She slowly backed down the corridor, her breaths becoming quick and shallow when she realized the teleport had failed. She bumped into something and turned around: a dead end, just a smooth wall with a mirror. She stared back at her reflection, gaze focusing in on the way her braces-covered teeth jutted out.

Laughter echoed in the maze and she flinched, clutching her Manual closer to her. She couldn't see the source, just an endless corridor full of mirrors. She began walking, her steps hesitant, nervous.

So many mirrors. Her skin crawled as her eyes shifted to glance at her reflection as she passed.

Her knees were too knobby. Her face was covered in acne. She was too tall and gangly. Her jaw looked crooked from the hinge glued to her teeth, and her huge, dorky glasses emphasized how square her face looked.

And those pigtails. God, what had she been thinking? Never mind how much her mother told her the knotted pigtails looked adorable on her, they were hardly considered attractive at her school.

She was too scrawny. Her boobs were too big, to the point where the other girls had tried stealing her clothes, demanding to know if she stuffed her bra.

The laughter echoed down the corridor again.

Her reflections began shifting slightly as she passed, and she knew, in the way one knows when one is dreaming, exactly what each mirror was showing her. She couldn't avoid seeing it. In that one—she was a failure. She was stupid. She was pathetic. She was useless. Worthless. Ugly. A loser.

Useless. Stupid. Pathetic. Worthless. Useless. Stupid. Pathetic. Worthless.

All her worst fears laid out for her to see, and she broke into a run, the laughter getting louder. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see other faces in the mirrors, faces she didn’t recognize, some of them not even human—but whenever she turned to look, she couldn’t see anything but herself.

She ran into a circular room coated in mirrors, and when she turned around to try a different path, she found the way out had disappeared.

"Stop it!" she screamed.

"Stop it! Stop it!" her voice echoed tauntingly.

"Leave me alone!"

"Leave me alone! Leave me alone!"

She dropped her Manual and covered her eyes, sinking to the floor.

"Crybaby! Crybaby!"

"She thinks she can be a wizard!"

"She can't even pass fifth grade!"

"Hahahaha!"

She screamed, and the mirrors shattered, the glass falling to the floor with a soft tinkle at odds with the reverberating screams.

When she opened her eyes, the room was clear of glass, empty save for her, her Manual, and... herself, staring at her with a curious glee.

She stared back. "Who are you?"

The other her smiled. "You know me," she said. "I've been with you for years now... that little voice in your head, that entity looking over your shoulder, watching every last little mistake you make..." She began circling, eerily reminiscent of a shark. "Do you have any idea how stupid you were to come here? No, probably not. If you did, you wouldn't be in this situation in the first place."

The would be wizard slowly crouched to grab her Manual, not taking her eyes off the doppelgänger. "Why are you doing this?" she whispered.

The doppelgänger laughed. "Why? Because I can. It's not like you've ever tried to stop me before. Loser."

She swallowed; her palms were slick with sweat and her knees were shaking. "You're my Ordeal?"

The doppelgänger rolled her eyes. "Uh, duh." The circling continued. As she walked, she began to change, going from knobby-kneed, acne-covered, to... beautiful. Breathtaking. Poised, confident. The doppelgänger stopped, spreading her hands and smirking. "That's the problem with you... well, one of a really long list of many. You're always too busy overthinking things. Idiot. Of course I'm the Ordeal; what else could this possibly be?"

She lowered her eyes, blinking back tears. Of course. Of course. She should have known from the moment she entered the maze. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

"You are stupid," the doppelgänger said coldly. "But hey, you're not a totally lost cause yet. Maybe if you ditched your Manual and went home, put all this behind you, accept you'll only ever be mediocre at best, you might actually be worth something." She shrugged. "Or you can stay in here and die of starvation. Seems more likely. Too dumb to cut her losses and run, and try to salvage what's left of your pathetic life."

"Why are you so mean?!" She burst out. "What did I ever to to make you hate me?"

The doppelgänger was suddenly standing in front of her, eyes blazing. "Absolutely nothing. And that's what makes it so. Damn. Easy."

