“Excuse me, Lady Chagrin?”

“Yes? What is it?”

“There has been an arrival. Humans. They’re following the path that The Original took a few hundred years ago.”

“Really? So, the plan worked… Wonderful. Thank you for your service, you may take the remainder of the day off, then I will assign you to a new team.”

“Thank you, Lady Chagrin.”

“Oh, hold on, one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“Where… are they right now?”

“Oh, we detected them in the wind rock mine. The power cut protocol worked, they’re currently trapped.”

“Excellent. You are dismissed.”

Amity banged on the walls.

She jumped, trying desperately to get the elevator moving again. The gap still open at the top of the elevator doors was too small for her to leave from. Katie and Raleigh, too. She thought Himiko would maybe fit, but her hat definitely wouldn’t, and there was no way she would agree to losing her hat for even just a few minutes.

It took a few minutes of thinking surrounded by the fear-powered yelling of her friends to come up with a plan. She pulled out a glyph design from her bag and created the usual magic solution, using barely any red rock to create as strong an ice pillar as possible. She placed the glyph on the edge of the land above, half underneath the edge of the elevator, and pressed the center of it.

The people around her took note of what she was doing and began to watch with bated breath as she tapped it.

Nothing.

Amity pulled down the glyph, checking out the design to ensure there were no errors or mistakes, and it was all correct. She tapped it directly in her hand to ensure she was tapping in the right spot, but nothing came out.

“Why… why isn’t this working?”Just to see what would happen, she used her own magic, and a block of ice was created, no problem. Himiko leaned in and tapped the glyph, and the expected pillar of ice rocketed out.

“What? Why did it work for you but not me?”

“I’m not sure… the only thing that’s changed between the last time you used a glyph and now is that you didn’t have natural magic then.”

“So it’s the shot then? Dang, wish I had known that… I think having natural magic is still better, but it’s not by all too much…”

Amity lamented for a second before coming up with an idea. She picked the ice off the paper and wedged it as best she could in the gap, then she put her hand to it and tried to manipulate it. Make it bigger. She felt her magic hook onto the ice and it started moving the ice. It got smaller to get just underneath the elevator door, then got just big enough to stabilize, then pushed up. The ice expanded, lifting the elevator along with it.

“Shocked I didn’t think of literally just using my own magic first. Or just like, pulling the elevator back up with the weird magic strength.”

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

The elevator wasn’t fully up, but it was enough for Amity to get through and realize the door to the mine had shut. Braced with metal bars, the door couldn’t be more solid. She banged on it for a second, but very quickly realized that even with her relatively new strength, she couldn’t get it out of the way. She pressed one of the buttons that are meant to control the elevator, but it didn’t move at all.

She idly pressed buttons for a few seconds before lights behind the silicone buttons lit back up

“Oh shit, power’s not out anymore. Should we still go in?”

“I mean, probably? Get back in the elevator and move the ice away.”

Amity slid down into the elevator and shrunk the ice again, just enough to push it away and begin their descent again. Once they reached the bottom, the elevator doors opened to a spacious hall with mostly flat floors save for the rocks scattered closer to the walls. The four of them stepped out and began looking at the walls, noting various colored rocks embedded in the walls. Raleigh split off from the group at the end of the hall to go down a smaller hall seemingly covered in a white rock, something they didn’t have yet. He ran his hands on the wall as he perused, looking for a separated rock that Amity and the rest of the group could use, until he noticed something.. odd. A few planks of wood had collapsed, revealing a smoothly carved hole in the wall. The walls of it were smooth, and the entrance looked well-worn, to say the least.

Raleigh passed it for the time being, but he made a mental note to show the group it when he next met up with them. He neared the end of the hall before spotting a small pile of rocks, mostly white but there were a few outlying green and red ones. He picked a new medium sized rock before heading back to the main hall. Amity had already arrived, but Himiko and Katie were still in their respective halls.

“Hey, Amity, did you find a rock?”

“No luck on my end, did you?”

“Yeah, here it is.”

He handed the rock to Amity and she immediately reached into her bag to begin making a glyph.

“Oh, Raleigh, can you record this? It’s kinda important for the whole… process.”

He didn’t question it before obliging, using his phone to take a recording as Amity spread the usual circle out. The expected light flung itself from wall to wall, drawing out a precise guide for the magic to follow. She used the recording to trace the lines as she had done many times before, then had Raleigh tap the center. A small gust of wind erupted out of the center before spreading wider and causing a few rocks to get pushed around.

“Oh shit, it’s wind. That’s like, awesome.”

Amity tried to capture the wind, placing her hand in the breeze before feeling magic flow into it, dispersing in the breeze before returning to the stretched out appendage. She tried to feel it, understand its every movement and influence them, curving the breeze to the side, then speeding it up and slowing it back down.

Eventually, Amity allowed the breeze to stop, and she disposed of the glyph.

“Using magic is so tiring. I didn’t really think there'd be that much energy going into it.”

“Where did you think it’d be getting it’s power?”

“True,”

Amity and Raleigh sat on some rocks and waiting, idly making small talk for some minutes until they realized something.

“Hey, haven’t they been down there for a while? Do you think we should go after them?”

“Actually yeah, they’ve been in their halls for like 10 minutes. Let’s go check on them.”

Raleigh went down the left hall, Amity the middle.

“Hey! Himiko! Katie! Whichever one of you is in this hall…”

There was a slight echo, but no response from either of the missing people. Raleigh traced his fingers on the yellow rock that was embedded in the wall, feeling a slight buzz of static electricity zap his hands every few seconds. Maybe 30 seconds into walking, his hand slipped into a hole in the wall, seemingly related to the one in his own mine but bigger and rougher.

“What the…”

He looked into it, seeing the hole attach to a tube running parallel to the mine. Something blurred by, running around the tubes, before turning back and stopping at the hole. The metallic ball rolled to Raleigh, capturing an image of his face and rolling back before Raleigh could do anything.

“What… Was that a robot??”

Raleigh had this weigh on his mind as he walked further down the mine before he saw another one. It was similar to the previous one but slightly larger, and colored black. It began rolling towards Raleigh’s feet, but Raleigh stepped to the side. When it made it where Raleigh stood prior, it simply vanished. No trace of anything having occurred remained. Just as he began walking again, the robot reappeared just in-front of him, ramming straight into his ankle and tripping him.

“Holy crap, that thing teleported!”

He felt a roll on his back, then a sharp prick.

He couldn’t move to swat whatever was back there away before Raleigh slipped into sleep.