For The Greater Good-World 1: A Corrupted Cove || World//Zero ||

14. A Letter for Two

After eating some dinner at the tavern, he spent the majority of his evening at his desk, surrounded by scrap pieces of paper with a bottle of ink at the corner of his desk, which sat in a small pool of black paint that was sure to leave a massive stain there. There was another blank sheet of paper in front of him, and Alec stared hard at it as if something would eventually come up.

It had been nearly a month since Alec's been to World Zero, and since then, he hasn't heard from either of his moms. That fact was partially his fault, he decided, because he barely took the time to reply to their messages. Not that he had that much time, to begin with, as he was practically bombarded with hours of training from Cal and completing quests that by the time he got back to the dormitories, he was too tired to even write back to them. As Cal was away at World 3 for some time, Alec thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to answer his Mom's and Ma's questions about his stay at his first world so far. Only whenever he tried to write an engaging enough response to their letters, he would end up starting over on it when he got sentences into it. By the time he felt that it was good enough, he would end up ruining it by writing something stupid or spilling ink all over the page, hence the ink droplets staining his desk. It got to the point where Alec started sketching on the ruined pages out of boredom and seeming failure. Why didn't they have pencils or erasers in World Zero?

As the evening got later, Alec then looked up in response to a set of knocks at his window, wide-eyed. He then relaxed his shoulders when he realized that it was only Sean, crouching low to the ground to peer into Alec's room. (You see, Alec's room in this particular inn was slightly below ground. The only way to see into the room was if one could get as close to the ground as they could, depending on how tall they were.) Sean's lips moved, his voice muffled from the glass, and Alec tilted his head and cocked a brow in confusion. Sean attempted "signing" to him, which mainly consisted of him making strange movements with his hands. Alec lifted his hands slightly and shook his head, hoping that that would alert the boy that he couldn't understand him. Alec saw Sean roll his eyes before stepping out of frame. Moments later, Alec heard a knock at the door, and speculating that it was his Elementalist friend, got up from his desk and opened the door for him.

"Alec!" Sean said, pushing his way into Alec's room. "You won't believe what just happened!

"Alec stared at his friend before slowly shutting the door behind him. "What?"

"Okay, so—" Sean paused for a moment to look around the room before looking back at Alec. "What happened in here? Practicing magic?"

So mages pick on themselves too?

Now that he was standing up, Alec realized how much of a mess his room was, and the papers on the floor didn't help that at all. Crouching down, Alec started picking them up. "Ah, no."

Sean bent down, too, assisting Alec with the mess. Picking up one of the papers, he looked at it before glancing back at the boy. "These are sick! Is it an art project?"

"No," Alec said again, snatching the paper out of Sean's hand. "I'm trying to write a letter to my parents."

"You get letters?"

Alec sighed. "Yeh. But I don't know how to start."

"Well, I don't know if I can help you with that," Sean said, standing back up. "I'm not much of a writer."

"Neither am I. Anytime I start writing it, I end up screwing it up somehow and needing to start over."

"Language, Alec." Sean put his hands on his hips. "Do you have to write it right now?"

"I would think so. I haven't talked to them in a month."

"Just reply to them like they were here right in front of you," Sean requested. "You don't need to be the next Shakespeare."

Alec chuckled at the comment. Stacking his papers together, he tossed them into the bin before turning to his friend. "You were saying?"

"Oh, right!" Sean jumped onto Alec's bed. "So you know how I'm in World 2, right?"

"Yes?"

"I'm finally eligible to do the last dungeon for that world," Sean said. "It's supposed to be really tough, though, so I don't know if I'll be able to do it first try."

"You can have multiple tries with dungeons?" Alec asked. He has only been in one dungeon, after all, so can you blame him for being curious?

Sean nodded. "Yeh, of course, you can. You have to be cautious and not die, though."

"How does that work?"

Sean leaned back against the mattress. "Well, when you're taking a lot of damage, you kind of just know."

"No, I mean...is that even possible? Can you actually leave dungeons once you started them?"

"You can. Whenever you want. You just need to know where to find the portals so you can get out of it when you can."

Alec nodded in response. Why didn't Cal mention that before?

"Anyway," Sean said. "You better get to work on that letter of yours. I'm sure your folks are waiting to hear back from you." 

As Sean splayed out on Alec's bed, the boy turned back to his desk. Scratching the back of his head, he went back over to it and sat down. Dipping his glass pen into the dark ink, he held the paper down as he started to write. 

----------------------------------------------------------------

[Word Count: 953 words]