The Onyx Prince

File 3

March - 18 - 1979
Orchard of Destruction, somewhere deep within the Allium. 

Alex's failed ritual takes him to the Orchard of Destruction.
-The Watcher


File begins:

Alex hit the ground on his side and was rolling down something. He kept rolling until he came to stop in a shallow ditch at the base of something large. He didn't move for a while. He just lay there, panting.


I stared at the open door. The corner was splintered and the bronze lock that held the handle glowed red-hot. The wood around it was charred and black. The smoke made me blink back tears. I couldn't remember when I had begun to cry...

Alex sat up. He dug his fingers into the soil to ground himself because his body was still shaking uncontrollably. The dirt was clay. He didn't understand how anything could grow here. But he was in some kind of grassland. Grass reached up to his knees as far as he could see.

Alex brought a fistful up to examine it. It was grey, but of course it was. It just made sense.

After all, everything around him was grey. The grass was grey. The sky was a dreary grey. The sun itself was black and had a dark corona that flared violently and smeared the sky as if bombs were being set off on its surface, over and over again.

He was in some monochrome hellscape. How had he gotten here?


"I can feel the magic inside you, Alexander. There is so much power within you. All you need to do is believe it yourself. Do you?"


I looked up at Mr. Clark, squinting. "See! I can't do anything." I collapsed to the ground and yawned. "I'm so tired..."

Mr. Clark stooped down to pick me up and I grabbed on to his strong weathered hands.

"But Alexander, I'm only trying to help you understand."

Alex got on his hands and knees and the hill he had rolled down. It was difficult, the hill was steep and the clay was slippery. At times, he had to hold the grass to pull himself up, but it stung his hands.

As he reached the top, he realized just how massive this grassland was. The horizon bent backwards like rolls of old film, and in the distance, giant grey mountains stood proudly.

Alex's head throbbed and he couldn't understand why.


I ran to the well. I hated it. I wasted all my time on summer nights like these trying so hard to make the water move. Nothing ever happened.

Would I ever find my magic? Did I have any at all?


There was a door standing upright on the top of the hill, with no walls around to support it. The door was open but looking through Alex saw it lead to nothing. Beside it was an old tree. It looked something like an oak.

Alex moved closer. He walked around, examining the frame and the peeling colorless paint, and the grey wood beneath it. He could walk in a full circle around the door. There was nothing holding it up, and yet it seemed so sturdy.

Soon his curiosity grew overpowering, and Alex dared to touch the handle.


"Of course you have magic. That's how the people of Eldora are."

I looked up at Mr. Clark, my mouth hanging open in amazement. "How did you..."

"Know what you were thinking?" Mr. Clark laughed. "Oh, Alexander, you forget that I too was once a young boy. I too was once your age."

"Yeah right."

Mr. Clark laughed, a warm laugh of amusement, and set me back down. "Alex, listen."

"To you?" I asked. I rubbed my eyes. "You're not sayin' anything..."

Mr. Clark took off his glasses and hushed me. "Listen," he said again, spreading out his hands wide. I looked around. What was he pointing to? His hands were swept out, and seemed to wrap everything up, like one big hug.

But then I understood. He meant...listen to everything. Listen to the sounds of the summer night. The sounds of the crickets chirping, and the hum of kerosene-burning lamps that lit the streets. The sounds of the moths, beating their wings together, dancing around the lamps, and the fireflies, who shone with their own light, lazily looping through the sky.


Alex stumbled back and grabbed his head. "No, no..."


It was a warm summer night, and the world around me was alive. How had I never noticed before...