be able to keep his temper in check.
“First, you have to tell me why you don’t hang out and play like the other kids,” the elf-woman said gently. He hated that tone.
“Because they’re stupid,” he spat. “Dumb, ignorant, foolish, and stupid. I don’t want to be like them.”
“But you do,” she said. That hadn’t been what he had expected. When she didn’t say anything else, he looked up and met her eyes.
“No.”
“Yes. You see, the reason that you hate them is because they have friends and friendships that you don’t have. You want to be like them, but you didn’t know how. I don’t know why, but you never knew how to make friends.”
Pen thought for a minute, letting the words wash up against the coast of his stubborn mind. He knew that couldn’t be true... but her words still echoed in his ears. He refused to let her be right.
“The reason I’m telling you about Tory’s birthday,” the wisewoman continued, “is because she used to like you. She used to respect and admire you, but you never returned the favor...”
“She never liked me,” he said, making sure to keep his voice strong. “Now, she’s only afraid of me.”
“Tory still likes you,” she replied, nearly interrupting him. There was anger in her voice that Pen had never detected before in the wisepeople. It seemed to tug on him, deep inside. “She likes you but you won’t let her in. You are a stubborn soul.”
“I don’t care. I care about me and my future—it is Tory’s own fault if she wishes to mess up hers.”
“Being a child doesn’t mess up your future!” the wisewoman had worked herself up to a fury. She jumped to her feet. “The other reason I’ve come to see you is because of this,” she threw an envelope at him. “I hope it makes you happy.” She took a deep breath to try and calm herself. “I worry about you.”
“Don’t waste your energy on me. I’m nobody to you—I can feel it.”
The wisewoman looked down on him with anger and pity-filled eyes. “I let Tory and her friends visit the city for her birthday. You can go if you want.”
“I don’t.”
“Please. Tory wants you to be there. Don’t ruin her birthday, Penumbra.” With the whisper of her white gown across the polished wood floors of the library, the elf left the dark-natured boy alone.
Chapter 2: Future (part 2)
It took a moment for Pen to find himself again, and to lock his mind away. He got to his feet and drew his beloved sword, watching the light play around on its smooth silver surface. Then he threw the envelope up in the air and broke the seal on his blade. Not bothering to sheath it, he bend down and picked up the paper with his free hand. He sat back down, balancing the sword across his knees.
Dear Penumbra of the Archives,
You have been invited to University, Center of Learning for Arts and Knowledge. Our school supports up to nine years of continuous education. By attending our school, you will be able to continue to the following places depending on your abilities and interests:
· Havoc, School of Combative Arts. Students must be invited to the auditions to attend, and the King assesses who will enter. Students travel alongside an authorized warrior for four years, and will be involved in mandatory quests to test their skill. Grades consist of Passing or Failing. Passing students will gain the attention of the public and are entrusted to dangerous missions on the order of the King. Failing students can be excluded from the program at any time and cannot re-enter.
The rest of the paper had been blanked out by magic, save for a curly elvish signature at the very bottom. It seemed that someone had already guessed that Havoc was the only thing Pen wanted to do when he grew up, and that he would get in. He was pleased.
The normal age for attending University was ten—Tory’s age. Pen had sought a way to get in one year early; a feat accomplished only one time before, by an angel named Predicus. The first time the dark-haired boy had heard of him was a year ago when he had eavesdropped on a pair of elvish travelers from Perol. They had gone to the Archives’ library to read up on dragons. Sitting in the shadows between the shelves as he liked to do, he heard them converse quietly if anyone would ever be able to save a certain city from the siege of a brass dragon. The man sent to settle the problem had been Predicus, fresh out of Havoc at the age of eighteen. Only two days later, the newspaper displayed a large painting of a fierce-looking angel, with the headlines “Havoc Graduate saves City from Siege.”
In the article was everything about Predicus. He was an orphan who was found by Havoc, wandering the mountains just off the coast of the northern city of Senlae. He spent a year growing up in the angelic version of the Archives, called Crypt. The only thing he said about his past before he was discovered was that his parents had died protecting the town from a raid. Despite his unknown history, he was a popular and highly skilled kid in ways nobody had seen before. At age 8, Predicus proved himself by protecting a girl from being murdered by an angry gaerfalcon. His popularity only grew after that, and the story got around until University decided to let him enter a year early. He did well and joined Havoc afterwards.
From the moment he first read that article, Predicus became Pen’s idol. The dark-haired boy had cut it out, stopped the magic that made it change day by day, and kept it in his special hiding spot in the library.
He had spent a lot of time looking at the painting of his hero, wishing deeply that he could follow in his footsteps. In the picture, Predicus had determined-looking, shining gray eyes framed by yellow-green bangs. The muscles in his arms looked like the kind that was much stronger than they appeared at first glance.
Pen got to his feet again, with sword in hand, and made his way over to a small wooden bookshelf just behind the chair. He stuck the letter into the crack between the wall and the shelf, beside the old article, with the rest of his precious papers.
Now what? Should he follow the wisewoman’s request to go to the city with Tory? He held the sword up and watched the light play on it. Something in him pleaded that he wouldn’t ruin her birthday because of his future. It was already planned out now anyway.
He didn’t want to go with Tory and her friends, but he did want to leave the Archives. In the end, Pen sheathed his sword and strode out of the high-domed library with the intention of going to the city.
The wisewoman was just outside the doors, along with an aged, white-haired wiseman. Tory and her stupid, giggly friends were gathered around them. When they saw Pen, the girls squeaked and scampered away; the boys froze. The wisewoman gave him a questioning but harsh look.
“I’ll go to the city,” Pen told her, “as long as I can go my own way when we get there.” The elf-woman exchanged a glance with her white-haired colleague.
“Alright,” she said, “but you must join up with us before we leave.” Pen nodded. She yelled to the girls to go ahead along the forest path, which they did with a great deal of noise and stumbling, pursued by the boys. Pen followed them, and behind him were the two wisepeople. He couldn’t help but sigh at the children’s silliness.
The forest was an untamed and magical place. It stretched across all of Anatol, and much of it was unexplored. Before the war, it was said that much more of the land had been inhabited, but many of the villages were never recovered from the wilderness. There were plenty of elvish allies in the woods, like the unicorns, pegasus, and several smaller kinds of dragons. It was a place were pests could easily become uncontrolled—dribs among them.
And then there was the least pleasant side of the story. Raiding parties were widespread, as were groups of criminals, mercenaries, and the similar. There was much talk about Gypsy-elves; the survivors of lost villages turned wild. Wizard-elves gone crazy was also a large threat. To top it off, there were the dangerous monsters—chimera, sphinxes, and griffins, among others. The beautiful Buto were also said to exist in the deepest parts of the forest, although they were rarely seen by elves or angels alike.
Pen walked along, staying in the shadow of the path in the attempt to stay out of the sight of Tory and her group of friends. Even if he could not see them, he could hear them clearly. Noisy idiots, Pen thought. It ought to kill them some day.
Chapter 2: Future (part 3)
The city of Quont-Ein was the capital of Anatol.
It was a huge clearing in the forest, cut cleanly out of the woods by gigantic, sloping, pale blue crystal cliffs that descended down to the city. Standing on the top, Pen could see all across the expansive blue-crystal buildings, over the sparkling golden castle, and out to the Anster Sea.
“Isn’t it a lovely view?” he heard the wisewoman say. “No matter how often I go, I am always impressed.”
“Yes,” the old wiseman replied in a quiet, croaky voice. “We are very lucky that the war did not reach it. I don’t believe that there would have been any way to replace it had it been destroyed.”
“Will we be descending now?” Pen asked roughly. Some of Tory’s folks were so scared by his tone of voice that they were silenced. Pleased, he shot them a dark look with his even darker eyes.
Usually he wouldn’t be so impatient, but there was something about looking out over Quont-Ein that made him very uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the brightness of the mirror-like crystal reflecting up to them that made him hate light even more.
“We will meet up here in three hours,” the wisewoman told him. “Until then, go where you please. We will be with the group unless we decide to split up.”
Pen nodded, stepped off the cliff, and slid straight down the blue crystal. Most people preferred to sit for this, but Pen had practice and his soft leather shoes made for a smooth ride. All he had to do watch his balance and stay in control of his feet.
It was a fun way to get into the city, but Pen did not enjoy it. The crystal was blindingly bright from the suns, without any shade until the bottom. He felt his anger growing.
After what seemed like forever, the crystal started to slope straight, and finally up slightly. Pen slowed himself with a hand just before he reached the stretch of green that divided the cliffs and the city, jumping to a full stop on the grass.
Above him, he could hear the joyful screeches of the rest of the group as they, too, slid down. It stirred his anger even more, leaving him feeling like a bomb about to explode. He trotted away into the nearest alley, where the rolling, continuous sound of many voices covered up everything else.
The city was the busiest this time of day. Even in these small alleys, farthest away from the castle, the streets were bustling with people. Elves and angels from all over Nydia came here to trade, to meet people, or to learn new skills or information. Pen liked it best in the smitheries and weapon stores, where many warriors and angels came. He stood out less among other short- and dark-haired people.
The alley he had stumbled into was dedicated mostly to healing. Staring through the clear shop windows—carved from the same crystal as the rest of the city—were mostly middle-aged elves. Some of them noticed him as he passed, even pointing him out to their friends. Pen hurried on to the North Side, where his favorite sword shop was located.
A little bell tinkled as he entered into the musky darkness of the store.

Chapter 2: Future (part 4)
The room into which he had entered was the store room. It was not a small space, but it felt small due to the many high racks of swords that lined the walls. There was a sword of nearly every shape and color imaginable, and each was sharp and kept spotlessly clean.
There were four angels in the shop. One, with black and blue wings, was browsing through the racks in the left corner. Two brunette angel boys who looked to be in their late teens were marveling over a dagger on the display table in the center of the room. Pen navigated silently around them and went to the counter.
“Is Danesan in the back?” he asked the aging lady angel at the counter. She looked at him over the newspaper with brown, bespectacled eyes.
“Oh Pen, it’s you!” said a familiar voice from behind a curtain-covered doorway. “Come right in!”
The woman disappeared behind the news again. Pen stepped past the counter and went through the door.
He found himself in a smithy. To his left was a huge, steaming oven made of crystal that sent a flickering light throughout the whole room. On the wall opposite were still more swords; the newer or more valuable ones, or old swords that needed to be fixed.
“I just traded a new sword from a merchant coming from Goswen Port,” Danesan told him. Pen found him standing, as usual, among tools of the trade near the oven. He was a very muscular, brown-haired angel who never wore a shirt, but who never needed one because he spent the majority of his time in the smithy. “He said that a weaver had given it to him just before he left Murneske. Apparently she didn’t have a clue what to do with the thing. It needed a bit of fixing up, but it’s a very good blade.”
Danesan put down his hammer and went to the sword rack. He perused for only a second before he found the one he was looking for, lifting the sheathed sword down from one of the higher shelves.
“It didn’t even have a scabbard when I got it,” he said, pulling the sword out and letting his eyes run over the silver blade lovingly. “Come have a look.”
Pen came to the angel’s side and took the sword from him. “It’s very light,” he noted, feeling its balance in his hand.
“Yes,” Danesan agreed. “The blade is a work of art. It seems to be mostly platinum and nickel-iron in the center, so it’s very durable, but it also has some gold and silver in the skin, so it’ll be good with the use of magic. And thanks to that gold, it’s more likely to bend than scatter. It was a bit of a pain to work with, though.”
“The handle is really comfortable, too,” Pen said. He held it closer to the light so he could see it better. “Is that dragon wood?”
“Yes. Only the dragons have that kind of tough pine. I have to say, though, the handle is a bit on the small side for most adult hands.”
“Hmm.” Danesan could tell that he was impressed, even though it didn’t show on his face. The angel smiled knowledgably down at him for a moment, before returning to his workshop. Pen started to swing the sword, getting a feel for the power that only a good weapon could emit.
Chapter 2: Future (part 5)
“So, what about you?” Danesan asked. Normally, Pen wouldn’t answer such a question, but the angel was an exception. He respected the wise smith, so it was one of the few things he could do to show his gratitude.
“I’m going to University this year,” he said, tossing the sword back and forth between his hands.
“You got invited early, huh?” Danesan commented, bent over his work and only looking up briefly to meet Pen’s gaze. “I had suspected you would. Talent like yours is in high demand. I take it you’re going to Havoc after?”
“Yes.”
The angel sighed, remembering his own past. “Yeah, I wanted to do Havoc when I was your age, too. But I was never selected, and so I went through University Accelerated instead, where I got hooked on making swords.” He shrugged. “I guess I was never a real fighter anyway. It was the swords I loved.”
“Is it really that hard to get chosen to be tested for Havoc?”
“Oh yeah,” Danesan’s tone became more serious. “It’s very hard, and it’s even harder to actually get picked to be in it. I hear that there’s only about two or three new warriors that can take students every year, which means there’s twelve kids that will get picked. And, rumor has it; only half of the people who get picked actually end up graduating. The rest fail or even die. Havoc is for the seriously elite.”
“I’ll make it!” Pen exclaimed, releasing all of his pent-up, angry energy into the sword, driving it into the wooden floor. More softly, he added, “I have to.”
Danesan paused from his work, put down his tools again, and came over to Pen so he was facing him. Pen had let go of the sword, and was staring with so much concentration at the blade that he hadn’t even noticed that the angel had moved. I have to make it, he thought over and over. I have to make it. It’s the only thing I’ve got. I have to make it!
“You’ll never make it to Havoc without a good sword,” Danesan said, breaking the silence. He pulled it out of floor, took the scabbard from the shelf where he had left it, and put the sword back in. Then, he held it out to Pen.
“What?”
“Here. It’s yours.”
Pen’s empty eyes met Danesan’s smiling ones. Suddenly, they were filled with something other than darkness.
“But… but I have nothing to trade. The Archives swords…”
“No. I want you to have it. It’s a gift from me to you.”
Pen took the sword. “Why are you doing this? This is a seriously good sword. You shouldn’t just give it away because I’ve known you for a couple of years.”
Danesan had returned to his workshop and had his back to Pen.
“The caravan to Goswen Port for the boats to University leaves in a week. I don’t reckon I’ll be seeing you again before then. This is good-bye for now.” The angel flicked his wings.
Pen hesitated, wanting to say something, but he couldn’t find the right words. After a moment of silence, he strode over to door and pulled back the curtain, intending to leave. But just before he stepped out of the smithy, he heard Danesan speak.
“Boy, you’ll be going places I could never have dreamed of.”

