The DragonOrb

Rogdan/Mary

Rogdan
The next day, it was time to leave. We'd been getting weird looks for awhile now, but last night's intruder had been the final straw. Much longer, and we would be hunted down by Queen Katie. After packing our things, we all met deep in the woods for departure.
"Alright," began Milo, turning to me. "Rogdan, you're going to have to make the portal."
I couldn't help it - thunder clapped right above us, without any lightning.
"Wait, what?!" I exclaimed. "Why me? I've never made one of those before! If you haven't noticed, I deal in nature magic. Not portals."
Milo sighed, exchanging a few looks with Brooke. "It has to be you because Mary isn't powerful enough yet, and both Brooke and I are out of commission."
So he spent the next half hour explaining the concept to me, and finally got me into position.
"So I just swirl my hand through the air and envision where I want to go?" I was still nervous.
Milo nodded. "But be sure to concentrate on containing it. If it turns into a vortex, we'll take half the town with us, in spite of our distance. Not to mention the low chances of survival if you bring even just the woods through on top of us."
Suddenly I was much more nervous. I looked at Mary. She smiled and nodded. I nodded back, a little less panicked.
I took a deep breath, thought of my beach house, and let the magic flow from my fingertips.
What ensued was an explosion of chaos. One second, I was standing in the forest, and the next I was dragged at lightning speed through the vortex and thrown violently out the other end. I wasn't the only thing, either. In seconds, I was bombarded with dirt and bushes and branches enough to completely bury me. Just when I thought I was going to die, it all stopped.
-----
Mary
My feet were ripped out from under me. I was flying toward the vortex, and suddenly, everything stopped. I fell back to the ground. I barely had time to take in what had happened before Brooke was throwing me through the vortex, but I had just enough time to see Milo, sustaining a force field around it. I landed with a grunt on top of Drake. A second layer, Brooke dragged Milo through and magically Pushed us all far away from the vortex, just as Milo finally went unconscious, and his force field collapsed.
I groaned, sitting up after the violent landing from being Pushed. The vortex was working again, spitting out debris from the other side. For a moment, I thought we would just let it run its course, but then I began to see pieces of the wall surrounding the town, and I threw up a force field around it.
"Rogdan!" I shouted. "You have to close the vortex before it destroys the town!"
"I don't know how!" he replied, an edge of panic in his voice.
I looked around desperately. Milo was unconscious. Brooke was trending him, obviously furious at us for letting this happen in the first place. Drake... I couldn't see Drake. I started to worry, but then I heard a thud, and Rogdan fell to the ground. There was Drake, standing over Rogdan's now-sleeping form, holding a large tree branch. The vortex collapsed.
-----
We were in even worse shape than we had been in before. Rogdan woke up a few minutes later with a massive headache and no desire to ever perform magic again. If Brooke had been able to speak, she never would have spoken to us again. As it was, she glared at us anytime we were within eye shot. Drake apologized over and over again for knocking Rogdan out, but frankly, we were just impressed that he'd thought of a solution. Milo was in bad shape. Worse than I'd ever seen him. For hours after the incident, he was actually smoking. He'd overextended himself so much that he had almost literally disintegrated. He didn't wake up for days, and when he did, we were afraid to even say the word magic where he could hear, for fear it would be too much.
As for where we'd ended up, it was Rogdan's hut... Or it used to be, before we dumped a few square miles of forest and pieces of town on top of it. We spent a few days digging through the carnage, trying to salvage some of his library. By the end of it, we'd found ten of his books, and only one that might actually be helpful with finding the DragonOrb. We wouldn't be fit for travel for several weeks, and after hearing about Sarah's warning, I had this terrible feeling of foreboding, like there was something we were missing.