They stared at each other for a long minute; the silence stretched between them, tension palpable. She was trembling; the words were familiar, words she'd thought hundreds, thousands of times before, but never had they come from such a familiar face.

The doppelgänger laughed and turned away as mirrors began to fade into existence, hemming them in together. "Oh, wow, you really think that?" She turned back, and her face had changed, mirroring the wizard's again. Acne, glasses, braces, and everything else that just emphasized how ugly she was. The doppelgänger opened her mouth, clutching dramatically at her cheeks. "Maybe if I wasn't such a failure, Mom would love me!"

"You're me," she realized, her heart sinking.

The doppelgänger applauded sarcastically. "Took you long e-freaking-nough."

"But if you're me," she muttered, "then that means I'm..."

"Your own Ordeal, yes, yes. Get on the same page already, gawd."

"Shut up!" she snapped. "I'm thinking."

"In your own slow, dimwitted way, maybe."

"SHUT UP!" Her voice echoed around them. "You're not—you're—you can't just say things like that!"

A soft light flared out from around her, and then faded.

"And why not?" the doppelgänger said, before she had a chance to wonder at the light. "You've been saying them to yourself for years! Why stop now?"

"Because... because..." She trailed off, closing her eyes. Every instinct in her body was screaming at her that she was about to say something she couldn't take back; that what she was about to say couldn't possibly be true, but if this was her Ordeal, and her small act of defiance had caused that light to appear... maybe this was what she had to do. Maybe... she just had to believe. When she next spoke, it was with the Speech. "Because you're wrong."

Light flared out around her again. The doppelgänger flinched back like she'd been struck. "What?"

"Because you're wrong," she repeated, more loudly, and the light brightened. "Because maybe I'm not the best at everything. And maybe I'm not the bravest, or the smartest, or the prettiest—but I'm doing my best, you hear me?!"

The light kept growing, and she began walking towards the doppelgänger, hands tightening around her Manual. "I took the Oath because it gave me hope! I thought I could finally make something of myself!"

"You were wrong!" the doppelgänger yelled, jerking away from the light as it reached her. "You were wrong, you're going to fail at being a wizard, just like you've failed everything else—"

"I haven't failed yet, though!" she yelled back, and hope swelled in her chest and the light brightened in a halo around her. "And if I haven't failed, there's still a chance! I can keep going and—and improving, and getting better, and nothing you can say will stop me!" She opened her Manual, running her fingers over its pages. "I will put aside fear for courage, and death for life, when it is right to do so—and I will not be afraid of myself any more!"

She pulled the stick of chalk from her pocket and crouched on the ground, beginning to redraw her spell from before, only this time, she made sure to get her name right—her real name, her name that was more than just her flaws and fears and downfalls, a name that was also her hopes and dreams and assets. Her doppelgänger screamed and raged, but made no attempt to touch her, and she tuned her out, focusing on her spell. This place, this… maze, she didn’t know what it was, but she knew it had to be destroyed before it could claim any other wayward souls.

“Alright,” she muttered to herself as she began working on the main part of her spell. “Alright, let’s see here…”

It wasn’t enough to just collapse this place like she’d originally thought. When she tried to listen to the walls, she heard nothing. Everything that was alive spoke to her, but this maze was… dead. No, not dead—worse. Darker. More ancient and evil, designed to prey on the lost and scared. How many other wizards had been trapped here when they failed to properly write their names, trapped and doomed to fail in their Ordeals?

Over the screams of her doppelgänger, she could hear whisperings coming from the walls.

The chalk in her hands was damp from sweat and her knees were covered in white dust, and still, she kept working, tugging her Manual along after her as she worked her spell. When it came to the part where she had to describe the maze, though, she froze.

What was she supposed to write? How was she supposed to know the words she’d have to Speak to collapse this place?

“See?” the doppelgänger said, breaking into her thoughts. “You’re a worthless, spineless, pathetic excuse for a wizard! Can’t even think of what—”

“Shut UP!” she roared, her shoulders tensing.

The whispering stopped for a moment, and then resumed.

She stared down at the circle she’d already constructed. This would take so much raw power to complete—if only she could figure out the words.

