“So, what happens to them now?” I asked Gunderson while still looking at both Beth and Letitia who were being looked after and talked to by the various people at the moment.

We all somehow survived another impossibly dangerous situation together only to possibly now have a new danger come up, in the form of the IDPA. Would they get in trouble for suddenly knowing the truth without first going through some kind of tedious bureaucratic process involving an excessive amount of forms and paperwork?

Wait, could I also be in trouble too then?

“What do you mean? Assuming they are all in good health and don’t need to go to the hospital they’ll go home after giving their statements.” Gunderson explained with a raised eyebrow and slightly cocked head.

“That’s it?” I asked in disbelief. That was way too easy.

“Yeah…” Gunderson replied, clearly just as confused at my reaction as I was at his. “What did you expect would happen?”

“I mean, I don’t know? At least some sort of long process of filling out paperwork, going to some kind of IDPA seminar, maybe even some kind of punishment or fine.” I said with my voice growing smaller and softer the longer my sentence went on, indicating the decreasing amount of confidence I had in what I was saying.

Gunderson didn’t say or do anything for a few moments before he suddenly just burst out laughing, drawing the attention of most of the room onto himself.

“Hahaha…” His continued laughter only served to make my cheeks just grow redder and redder.

“It’s not that funny.” I said sheepishly.

“It’s kinda funny.” He said wiping tears from his eyes, a big smile still plastered on his face. “That is both the craziest and somehow sanest thing I’ve ever heard. You're right, that totally sounds like something the IDPA would do, but also you’re somehow completely and absolutely wrong.”

“Well, fine sheesh. You could have just said that.” I said petulant while crossing my arms and turning my head away in a huff.

“Sorry, sorry. It was just too funny.” Gunderson took in a deep breath to center himself. “It was probably just the juxtaposition from being on maximum alert and super stressed out over whether or not you were even alive, and here you are worried about whether or not we’re going to be handing out fines to you and your friends.”

He suddenly burst out into another fit of laughter.

“Okay, I got it. You had other priorities.” I said, still somewhat irritably. “But, like it can’t be as simple as saying ‘Hey, have a nice day’ and then letting them leave, can it?”

“I mean, pretty much. What are you worried about happening? That they’ll start blabbing about this or that they’d somehow use their new knowledge to cause trouble.”

“Well, yeah. All that.” I said making a broad gesture with my hands for added emphasis.

“The first part isn't a huge concern, they barely know anything at the moment, much less enough to cause trouble. Regarding them revealing the truth to others, well… the short version is they can’t, even if they wanted to.” Gunderson said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, my feelings turning into a mixture of both curiosity and a bit of relief.

“It’s because… wait, hold up. We should probably be having this conversation with those two here as well. Repeating the same thing multiple times gets kind of annoying.” Gunderson said before letting out a sharp, shrill whistle to get attention back onto himself. “Hey, let those two come over here a sec. I’d like to have a word with them.”

The EMTs and local police had mixed expressions at being interrupted from what they were doing, but they didn’t try to argue and urged Beth and Letitia to come over toward Gunderson and me.

They took up positions to either side of me and looked between Gunderson and me curiously, not knowing what was in store for them by coming over.

“So.” Gunderson began. “I imagine each of you right now have a ton of questions. Most of those I can answer, but, for now, we only have time for a few. To hopefully clear up some of them, yes, monsters are real, and yes, so is magic.”

Neither Beth nor Letitia said anything for a long while. Beth continued to stare at Gunderson waiting for him to continue, Letitia’s eyes were still mostly glued to the floor only seeming to partially pay attention to what was being said.

“No reaction?” Gunderson asked somewhat confused.

“Is this a joke?” Beth asked clearly annoyed. “Are you trying to make us laugh to make us feel better or something? Is that why you called us over?”

“Uh, no. Nothing like that.” Gunderson answered even more confused. “I was hoping to clear up some of the confusion you might be experiencing.”