Chapter 3: The Dragon (part 1)
Outside, while he was walking along the busy streets, Pen stripped off his belt and slid the new scabbard and sword on top of the one he already had by a metal ring. When he put the belt back on, with both swords on his left side, he felt rather strange. It was nice knowing that he finally had a real, great sword to work with. But there was another weight on him: Danesan.
Why did he do that? Pen asked himself, resting his left hand on the comfortable wooden pommel, so that the other end of the too-long weapon wouldn’t drag on the ground. Why did he just give me the best sword in the house? I never did anything for him! How did I deserve it? What does he want from me?
“Excuse me—“ started a lovely elf selling red jam from a basket.
“Leave me alone,” he retorted, walking right past her. She looked rejected, but did not try again.
According to his watch—a mixture of magic and wheels that he still could not comprehend—he still had a little more than two hours to spend in the city. But with his new sword at his side, he wanted to do nothing more but go back to the Archives and try it out in the training yard. After pacing through another alley, deep in thought, he decided that he would go look for one of the wisepeople and ask for permission to head home. He didn’t know if he would be allowed to, but it was worth the try.
From what he had heard from the kids on the way to the city, they were going swimming in the Anster. The water from the lake was always warm, thanks to the power of the two suns on the shallow pool, which made it a very popular resort. Many people also took advantage of the high crystal cliffs, using them as natural slides or—farther away from the city, where the water was deeper—for cliff diving.
The beach was on the south side of Quont-Ein, just below the port and extending past the city’s crystal bounds, where the cliffs turned to face the water. It was a long walk away from where the weapon stores were.
Sighing, Pen decided that it would be quickest to cut directly through the middle of the city, even if it meant facing the bustle of the castle. It was a far enough walk without taking any side alleys to try to avoid people.
The closer he got to the high, golden walls, the closer the crowds got, until Pen found it very difficult to move at all. Discarding his initial plan, he struggled out of the river of people and cut through a bookstore to the nearly empty alley on the other side.
But the reason it was so empty was because it was a dead-end against the castle wall. Gritting his teeth in frustration, Pen turned to go in the opposite direction. But just as he turned his back, he heard a little voice behind him.
“Help!” it squeaked; the sound made quiet by something in the way. Pen turned back to wall, where he noticed a stack of book-crates in the corner. “Sir, help me out!”
Pen considered ignoring it, like he usually did for everything else, but it wasn’t normal for something in a crate to talk. After a moment of hesitation, he spoke up. “Where are you?”
“The second from the top on the right!” the voice told him urgently. Checking that there was nobody else in the alley, Pen went to the stack and knocked on the rightmost boxes. From the sound of it, the top one was still full of books, but the one beneath sounded hollow. Making sure a second time that he wasn’t being watched, he quietly lifted the heavy box off the stack. When he lifted the hollow one, the little voice exclaimed a quiet “Yes!”
The box was nailed shut, but the nails on the bottom side were rusted. Pen turned it on its side, to some squeaks by the inhabitant, and drew both of his swords. “Watch out,” he told whoever was inside, and started to slowly push his old sword inside the gap between the side and the bottom planks of the box. The nails squealed as if in pain as the gap grew wider.
“Almost there,” Pen grumbled to himself. He drove the new sword in beside his old one, then pushed both of them in opposite directions. The wood screamed again as the bottom peeled and broke away.
Out flew a pseudodragon. She was still young, big enough to fit in Pen’s hand, and she was still only a rust color, instead of the brown-red pattern of an adult. Stretching her little wings out, she landed on Pen’s shoulder.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing!” yelled the voice of the bookstore’s owner, a blue-haired elf. He looked enraged.
Pen did not waste a second; he ran for it, sheathing his swords as he went. He slid into the nearest branching alley, elbowing aside a group of teen-aged angels. Trying to dodge as many people as possible, he ran through the maze of streets until he had lost track of where he was.
But he wasn’t paying attention to where he running, anyway. His mind was on the little dragon that was hanging on to his shoulder. Pseudodragons were some of the only dragons that lived in Anatol’s forests; he had seen them before. However, the only time you saw the mini-dragons in cities, in close association to angels and elves, was when they were with Havoc groups or others close to the king. Their telecommunication skills were used for communicating over distance. So why was a pseudodragon being kept in a box? They were creatures honored for their skill, and nearly everyone respected them because of it. They were not pets.
Chapter 3: The Dragon (part 2)
Pen slowed down, convinced that he wasn’t being followed. “How did you get stuck in there?” he asked the smart little creature.
“I was going to the castle,” she explained. “I had volunteered to be a king’s dragon, so they put me in that box to ship me down from Sersaalla to here, but along the way, my box got mistaken for a book box.”
“You came from Sersaalla?” Pen was impressed. The capital of the dragons was almost as far north as University was far south. It was a long trip. It also meant that he had a pretty valuable dragon on his back. “How long have you been in that box?”
“Actually, about three weeks.” She yawned. “I slept most of the time, though.”
“What do you want me to do?” Pen questioned. All thoughts about going home had left him.
“Bring me to the castle.”
“What?!” After splitting a box and running through half of the alleys of Quont-Ein, Pen had thought that there was nothing worse still left for him to do for the creature. Yet, as he thought about it, it was the only thing he could do. She was very important to the king. “Okay, fine!” he grumbled. “But I’d better be getting something out of this!” He turned back to the golden walls.
“What’s your name, anyway?” the dragon asked him. Pen could see her brown beady eyes watching him from the corner of his eyes. He could also feel the eyes of many angels and elves as he passed them. It was definitely something you didn’t see everyday: a black-haired, black-eyed, nine-year-old elf with two swords and a pseudodragon on his shoulder. Well, there’s a first for everything, he thought carelessly.
“It’s common courtesy to state your own name first,” he retorted. He was starting to loose his patience with this little critter.
“My name is Sasheeta,” she said.
“I’m Pen.”
“Just Pen?”
“Just Pen.”
“You’re lying. I can tell.”
“My name is Penumbra!” he hissed, flinching as he said it. He didn’t know why, but he hated saying his full name, as if it told him about something about himself or his past that he didn’t want to recall.
The dragon said nothing for a long time.

Chapter 4: The Sword Song (part 1)
There was only one way to get into the golden castle: the front gate. It was not quite as busy as the rest of the city, the crowds breaking up just in front of the guarded arc. The plain wooden doors were always propped slightly open during the day, so that whoever had permission could come and go as necessary.
Pen tried not to look too awkward stepping up to the armed guard-elf at the gate. “Sir,” he started, meeting the man’s light-blue eyes, “I found this pseudodragon.”
The guard looked more interested in Pen’s black eyes than Sasheeta. “I can’t let you bring her up without an escort,” he said.
“Will you take her up for me?”
“I can’t leave my post—“
“Sir, I’ll take him up.”
Both Pen and the guard were surprised. Pen was so caught off guard that there was someone behind him that he spun around, his hand automatically finding the hilt of his sword.
The speaker was a tall, well-built angel who looked to be in his early twenties. He had short, light-brown hair and gray, brown-freckled wings. His eyes were kind and brilliant green in color. The most surprising feature, however, was the reddish metal armor that he wore on top of his plain, gray outfit. The bottom part of it was like a wide belt, held in place by chain mail of the same strange red material. A sword hung from his side.
Pen didn’t know much about metals or armor, but he did know one thing: there was only one place where you got red armor. Havoc.
“As you wish, Panda,” the guard said, moving to the side to let them in. The angel passed Pen and entered the castle.
“Come on!” he urged, turning around to wave Pen in. Overcoming his shock, the boy followed. Panda led the way up the slope around the edge of the wall, up to the stronghold.
“We’ve been looking for a pseudodragon for quite some time,” Panda said as they walked up the gravel path. “There was a Havoc group that left here a while ago with mine.”
“You had a pseudodragon?” Sasheeta asked him, walking across Pen’s shoulders so that she could get a better view of Panda.
“Oh, yeah!” the angel smiled at her kindly. “He was a very nice fella. I was quite fond of him, myself.”
“Why did you give him up?”
“The Havoc team was penned up here for a week before they gave up on trying to find their dragon,” he explained. “Since I was assigned to stay in the city, at least for a while, I had no real need for mine, so I decided that he would be put to better use with Havoc.”
“Does that mean that I will be your dragon, now?” Sasheeta looked excited.
Panda laughed. “I’m not so sure about that. The king is pretty careful in how he uses you guys. I don’t think I’ll be assigned another dragon until I leave the city.”
“Sir, you’re a graduate of Havoc, right?” Pen spoke, not having the courage to look at the person he was talking to. Panda looked surprised.
“Why… yeah. Why do you ask?”
“I want to join Havoc, too.”
“I see.” There was a moment of silence. “What’s your name?”
Pen gritted his teeth. He hated that question. “Pen,” he answered.
“Penumbra of the Archives, huh?” He finally looked up and met Panda’s green eyes. The angel was smiling. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Where—“
“You’re the kid that they’re letting into University a year early,” he continued. “That’s quite an achievement. You really thought I wouldn’t know about that?”
“No—“
“Good,” Panda was still smiling. “You’ll never get into Havoc without ever having crossed swords with someone worth your time.” He locked eyes with Pen again. “So, what about it? Would you like to spar with me?”
“You—“ Pen was speechless. “You—you’re serious?”
“Of course I am!” Panda chuckled. “Let’s just drop off the dragon, and then I’ll show you where we can have a little match!”
Pen didn’t know what to say. He dropped his eyes to the ground and was silent the whole way to the castle’s huge wooden front doors.
Chapter 4: The Sword Song (part 2)
Another guard greeted them there, letting them pass through the open doors without any more than a bow. Inside was a bright, golden hall that connected the entrance to the rest of the castle with huge, marble stairs. Although it was definitely breathtaking, Pen was slightly disappointed. He had expected the inside of the castle to be a little more fancy. Instead, everything looked very practical and not overdone at all.
“Miss—“
“Sasheeta,” the dragon put in.
“Yes. Come with me for a moment.” Sasheeta flew off Pen’s shoulder and landed skillfully on Panda’s. Even after she had left, Pen thought he could still feel those little pointy claws against his skin.
Panda ran half-way up their nearest stairway to the left. “Contra” he yelled. “I’ve got a dragon for ya!”
“The missing one?” another voice yelled from above.
“Yeah, that’s the one.” Pen heard the footsteps of someone running down, but he didn’t see whom it was.
“Throw her up!!”
Sasheeta squeaked as Panda rolled her up neatly into a ball with his hand. “Catch!” he yelled, tossing her gently up the remaining steps to whoever was there to catch her. Pen heard her squeal in delight a story above.
“Well, got that taken care of!” Panda rubbed his hands together. “Let’s go!”
Panda led Pen down a smaller flight of stairs and out a well-worn wooden door. It opened to a stretch of green, like a courtyard, with a small covered area where there was a shelf filled with all kinds of training equipment. Pen waited as the angel dug through a pile of unorganized armor, all of it made unique by assortments of dents and scratches.
“We don’t usually have people as little as you come here to train,” Panda said as he searched. “But we might just… ah.” From the back of one of the bottom shelves, he pulled out a dusty, forgotten-looking pair of child chest plates. The leather straps keeping it together were stiff and dry from age. “I guess that this will have to do.”
Pen took the armor and slipped it over his head. It was surprisingly light, and it fit well. Before he pulled the sides tight, he took off his belt and balanced his two swords against the wall.
“By the way, I want an even fight,” Panda added, watching him. “So choose a sword and stick with it.”
The boy nodded. He hadn’t planned on using both his swords; he didn’t have much practice with using two at once. Besides, he wanted to test out his new one first. He hopped in place a couple times to test that his armor was secure, then turned to his swords and drew out the longer. Simultaneously, he kicked off his leather shoes. They were too slippery against the grass.
Panda had backed away, so that he was standing away from the walls. As Pen approached him, he drew his sword.
Chapter 4: The Sword Song (part 3)
Following the tradition, Pen faced Panda, placed the flat part of his sword against his left shoulder, and bowed. Panda did the same. There was a moment of mutual silence.
Panda struck out first. Pen had been expecting it; although it was usual in practice sparring to rise before making a move, many, more advanced students were known to make use the starting position to try to catch their opponent off guard. He flipped his sword up and blocked Panda’s.
A sweet sound filled the air as the blades collided. Pen could feel as the handle absorbed the shock of the blow. Since he was used to his school sword, he had been expecting a much harder hit. He wasn’t even sure if he would have been able to hold against the blow if he had been using it.
Panda’s green eyes almost seemed to glow with a hidden smile. The sword sang as Pen slid it rapidly around his and took a swipe at his legs, forcing the angel to take a step back. When he did not strike in response, Pen got up and took a few steps back, also.
“I have to admit,” Panda said. “You’re good. Let’s go faster.”
This time, when he attacked, it was rapid. He struck at Pen, forcing him to block, then spun around and struck from the other side. The boy had to duck to evade his attack. Panda then stabbed down on him. Pen just barely managed to roll to the side before the sword grazed the grass beside him.
He had hoped that the angel would have gotten his sword stuck in the ground, but that would have been the foolish mistake of a beginner. Panda continued to take swipes at him while he struggled to stand up; Pen blocked him, taking a step back with every blow. His sword rang almost constantly, filling the air with it’s own music. He could feel it vibrating in his hand, as if shivering like a living thing, sharing its energy…
“You shouldn’t always back down,” Panda said, still attacking as he spoke. “Take advantage of my weakness when I strike!”
Pen knew what his weakness was: his sword couldn’t be in two places at once. At the next strike, he ducked and took another swipe at the angel’s legs. This time, it was Panda who had to step back. His green eyes were smiling.
“You need to be fluid!” Panda told him. “Bend around the attack!” He spun around; Pen wasn’t able to tell where he would be coming from, so he took a step back, waiting for the right time. When he saw the flash of the sword on the right, he met it. For the split second that they were caught in a lock, he slid right up to Panda, stuck his left foot behind Panda’s left, and pushed the angel back with his free elbow. Caught by surprise and off balance, Panda tripped and fell backwards.
Pen was on him immediately, and the angel barely managed to raise his sword to block his attack. With a flick of his wrist, the boy broke the song, sending Panda’s sword spinning away to the side. It stuck in the ground, quivering.
Panda hit the ground with his hand to admit defeat. Pen straightened up.
“You’re a great fighter,” Panda told him, sitting up. He sighed. “Havoc can teach you many things, but nothing beats good old talent.”
“You were going easy on me,” Pen said. It wasn’t a question.
“I didn’t want to beat you. It wasn’t the point.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wanted to see what you would do.” He got to his feet. “It wasn’t all about the fight. It was just about getting to know you. My Havoc teacher once told me that crossing swords with someone was one of the best ways to connect to another person’s head. I’ve learned a lot about you.”
“Like what?” Pen didn’t like what he was hearing. He stuck his sword in the ground and took off the training armor.
Panda’s eyes met his. “Havoc will not be what you expect. That’s all I can tell you.”
Pen didn’t answer. He put the armor back on the shelf, slipped on his shoes, and gathered his belt again. When he turned back to the angel, he saw that he was holding his new sword.
“Where did you get this?” he asked, handing it back.
“It was given to me.”
“She’s as lovely as her name. And she sure knows how to sing.”
For the first time, Pen noticed that the sword had something written along the top of the handle. There were two words: Sing Lucaya.
Chapter 5: The Eyes of a Hero (part 1)
Sing Lucaya.
Pen turned the two words around in his head as Panda led him back out the stronghold. Lucaya was the name of the sword, there was no question about that, but why the “sing?” Since Danesan hadn’t told him about it, Pen assumed that either he didn’t know about it, or he didn’t know what it meant either. He was sure that the swordsmith would have told him if he did. Pen decided that he would have to check the Archives’ library to see if there was anything about swords marked with two words.
“Do you want a lift somewhere?” Panda asked him, perhaps wanting to break the silence. Brought back to the real world, Pen took a look at his watch. He had five minutes to make it up the cliffs to meet Tory’s group. If he went by foot, there was no way he would get there on time.
“Well,” Pen hesitated. He never liked asking for favors, but, in this case, he had little choice.
“Okay,” Panda didn’t even wait for him to say more. “Keion hasn’t gotten a chance to do anything in a long time. He’s been slacking off a little.” He pulled a little green stone on a chain out of a hidden pocket inside his belt and held it up to sky, so that the light of both suns, starting to set in opposite parts of the horizon, hit it and made it glow.
Only a minute later, there was a great gust of air from above and huge, feathered wings blocked the suns out. A gray-and-brown griffon dropped down beside Panda, the green stones on his collars answering the call of his. His proud orange eyes gazed sharply upon Pen.
“Jump on!” Panda told him. Keion crouched so that the boy could climb on his back. When he was sitting comfortable in front of the wings, his owner gave him a friendly scratch behind an ear and told him to drop Pen off at the top of the city cliffs. The griffon snorted in understanding before jumping up into the air.
“See you later!” Panda yelled as the creature disappeared over the castle’s golden wall.
Pen had never been off the ground; he held on to Keion’s collar in wonder as the city dropped away beneath him. He could see all the alleys and the houses perfectly laid out in small, everything looking like in slow motion from the height. The griffon’s giant patterned wings worked gently, lifting him up over everything, gathering the air and letting it push them to the top of the glittering crystal cliffs.
The boy could see, in the distance, as the wiseman airlifted Tory’s group up with magic. He pointed to them, showing Keion where he should land. The griffon flew gracefully toward the forest, landing carefully on a small plot of grass just inside the tree line, where the group couldn’t see them.
Pen slid off Keion and thanked him. The griffon snorted in response, folded up his wings, and trotted away into the wilderness. Once he had made sure that everything was still in place, Pen followed the edge of the cliff to where Tory’s group was waiting.
The wisewoman looked like she was in a better mood than before. She was talking cheerfully with the wiseman when she saw Pen approaching.
“Okay, we can start going now!” she announced. The wet-haired children, worn out from swimming, did not run ahead as before, and their talking was much less noisy and irritating. Pen was too lost in thought to care about how much he hated them.
His fingers found the letters on his sword. Sing Lucaya. While he walked, he started to feel like there was something out of place… something missing…