Her thoughts drifted back to how she’d gotten here, with her botched attempt at a teleport. Something in that spell had brought her here.

If this maze—this entity—didn’t have a life of its own, it had to draw its energy from somewhere.

From the mirrors. From its victims. From her.

Her hands shook as she wrote her name, her broken name. The name that she’d written containing only her worst aspects. And she mirrored it, and she twisted it into the warped abomination she’d found herself running from, and she sealed the circle.

“Don’t you dare!” hissed the doppelgänger.

She didn’t bother responding, instead standing up and dusting her hands off on her pants and picking up her Manual. And she began to read, weaving her spell as the doppelgänger screamed and thrashed and convulsed behind her. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she could feel her grip on her Manual becoming slick, but she pressed on. The light began to grow brighter and brighter as she continued to speak of light and life and hope. She spoke of joy and passion and of love, and the light grew brighter and the doppelgänger’s scream became even louder, threatening to drown her out.

There was a deafening sound of shattering glass, and she had to shut her eyes against the blinding light.

When she opened them again, the sky was blue and the grass was green, and a gentle wind caught her pigtails. She laughed and closed her Manual, falling backwards onto the grass and kicking her feet up in the air as she hugged her Manual to her chest.

She was still afraid, dreadfully afraid—but she wasn't going to let the fear hold her down like before. She had passed her Ordeal and she was now a wizard. Maybe not the best, maybe not the brightest, but a wizard all the same.

And surely, that had to count for something.





((Once again, a massive thanks to Delta Juliette for helping me out with this one and giving me the last bit I needed to make the spell feel right. Wouldn't have been able to do it without her.))

The sky outside the window of the Group Dynamic was warm and clear and inviting, with only the merest wisps of cloud far away. It was also an electric orange colour, as if the whole world was a street light. It hung serenely above an enormous plain, full of rich purple grasses and stubby, thick-trunked trees like fat acacias. There was one close by, and Siobhan could see a bright white fruit hanging from its boughs. Without really understanding how, she knew it was delicious, some distant bit of human ancestry screaming at her to eat it and find more.

The distinct lack of Norwich only made it more enticing.

The three Nigerian wizards from the next table over were the first to investigate, creaking open the door of the Group Dynamic as they cast a few spells to enable them to breathe. As intoxicating as the view out there was, Siobhan's head was still turned by wizardry, even - perhaps especially - when put to such casual use. She was watching closely as they stepped outside, but didn't quite see them leave. A blink at the wrong moment. She never was much cop at staring contests.

Seeing them out of the window, though, they seemed... happy. Much happier than they had in the pub. A few more wizards joined them, fascinated by the country they saw outside. And more. And more. And more. The hubbub was gone, now. Siobhan, Purple, and Wombat were alone.

"Why," said Wombat after a long moment, "are the bar staff still here?"

One of them made a strangled hissing noise that the two wizards understood as "More than my job's worth, guv."

Siobhan shrugged and looked at her blue Coke. "Does this... does this normally happen?"

"Eh, sometimes. But they put a sign up when they're going anywhere, and I've not seen it. Going off-planet like this unannounced? Screws up the coordinates for a claudication. Maybe I missed the memo or something, but I normally go, and Gary the Gasworks is usually pretty good about letting people on the mailing list know."

"So, you're saying that the landlord of this place takes the entire pub on a bloody interplanetary booze cruise?"

"No!"

Siobhan sagged a bit. "Let me guess. Gary the Gasworks isn't the landlord."

"Skree, chick, no flies on you, are there? How would he even fit? This gaff's not that big." Purple pecked at his pint of nuts. "Nah, Gary's just the bloke who sorts out the invites. He doesn't get offworld much, on account of how he can't move, so a bunch of local wizards help him get around."

"Wait." Wombat's voice was slow and incredulous. "Is he actually-"

"The St. Martin's gasworks, yeah. Nice bloke. He planned my stag do."

Siobhan stared into her drink for a while as she tried to process that. It felt a bit like her brain was starting to dribble out of her ears.

---

"Okay, time for another blue soft drink." Siobhan stood up. "Want anything, you two?"