“Oh, I have lots of confusion going on.” Beth replied angrily. “Tons and tons of it. But what does making up goofy stories do to make any of that better.”

“Um…” Gunderson muttered before looking to me for some kind of answer. “Is she really one of them?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m like 90 percent sure at least.” I admitted.

“Hey! What are you two talking about? I’m right here you know.” Beth loudly demanded.

“Hmm, yeah I think I get what's going on. She’s deeply in denial. It happens, especially if the unveiling occurs in a particularly traumatic situation.” Gunderson said, nodding to himself.

“Yeah, that makes sense. She was doing her best to avoid any eye contact with the corpse after it was dead.” I replied, agreeing with Gunderson’s assessment.

“Hey! Stop that!” Beth shouted irritably. “You two are really starting to tick me off talking about me like I’m not standing literally right beside you.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Sorry.” Gunderson said simply. “You’ve been through something extremely traumatic today, both of you. Perhaps it might be better to keep pretending none of what you think you saw was real, but…”

Before Gunderson could keep explaining he was interrupted by Letitia.

“Tell us the truth.” She said louder than I’d heard her speak all night. “I-I need to know.”

Beth and I both silently looked at Letitia as her face was set in a stern and determined expression and looking directly at Gunderson, desperate for answers.

“Right, of course.” Gunderson said softly, looking between all of us again. “Like I was saying, magic is real and so, of course, are monsters. You all fought one tonight.”

“No, we fought a drugged-up and fucked up man. He was our gym teacher, Coach Philip.” Beth shot back quickly, almost frantically.

“I can’t speak to the details of the monster yet, because I don’t know them.” Gunderson said while looking in my direction.

“It was an Alchemical Horror, according to my Analysis skill.” I dutifully reported.

“Right, that. It might have looked like your teacher, but I’m quite certain based on the damage I’ve seen it cause so far, it was very much a monster.” Gunderson slowly explained.

“N-no, monsters aren’t real.” Beth insisted, her eyes now wide and glued to the floor.

“Jenni, would you mind showing her a small bit of magic.” Gunderson said softly.

“Sure.” I replied before holding my hand out in front of me and conjuring three small inky black orbs that obediently hovered above my palm, waiting. I let them slowly circle in a small orbit there as I turned to look at Beth’s reaction.

“There’s…no…way….” Beth said weakly, her eyes locked on the display being shown to her.

Letitia’s eyes were also glued to the little black orbs hovering above my hand.

As I turned to look at her, I noticed Letitia’s chest rising and falling at an accelerated rate. Her eyes were also huge saucers now as she watched my improvised magic performance.

After only a second I could also hear her breathing become audible louder and turn into increasingly loud gasps and gulps of air.

“Woah there, are you alright Letitia?” I said, taking a step toward her.

“St-stay way from you monster!” She shouted before backing away in fright.

“Woah, alright. It’s alright.” I said slowly and softly, mentally extinguishing the shadow bolts that were still hovering in place. “They're gone now, you’re alright. You’re safe here.”

Once the magic was gone, she let me approach her again and I was able to place a hand on her back. I started massaging it in slow circular motions in the hopes that it would calm her down a bit.

“You’re okay. You’re safe.” Beth repeated, coming up to my side and doing the same thing I was, gently trying to massage her back in slow circles.

“Hey.” Gunderson said somewhat loudly to a nearby EMT who was patiently waiting on standby near us. “We could use some help over here.”

After rushing over quickly, he asked. “What’s happening?”

“The young lady here has started hyperventilating. She’s likely experiencing or just experienced a panic attack of some sort.” Gunderson explained to the medical worker.

“Right. It's Letitia right? Would you mind coming over here with me? We’ll get you some water, and you can sit down for a little with us. We’ll even bring you over a blanket you can wrap yourself up in. How does that sound?” He said in a calm, friendly, and professional tone of voice.

“O-okay.” Letitia replied, obviously not willing to put up much of a resistance right now. “I’d like to see my friends please.”