They could see the lights of the library ahead in the growing darkness when it hit him. The group of kids ran and the wisepeople ran the rest of the way to the building, leaving Pen standing in the shadows.
Tory wasn’t among them.
In the haste of returning home before dark, she must have been left behind. A strange feeling struck Pen as the truth sank in.
The forest was a dangerous place at night. Not even the city was always safe. There was no time.
As quickly as he could, he threw off his slippery shoes and his belt. He took his school sword off and put it by his shoes; it was too much to take. While he put Lucaya back on, he started to run.
The darkness began to close in on him. He enjoyed it. In the dark, he felt whole. He let it wash over him, sharing his energy as it shared its.
Faster, he thought. Faster.
The shadows swallowed him.
For a moment, he felt disoriented. Pen struggled to find his feet again, and when he did, he could already see the lights of city in front of him. He sprang off the beach side of the cliff, sliding down on his back until it threw him out on the sand.
The blue light of the moon shimmered on the water. Pen ran along the beach, looking for that golden hair that he used to know so well…
In the quiet, as he ran, he thought he heard a strange sound. He stopped, straining his ears against the water of the lake and murmur of voices from the city. It was coming from the little wooden house that served as changing rooms. With a hand on his sword, he approached it.
Just inside the dark, door-less building sat Tory, her back against the wall, weeping.
“Tory!” Pen said quietly. Started, she squeaked and scuttled into the corner, her pink eyes big in the darkness as she tried to make out the shape in the doorway.
“Who… who’s there?”
“It’s me, Tory!”
Her weeping ceased. “P-Pen?” she stuttered. “You… you came for me?”
“Yes,” he said impatiently. “Now, let’s get home before it gets even darker.”
Tory stumbled to her feet, feeling her way to the shadows. As soon as she had made it out, her breath seemed to come easier. Her eyes wandered out to the glittering lake. “Beautiful,” she breathed.
Chapter 5: The Eyes of a Hero (part 2)
Pen pinched himself. Neither of them were trained enough to use airlift. They would have to go all the way to the south side of the city in order to use the stairs that led up the cliffs. They didn’t have time for that!
He closed his eyes. If only they could call Keion the way Panda had, if only he answered to someone other than his master…
Wing beats sounded overhead. Pen tore his eyes open and wouldn’t believe what he saw: Keion. The griffon circled down to them, his orange eyes shining in the light of the moon.
Tory gasped and grabbed Pen’s hand. “What is that?” she gasped.
“Shh.”
The griffon landed in the sand before them. Pen carefully approached him. “Will you give us a ride to the top of the cliff?”
He snorted and sank to his knees, allowing the boy to get on his back. After a moment of hesitation, Tory also came to Keion’s side and allowed herself to be helped up. She wrapped her hands around Pen’s middle tightly.
Keion slowly got to his feet, giving them time to find their balance, before he jumped to the winds. Up the cliffs he flew. Pen heard Tory gasp as they spiraled higher and higher, until the griffon settled down on the trail that would take them home.
“Thank you,” Pen told him gratefully as he slid off his back. The griffon bowed his head, and then took to the skies again.
Tory did not say anything as they hurried along the dark path. Sounds of the nightlife of the forest met their ears; Tory inched closer and closer to Pen’s back in fear, until she was almost touching him.
After several minutes, Pen got the feeling that they were being watched. Acting on instinct, he stopped, putting out a hand to make sure that Tory stopped, too.
Two eyes shone at them out of the darkness in the path front of them. A moment later, Pen could make out its whole body.
It was a female griffin—a wild griffon. Being a night griffin, she was bigger than Keion, and more powerful. Tory’s breath became fast and tense behind Pen. For a moment, the griffin and the kids stared at one another. Then, she charged.
Quick as lightning, Pen shoved Tory off of the path, where she fell roughly against a tree. Having her out of the way, he drew Lucaya and struck at the griffin, cutting her diagonally across her feather-covered head. She howled in agony, blood dripping from the gaping wound.
Thoroughly angered, she turned to face Pen again, growling. The next time she attacked, she pounced. Her heavy paws wrestled him to the ground and her beaked snapped wildly. Pen was drowned between the path and her fur. He slashed madly with his sword, cutting everything in front of him.
It was a split second where the wild creature snarled with rage when Pen found her neck. Gathering all of his strength, he freed himself from the paw holding him down.
“Die!” he cried as he drove Lucaya into the griffin’s neck above him. It went all the way through, to the hilt; as she thrashed against it, a flood of warm blood poured down on him, covering every last inch of his body.
The griffin’s howl was cut short. Her body twitched one last time before it became limp above Pen. He kicked the creature's lifeless head away while he pulled his sword out. Her entire body fell to the ground with a dull thud.
Pen stood by the carcass of the slain creature, surveying his work, before he turned back to Tory.
She had been watching his courageous fight from behind a tree. She had been admiring him… but what she saw now was the most horrible thing.
When he turned to look at her, blood dripping from every part of his body, sword in hand, silhouetted against the ghostly light of the moon… When he turned to look at her, his triumphant gaze meeting her’s, those black eyes were like hell itself.
Tory screamed and ran the rest of the way home.

Chapter 6: The University Caravan (part 1)
The day following Pen’s encounter with the griffin, he could be found in Archives library, sitting alone against a shelf, paging through a thick, leather-bound book about swords.
The night before, having heard Tory’s scream in the forest, she had been greeted by a crowd of wisepeople. The elf-woman, who had left her behind, held her in her arms as they cried together—one from fear and the other from guilt. Pen had come out of the forest then, still dripping with blood and with his sword in his hand.
For a moment, they were all speechless. Then, the old wiseman spoke.
“What has happened?” he asked him, his voice filled with power that Pen had never heard before.
“Tory was left behind,” he told them, forcing them all to meet his lifeless eyes. “It was getting dark, so I returned to the city to bring her back as quickly as possible.”
“But… what happened to you?” gasped a blue-haired wisewoman from the back.
“We encountered a night griffin.”
There was a ripple of quiet talk that overcame the group of adults. Pen waited patiently.
“Let us get this clear,” a young male demanded. “You fought a night griffin?”
“That’s outrageous!” exclaimed another, even before Pen had a chance to nod. “Do you really expect that a little kid like him could encounter a griffin and survive? He’s lying! He’s gotta be!”
This comment was answered by loud argument. Pen couldn’t believe it; they were even louder than the kids! His temper began to grow short.
“Shut up!” he yelled. The crowd grew quiet. “I killed the stupid thing! I killed it! Now let me go home!”
A deep, awkward silence had set in. The only thing that broke it was Tory’s soft, sobbed words.
“It’s the truth,” she cried into the wisewoman’s shirt. “He saved me. Leave him alone.”
At those words, a wiseman led Pen to the back of the dorms and helped him wash the sticky blood off his clothes and body. Lucaya was the first the cleaned, however; Pen made sure that not a spot was left on her.
She was officially his own now. The sword-wiseman had taken the school sword back without questions when Pen had gone to give it to him. He knew that the boy had connections to Danesan and he respected the swordsmith’s judgment.
So far, Pen was having no luck finding anything about two-name swords. He had spent the entire day paging through books. The only thing he found was meanings of the names of swords, but Lucaya wasn’t even in that. Nevertheless, he set it aside, feeling that it was a small step in the right direction.
As he was looking through the index of yet another volume, he heard footsteps coming his way. He pretended to ignore them as they drew closer and closer.
It was Tory. She was dressed in a plain lavender gown, with a matching bow that tied her hair back. She stared at Pen for a moment with her pink eyes. He continued to search the index, ignoring that she even existed. When she got no response, she walked down the row and sat down against the shelf beside him.
Tory sat there in silence for a long, long time.
“What do you want?” Pen said finally, sticking the useless book back and taking out another from the shelf across from them. When she did not say anything, he growled, “What, you can’t talk?”
“I just wanted to thank you,” she said. “For yesterday.”
Pen did not know what to say, so he said nothing. He had never been thanked for doing anything.
“You should have seen yourself,” she continued. “You were awesome! You saved my life!”
He still did not respond. Tory watched him out of the corner of her eyes.
“Can… can I help you?” she asked him, watching as he returned yet another book to the shelf.
“I don’t need your help,” he retorted, pulling out another.
“We leave for University in six days,” she said. “You might not find what you’re looking for in that time. If you tell me what you want, I’ll help you look.”
“I said I don’t need your help!” he said. Disgusted and not understanding why, he put down the book he had just taken out, picked up the one he wanted to keep, and strode out of the library. Tory was left alone in the isle.
She picked up the abandoned book, surprised by how heavy it was. It fell open in her lap to a page where someone had stuck in a piece of paper and forgot to take it out. Knowing that it was bad for the binding, especially for such an old book, she took it out. On her way out of the library, she stuck it behind one of the shelves against the wall, where it was hidden and well taken care of. Maybe someone would find it there later and be able to do something with it.
Feeling lonely, Tory wandered slowly back across the stretch of grass to the dorms. She wondered if Pen always felt this way; was it the reason for the way he was?
She decided that she wouldn’t let herself forget him ever again.
Chapter 6: The University Caravan (part 2)
It was the day before they left for University when Pen found the paper that Tory had stuck behind the shelf. He was gathering together his special papers in preparation for the next morning, when they would be traveling to Quont-Ein in order to join the caravan. Surprised that someone else had come across his hiding spot, he unfolded the old piece of parchment.
It had a line of angel-magic symbols, labeled with the words “awaken power.” Pen, who possessed almost no magic, could not read them, so he folded it back up. He gathered his article about Predicus and his invitation to University, and took the little stack up to his dorm room.
The room was only a small, empty, dark space. A collection of Pen’s clothes—the plain, brownish-gray outfits of the Archives—was already packed into a well-worn backpack given to him by a wiseman. He sat down on the colorless bed to look at Predicus once again.
His hero appeared like he always did, those fierce gray eyes staring somewhere Pen could not see.
I’m on my way, the boy thought to himself. I’m going to Havoc!