"I'm alright, ta," said Purple. "Do you fancy something stronger?"

"Christ yes."

"Tough."

Siobhan came back with a tray a few minutes later to find Purple staring wistfully out of the window.

"Reminds me of Akosho Gul," he said. "I think it's the fruit trees. Probably the sky, too. You never forget your first new sky."

"Yeah," said Siobhan. "I don't think I'll ever forget this. It's so... so different."

"I just... I've got to go out and give it a try. Just one of those fruits. Don't worry, I'll ask first, I'm not a gannet."

"Okay. Just, you know. Be careful out there, alright?"

"Will do, chick. I'll save you some. Not a lot, but some." Purple took off from the pint glass and flew towards the door. "I mean, it's in my name, after all!"

Siobhan's eyes widened and her breath caught the her throat and she nearly knocked the table over as she scrambled to her feet but it

was too late

and Purple was out of the door and gone.

---

Siobhan dragged her Manual out of a pocket, brushed bits of grimy sand and desiccated crisp fragments off the cover, and slammed the book open on the table so hard that Wombat briefly became airborne. As with all uses of a Manual, it opened at the page she needed. As with all uses of her Manual, the information was couched in bone-dry academic prose and tangential examples from history, with spell diagrams beaten into bronze plaques or painted on cave walls.

"Are you okay, Siobhan?" Wombat's voice was shot through with veins of black worry like a marble statue.

"Emics and etics," Siobhan replied.

"Eh?"

"In-group and out-group analysis," she mumbled, along with more stuff Wombat couldn't hear.

"... Eh?"

"I'm an idiot. A massive, massive idiot. I got so caught up in magic and everyone else's magic that I forgot what was going to happen."

---

Purple soared through the door, dimly noticing the flash behind him, and he danced through the air until he collided bodily with the voluminous bum of an extremely confused elephant.

Once he shook the stars out of his vision, he looked around at the array of wizards...

Crammed into the Colman's mustard museum.

"... Oh, SKREE!"

---

"The fruit tree outside. I saw white, which is weird because fruit isn't white, it's brightly coloured to attract people to it. But Purple saw a purple fruit, because I want answers and he wanted... I dunno, lunch? The point is, what did you see?"

"... I thought we were floating in deep space or something."

"Because you don't really want anything, at least not that can be shown outside a window."

---

"You don't understand, Patience, she's not on errantry, she's on ORDEAL!"

---

"So, the question is: If something is so strange, so tempting that nearly every wizard in the building ran out to investigate, why didn't the snakes? No job's that vital, even bar work. Especially not bloody bar work."

"Okay..." Wombat looked even more frightened.

"So we've got snakes, we've got temptation, we've got a weird fruit. You see where I'm going with this, right?"

"Oh."

---

"I can't get into the pub," one of the orbs shrieked. "Something's blocked it off from me!"

---

"Took you long enough, didn't it, lad?"

Siobhan spun around to see one of the tree snakes glaring at her, a look of pure loathing in its eyes.

"I - I'm not-"

"Why are you so intent on denying who you are? Why do you think people can't tell? You love answers so much, answer that one, boy."

Siobhan felt the tears trickle down the curve of her face. Inside, she felt nothing at all.

"I'd like to speak to the manager, please."

"And what are you gonna say, boy?"

"The only thing."

---

Purple spun in mad, electric circles above the Princes Arcade, trying to cast a spell, any spell.

"SIOBHAN!"

---

The manager came down, and she was androgynous and dressed well and as beautiful as a dying star. "Now then, little wizard, how can I help you?"

"Fairest and fallen," Siobhan said, her voice thick with the effort of not stammering, not giving in, not letting everything win, "greetings and defiance."

hS

When I think of the books I like to reread, I find I can usually characterise why very quickly. J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is deep, with worlds of detail under every paragraph. Megan Whalen Turner's Queen's Thief series is incredibly clever. Rosemary Sutcliff's Eagle of the Ninth sequence is rich in history. Aaron Allston's X-Wing books are just ridiculously funny. And Diane Duane's Young Wizards series is absolutely bright with hope.

