What is Magic?

What is magic? I have lived my whole life with that one question. Wondering where it came from, how it works, why it's so evil.

I have lived my whole life escaping my fate. The fate of the world that surrounded me. The knawing pain that lingered around every corner, excepting my arrival, anticipating my return.

I have lived my whole life searching for the answers, looking for the way out, to return to my life before magic, before my parent's death.

But that was then... And now is now...

Now I live in a world of magic, a world where death is around every corner, where my once impossible question turned to reality...

But still... It lingered in my head. After all those years of not knowing, even after finding the truth...

I guess it all started when I met him when he showed me the other side of magic.

He was just like me. Magic ruined his life, killed his mother, and pushed him toward the path of loneliness and sadness. But we were also different. He lost sight of that goal and decided to roll with the waves.

I thought he was stupid at first, not letting his past take hold, not pushing past the pain. But he made me realize something else.

"What you have now, is not what you had before." (Chil)

---

My name is Chil. I don't have a last name, and I don't have a family either.

Ever since I was six I have been traveling across the United States as an orphan. Going from family to family, from abuse, to love, to hate. I have been running from it all, all in search of that thing that killed my parents, the thing that put me in this predicament in the first place.

But that was all so long ago. Now many years later, after escaping the Foster Care System, I learned to take the world into my own hands, I learned to struggle through the streets, to go from train to train, all for one goal. To find it... To find the magic in the big city.

Oh, and by the way, I have also been traveling with some other orphan friends I made along the way.

Let me introduce you to them.

"Chil you're looking hungry. Here I saved some bread for you." (Mike)

Mike's the nice one of the group. He always gives me food and takes care of me. Plus he's two years older than me so he's super reliable and tough. I might marry him one day.

"We don't have time to chit chat! Get ready! The trains coming soon!" (Leia)

Leia is the leader of the group. She always makes sure everyone's in order and pushes us forward to our next destination. Even though she is really mean to me, and makes fun of me sometimes, I really do look up to her.

"Mike, can we have some bread too?" (Shi Twins)

The Shi Twins are our new recruits. They're both two years younger than me and don't have much to bring to the table, well except for the cuteness of course. They are the cutest.

"You guys can't have any more bread. You already ate your fair share." (Melana)

Melana is my best friend in the whole wide world. We have been traveling since even before I escape the Foster Care System. We met in an orphan family. Where we would get in trouble together, run together. We had blasts back then, but soon we're gonna be in the big leagues, we're gonna be in the big city of New York. Where we can run the streets as sisters, turning the world into our oyster.

"..." (Liam)

And lastly, we have the quiet boy in the back, Liam. He never talks to anyone. We picked him up in an abusive family foster family. We then took him in, but even then he wouldn't talk to us. Not even Mike could get anything out of him, and he gets everything out of everyone. I guess you could call Liam the brick wall of the group. He never cracks under pressure and I guess we could use him as good bait.

But even then, I don't think he would complain about it.

I don't understand him.

---

We boarded the cargo train to New York City.

We all sat in a small railroad car with two wide-open container doors that opened to the dark forest in all directions.

Mike made a super small fire and Leia used her phone as extra lighting.

We talked back and forth, laughing, joking around, watching the sky turn dark.

"Hey Melana, you've ever seen a monster?" (Leia)

"No, and I hope I don't. I saw in a newspaper recently that a town in Oregon was completely destroyed by monsters. The rates are increasing." (Melana)

The Shi Twins stuck close to Mike as the scary stories continued.

"Well, I heard that around these parts, monsters live in the shadows. Even out in the woods. Look out there. Pitch black." (Leia)

"Hey don't make up stuff Leia, there are kids with us now." (Mike)

"I'm not making up stuff. It's true." (Leia)

She grinned falling back on her back, she turned to the two scared twins. Her grin turned to a frown.

She apologized.

"I'm sorry. I'm just trying to buy the time. All that was made up." (Leia)

See, Leia is still a good person underneath, she just makes stuff up sometimes that goes too far. Like all that monster stuff... I couldn't stop staring into the forest. The fear. the paranoia. Then I turned to Liam who sat alone in the back of the cart. He looks scared? Should I talk to him. Give him company...

I thought about myself, the first time I joined the group when no one would talk to me...

Maybe I should talk to him.

I got up and sat down next to Liam.

Our two silent voices echoing the raging sounds of the train. They silent outside as the other guys kept talking and talking, about monsters, their futures...

My future... My past...

"Hey, Liam...? Your family... You don't talk about them that much right? No what am I saying you don't talk at all... But... I think that's fine... After my family died I didn't talk either... They were killed by monsters. Right in front of my eyes. A monster with ten arms, it was super tall, drooling some kind of green liquid. I couldn't understand the stench, the smell as my mom and dad... I just couldn't understand it. They used some sort of magic..." (Chil)

"Have you ever heard of the..." (Liam)

Wait, is Liam talking? Wait what was I telling him? Did I really tell him all that? What was I think-

"Have you ever heard of the Magic Force..." (Liam)

"Magic Force...?" (Chil)

Liam leaned forward with a sad scared face. He reflected on his own past.