The next morning, two wisemen walked a group of five kids to Quont-Ein to join the University Caravan at the head of the main trail. The wide, well-worn path was the primary way of travel between Quont-Ein and Goswen Port. After Goswen, the rest of the way was by boat along the Acheron River.
All of the kids were quiet with excitement the whole way. Three were girls; Tory and two of her friends. The boy also seemed to know her, although not as well. Pen was, again, the outsider in both appearance and additude.
The wisemen said good-bye to them as they mingled with a large group of other elf-kids from nearby villages. Towering over the sea of children was the caravan: soldiers, some more friendly-looking than others, all armed and ready for duty.
A blue-haired elf with kind, yellow eyes checked his watch. “We leave as soon as the guardians arrive,” he told the group of impatient kids. Even though the main trail was used often, it still went through the forest, so you could never be too careful, especially with a group of delicious kids. “They’re late, as usual.”
“No, never!” yelled a voice from the forest. They heard the pounding of hooves in the distance. A moment later, a horse and rider burst out of the woods before them, the gigantic bay rearing as the elf on his back wheeled her around to a stop.
Many of the kids gasped and held on to each other. Horses had become a rare sight since the Continental War, before which they had been plentiful. Many hundreds of thousands had died bravely in battle, leaving nearly only the wild ones to survive. There were only a few bred war-horses still around, not counting those that had gone wild after the war, and this appeared to be one of them.
Pen would have expected no less. The gray-haired elf on her back wore a shimmering, pearl-colored cloak and he held a staff with a big white crystal on the top; the outfit of a Havoc-graduate wizard.
“Oh, don’t scare them, Contra!” cried yet another voice, this one even more familiar. Pen spun around and saw Panda on the back of Keion, hovering just over the ledge of the city.
“Do you have the dragon?” Contra asked his colleague.
“Yep, right here!” Panda pointed to a little speck of red on his shoulder that was Sasheeta.
“Okay, we can start moving,” Contra announced. He turned his horse around and started to lead the way along the main trail. When the soldiers also started to move, the kids gave each other meaningful glances and started walking. Panda flew overhead, watching over the scene.
After several minutes, the kids started to talk amongst themselves while they walked. Some of the tension faded from the air.
Pen, who walked alone at the edge of the group, immersed himself in his own thoughts. He was frustrated about not having found the solution to Lucaya’s strange two-word name. On the other hand, University also had a large library, not to mention knowledgable people that he could ask.
“Excuse me,” said the soldier beside him. Pen was mildly surprised; it was an elf-woman. She had light brown hair, braided back with a strip of leather, and matching colored eyes. Her armor consisted of chain mail covered by a plain, black surcoat. She wore only a quiver of arrows and a bow as her weapon. “Are you the boy who was invited to University a year early?”
Pen nodded grimly.
“Wow, I’ve heard so much about you!” she exclaimed. “I’m Nomei by the way. Is it true that you really killed a night griffin? Your eyes are really black?”
“What does it look like?” Pen snapped.
“It’s so strange though!” she continued, not put off by his angry tone. “I can’t sense any wild magic around you, which is really strange, because only wild magic could do something like that. Elf or angel magic alone doesn’t have the power to change a person’s body like that.” She sighed, not noticing that Pen kept flashing her angry looks. “Maybe my magic is just not sensitive enough…
“Hey, have you heard of Gerrit the Earthbound?” she suddenly asked. “You must have heard of him from somewhere!”
The name did sound vagely familiar, but Pen couldn’t recall where he had heard it before, so he shook his head. “No, I don’t believe I have.”
“Well, he might be able to sense if it was wild magic that made you like this,” she continued, talking so quickly Pen nearly had trouble keeping up with her. “He’s really perceptive of wild magic and he’s always on the lookout for it. We run into him a lot when we travel. He’s a strange guy. He always says I talk too much and he won’t answer any of my questions. Hey, maybe we’ll run into him along the way! He always runs into the University Caravan every year at some point in time…”
Pen was no longer listening. Nomei kept talking on and on about everything from wild magic, the magic of the wild wizards, to Akana, Contra’s horse. He did not know or care how she could talk so much. One thing was for sure: Gerrit was dead right. She did talk too much. Way too much.
Chapter 7: Lucifer (part 1)
It wasn’t until high noon that they stopped to eat and rest at an inn. Pen finally managed to separate himself from Nomei when they went into the building, finding a seat at the far end of a long table where Tory and her friends had already taken seats. He watched as the others ate; food made him sick, and he never understood why everyone made such a big deal over it.
After an hour to rest, the group made off again. Pen made sure to choose a place as far away from the lady soldier as possible, but she seemed to have talked herself out for the day. She, too, walked in silence along the main trail, herding along the group of kids. Contra took up the back this time, on foot; his horse was still away somewhere, grazing. She caught up with them a few hours later, where her rider allowed her to walk alongside until nightfall.
The kids were tired when they finally stopped for the night. The soldiers had found a nice expanse of mossy ground at the side of the trail, on which they spread oiled leather sheets to keep the moisture out and cloth blankets for warmth.
The exhausted children were too tired to complain about the nature matress. After stacking their backpacks away, they curled up together on top of the “bed,” using each other as pillows and for warmth. They looked like a big pile of puppies after an extremely exciting day.
Pen was not amongst them. He sat alone with his back against a tree with Lucaya leaned against his chest. He watched as the soldiers settled down for the night, most of them laying down to sleep, with only a few staying awake on watch. He knew that these would change shifts with others half-way through the night, and the next day those who got to sleep the night through would be the ones to watch.
Akana, the horse, was nowhere in sight. Contra was sitting against a tree facing away from the camp and to the forest; Panda doing the same on the opposite side of the group, leaning against Keion instead of a tree. After a while, they both appeared to be sleeping.
As complete darkness fell, the forest began to awaken. Little sounds sprang up everywhere. Pen closed his eyes, letting his senses go free. It was as close to sleeping as he ever got.

That was how they spent the next three days. They would walk for hours straight, stopping at inns to eat or trading food off merchants that they came across. The kids grew accustomed to the schedule and to each other. As they walked, more elf-kids joined the University Caravan. The group became larger. By the time they reached Goswen Port at the end of the fourth day, there were about three or four dozen kids gathered together.
The port was even larger than Quont-Ein, possibly because the houses were more spread out. Nearly everything in the town was brown, from the wooden houses, to the plain dirt streets, to the practical clothing that all the travelers wore. There were lots of interesting things to be traded, but they did not have the time.
Many people greeted them with smiles and congratulations as the University Caravan shepherded the kids to a large inn overlooking the Acheron river. There, they took baths and ate dinner in shifts, before they were all assigned rooms for the night.
Pen was sitting at a table, waiting for the soldiers to give him a room, when a draft of cool air brought his attention to the door. Panda was greeting someone dressed in a long, black cloak, whose face was hidden beneath a large hood. The two exchanged words that Pen could not hear over the chatter of the remaining kids and the soldiers. Then, Panda led the person up the stairs to the rooms.
The black-eyed boy gave it no more thought, shifting his ears to the travelers seated near him.
“… them intruments sold well, though.”
“Really? Well, who’d ‘a thought that?”
“The folks ‘ve got time now to play ‘em an’ listen. They couldn’t do that before now, right, with the war an’ all. It was all “fight fight fight” back then, ya know.”
“Weapons ‘re still going, too, though.”
“Yeah, well, they still wanna protect themselves. A lotta wild magic has sprun up in forests lately.”
“They should send Havoc or something to go sort out those crazy wizards.”
“They’re thinking there’s only one mind behind it all though, a’ least that’s what I heard…”
“Pen,” Panda interrupted his hearing, “I can show your room now. Unless you want to keep listening…”
“No, I’m coming,” the boy said, not knowing how the angel knew that he had been eavesdropping on the travelers. He followed Panda up three flights of stairs to one of the higher stories of the inn.