I mean that fairly literally. Unlike most fiction involving fighting an Enemy, almost all of YW takes place in the daytime, or otherwise in the light. Light, and bringing light to dark places, is a constant theme throughout the books - Nita and Kit's wands of choice are moonlight-soaked rowan and noon-forged steel, for instance, and two of the first three books include pivotal scenes where light is used to defeat the Lone Power.

This isn't to say that they're sheer fluff - Diane establishes early on that sacrifice is necessary to achieve victory - but even there, the light-bringing theme continues. I could name at least six or seven characters who give up everything to bring literal light in and against the darkness - and yes, it's heartbreaking, but it's also worthwhile.

Diane's hopeful approach to the series is also reflected in other ways. In the other four series I listed, one way or another the characters' goal is concealment. Frodo and Sam want to sneak into Mordor. Wraith Squadron want to trick the Empire. In all of those books, being spotted is a failure, and confronting the enemy directly an act of desperation.

Not so in Young Wizards. The constant message, shown through the characters' actions in every book, is that to turn back evil you have to stand up to it. Nita, Kit and their friends and family aren't trying to work around the Lone Power, to pull off their goals without drawing Its attention - they're trying to face It. Yes, they need to prepare the ground first, and yes, they may stay stealthy for a while during the preparation - but ultimately, they draw their circles, stand forward, and declare their greetings and their defiance.

It's a very different worldview to the one I usually read, so when I want to read something that puts a heartfelt smile on my face - when I want to remember that even when sacrifice is necessary, "there's always Timeheart" - when, in fact, I just want to feel better about the world - the Young Wizards series is where I turn.

hS

"He forgot the high-energy radiation again."

"He always does."

(And yes, I know I forgot to come up with a title for the last part of Marisa's story. |D 'The Flashes of Succcess', maybe?)

Anyway, a long while back I was scrolling through DeviantArt for Young Wizards fics and found... this old thing.

There aren't words.

Having tried a couple of impressionistic diagrams in the first thread, I thought it was time to step it up a bit. So, taking inspiration from Arabic and Georgian scripts, plus a bit of the Cherokee syllabary, I cobbled together a 'Speechesque' alphabet.

Yup.

Now, obviously the writing system is only half of the deal, and I didn't exactly feel up to inventing a language too. So what follows is a translated spell circle - the words are all in English, but in a curlier alphabet. (English orthography has been used, too - so the Welsh name 'Cafall' has been written 'Cafall', despite being pronounced ~'Cavalth'.)



(Larger version)

The whole spell (this is the one cast by Jacob and Lise to feed Bran power and banish the Afanc) is a single unbroken line, read counterclockwise around each circle in turn. Most of the writing is alphabetical text, but there's also a sprinkling of unique symbols in there - the upper-left circle (Bran's name) includes prominently both the dragon-sword 'Pendragon' and the infinity 'wizardry'. You can also find 'Pendragon' in the outer circle (over on the left), and the related three-symbol concept 'Wales' facing it on the right (the dragon there is the centre).

I did my best to make the image match the story. I wrote about how weird Jacob found Will's and Bran's names, and the diagram bears that out. Lise's and Jacob's names (bottom left and right) follow the same pattern as each other, differing only in the details. Will's (top right) starts dropping details, replacing his entire 'Present' chord with a quartered circle (that seems to kind of contain the symbol for magic). Bran's name not only contains the name of Wizardry itself (deeply unnerving, if you're a wizard), but also has two Future chords - one of which crosses his Past chord.

Finally: the spell reads counterclockwise and left-to-right, which means that every word of it is outward-facing. In other words, the spell isn't designed to be read from the inside (though that's where the wizard is doing the reading) - it's meant to be seen from the outside, by the rest of the universe...

hS

PS: The full text of the spell reads: "This is a power transference rekwest, target {Bran Davies}, for the purpose of driving from [Llyn Barfog] Afanc Darkborn [Pendragon]-banished Maidenbane. {Lise} as spell originator and power-donor/enactor alongside {Jacob} enacted in [Wales] and calling on the Old [Magic] and the Light: {Will Stanton}, High [Magic] implores aid for Bran [Pendragon]! Will you give power?"