"Back when I had my family, my dad would talk all about them. How they would protect the world. Kill the monsters that were unkillable. He always looked up to them, said that if he was born with magic that he would join the magic force." (Liam)

"Did your family also die by a-" (Chil)

"Yes! A monster... And ever since then I have spent my life waiting. Waiting for the moment they would come, come to scoop me away from this horrible life. I want to be a Sorcerer! I want to be a-" (Liam)

Suddenly as if it was magic, the train came to a sudden halt. An explosion erupted two cars ahead of us. I stood up but then everything started to spin. The train started to tip, turn, flip. And before anyone could-

---

A tall looming monster stood tall. It's two thin grey legs that came running from the dark forest. It ran faster than a spreading train, slamming straight into the cargo train ahead of it. Sending the entire front flying, flipping all the carts, all the cars... All the kids went flying about, tossed through the two open container doors, tossed across and into the rocky hillside.

Chil laid out front. Her legs slightly scarred. She watched the monster burn on fire, its body covered in spikes, tall and thin...

"Chil! Chil! Help! Help me! Ahhahgahhaahga!" (Leia)

---

I looked up into the sky. A being tall and thin. It's head flat and long, with four arms that stretched out in all four directions. It was grey, spikes rolling across its elevated back. And all I could see was red. As blood-soaked from its hand. Leia... Her body... I turned to Melana... Her body... No no no no!

Her legs were missing. Her body slammed by the flipped train...

I watched with raining blood flowing from my forehead. The pain was like nothing I had ever felt before. Worse than losing my parents, my family, my new family...

All I could think about was them. My friends. How I would miss them so much. How I wasn't prepared to face that same night, that same dream. To see my friends being killed around me. One by one.

I watched as their heads were bitten off, cut from limb to limb.

I watched as Mike tried his hardest to carry me out of there, my legs riddled with scars. I watched as he fell. His body grabbed squished. All I could see was his face bleeding off, his eyes blown out, dead and lifeless.

All I could see was the blood all around me. Red thick blood. My friend's blood, my blood, my future husband's blood, my bullies blood.

"You monster! DIEEEEEE!" (Liam)

Liam don't do it! Don't!

He ran at the towering monster with anger and rage. He ran at it, slashing hitting, trying his hardest, trying his hardest to widdle it down, to give me enough time to run away.

Don't do it! I can't run Liam I can't... I can't! My legs are broken! I can't! I can't even speak. My throat. I can't tell him.

He kept hitting and hitting, but nothing did anything. The monster still stood two stories high, it's body grey and gruesome, uninjured.

"DIEIEIEIEIE!" (Liam)

And before I knew it...

Liam...?

He was dead. A wave of icy magic slashed across the sky. The monster's cold breath, colder than the coldest days, like frostbite in one cough.

The monster slowly turned to me, knocking over the frozen Liam, crushing him into a thousand chunks.

I was crying.

His words permeating my ears. Liam's hollowed words bouncing from one end of the forest to the other. The Monster reached down to kill me, to end my sorrowful life.

And suddenly it all went black.

I was never able to answer my questions, like what are monsters, where do they come from, where does magic come from, how does it work, why is it so evil?

What is the Magic Force?

But as soon as the night went black, it lit up again.

A flash of yellow lighting across the sky. Like stars shooting from one end to the other.

"Hermes Flash!" (Yaku)

"Did we make it in time?" (Jack)

"It's not that bad, it seems that it only attacked a train." (Yaku)

The monster fell with a thump, its flat head sliced in two.

"Is that really the A-Class Monster Boreas. It went down so easy?" (Jack)

"It was definitely weaker than those intelligent X-Class ones. But as the theory suggests, these ones are the most dangerous, cause they can probably turn into X-Class ones given enough time." (Yaku)

"So A-Class doesn't mean stronger, it just means it's... It has more potential?" (Jack)

"It's a theory. And it shows. These ones can control magic." (Yaku)

Jack slowly walked up to the flipped-over train car.

"And aren't there more of these magic controlling types appearing across the world, and even the ones that talk too? I think their even appearing in highly populated areas." (Jack)

They walked onto the scene.

"Even the ones that talk. It seems the more humans they eat or the closer they are to humans the more they turn into them." (Yaku)

"That could explain how the X-Class ones can talk the human language. Maybe it's because they are becoming human?" (Jack)

"Well, it is all a theory, we won't know until we catch one of the missing X-Classes and interrogate them." (Yaku)

Jack shined his flashlight on the surrounding area.

Dismembered heads of children. Blood and guts and gore slathered across the grass and dirt. The bodies of Mike, Leia, the Shi Twins, Melana, and Liam...

Yaku quickly jumped to the single fifteen-year-old girl in the center of it all. Her face bawling in tears.

"Holy... Shit...!" (Jack)