Chapter 7: Lucifer (part 2)
“I’m sorry to have to break the news to you that you’ve got a roommate,” Panda said as they walked. “I know that you would rather be alone. However, you might be pleasantly surprised. Ah, here we go.” He had stopped in front of the door labeled with the number 10-1. “Well, go right on in. I’m sure you’ll both be happy to meet each other.” With those vague words, he left Pen standing alone in the hall.
The boy knocked before he opened the unlocked door and stepped inside. It was a small, rectangular-shaped room with two skinny beds. A lone candle flickered in the dim light on a bedside table.
“You must be my roomate, huh?” said an ageless, but not unpleasant, voice. The speaker was standing by the window, looking out over the sunset across the water of the Acheron river. He wore a black cloak that disgused his whole figure. Pen realized immediately that this was the person who Panda had greeted at the door of the inn.
As usual, Pen did not answer his question. The door fell shut behind him, a tool to cover up the silence. He didn’t know why, but there was something about this guy that did not want him to stay silent. It was something hidden in his voice, the mixture of seriousness and amiability and intelligence and quiet all wrapped into one somehow.
The person turned around, away from the window, taking off his hood in the process.
The two boys stared at each other for almost a full minute.
Pen had never seen anyone so strange. He was an angel with black hair, except that the tips were made red by magic or dye or both. His eyes were so dark brown that they nearly appeared to be black, too. His clothes were all black: a tight shirt, reveiling a powerful and strong body, baggy pants that were easy to move in, and practical shoes. It appeared as though everything he wore was made of the same black leather that was so thin that it could pass as cloth if one didn’t look closely enough.
“My name is Lucifer,” he said, breaking the silence. He took off his cloak and hung it across the lone chair in the corner, uncovering his completely black wings. “Where I come from, it’s common curtesy to say one’s own name before asking for another’s.”
“Yes, it’s like that here, also,” Pen said. “I... I’m Pen.”
Lucifer gave him an odd glance out of the side of his eye while he pulled the blanket off the bed. The black-eyed boy kicked off his shoes and set his backpack down on top of them. “That’s not your full name, is it?”
Pen flinched.
“Oh, did I say something wrong?”
He hesitated, his mind shivering when he finally said the words that he had never before shared in his life. “I hate my name.”
“Well, sorry about that. Pen is fine.” Lucifer flicked and stretched his wings, preparing to go to bed. Pen didn’t know what to say or do when he did not persue the topic; he had been expecting him, like most of the people he knew, to start asking questions.
“Umm… one thing,” Pen started, even though it was very unlike him. “Where are you from?”
“The Okora mountains,” was the answer. Lucifer got into bed, tucking his hands under his head. “Have you heard of them?”
“We learned a little about them from the stories about the war,” Pen replied. “They told us that most of the mountain’s natives were wiped out when the demons started invading. You held them off until the armies were gathered.”
“Yes, I guess that’s right. There’s only two villages left that still hunt the Okora.” Pen sat down on his bed, too, as the angel stretched out his wings beneath him. “Mind if I ask you something?”
The black-eyed boy layed down, so as to cover up his lack of answer again. When Lucifer did not say anything, he finally spoke up. “Go ahead.”
“You’re the one who got invited to University a year early, right?”
“Yeah.” Lucifer started chuckling. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, it’s just,” he answered, “it’s so strange that they would put us together, since you’re a year younger and I’m a year older. I guess we’re the two oddballs, huh?”
Suddenly, Pen found the humor in his statement. Without knowing why, he started to chuckle too, for the first time in his life, laughing along. “Odd is right!”
“I’ll bet you that we’ll be roommates at University, too!”
“I thought that there were single rooms there.”
“Are you kidding? They’ve got a couple hundred thousand kids to fit in! I doubt the Primary School has singles very much.”
“You’re probably right. I never gave it that much thought before. I assumed I’d just be stuck in with some other elf-kid.”
“You sound so glad about it.”
Pen didn’t know what to say.
“Well, anyway, we’d better get some rest.” With those words, Lucifer blew out the candle, drowning the room in darkness. “Sleep well.”
The black-eyed boy felt strangely content. Before he knew it, he had closed his eyes, too. “You, too,” he said, not knowing why, for the first time in his life, he actually meant it.
Chapter 8: Down the Acheron River (part 1)
Pen found himself again at the very first crack of dawn. He got up from his bed as quietly as he could and went to the window. The port was still asleep.
Lucifer was also still sleeping. He was curled up into a little ball, his wing covering him. He was scowling. Pen could feel the darkness in his thoughts… it was a dream… but the black-eyed boy could not reach it. Shaking his head, he turned back to the window.
“Pen, you’re already awake?” he heard Lucifer say. The angel was sitting up on the bed, looking at him. He was so tired, his eyes were still only half open.
“Yeah,” Pen answered. “Sorry if I woke you up.”
“What time is it?”
“Five thirty.”
Lucifer flopped back down on the bed. “You weird guy. I swear I just saw your eyes in my dream.” He closed his eyes again and had fallen asleep in a matter of seconds. This time, his face stayed smooth and peaceful. Although a part of Pen regretted waking him up, he was also somewhat grateful; whatever Lucifer had been dreaming, it had not been pleasant.
Pen considered the angel’s last words to him. Was it possible that he had touched Lucifer’s mind? He had no access to it now, and yet he knew that the way he had been drawn by the darkness was real.
Softly unsheathing Lucaya, he took a seat on the wooden floor and balanced her across his knees. The new light of the suns shimmered on her surface, as well as the patterns of magic as it skurried along the blade. He watched the sword for a long time, even as the suns broke over the horizon and bathed the world in light. When Lucifer woke up, he still wouldn’t budge.
“It looks like you’ve already got a real sword,” the black-winged angel said. He was laying on his stomach at the edge of the bed, looking at Lucaya. “I’ve really been looking forward to creating my own sometime.”
“Do you want to go to Havoc, too?” Pen asked him, picking his sword up by the hilt. It was common knowledge that Havoc students had to make their own swords.
“Not nessessarily. I guess I wouldn’t mind if I got in, but it really seems like a lot of trouble to go though. As long as I learn how to fight and protect people better, I’ll be happy. Maybe I’ll improve my magic skills in the process.”
Suddenly, an idea struck Pen. “Can you read angel magic symbols?” he asked, starting to get to his feet.
“A little. Why?”
Pen sheathed his sword with one hand, while simulateusly pulling a piece of paper out of his backpack. He handed it to Lucifer. “I found this thing in the Archives library, but I can’t read it.”
Lucifer took a moment to decypher it. “Okay, let me show you,” he said, sitting up so that Pen could also see the paper. He pointed to the two ledgible words, then running his finger along as he read off the symbols. “Awaken power: Senots Tsefinam sih Yawa Gnis. It’s followed by the symbols for fire and air.”
“What does it do?”
“I dunno… “awaken power”? That’s what it says, anyway.”
“Can you translate the symbols into letters for me?”
“Got a pencil?”
Pen went to his backpack and pulled out a smooth, almost straight stick into which a tiny groove had been cut on the side. This was filled in with a black, metal-like substance that made a mark on paper. After a few weeks of use, the edge would be worn short, so that the wood had to be cut back with a knife.
Lucifer got out of bed and took the pencil from him. He put the parchment up to the wall so that he could write, neatly lining up the translation with the symbols. For the last two, he just put arrows with the words “fire” and “air” as labels.
“Here, is that okay?” he said, handing back the pencil and paper. Pen looked over the words.
“Senots Tsefinam sih Yawa Gnis,” he read, memorizing it. “I wonder what it means.”
“Sorry that I couldn’t be of more help,” Lucifer told him, slipping into his shoes. “I’m gonna run down to the bathroom, if that’s all right with you.”
“Yeah. Thanks,” Pen sighed, sitting down on his bed. After the angel had been gone for a minute, he gave up on trying to make anything of the strange symbols. Folding the paper back up, he stuck it into his backpack again. Not knowing what else to do, he drew his sword.
There wasn’t much room to practice, but it was enough. Pen closed his eyes to concentrate: he imagined a wiseman before him, preparing to spar. In his imagination, he blocked a high strike and a low one, flipping his sword wherever his opponent’s was. He went faster and faster; only by memorizing the movement, he would be able to use it without having to think. Thinking wasted too much time in a real fight. You had to move as your mind did.
Chapter 8: Down the Acheron River (part 2)
The creak of the door broke him out of his training. He sheathed Lucaya just as Panda came in the room.
“’Morning, Pen,” he said cheerfully. “Where’s Lucifer?”
“He went to the bathroom.”
“Well, let him know that we’re eating breakfast now, and we’ll be leaving right after.”
“Okay.”
“You guys getting along?”
“Hmmm,” Pen answered, which served as a “yes.”
“Glad to hear it,” Panda winked. “Well, see you in a couple minutes.” As quickly as he had come, he was also gone.
Only half a minute later, the door opened again. It was Lucifer this time.
“Panda just came by here,” Pen told him, reciting his message.
“Well, I guess there’s no time to loose,” the black-winged angel sighed, gathering up his cloak. Pen slipped into his shoes and put on his backpack. “I love this eastern food that your people cook up.”
“I’m not a big fan of it myself,” was the answer. “I don’t like to eat.”
“You what?” Lucifer was very surprised. The door slammed shut behind them as they left the room. “You know, your body sort of needs food to survive.”
“Really?”
Lucifer was laughing. “You didn’t know? Are you being serious?!”
“Yeah. Nobody ever told me that!” Pen had always assumed that eating something was a form of tradition and entertainment that most people needed. It had never occurred to him that it was actually required.
“Well, it’s true! You don’t eat, you starve. That means you die. And, come to think of it, it’s not a very nice way to die, either.”
As they descended the last flight of stairs, the noise and the smells of breakfast whafted up to them. Pen could hear Lucifer’s stomach growl loudly. The angel chuckled and patted his belly. “See? My body’s already complaining.”
They took a seat at an empty round table. A lady listed the choices for breakfast, took their order—Pen got whatever Lucifer got—and returned within seconds with two plates. Lucifer dug right in; Pen took a fork and stabbed a piece of wild boar ham.
After a few minutes, heading Lucifer’s advice, he started to eat, begining with the mashed potatoes. But it felt strange to him, almost silly. He felt like he was wasting his time and energy. After two mouthfulls, he put down his fork. “I can’t do it,” he growled, pushing away his plate.
Lucifer, contentedly munching, shot him a glance and put down his fork. “Why no-“
“Are you going to eat that?” squeaked a familiar voice. Sasheeta landed on their table and pointed at Pen’s ham.
“No. You can have it.” He pushed the plate over to her, where she snatched away the bacon with her forepaws and took a huge bite. The piece of meat was nearly bigger than she was.
“Is that a pseudodragon?” Lucifer asked, distracted.
“Yeah. Her name is Sasheeta,” Pen sighed. “I almost lost my head over her.”
“She’s…” he started, squinting at the dragon’s perfect tinyness as she gnawed at the ham. Her eyes were big and questioning at his strange expression. “She’s… really cute…”
Sasheeta swallowed, raised her head, and smiled, her head crest raising up in happyness (which side affects included making her look even more cute). The boys, all other topics forgotten, couldn’t help but chuckle.

Chapter 8: Down the Acheron River (part 3)
The boats for the University Caravan stood ready at the far south side of the port. They were small, five-person, shell-shaped pieces carved from the trunks of large trees. There must have been fifty or more of them in the harbor, each supplied with a pair of paddles, a length of rope, and a small metal bucket.
“Everyone grab your roomate and get in a boat!” yelled Contra over the chatter of the excited kids. They did as he told; Lucifer and Pen—with Sasheeta sitting on his shoulder—sat down in the one farthest out in the river. Each of the soldiers got a boat to themselves, and several of them even tied an extra to the back of their’s for the other children that they would be picking up along the way.
“Okay you guys,” started Panda. “We stick together! Always stay with the group and stay on the right side of the river unless we tell you otherwise. Other than that, just have fun!”
The ropes holding the boats to the harbor untied themselves by magic and curled themselves up. This was greeted by panic from some and glee from others.
“Sir, you’re not going to tell us how to drive these things?” cried an orange-haired boy.
“What’s the use?” Panda chuckled. “You learn from experience. The current will do a lot of the work for you; the rest you need to learn by yourself.”
Lucifer and Pen had both already picked up paddles and taken up places at opposite sides of the boat. The little shell was light and responded easily to their strokes. Before long, they had reached the far side of the Acheron, where Lucifer suggested that they stop and wait for the others. They let the current slowly wash them downstream, watching the kids as they figured out how to use the paddles. Some, like Lucifer and Pen, had no trouble at all, whereas others struggled. Pen noticed that Tory and her lavender-haired friend nearly capsized and hit the boat of another.
Before long, however, they had all sorted themselves out and were steadily paddling down the river. Contra lead the group—Akana was nowhere in sight—and Panda, as usual, flew above on Keion.
After an hour of off-and-on paddling, Pen could tell that Sasheeta was getting bored by their shared silence. She sighed loudly into his ear. When he did not respond, she started nibbling on his shirt.
“What do you want?” he asked, trying not to sound too angry.
“I’m bored. Say something.”
“What do you want me to say?” seeing that the group ahead had started slowing down, he stopped paddling and balanced the paddle across the smaller part of boat, so that his hands were free. The dragon clampered down his arm and sat inside his crossed legs.
“Tell me a story,” she said.

Chapter 8: Down the Acheron River (part 4)
“I don’t know any stories.”
“Fine. Then tell me something about yourself. We’ve known each other for a while, but I still don’t know anything about you.”
Pen could tell that Lucifer, too, was all ears. The angel was also stowing away his paddle. He sighed, deciding that there was no escape this time, and started to talk. “I’m an orphan who grew up in the Archives. I have no memory of my parents. I don’t even know if they’re alive or not. I’ve been under the care of the wisepeople my whole life.”
Lucifer was staring off into space. “What was it like living in the Archives?” he asked, almost carefully, as if he didn’t want to scare Pen away from the topic.
“I dunno,” Pen shrugged. “I’ve never had another life, so I wouldn’t know what it’s like.”
“Did you have friends?” Sasheeta squeaked, intrigued.
“No. I was always alone, training on the grounds or reading in the library. Once—“ Pen cut himself off, remembering.
“Yes?” Lucifer asked. Sasheeta wiggled encouragingly.
“Well, Tory used to be around sometimes,” he filled in. “But she, too, left me alone.”
“Why was that?”
“She got scared of me,” he said. “I killed someone, and after that, she didn’t talk to me again for a really long time. I don’t have any kind of connection to her anymore.”
“You’ve been alone that long…” Lucifer appeared lost in thought.
“Being alone hasn’t ever bothered me,” Pen added quickly.
“Who did you kill?” Sasheeta squeaked, her voice split between excitement and dread.
Pen shrugged. “It was just a stupid village kid who picked a fight with me.”
“A…” Lucifer studdered, nearly disbelievingly. “A-a kid? You… you just killed a kid?”
“Well… yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
The black-winged angel wasn’t sure what to say. He hesitated several times before he spoke again. “You’re not kidding?” he almost whispered. “You don’t know what’s wrong with that?”
Sasheeta looked disgusted. She sprang out of Pen’s lap, climbed up Lucifer’s cloak, and disappeared in his hood without another word.
“No,” Pen said honestly. “Why?”
Lucifer seemed pained. He scratched his head, trying to make sense of the strange new friend he had made. Something was matching up about Pen, but Lucifer did not want to make himself believe that it was the truth. “Pen, do you not know what life is?” he asked, already knowing and dreading the answer.
“No. I hear a lot about it, but nobody ever told me what it was.”
“Life is everything that lives and grows around us,” Lucifer explained. “The trees, the bugs, and angels and elves are all alive! It’s everything that has a soul, that can feel things around it, everything that has some kind of heart beating inside it and some kind of blood flowing in its veins.”
“Heart?”
“A heart is what keeps us alive. You see, life has an end. Everything dies at some point in time, whether you like it or not. And yet, most things try to survive for as long as they can.”
“When you kill something, you take its life away?”
“That’s right. You ended that boy’s life.”
Pen thought for a long time in silence. It had never occurred to him before that he had ended something when he killed things. It was just second nature to him. But if they had souls just like he did… then was it right to take that away?
“Lucifer?” he started quietly, feeling something heavy inside himself that he had never felt before.
“Yes?”
“What is a heart?”
“It’s that drum inside you. It beats to keep you alive.”
Pen looked out over the river, his whole being burning with a horrible, incredible knowledge; one that he did not want to face. And, yet, he said the words, knowing finally what he was.
“Lucifer, I don’t have a heart.”

Chapter 9: Gerrit
It wasn’t possible! How could someone not be alive, and yet still have the functions of a living person? How could someone be dead but still alive?
These questions plagued the boys as they pulled their boat ashore at a riverbank on the Perol side, near a little port-town. Since the sky had clouded over towards the afternoon and looked like rain, they dragged their boats up to where the grass started. Panda and Contra showed them how they could use their boats as tents by turning them upside-down and propping them up on one end by using the paddles. There were even slits carved into the top edges of the boats, where the top of the oars fit right in.
Just as the soldiers were passing out food—the water of the river was purified by magic and was good for drinking—the rains started. They watched for a while as the showers got stronger, Lucifer and Sasheeta munching on sandwiches, before they decided that it was safest to de-prop the boat to keep water from coming in. Lucifer and the dragon made themselves comfortable while Pen pulled the paddles out of the ground and the boat. Once both of the props had been removed, the boat lay flat nearly against the ground, submerging them in darkness broken only by the edges, where a sliver of light still peeked through. But, as night fell, that, too, disappeared.
Pen lay awake in the deep shadow of the boat, feeling as the air inside grew warmer from the heat of Lucifer and Sasheeta’s bodies. The black-eyed boy was unfamiliar with such heat; he did not mind it, but he was a stranger to it. He inched his head closer to Lucifer’s midsection.
There it was! The steady beating of a drum that kept his friend alive. Why did he not have that music inside him? Why was he cold like the earth?
Why was he dead, but still alive?

Pen was the first to notice that the rain had stopped. There was also a sliver of pale light that was starting to sneak its way into the boat-tent. He crept to the front of the boat and lifted it up slightly, so that he could slide out.
It was morning, but the sky was still a sodden, gray color. He looked around absentmindedly, noticing that Panda was standing beside Keion at the far side of the camp. The griffon had noticed Pen and was gazing at him with his great orange eyes.
“Hey, good morning, Pen,” said Panda. “It looks like we’ll be stuck here for a while.”
“Bad weather?”
“Yeah, we’ve gotta wait a couple of days for these clouds to pass before we can go any further by boat. Once everyone wakes up, we’ll be checking in at the biggest inn over in the town. It’s too wet out here. Keion wants you to scratch his head.”
It took Pen a second to catch the abrupt change of subject. He strode over to the griffon and ruffled up his head feathers, causing the large creature to purr and close his eyes with contentment. Pen didn’t know why, but petting Keion made him feel somewhat better inside.
After half an hour, soldiers began to knock on the tent-boats to wake everyone up. Lucifer came out of the boat immediately, coming over to Panda and Pen with a sleeping Sasheeta cradled in his arms.