I can't really write out the names in full because they rely a lot on contextual information from their structure. Jacob's 'past' line, for instance, reads: {mid [Lower Thames] natural [father's name] 46447.4 [mother's name] reader male-nonstereotypical past}, which is hardly human-readable. ~hS

(Originally starts here, for completionists.)

While the paralysis had faded, Marisa still felt like she was dreaming - and horribly lost. So, she grasped for routine, protocol.

"F- Fairest and Fallen, greetings and defiance!" she exclaimed - though it was really more of a squeak. It didn't even echo, not that that was the worst of her problems.

"Oh, come now," the Lone Power said; from where It said this, she couldn't easily tell. Not that she often looked at peoples faces in dreams, anyway, but if It wanted her unsettled It was succeeding. "You know this place; it's for fun times! ... Not that you've been doing your fair share of them, lately." It leered at her - or sure sounded like it was, at any rate.

"Or at all, really - you consume a lot more than you produce! And while I can pick up the slack, why should I care? An act of notcreation, if you ask me, is an act of furthering entropy!"

Marisa's eyes narrowed, and she crouched into a protective stance on the not!ground. /Where. Is. My. Manual?/

"Aawww, straight to business, you don't even want to talk? Such a shame. You know," It went on, "You could make a great attack dog! You know, if They ever feel like using you that way. Now tell me," And suddenly they had moved, nearly knocking Marisa off her feet. In front of them was something that almost looked physical, now - a line, a stream -

Data? Marisa thought, then quickly refocused. There was a stomp - whatever form It was taking here looked to be turning more humanoid as the conversation went on. All around them were now familiar words - familiar HTML-

"How does this make you feel?"

The text mess resolved itself into comments - the sort of comments that Marisa didn't like looking at. The disrespectful sort, the unintelligible sort, the kinds of people who got what she liked all wrong-

"See? You're shaking already." It was true - the reminder of humanity's dregs did her no favors, and she realized she'd clenched her fists down tight.

"They're- they're just you, aren't they? The parts of you that are in other people?"

She got the impression that she'd made It smile - not that she liked that feeling, either. "All people, but yes. And what would you do to them, if you could?" It was pushing Marisa for an answer, she knew, so she said the first thing she could think of that would frustrate it:

"Not kill them." Now It dissipated the comments, their surroundings going cold with Its temper.

"Oh really? And you think that you know what I know about you? Think carefully, now: what good is anger when it can't change people's minds, when there's nowhere left to go that makes a difference? You'll find yourself running up against that wall sooner than you think, little wizard - and when you go scrounging for answers, you may well think twice!"

Marisa tried to remember to breathe, calm and evenly. But it was hard.

"Besides," It said, cutting off her thoughts - or her attempts thereof. "Hate is only half of the equation. You wanted to know where your Manual is? Well," It said - and this time, Marisa could see It smile.

"Let's have a look. Just remember, these were your ideas - I just, how you say? Improved on them." Again the movement took hold, only this time Marisa was ready. She jumped, looking to tackle It to the "floor" in her anger-

She couldn't move, again. "Ah, ah, aah~" the Lone Power taunted her.

"Naughty wizard. Besides, it's not me you want to be aggressive toward now, is it? Well, not now now, just for a while now- Anyway."

Despite that confusion, Marisa tried to close her eyes - but couldn't.

I've never actually been to a convention (PPC Gatherings aside), so there's that extra air of supercoolishness at the prospect of meeting someone like Diane Duane. :D I hope you do get to go. (I won't be, of course - doesn't do to break a streak like this one!)

Fear not, no thunder has been stolen. ^_^

As to your question... if they were a wizard, yes. o.O There's a note on the Concordance that says wizardry is basically being granted the right to use the Speech in enactive form. For other people, it's just a language, albeit a super useful one because everyone understands you when you use it. For a wizard, though, it's much more.

This is the point where I throw in an obligatory reminder that one book does in fact feature the creation and/or visiting of an existing canon universe, with a brief trip to Middle-earth shortly after the fall of Numenor...

hS