A World Full of Magic: The Revenge.

We travel into the Past

Dad stepped out of the car.
"Jason, get out of the way." He yelled.

"What do you want from her?" I asked him aloud.

I looked over my shoulder and saw one of the wizards dropped to the ground.
The other wizard was lost in the crowd.

"Come on Jace!" Luke shouted from behind me, "Elsa is out now!"

I didn't understand what he meant, but I got away from my father's way and sprinted after Luke and Kate.

"Kate! Jason!" Dad shouted, "Get back here!"

We ignored him.
"Where's Elsa?" I asked Luke.

"No time for explanation." He answered me, "You'll know soon." 

Then he stopped, Kate stopped too.

"What?" I said.

We were in front of a wall.

"Enter that portal." Luke told us pointing to the wall.

"What?" Kate said, "Luke there's nothing here!"

Luke smiled. "No offense, Kate, but you're not seeing it? It's in there."

"We need to enter the wall to see it?" I asked.

Luke nodded. "You need to enter the wall to get through. Trust me, we need to go."

"I... I'm happy to stay here." Kate said, "Walls and I don't really get along."

"Yeah and what about my father?" I said.

"Why are you worried about him?" Luke asked.

I stepped closer to the wall. I put my hand on it and it disappeared.

"Um... Guys?" I said, "What_"

As I turned toward Luke and Kate, I felt a vise-like hand land on my shoulder. And I was flying back toward the wall.

Luke had Kate and me in his grip. "Take a deep breath, hang on. And most of all, trust me!"

We had no choice. Together, we entered the wall.

As soon as we stepped in it, we were in a totally different place.
We were in a river!

I blinked water from my eyes. I could see Luke rising and falling on a wild current. He let go of me, swimming toward Kate, pushing her toward the bank.
I was too far in the middle, the deeper water. I struggled to push myself high enough above the surface for a proper breath. As I went under again, I fought to stay conscious.

"Hang on, Jace!" Luke shouted.
His fingers locked around my arm. He was swimming beside me, pulling us both toward the bank. Kate was struggling onto the shore, staring over her shoulder at me in horror.

Luke and I bounced downstream in a helpless zigzag. We careened around a jutting rock that rose up between us, forcing Luke to let go of me. Directly in our path was a downed tree. I kicked hard and up, opened my arms, and let it hit me full force in the chest. My legs swept under the wood as I held tight.

"Luke!" I yelled

"Here!" Luke clung to the tree about three feet to my left, closer to the riverbank. We both hang there, catching our breaths. "How's your grip, Jace? Steady?"

I nodded. "I think... I can make my way to the shore!"

"Good... See you there!" Luke swung up onto the wood, stood carefully, and scampered toward the shore like and Olympic gymnast. Jumping onto the bank, he began calling for Elsa.

I yanked myself onto the fallen tree. Lying there, I felt my chest beating against the slippery wood. I didn't dare to stand. Then I remembered. I am the Wizard of Nature, maybe I can control water. I focused on the river, but nothing happened. The gloves. I couldn't reach them.
Slowly I reached out toward the shore, gripping farther along the branch. In this way I managed to shimmy along at a snail's pace until I finally reached the bank and flopped onto the mud.

Farther upstream, Kate had made it to solid ground. Luke behind her. I struggled to my feet. My legs ached and rain pelted my face, but I hobbled toward them as fast as I could in the soggy soil.

"Jace!" Elsa threw her arms around me as I arrived. Her face was warm against my neck.

"Behave, you two." Luke said.

I pulled away, feeling the blood rush to my face. "What just happened?" I asked.

Kate was staring across the river, looked dazed. "Okay, we entered a wall. We found ourselves in a river in a desert. Am I going crazy?"

"I don't think so." I said, "Elsa, how did you know?"

"We can't waste time... come on!" Luke was already heading up the slope into a thick pine grove.

Kate and I shared a wary glance. "Luke, you're not telling us something," I said. "What just happened?"

Luke scampered through the trees without an answer, as if our near drowning, our battering against the rocks, had never happened. Kate looked at him in disbelief: "He can't be serious."

We followed behind as fast as we could. My legs were bruised and my head felt bloody. My arms felt as if I'd been bench pressing an elephant. The slope wasn't too steep, really, but in our condition it felt like Mount Everest. We caught up with Luke at the edge of the pine trees. Here, everything seemed a little more familiar. Just beyond the grove I could see a vast plain of dirt to the horizon. The clouds were lifting, the water-soaked ground quickly drying. Scrubby bushes dotted the landscape, which was crisscrossed by a network of wide paths cut through the plain.

"What is this place?" Kate asked.

"Check it out." Luke said, gesturing to the left.

A giant rainbow arched through the sky, sloping downward into a city of low, square, yellow-brown buildings, thousand of them, most with crown-like sand-castle roofs. The city rose on a gentle hill, and if I wasn't mistaken, I thought I could see another wall deeper inside the city. The outer wall contained a mammoth arched gate of cobalt-blue titles. In the center of the city was a towering building shaped like a layer cake. Its sides were ornately carved, its windows spiraling up to a tapered peak. The city's outer wall was surrounded by a moat, which seemed to draw water from the Euphrates. Closer to us, outside the city limits, were farms where oxen trudged slowly, plowing the fields.

"Either I'm dreaming," Kate said, "or no one told us there was a phenomenally accurate ancient Babylonian theme park inside a wall in Rome."

"What do you mean?" I turned toward Luke. "Where are we?"

Luke looked at us. "Welcome to the past."