Chapter 9: Gerrit (part 2)
“Oh dear,” Panda said, eyeing the dragon. “That’s where she went!”
“Didn’t she tell you where she was?” Pen asked him.
“Nope. But it’s okay. She’s still young and she needs to have attention.”
“What will happen to her when we get to University?” Lucifer asked curiously.
“She’ll stay there, for the time being,” Panda answered. “She has to get used to being around our people more before she can be sent out as a real king’s dragon.”
“Can she be with us, for now?”
“Of course. She’s a sweet little creature.”
Keion snorted suddenly and jerked his head around. Akana was coming from the direction of the port-town, followed by a man bearing a huge battle-ax in his hands that was as tall as he. As he drew closer to them, Pen noticed that he wore only a plain t-shirt and pants; his feet were bare.
“Well, if it isn’t Gerrit the Earthbound!” Panda exclaimed, walking forward to meet him. Up close, Pen saw that he had brown hair that stuck up straight, as well as hazel eyes and strange skin. It looked rough and tan, like carved stone.
“Hello, Panda. Is this the University Caravan?” he asked, shaking hands with him while looking around at the boat-tents waking up.
“Yes. We’ll be staying in town for a few days. Do you want to stick around for a little while?”
“That’s what I had been thinking, actually,” Gerrit responded. “I’m not a huge fan of walking through rain.”
Pen had caught his eyes, but Gerrit’s attempt to meet him was utterly interrupted.
“Gerrit!!” yelled the voice that Pen least wanted to hear at that point in time. Nomei came sliding up the slope, her shoes skidding against the wet grass. “I knew you would come!! What’re you doing here? Were you just passing through? Will you stay with us while we’re here?”
Poor Gerrit could not help but endure her pounding of questions.
“Nomei!” Panda barked finally, breaking into her incessant string of talk. “You need to go gather up the kids.” When she gave him a sad look, he added, “Now!”
As she slinked away, Gerrit only shook his head at her, before turning his attention back to Pen. “You must be Pen,” he said. He didn’t offer his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” A frown crossed his dark-skinned face.
“Is something the matter?” Lucifer asked carefully.
“It’s so odd,” Gerrit told them, speaking deliberately. “There is no angel or elvish magic that can achieve such evil to a soul, and yet I can’t sense even a drop of wildness in you, Penumbra. But there is something…”
A drop of rain fell, almost experimentally, on Keion’s beak. The griffon growled at it.
“Uh oh,” Panda started. “We’d better get moving before the clouds open up again.”
The soldiers were hurrying the kids out of the boats and gathering them at the path to the town. As soon as they were all together—most of them still looking asleep—they herded them into the port, where two inns happily accepted them.
Lucifer and Pen shared a room again, this time in the accompaniment of Sasheeta, which closely resembled the other chamber they had stayed in. This one, however, had stone walls (angels preferred stone to wood) and the window, overlooking the town, was larger. At the moment, rain was obscuring the view, leaving only the shadows of the rooftops of the port houses.
Chapter 9: Gerrit (part 3)
The two boys had just kicked off their muddy shoes and changed into clean, dry clothes when there was a knock at the door. Lucifer, with Sasheeta on his shoulder, opened it.
Neither of them was surprised when Panda and Gerrit entered the room. “Is this a good time?” Panda asked lightly, meeting eyes with Pen, who was sitting on his bed.
“Sure,” he answered.
“Would you like to sit down?” Lucifer offered, gesturing to his own bed while sitting down beside Pen. Sasheeta automatically clambered down his arm and took a seat on his lap.
“Thanks,” the Havoc graduate said, sitting down, also. Gerrit remained standing, leaning on his huge battle-axe. “You two probably know why we’re here, right?” he started, taking on a more serious tone.
“Yes,” Pen answered, focusing his eyes on the floor. It was because of him, of course. Lucifer shot him a sideways glance.
“You’re searching for wild magic,” the black-winged angel said, his voice having only a touch of force behind it. His dark brown eyes, unlike Pen’s black ones, fearlessly met the gaze of the adults.
“Yes,” Gerrit said. “I’ve been looking for the source of wild magic for as long as I can remember.”
“The source?” Pen asked, feeling less self-conscious.
“We believe that there is only one mind behind wild magic,” he explained. “Elf-wizards do not just go wild by their own free will. They are more intelligent than to do that. There must be something—or someone—who is forcing them.”
“But what does this have to do with us?” questioned Lucifer. “We don’t have wild magic.”
“This mastermind,” Panda continued, “seems to be looking for something. Powerful magic-users, angel, elf, or dragon alike, have come up missing. Some of them never return; others become wild, spreading their contaminated magic into artifacts and even people.
“Over the years we have been hunting wild magic, we’ve become familiar with the energy-shaping ways of the wildness. The magic works with the binding and the breaking apart of life-energy.”
“It is the only magic that could have made you the way you are, Pen,” Gerrit said, repeating what he had mentioned before. “We thought that we had finally discovered the mystery of the boy with the shadow eyes! We all believed that!”
“You were disappointed,” Lucifer filled in.
“Yes,” Gerrit said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t understand it, but I would know if Pen had wild magic. I don’t even sense a spark of any kind of magic in him.”
“I know,” Pen said. He had heard it often. “I have no magic.”
“No, you do not. Your sword, however, is a different matter.”
Almost automatically, Pen drew Lucaya and looked over her blade. There were no symbols depicting angelic magic, and none of the energy that elvish magic gave off. She was unmarked in any way—only her makeup made her a vessel for magic—except for the two words that were her name.
Gerrit took a step back, his eyes starting to sparkle with an odd green light. “That sword holds a strange magic,” he said.
“May I see her?” Panda questioned. The boy reluctantly handed his beloved sword over, knowing that he had little choice but to obey. He was also curious; was her strange name connected to the magic that Gerrit was picking up?
“It’s wild magic, but it’s not like what we’re familiar with,” Gerrit continued. “It feels uncompleted, like an unfinished thought. And it traces back into angelic magic, as if it was only an experimental addition to the code, like an enforcer. I don’t think that this wild magic was made by the wizard we are hunting.”
“An enforcer?” Pen asked, surprised by this news. “Of what?”
Gerrit closed his eyes for a minute, and they waited in silence until he opened them again. “The code is incomplete, as of yet, but the sword will let you know when it finds the symbols that rouse its power. When it is complete, the sword will give up itself…” his gaze met Pen’s and did not look away. “… And there will awaken something of far greater creation.”
His words echoed inside the minds of the listeners. Panda examined the sword again, this time in awe, before he handed it back to Pen. “Here,” he said. “She is your sword. I don’t doubt that she was given to you for a purpose.” He got to his feet, adding: “Take good care of her, Penumbra.”
As they left the room, Pen pulled himself out of his thought-filled daze. “Wait!” he yelled, jumping after them. They stopped in the hall, looking back to see him. “You don’t know what the symbols are, do you?” he asked hopefully, wondering how deep Gerrit’s senses went.
“No,” said the man. “This sword is very old, older even than any wild magic I have ever felt, and yet it is more familiar. I cannot tell you the few words I know of the sword. I can’t speak them; I don’t dare speak them.”
“Why not?” Pen blurted out, which was very unlike him, but his drive to discover the hidden power of Lucaya was greater than any restraint he possessed.
Gerrit examined the boy from head to toe with his eyes, before he spoke again. “I am like you in many ways.” He turned his back to him, starting to leave after Panda, who had already disappeared down the stairs. “And yet, I am very unlike you. My body is made of stone, a puppet that I sculpted and control with the power of the magic that my spirit still possesses. I am not alive, in the conventional sense.” He turned to look over his shoulder at the boy one more time. “My soul and life-energy were torn from my body and harbored inside a stone. It was wild magic did this to me. That is why I must hunt it until I find the wild wizard. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Gerrit sighed heavily and made his way to the stairs. “We will meet again,” he said as he walked. “Penumbra of the shadow eyes.”
Chapter 10: The Angel Caravan (part 1)
It stopped raining halfway through the night, starting up again in the morning when they filed down into the kitched for breakfast. Sasheeta, as was expected, ate all the food on Pen’s plate.
“What?!” Nomei’s surprised voice rang through the whole room. “He left already?”
“He said he had urgent business to attend to,” they heard Panda say. “He left this morning, before the rain started again.”
Nomei could be heard for several minutes, complaining about Gerrit’s sudden escape, but their conversation was largely covered up by the talking children.
“Do you think he left because of last night?” Lucifer wondered.
“Could be,” Pen responded. “But I’m pretty sure we’ll see him again.”
“You’re a freak!” Sasheeta put in, pointing at Pen while trying to swallow an exceptionally large piece of egg. “You and that sword!!”
“Thank you for that,” he said sarcastically. “I really needed it.”
“You’re a mean little beastie,” Lucifer growled playfully. As soon as the egg had gone down her throat, he snatched her off the table and cuddled her tightly to his chest. She squalked in surprise and delight, snapping jokingly at his nose.
“You’re squishing me!!” she squeaked, attracting the attention of many nearby tables. Lucifer laughed and sat her back down on the table, where she shook herself like a wet dog.
“You deserved that,” Lucifer told her, taping her nose with a finger. “And don’t you forget it. Pen can’t do anything about the way he is.”
The little dragon bit his finger, returning promptly back to her breakfast. Lucifer shook his head. “She’ll never learn,” he sighed, chuckling.

