The Names Our Children Will Know

Magic! - Draft One

For the space of several seconds, everyone stood frozen in surprise. Then Mark murmured, "They were expecting us." He turned to Wesson. "Where did you find this?"

Wesson gestured to the rooms outside. "It's a few hallways over from here. Bit of a walk for you, Mark."

Mark scoffed and pushed himself to his feet. Jordan stared up at him in awe. "Didn't you say the veridine had worn off?" She asked worriedly.

"Yeah." Mark grimaced, then slouched forward to accommodate the tug of the stitches in his chest. "But I want to see this more than I want to think about how stupid I was to get hurt. Come on."

Tessa looked like she was about to say something, but then thought better of it. Ghost followed after them, her tail wagging hopefully.

It took some effort, but eventually, even Mark was in a tiny room at the end of an unlit hallway. He'd had to duck to get through the door, even slouching.

The door had been half rotted away, creaking and splintering under Jordan's hand when she pushed it open to help Mark through. When they entered, a torch opposite them burst to life, making Tessa jump. The light it gave illuminated a wall of thick, leather-bound books covered in swirling, tight print that looked completely illegible in the flickering half-light from the torch on one side and a spindly table stacked high with piles of notebooks on the other.

Most of the notebooks were hastily bound with uneven lengths of twine or thin strips of leather, but there was one bound in dyed leather sitting in the middle of the table with a tightly rolled scroll sitting on top of it.

Wesson handed it to Tessa. "It's written in Flyatian. Read it!"

Tessa unrolled the scroll gently, looking eager and apprehensive.

"'Dear Reader,'" she began. "'I hope that I am not reaching out to you from the far distant past. I am far too young for that, it makes me feel old.

"'But my feelings are not what this letter is for. This letter is for instruction and warning; instruction on what we are about to do and what you must do with it, and warning about the danger that goes with it.'" Tessa looked up, a half-smile on her lips. "Ominous, that."

"'The end of the Wizard's Wars are upon us. There are only nineteen True Wizards left among us: seven humans, six werians, and us six flyants. The wars have been cruel to us. But we are going to change that with one simple spell.

"'Soon, everyone will be able to use magic, whether you are human, werian, or flyant. This spell will kill us true Wizards, certainly. But soon that will not matter. The nineteen of us are not nearly powerful enough to affect this change. We are relying on our own bodies, as well as the energy and will of every plant and animal for miles. By this time tomorrow, the lush plains and beautiful prairies will have crumbled to ash and dust. Not one single living thing will remain.

"'Hopefully that will put an end to this madness.'" Tessa stopped and looked up. "Do you realize how old this is? The Wizard's wars were over ten generations ago."

"Keep reading!" Jordan demanded. "You're such a history fanatic."

"All right, all right!" Tessa returned to the scrawled writing on the scroll. "'Do you see the pile of notebooks in front of you? They are not uniform; we collected as much paper as we could in the short time we had left to us. Be gentle with them, for they are the future of magic.

"'What this spell will do for our world is unlock the innate power in every member of the sentient races. That means that as long as you write down the change you want in the world, and as long as you have the strength and will to enact that change, the magic will be wielded through words on paper rather than the magician's body. Do you know what this means? Magic is now only limited to your imagination, dear reader!' Well, that's not going to end badly," Tessa quipped before continuing to read.