Reality Check

Kiel's Spell Dilemma

Something Has To Change (by The Japanese House)

"You're back where you started, it's the same thing. You keep trying to do something different, over and over again . . ."

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Three Years Ago

It was late, almost midnight, when Kiel found his face wedged into the side of his spell book, some nasty-looking droll formulating on the pages. He sat up, swiping at his mouth with slight disgust. It was rare and completely against Kiel's nature to over-exhaust himself over endless researching. In the past when he got too tired, it was usually from using too many strong spells.

Usually Bethany was the one who researched, Owen contributed, and Kiel managed to slack off for a while until one of them got mad. While the others were more scholarly, he was an excellent strategist. He was better at taking action once they were inside a book. If they got in trouble, he was more than willing to fight the enemies with a smile on his face.

He looked down at the page the spell book was open to. It was a teleportation spell, which he'd been reading and attempting to study for hours. Usually, the spell book opened to whatever spell Kiel needed most, but most times the book seemed confused. It would flip between various spells, as if unsure about which spell would be the right one. Unfortunately, he was dealing with the same problem. There was no specific spell that allowed a fictional person to jump out of a book, so that made everything much more difficult.

Because of that, he'd resorted to researching every spell that he could find for the situation, testing one every few days, and discovering that nothing quite came close to what he precisely needed. But creating a spell that would form a link to the nonfictional world? That wasn't easy.

And really, he had no idea if he'd actually succeed. Maybe the one thing keeping him optimistic was the reminder that this had happened before. Once, when Bethany's dad had gotten out of his own book. Back then, it'd been before Bethany was born, so he'd found a different way to jump out. That meant something. It had to. Of course, he just needed to figure out the specifics.

"What am I doing?" he whispered under his breath, eyes lifting from the book. Although Charm believed it all the time, it was the first time he felt stupid.

All of the sudden, a man's voice echoed through the tower. "That's exactly what I am thinking."

The sound almost knocked him out of his chair. Heart jumping, Kiel rotated around, but saw no one. "Who's there?"

"I've come to know that you're trying to create a spell that will make a link between the fictional and nonfictional worlds," the voice said, drawling out each word. "I can't let you do that, Kiel Gnomenfoot. I can't let you single-handedly destroy everything I've carefully worked to fix."

"How do you know that? Who are you?"

"Nobody," the voice echoed, now sounding almost . . . amused.

From the shadows of the room, Kiel watched a figure step into the moonlight, someone he'd never recalled seeing before. The figure took the form of a man, but his face was disturbingly featureless. There was nothing where his eyes, nose, and mouth should be. That, along with the fact that he'd somehow broken into Kiel's tower, was enough to make him uneasy.

And then the rest of the man's words caught up with him. Somehow, he knew about Kiel's plan to create a spell leading into the nonfictional world. He wanted to stop Kiel. Even more telling, though, was the last part the man had said. I can't let you single-handedly destroy everything I've carefully worked to fix. All at once, it clicked in Kiel's head. Whoever this person was, they must've been the cause for Bethany's fate, for the separation between the two worlds.