It took two days for the clouds to pass. For those days, they entertained themselves in many ways. The two boys combined their strength and found a way that they could lift up the beds and lean them up against the wall so that they had room to train. Using broken broomsticks that they had found hidden in the closet of an unoccupied room, they practiced sparring.
Lucifer was a good fighter. He was fast and sure in his movements, but he was always on the defensive. He even seemed reluctant to strike out sometimes, weakening some of his attacks. But when he wasn’t thinking, he could keep up even to Pen. It was hard to believe that he didn’t already own a sword of his own.
When they were tired, they would rest a while. Since neither of them seemed to have very much to say, they spent most of the time in silence, listening as the other kids played games in the hall.
The last day that they were relaxing in the afternoon, they heard yells outside their room. They were louder than the usual games of the children, so Lucifer and Pen exchanged a questioning glance, knowing that they both heard the commotion.
“Give it back, idiot!” a boy’s voice was yelling.
“I didn’t take it,” a girl whimpered. She sounded like she was right outside their door.
“Shut up! I know you have it! You were the last one out of the room!”
“I said—“ her voice was cut off by a grunt of pain as the boy shoved her against the door. Lucifer was up immediately—Pen had never seen him move so fast—and he had flung the door open before anyone knew what had happened.
With one hand, he pulled the girl inside, simulatiously using a foot to kick the boy just to the side of his stomach, so that his breath was knocked out of him. Gasping, the gray-haired elf-boy stumbled back against the opposite wall.
“Are you okay?” Lucifer asked the girl, releasing her. She was a green-haired, blue-eyed elf they had collected on the walk to Goswen Port.
Pen had also gotten to his feet, and he now went out the door and faced the winded boy. “What’s all this about?”
“She took the pocket watch my mom gave me!” he exclaimed, pointing at the girl.
“I didn’t do it! It must have gone beneath the bed or something! I swear!”
“Where’s your room?” Pen demanded. The boy showed him to the room at the end of the hallway, by the stairs.
“I left it right on my pillow,” he said.
“That’s pretty foolish of you,” Pen responded. He got to his knees and checked beneath the bed. “Someone would be tempted to take something that’s just laying around. That, and there’s a good chance it fell off.” He pushed himself underneath the mattress. A moment later, he came out again.
“I hope Lucifer taught you a lesson,” he said. He dropped the watch carelessy on the bed. “Don’t make me hurt you the next time.” Without another word, Pen left the room, leaving behind a stunned and speechless elf.
Chapter 10: The Angel Caravan (part 2)
The boats were right where the group had left them. Feeling regenerated as the rising suns burned away any remaining fog to reviel a clear sky, the kids and soldiers pushed their boats into the water and took their places at the paddles. It took a little while to break back into the pattern, but, before long, the University Caravan was on the move again.
Not even stopping for lunch—sandwiches were tossed to the kids by the soldiers—they had covered a great deal of distance by the afternoon. Sitting on Pen’s head, Sasheeta was the first to break the lulling silence that hung over the group.
“Hey look!” she exclaimed, pointing ahead. “It’s the Cocytus River!”
Heads turned as everyone noticed the stretch of blue that flowed into the Acheron River from the northern heart of Perol.
“Hello Panda!!” a voice yelled from overhead. A beautiful creature flew overhead: a winged horse, her body shimmering the color of steel, accented by silver wings and feathers. As she wheeled around, they could see the shine of her electric blue eyes.
Keion screeched a greeting, getting a respectful snort as a response as they circled each other. Her rider was another Havoc graduate; to Pen’s surprise, the wizard was an elf-woman. She had light, turquoise-colored hair and bright pink eyes that showed her age. Pen guessed that she was around 40 years old.
“Are we late?” Panda asked her, his voice carrying down to the kids by the wind.
“No, you’re right on time!”
“Nano!” interrupted Contra. “We’re landing on this side of the Acheron!”
“Aren’t we staying in Benttown?” she yelled back, flying lower so that they could talk more easily.
“No, it’s too much trouble this year,” was the answer. “Have your rafts land on the far shore and we can meet in the middle.”
“Okay,” Nano answered. Her pegasus turned away from them again to return to their own fleet of Caravan to pass on the instructions.
As Contra had said, they pulled their boats out of the water on the sandy shore, right at the edge where the two rivers met. Since there were few trees, they could watch as the angel kids pushed their rafts on the beach with paddle-sticks. The Cocytus River was generally wide and shallow; so shallow, in fact, that the favorite form of transportation along it were rafts pushed and steered via long sticks against the river bottom. They were easier control in the gentle stretch of blue. However, the rafts were poor for use on the Acheron’s powerful current.
The angel caravan was slightly bigger than the elven caravan; more angels had survived the Continental War, mostly thanks to the fact that the Okora Mountains were a formitable barrier that had kept the demons from invading the center of Perol.
It wasn’t until Panda and Nano returned, both bearing large bags of food, that the two groups finally mingled. The soldiers built a large fire, on which they roasted two large wild boars. The kids gathered around as the cool night came upon them, their stomachs growling as they watched the roasts slowly start to cook.
Pen and Lucifer sat together in silence, entranced in the beautiful flickering of the fire. It hissed as grease dripped onto it, sending a whaft of delicious scent over to them. Sasheeta was dozing off between them, stretched out luxuriously on her stomach against the warm ground.
When the boars were finally done—with plenty for everyone—a cheerful atmosphere set in. Lucifer and Sasheeta had claimed an entire shoulder for themselves, which they devoured ravenously. Pen watched them with some amusement as they both ate from the same huge piece.
“Mhim iz really amazing,” Lucifer told him when he noticed that he was watching. “You m… ought to try sommme.”
“No thanks,” he responded, a smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. Sasheeta tore a piece off and offered it to him. “It’s alright. I’m not hungry.”
“Can I eat it?” pipped another voice. A brownish pseudodragon, another female who was a handsbreath larger than Sasheeta hopped over to them and took the meat from Sasheeta.
“My name is Sasheeta,” the younger one said, moving over so that she could help herself, too.
“I’m Koshgankae. You can just call me Koshga,” she answered, pulling off another strip and swallowing it down with one bite.
Lucifer, who had already eaten half of the shoulder, declared that he was quite done and set the remaining bone and flesh on the grass for the dragons. He and Pen got to their feet and returned to their boat to sleep. After Lucifer washed his hands in the river, they made comfortable dents in the sand beside it and settled down to rest. Even the fading, far-away murmur of sounds coming from the remaining feast was not enough to keep them from drifting off.
Chapter 11: Fifth (part 1)
Pen opened his eyes at the first light and sat up. Lucifer, with Sasheeta laying on the downy underside of one of his wings, was still sleeping, along with the other Caravan kids. The only voices that floated over to him were those of the four Havoc graduates. Akana, Keion, the pegasus, and a large chestnut war-horse were also gathered around their owners. Their figures were hardly more than shadows against the still-dark sky.
“It was lucky that we got the news just in time,” the blonde-haired, brown-and-golden-winged warrior was saying, his hand absentmindedly stroking his red steed. “Run-away chromatics are common, but we wouldn’t want to have faced him with the Caravan.”
“Yes, that makes sense. Was is wild magic?” Panda asked
“No, thank goodness, it was only a cast-out father. And, well, you know how they get when they’re hungry.”
“So I’m guessing that you didn’t give it any more thought,” Panda commented.
“We sent ZeeDee to take care of him,” the warrior was chuckling.
“Oh, I see!” Contra added, also laughing. “Well, I guess that’s why!”
The four of them all shared the inside joke, before Panda noticed that Pen was awake and listening. “Good morning, Pen!” he told him cheerfully, waving a hand. “Come over!”
The black-eyed boy got to his feet and made his way over to them, careful not to disturb the sleeping kids on the sand. When he had joined them, he was quick to introduce himself, remembering that he was in the presence of four Havoc graduates.
“I’m Pen,” he said respectfully, almost automatically scratching Keion’s head.
“This is Nano and Sharp,” Panda said. The two nodded at him, smiling kindly. “And Lyanni and Tobas,” he added, indicating first the pegasus and then the chestnut.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Nano said. “We’ve heard many things about you.”
“My curiousity wonders…” Sharp broke in. “Is it really true that you killed a griffin on your own?”
“Yes.”
“I do not doubt that you tell the truth,” Contra commented. “Your strength is rare.”
Pen shrugged, not knowing how to respond to the complement. Keion started to purr, and the black-eyed boy felt something inside him stir at the sound. It was something between comfort and a strange, warm feeling that he didn’t know what to think of.
Tobas, almost as if he was drawn to Pen, left the side of his master and gently nudged the boy on the shoulder with his big, soft nose. Surprised by the kindness of the huge creature, he reached up his free hand and petted his forehead, marveling his hidden power. Yet, before he knew it, Lyanni had come forward and planted her head in his belly.
Pen didn’t know what to say as the animals surrounded him with their warmth and presence. He petted and scratched them, not realizing that he was returning the kindness that they had extended to him.
“Well, would you look at that!” Panda exclaimed in surprise. Broad smiles were on all of their faces; they all felt happy, without really knowing why.
Chapter 11: Fifth (part 2)
As the first beams of sunlight flooded over the beach, the kids began to awake. Lucifer was one of the first.
“Good morning,” Pen said as the angel sat up. After stretching and yawning, he poked Sasheeta gently to get her to wake up. She grumbled and bit his finger.
“You sound cheerful today,” Lucifer noted, somewhat absentmindedly, as he tried to get the sleeping dragon to release him. “Sasheeta, that hurts!”
“Here, let me help,” Koshga proposed, flying over to them. She sat down beside her younger colleague and tilted her head to the side. There was a second of complete silence.
“Yeep!” Sasheeta squeaked suddenly, jumping to her paws, suddenly wide awake. In the process, Lucifer got the chance to pull his finger out of her mouth. “Koshga!”
“That worked,” she said with satifaction. “You need to learn how to stay awake if you ever want to be a real king’s dragon. Now would be a good time to start training.”
Sasheeta grumbled something, then busied herself brushing sand off her wings.
“Anyway, as I was saying, you sound happier today,” Lucifer told Pen, watching as Chella cast her morning light across the water of the Acheron.
“I do?” Pen asked, unsure of what to make of this news.
“Yeah.”
A silence set in, but it wasn’t an awkward one. They simply enjoyed each other’s presence for the short while that it took for the remaining kids to wake up.
Once it was certain that everyone had gotten up, Sharp gave instructions to the Angel Caravan to stack together their rafts and paddle-sticks in piles. It only took a few minutes for the kids to do as he told them to. The University Caravan waited anxiously as the angels, in pairs or small groups, finally wandered over to the boats to join them.
The first boats to be filled were the extra ones that the soldiers had brought from Goswen Port. These were occupied quickly, leaving the remaining angels no choice but to find a pair of elves to share with.
Pen watched as Tory and her friend partnered up with a pair of remarkably well-matching angels: they both had brown eyes and light, blondish-brown hair, and they were short for their age. The only way that Pen could tell that they weren’t sisters was their wings and their build—one was very skinny and rather pale for an angel, with white wings that faded into a grayish blue toward the tips, whereas the other was less scrawny and had pink wings.
The two of them tore their attention away from the girls when they noticed that an angel had drifted over to them. An elf—perhaps his friend—was not far behind. They saw that the two boys were watching them, and approached them a little nervously.
“Do you still have room in your boat?” the first asked. He wore a plain gray t-shirt and pants; his only interesting feature was a headband that had the image of a bird on the front, which he wore proudly on his brown hair. His wings were fairly small and frail for an angel.
“Sure,” Lucifer said kindly.
“I’m Yatii,” he responded. “Can my friend also come with us?”
“Of course.”
“My name’s Edward,” the elf said, coming to Yatii’s side. He had one blue eye and one green eye, as well as dark blonde hair. Unlike his angel friend, he wore a red shirt and cream-colored pants. “You can just call me Ed.”
“I’m Lucifer.”
“Pen,” Pen told them to introduce himself.
“My name’s Sasheeta!” the little dragon, flying on to Lucifer’s shoulder. “It’s a pleasure to meet you!”
“Wow, you have a pseudodragon?” Yatii gasped in awe. “Other than the one that came with the Angel Caravan, I’ve only seen wild ones!”
“Well, she’s not ours technically,” the black-winged angel explained. “She’s just hanging out with us for now.”
“I’ve read so much about you,” Yatii told the little dragon. “The smartest of the chromatics, a rare strand of magic and mental energy that forms a bond between those who share the same blood…”
“It’s time to get moving,” Contra’s voice rang over the camp. Pen immediately got busy and began to push the boat back into the water. A second later, Lucifer, Yatii, and Ed also added their strength, pushing the shell quickly through the uneven sand and into the swift current of the Acheron.

Chapter 11: Fifth (part 3)
“Hurry, get on,” Pen told the two newcomers, and they did as he had said. As soon as they were all sitting, he pushed it the rest of the way in and jumped on, taking his place at the paddle.
At first, it was strange having Yatii and Ed aboard, but it became more natural as the day went by. They talked and got to know each other better. Ed was the son of a merchant, who had left him with friends in Perol while he traveled. He had been friends with Yatii for many years, ever since he could call Perol his home. Yatii, on the other hand, had grown up in the same town that his ancestors had lived in.
Lucifer briefly told them about his heritage in the Okora mountains, reciting the same story to them as he had told Pen. Yatii, especially, was fascinated by the topic, and immediately struck up a conversation about Okora, the black-skinned, huge, cat-bear-like creatures that ruthlessly ruled the mountains and could only be hunted by those that lived there and carried the experience of many generations and traditions. He seemed to know an incredible amount about animals.
Pen shared none of his history. He found it utterly uninteresting, and he despised being reminded of it. The Archives felt like a thing of the far past. It pleased him when they did not ask him questions.
At noon, they stopped for lunch at the edge of the river, where the only thing in sight were the rolling green hills of Perol, flecked with the stone houses of angels and only few trees. Pen, who had grown up inside the dense forest, was surprised by the broad, grassy greeness of the angel’s country. And, from snipets of conversations that he overheard, so were the other elves.
Lunch consisted of bread, jerky, and water from the river. It wasn’t very much, but—as Panda pointed out—they would be arriving in Murneske, the angel’s capitol, by nightfall of the next day, promising a hearty meal.
As Pen watched Lucifer, Ed, Yatii, and Sasheeta eat, he suddenly sprang to his feet and ran to the top the hill, getting a better view over the land.
“Pen, what’s up?” Lucifer asked. He got to his feet and joined his friend. A moment later, Yatii and Ed also set aside their lunches to see what was happening. The other groups, concentrating on their conversations and food, did not notice them.
Far in the distance, coming from the north, someone was riding. Nano, who was in the sky on Lyanni and had Koshga on her shoulder, flashed a red light from the stone on her staff, circling higher into the sky so that the signal could be seen from far away.
The moving speck in the distance disappeared in a valley, only to reappear at the top of one of the nearer hills. Whoever it was was heading directly for them.
The pounding of hooves made the earth shake, even when the figure was still no bigger than a thumbnail on the horizon. They all gasped in astonishment at the creature’s speed; none of them had ever known that anything could run so fast. And, as she drew closer, Pen was struck breathless by her beauty.
It wasn’t a beauty like he had ever seen before. On the outside, she was a normal bay, but there was something about her that did not reach the eye. She was built more heavily and she was taller than a war-horse, but she had a lightness about her that did not match her looks. Her black mane streamed, rippling like the angry sea; her fur shimmered like fire with youth against her muscles. Her eyes were fierce and deep and wonderful with an inner power that defied all other around it.
She burned down the last hill with the fury of the wind, the rhythm of her hooves changing as she made her way up to them. As she slowed to a canter, the four of them caught a glimpse of the rider. He wasn’t an elf, since his light green hair was short, but he had no wings. Pen saw that he carried the outfit of a Havoc graduate, and yet he wore no sword.
In a split second, the horse pranced once in place before them; then, she spun around and galloped away, her rider smiling and lifting up a hand in farewell. A boy was standing where he had been dropped off, right before them.
Chapter 12: Black Tears
“Of course,” Lucifer was the first to answer. “We still have room on our boat.”
“Great!” the boy exclaimed, coming toward them. “I’m Raine. It’s nice to meet you.”
Lucifer was quick to open up to the strange boy, leading him down to where their boat was pulled up on the shore. He introduced them all as they returned to their lunches. Yatii and Ed were a little slower in getting accustumed to Raine, but within a few minutes, they also warmed up to him.
“You must be a half-dragon,” Yatii said, trying to contain his curiousity. “I had heard stories that some dragons got attracted by our people during the war, but I was never really sure about their accuracy.”
“It’s true,” Raine confirmed. “My father is a tiger dragon who fought in the Continental War. My mother was a dragon-healer.” He shrugged. “You can probably guess how they met.”
“A tiger dragon?” Yatii asked, scratching his head. “It sounds familiar…”
Pen didn’t know anything about them, but he wasn’t about to ask. It was Ed who finally did. “I’ve never heard of any tiger dragons before,” he said.
“They’re pretty rare,” Raine explained. “Even more now because so many died in the war.”
“That must mean that they’re metallic dragons,” Yatii put in. “They must have very powerful magic in order for them to take on an angel form.”
“Yeah. The reason that they were so valuable in the war was exactly because they had power-destruction magic in their fire. With just one blast, they could blow apart physical, magical, and demonic flesh alike. Of course, they have to be in their dragon form to do so.”
“Do you know your father?” Ed questioned, almost tentively.
“We live just inside the border of Imdaar, at the edge of my father’s mountain. He watched over us, coming to visit whenever he felt that he had enough power to spare to take on his angel form. He taught me many things about the power-destruction draconic magic in my blood.”
“But, if you’re only half-dragon,” Yatii pointed out, “that means that you must also have your mother’s healing magic in your blood, too.”
The boy’s hand strayed to the covered hilt of his sword, hesitating for a moment before he drew it out. It was slender and slightly curved; it was a good weapon, Pen knew. But it was as unusual as its wielder, because its blade was half white and half black, split down the middle.
“This is Judgement,” Raine said. “My father and my mother made it for me. They said that it would help me to control the two magics inside me, once I better learn how to use it.”
“It’s a good sword,” Pen said, speaking to him for the first time. “You won’t need any other.”
Raine and Pen locked eyes for a second, each unsure whether they faced a friend or foe. Then, Raine smiled. “I like her, too.” He slid the weapon away again. “What about your sword?”
Pen shrugged. “I still have to figure her out,” he stated honestly.
“Okay, it’s time to keep moving!” Sharp’s voice rang over the camp. This time, Yatii and Ed took over the paddles for the stretch of river before nightfall. The five boys spoke of the past and of the future, sharing their similarities and recognizing their differences. Pen listened more than he talked, but even he—with Lucifer at his side—opened his mouth once in a while. The boys respected his silence and did not force him to join the conversation, and Pen finally had to admit that some kids weren’t as stupid as they might appear.