“You’ll see them soon, before you head home in any case. Promise.” Gunderson assured her.

“I still just can’t believe it.” Beth muttered after Letitia had been escorted away. “I mean I do, I guess, but I also don’t. Does that make any sense at all?”

I couldn’t help but smile at Beth’s question.

“I do. Of course, I do. I had pretty much the same exact feeling when I first learned about all this craziness myself.” I said moving up to stand closer to her.

Gunderson, likely sensing the moment, decided to make himself scarce and go talk with the other workers moving about the gymnasium.

“How long have you known about this? At least since the party, am I right?” She guessed.

“You are. That’s when it happened to me. Well, technically probably right before the party. Do you remember me suddenly being in pain outside of Damien’s house?”

“Yeah, I do remember that. So that's when it happened to you huh. Why didn’t I experience any sort of pain like that? Is it just cause I’m tougher than you?” She asked with a small smile on her face.

“Ha, well you probably were before all this, but now I’m way tougher. To answer your question though, it’s because what happened to you isn’t what happened to me.” Taking in a deep breath, I continued. “It’s kind of a lot, but the short version is I got gifted a whole bunch of magical powers to help me fight monsters. In your case, you’ve spent too much time around monsters and magic, so your able to see things how they really are now.”

“Wait, you get magical powers, but I don’t? How is that fair?” She asked grumpily.

“Well, you can still technically learn magic. But you have to do that super slow and inefficient way. I just got fast-tracked and handed a bunch of cheat codes from the start.” I said to her with a sly grin.

“Lucky.” She shot back, but without any venom in her words.

“Meh, it has its ups and its downs.” I said with a shrug, not really willing to reveal all the negatives that came with my job just yet.

“What about me though? What happens to me now?” She asked cautiously.

“Well, you’re not in trouble or anything if that’s what you’re thinking.” I said with haughty confidence. “According to Gunderson, you can just go home now.”

“It can’t be that easy. Clearly, this is all one big secret, right? What’s stopping me from going home and telling my Mom all about it?” She asked insistently.

“Do it.” The smooth calm voice of Gunderson said, as he made his way back over to us.

“What?” Beth and I both said at the same time.

“Do it.” Gunderson repeated with a sly smile. “I’ll spoil the results now though, so you'll understand, but if you try you’ll find you won’t be able to. As in physically, you won’t be able to vocalize the words, or write them down on a piece of paper.”

“Okay… assuming that is true, that seems creepy and super fucked up.” Beth said slowly while giving Gunderson a wary look.

“Meh, you’re still new so the gauge on what's fucked up is way different than mine, but that isn’t even the worst part.”

“What is?” Beth asked, even more nervous and on guard than before.

“Well, if you somehow, someway find a way to communicate and convincingly reveal the truth to someone else, and it’s your fault. You’ll die.” He said simply.

“Just die. As in I’ll drop dead.” She asked incredulously.

“Maybe, or some other ill fate will happen to you. The worst case is that Jenni here, or someone like her, will get a quest to execute for endangering humanity by recklessly revealing the truth.” Gunderson said with a broad and slightly terrifying smile.

“Woah, woah, woah, hold up. I’m not killing Beth, no matter what stupid quest I might get.” I loudly insisted, even going so far as to shoot an angry glare in Gunderson’s direction.

“Like I said, that’ll only happen in the worst case where she continues to maliciously try and reveal the secret to as many people as possible and other methods of ending her life haven’t worked for one reason or another.” Gunderson said reassuringly. “Besides, Bobbie would probably get the quest before you did, given your close connection.”

“Oh, that’s sooo much better.” I said sarcastically.

“So what, I just go home and not tell anyone about all this, because I can’t, but if I somehow do, one way or another I’ll end up dead. Possibly at the hands of my best friend.” Beth summarized. “Wow, this is all so fucked up.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” I agreed sadly.

“You get used to it.” Gunderson said with a dismissive shrug.