Chapter 11: Fifth (part 4) and Chapter 12: Black Tears (part 1)
“Hello,” he said cheerfully, meeting four pairs of eyes. “Is it okay if I join your group?”
He was like no other; his appearance was just as surprising to Pen as the horse’s had been, although in a very different way. It took all of them a moment to look him over, registering his eccentic features. He had platinum silver hair, with bangs that fell over and to the side of his eyes. In contrast to his light hair were his black robes. His wings revealed that he wasn’t an elf, although he wasn’t an angel either.
One of his wings was normal and white, but the other was black, and it was the wing of a dragon.
Chapter 12: Black Tears (part 2)
At the end of the following day, when the two suns were across from each other in the sky, the Caravan drifted into Murneske, to be greeted by thunderous applause. The angel’s city covered an entire hill, built entirely of stone. It was simple and practical, with paved streets and wide alleys. Like Quont-Ein, there was a castle on the top of the hill, although this one was entirely made of stone bricks instead of gold.
They tied their boats to the docks, where a crowd of angels awaited them. Within half an hour, they were herded up to the castle and into the huge courtyard, where tables had been set out with food.
“Wow!” Lucifer exclaimed. Sasheeta’s eyes got big when they fell on a huge platter of raw fish from her perch on his shoulder.
“Before we start the party,” Contra yelled over the growing cacophony, quieting the angels and the Caravan, “boy’s dorms are to the left, girl dorms are to the right! Two to a room. That is all!”
With his last words, music jumped out over the crowd and filled the courtyard. Pen was awestruck by it, since none of the music that the wisepeople of the Archives played were as energetic or as wild as what he now heard. Strangely drawn by the sounds, he swam through the crowds around the tables and found the corner where the musicians were.
They were a group of three elves and three angels. An old, gray-haired, kind-looking angel, an elf with wild, curly blonde hair, and a brown-haired elf-girl played violins, fiddling the quick-paced melody from a rickety wooden music stand. Beside them, sitting on book-crates, an elf and an angel were armed with guitars and bells strapped to their ankles that rang as they tapped their feet. The last angel was a handsome young man with black hair and inticrately-pattered wings, playing an instrument that Pen had never seen before. It looked like a wooden box with a long neck that was taller than the musician, carved into the shape of a horse’s head at the top. Its single string was thick—presumably spun from hog guts—and made a deep, vibrating sound when it was plucked.
Pen was so spellbound by the mix of chords and rhythms that he took a seat right on the grass before the musicians and listened. He unsheathed Lucaya and set her across his lap, feeling as her blade vibrated with the music.
After half an hour, Lucifer finally found him. “I was wondering where you had gone,” he said as he sat down beside him. The curly-haired violinist winked at them and smiled while she played.
As the night began to close on them, they struck up a slow tune. The people quieted down to listen to the sad melody, which seemed to echo over the hills for miles.
Pen began to feel something while the song flowed. He didn’t know what was happening, but he began to ache inside; a great fire was there, like nothing he ever felt before. An emptyness filled his entire being. The music sang.
A drop of something black dropped onto Lucaya’s blade, where it slid off and disappeared in the shadows.
“Pen,” Lucifer said quietly, surprising Pen. The black-eyed boy looked up suddenly, meeting his gentle eyes, and saw that they were filled with pain and care. “Pen, you’re crying.”
Pen could no longer stand it. He stumbled to his feet, clutching Lucaya to his chest, and ran up the stairs to the deserted boy’s dorms. Heads turned as Lucifer raced after him.

Chapter 12: Black Tears (part 3)
The music still sang on and on as Pen staggered along the stone hallway. All the torches died, leaving everything in utter darkness. He felt weak and disconnected, and still a fire burned inside him as the beautiful, horrible music pushed against his ears. Opening the first door he found, he flung himself into the room and fell to his knees on the rug, Lucaya still in his arms.
“Pen!” he heard Lucifer cry in the dark hallway, but he seemed distant and far away. Pen finally dropped his sword, his body shaking with feelings that he never before knew he had.
Lucifer heard the sword fall, and he used it to find his way through the dark to where Pen was crouching. He laid a comforting hand on his friend’s quivering back and subcontiously barked a command to the candle in angel-magic. It burst into flame, immediately filling the room with its encouraging light.
“Pen, talk to me!” Lucifer urged, kneeling down and gently shaking him to get him to return from wherever he had gone. Pen’s face was burried in his hands; his black tears, like blood, streamed through his fingers. “Pen! Are you okay?! Pen!!”
The song ended.
The music released Pen from its merciless grip, but the new feelings did not. They were feelings that he wished he had never discovered.
He dropped his hands to the floor, where the black tears were absorbed into the rug and disappeared. Slowly, the feelings began to ebb away to the back of his mind, and his body stopped shaking. The light of the candle gave him strength; Lucifer’s anxious breathing gave him comfort. After a moment more, the torches in the hallway came back to life.
Pen sat back upright, and, meeting Lucifer’s worried eyes, he smiled sadly. There was a moment of mutual silence.
“I can cry,” the black-eyed boy said, closing his eyes in a weariness that he had never experienced before. His soul drifted off into the darkness.

Lucifer did not once leave Pen’s side again that night. Only minutes after Pen had fallen asleep, Raine, Yatii, and Ed stopped by the room to ask about what had happened.
“I’m not sure,” Lucifer told them honestly, his voice hardly above a whisper so as not to wake up Pen. “The music seemed to have gotten to him somehow.”
“Is he okay?” Raine asked, concerned.
“Yeah, I think he’s just sleeping,” he answered. He did not tell them that he had no way of knowing whether Pen was sleeping or if he was dead.
Reassured, the boys headed off to bed, closing the door behind them. After hesitating for a second, Lucifer covered Pen with a blanket from the bed. He didn’t know what else to do for his black-eyed friend, so he laid down on his bed and waited, until exhaustion pulled him unwillingly down into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter 13: Sanna-Saegea-Pindus (part 1)
When Pen opened his eyes, he saw beams of light streaming through the open window. Sasheeta and Koshga were curled up together on the windowsill, their scales shimmering in the morning sun. Birds sung outside; the air was cool and refreshing.
Pen frowned at the weather’s irony. Inside, he could still feel the hole that the music had burned inside him, and the horrible new feeling lurked there, like a monster in a weak cage, waiting for the right moment to break out.
“Oh, you’re finally awake!” Lucifer exclaimed, his voice heavy with relief. He got off the bed, where he had absentmindedly been reading a thin book. Pen also got to his feet, though more slowly. If it wasn’t for the new emotion inside, he would have been all back to normal.
“How are you feeling?” the black-winged angel asked, gathering up the blanket from the floor and throwing it back on the bed. Pen kneeled down and gathered up Lucaya from where she still lay on the rug. Once she was safetly back in her sheath, he answered Lucifer’s question.
“Fine,” he said carelessly, refusing to meet his friend’s eyes. He turned so that he was facing the wall and ran a hand through his black hair.
Lucifer hesitated for a moment, before he broke the silence again. “No you’re not,” he stated.
“I’m fine!” Pen almost yelled. For some unexplained reason, anger was stirring in him. He went to the door and pulled it open roughly, scowling. With his back to Lucifer, he paused. “Don’t worry about me,” he hissed, before he slammed the door behind him.
Lucifer stood, stunned, where Pen had left him. Although he didn’t want to, he couldn’t help but feel hurt by Pen’s actions. Had he done something wrong? Why was Pen so angry at him all of a sudden?
He turned slowly back to the window, where the two pseudodragons had been awoken. They regarded him with their innocent, bright little eyes. Lucifer gathered Sasheeta in his arms and held her for a moment, calming himself.
“It’s not your fault,” she said comfortingly. “I think that’s just the way he is.”
“We can’t read his thoughts like we can for most people,” Koshga filled in. “Otherwise, I would tell you—“
“No,” Lucifer broke in quietly. “I think that he is beyond thoughts.”
The dragons did not question him any more.
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errgg...I just got back from shop 'n save! yay!....-_- my dad made me & Al go up there so we can hunt for meat..such as steak... wich is a cow...T.T poor cow!!!! ToT me no eat!! Oh & do you like my new Halloween theme??? lol
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I'm sooooooo bored...I just tried to submit siome fanart...it probably didn't work...T.T nothing ever works with me!! errggg!!! try & chex it out okayz??? It said it should be up within 48 hours...that's like...tuesday afternoon...or morning...I don't wanna wait that long! >:0
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   lookit my yugi & ed pic!! LOL!!!

Hey there guys! good morning! n_n lol last night was rough...n_n' China kept constantly barking cause she wasn't sleeping on me...n_n' she was somewhat annoying, but thats what I get for a puppy. lol and at like 1:00 30 am she woke me up making me let her outside...it was dark...me no like the dark...n_n' ll so instead I let her out on the side of the house where there's a patch of grass underneath the lamp poast & then I went in & watched some cowboy bebop & Inu Yasha. Cowboy bebop was wild. I have no clue what teh hecks goin on there, but the music was cool at the end! lol I thought spike was gonna die...that would've been a nice dramatic ending for him...falling off a church in slow motion. n_n Inu Yasha was awesome. I'm not lost at all there. Elda was crying this morning when we watched the repeats (she woke up to cause she couldn't sleep so we went in the kitchen & watched) and Bonkotsu died. She was cussing out Inu Yasha! n_n lol And Fma, I'm somewhat lost with the whole Chimera dude thing...-_-' see the one episode I miss is one of the most important ones!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ToT so yeah....T.T *sniff sniff* but that's awesome how Greed, Envy & Sloth were together. That would've been awesome if all seven sins were together in battle. n_n lol Wrath's still a turd in my eyes. Don't like him. Never did & never will. But Jenny's obsessed with his little psychotic eyes, voice & hair. I keep saying he should be in the lunny bin! crazy...*starts to mumble to self about how life isn't fair* well yeah...Today I have to go to Hieis Twin's party. We're going to see Elizebeth Town with that Orlando-sissy dude. and then we're going to eat dinner at Olive Garden! yay! my favorite food!!! n_n lol Oh & please visit these ppl!:
Hey there! this'll be my last post! but while I'm posting I have to say this! Please visit these following sites:
-sesshoumaru 2000
-LokiRagnarok
-GothicInuYashaFan
-Hieis Twin
-Hieis Firey Babe
-Edo Pimp
thanx! ttfn!
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Saturday, October 15, 2005

  

Hey there! n_n' I'm so tired...I know it's early, but I've had a big day...*yawns*...-_-ZZZzzzzz... so sleepy...my friends are comming over tomorrow to meet China & then I have to watch my anime, then I have to give China a bath & then I have to go to Hieis Twin's party...n_n I'm tired...I hope my fma & Inu yasha records tonight...I swear if it doesn't I'll hurt someone....-_-'....
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AWESOMENESS!!!! W00T!!!! n_n *big smile on face* I just got a puppy!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!! n_n It's a female black cocker spaniel. n_n so cute!!! n_n *huggles* we named her China. n_n currently my other dogz aren't being to nice to the poor girl, but hey, they'll get used to her, right? n_n I'm so happy! she's so cute, with her long little ears & wobbly legs! *huggles more* but she smells like hay, and needs a bath badly! lol n_n ttfn!
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AWESOMENESS!!!! W00T!!!! n_n *big smile on face* I just got a puppy!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!! n_n It's a female black cocker spaniel. n_n so cute!!! n_n *huggles* we named her China. n_n currently my other dogz aren't being to nice to the poor girl, but hey, they'll get used to her, right? n_n I'm so happy! she's so cute, with her long little ears & wobbly legs! *huggles more* but she smells like hay, and needs a bath badly! lol n_n ttfn!
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AWESOMENESS!!!! W00T!!!! n_n *big smile on face* I just got a puppy!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!! n_n It's a female black cocker spaniel. n_n so cute!!! n_n *huggles* we named her China. n_n currently my other dogz aren't being to nice to the poor girl, but hey, they'll get used to her, right? n_n I'm so happy! she's so cute, with her long little ears & wobbly legs! *huggles more* but she smells like hay, and needs a bath badly! lol n_n ttfn!
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Hey there guys! *yawns* I got up at like 7:00 am today... so tired...but great news! my mom woke me up cause she thinks we'll probably be able to get the puppy today! w00t! so exciting! lol n_n We're going out there to look for a Cocker Spaniel! w00t! It's all black with velvety fur. n_n never saw it up close but I saw a pic of it. n_n the puppy's cute! lol n_n Oh & last night I was watching Twitches when I was done with all of my homework I had to make up from vacation. Al has a ton more homework than me though! lol he fell asleep on it matter of fact! n_n he was drooling on it with his pencil in his hand with his head flat down...pooor guy...must've been really tired! he was up all night til like I think 1:00 am! o.o I'd just forefit my homework by then. I wouldn't even care if I got it done! lol n_n but he's a trooper. He said that he's gonna finish it in the morning....hmmm.... well yeah. Hey, I'm not sure if I told you this, but Al got a girlfriend & her name is Kaulover! yay Al! n_n she's a good friend of mine & I helped pull some strings for them. n_n But he told me that he had to hack into this one site last night...didn't give me the address of it but...hmm...I'll just have to find it myself & see what he was up to.... lol n_n at this point I'm starting to realize, thus again I'm talking to myself... T.T unless my true friends on myo are really reading this lame post all the way threw. n_n *cries* you guys are great! *huggiez* well I'm going to go watch Digimon, Shinzo, Battle B-Damon, and all that other good stuff on Jetix. ttfn! n_n
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