Teenage Sorcerers: Prophecy Foretold

Chapter 15: Opening Up

"That's how we all met and ended up here." Os sighed as he just finished up his plate of leftovers. "So you guys had it pretty rough..." Andre spoke up, moving to sit beside Sabbi, who remained silent. "Yeah, but what can you do? That's just what happens in life, there's things you go through and you can't change the outcome of them." Amias shrugged, taking the now empty plates and stacking them on top of one another. "True...and about the other towns?" Sabbi spoke up, making Os think for a moment. "I don't know every single town here, only the neighboring ones. You already know about Rasferdon...and from what Amias and Elijah already told me, you're all from Glimis, so you obviously know about that town. For Harlil, it's the poorest out of all the neighboring towns. We've struggled to afford certain foods like chicken and beef. Even if you managed to scrape together enough money, it wouldn't matter since there's no cattle kept there and it's too expensive to have them delivered to the shops. The closest a Harlil resident could get to a food item like that is if they take the horse carriage into Rasferdon and visit the shops in there, but even then they wouldn't stay long since the people in Rasferdon aren't exactly welcoming towards Harlil folk and would shoo them away." Os seemed annoyed when mentioning the last part. "There's also Silor, that town is the complete opposite of Harlil. They have the wealthiest residents and have the best of everything. Better houses, better shops, better food, everything! A lot of the people there are pretty stuck up, but not everyone there is too bad. I had a childhood friend that lived there until his parents found out I was from Harlil, then they made him stop seeing me." Os stretched a bit before continuing to speak. "There's also Garloden, Alger, and Bontino. Those towns are pretty similar to Rasferdon with them all being in middle class and having similar laws and stuff, but they still have something unique that makes them all stand out in their own way. For example, the Kaleidoscopic tree is one of the unique things about Rasferdon. Alger holds the rarest fruit of blue peaches, Bontino has huge gardens filled with plants and flowers that grow up to 20 feet tall, and Garloden has a violet waterfall that is known to glisten when there's a full moon." "That sounds great! We have to explore those places, guys!" Andre exclaimed as he turned to the rest of the teens, who were still on the fence about everything. "I don't know...should we? We still don't know much about Rasferdon and we still need to go back home before Rana notices we're gone." Malik whispered the last part of his sentence so Os and his friends wouldn't hear the mention of Rana. "That's true...we'll just explore the towns another day. Until then, lets just go back home and we'll go exploring tomorrow." Sabbi smiled as she turned her attention back to Os. "If those are the neighboring towns, do you maybe have an estimation of how many towns are there farther out?" "To be honest, not really, we never tried to go out and see the other towns since everything we have left is here. And besides, not like we would be able to see much anyway since we're not allowed to enter any of them." "I see...well, thanks for all the information!" Sabbi stood up and brushed herself off before ushering the rest of the teens to get up too. The group of teens climbed down the ladder of the treehouse, Bora and Malik staying behind to help Lulu down. Os and his friends watched as the teens left their area of the forest and went back down the path of trees they came from, eventually making their way back to the Kaleidoscopic tree and into town. As they reached the house and opened the door, the first thing they saw was Rana, who was sitting on the rocking chair with a pile of clothes neatly folded on the coffee table. "Where have you all been?! I was so worried about where you guys went!" Rana stood up from the rocking chair, quickly going over to the group. "We just went out for a bit, we didn't cause any trouble!" Kennethn quickly spat out, making Bryan swat him behind his head. "Kennethn, please stop talking..." he sighed as Rana went back to the coffee table and brought over the new clothes he bought for the teens. . "We'll talk about this later...I got the clothes you all can wear outside to fit in with the townsfolk and some pajamas." Rana distributed the clothes he bought with everyone, all of them appearing to have a color scheme going on. All the boys had matching button up shirts and slacks, but each of them had their own color to tell the outfits apart from who they belong to. The shirts were a lighter shade of color while the pants had a darker shade. Lulu was red, Malik was yellow, Bryan was gray, Andre was orange, and Kennethn was beige. The girls had long dresses that reached down to their ankles and long puffy sleeves, their color schemes being pastel shades. They had small frills at the skirt of their dresses along with a slight waist snatch. Sabbi had blue, Chaz had purple, Aurora had green, Josephine had pink, and Bora had black. "You all don't need to change your shoes, the townsfolk won't take notice of them." Rana smiled as the teens took turns changing in the bedrooms to try on their new outfits. After all the teens got dressed into their new outfits, they all admired each other while examining their own clothes. "I look so spiffy!" Kennethn smiled as he folded up the sleeves of his button up shirt. "Spiffy? Who says spiffy?" Aurora tilts her head at him and chuckles. "Let him be. If he wants to say spiffy then let him." Malik went to Kennethn's side and helped him fix the neck of his shirt. "Anyway, what about the pajamas?" Lulu looked up at Rana, who already had the pajamas prepared for the group. The pajamas had all the same corresponding color schemes for each teen, the boys getting striped shirts and pants and the girls getting nightgowns with bits of lace at the ends of their gowns and sleeves. "Because of all the shopping, we blew through a good chunk of the money you've gotten from the sea serpent." Rana stated as he pulled out the small money satchel, which didn't appear as full as it was that morning. "Crap...what do we do when we run out?" Chaz asked as she held the money satchel. "We'll hunt down another sea serpent! The next one will be even bigger than the first!" Sabbi exclaimed with exhilaration. "Yeah! Lets go out and find one right now!" Andre immediately jumped on board with Sabbi's idea, before it quickly got shut down by Bryan and Malik. "No way! We nearly got killed!" Bryan folded his arms as Malik nodded in agreement. "Besides, did you guys forget that that's how Lulu is in his current condition?" Malik points out Lulu, who was sitting on the rocking chair. "Speaking of Lulu, I forgot I bought this for him." Rana spoke up as he dug through his pockets and pulled out a small vial bottle. He approached Lulu and gently rolled up his pant leg to reveal his wounded ankle. He carefully applied the liquid from the vial onto Lulu's ankle, making sure to only give him two drops of the liquid. Lulu sat there in surprise as he could feel his ankle getting better. "Now try to stand up please." Rana got up, watching as Lulu hesitantly got up from the chair. His eyes widened a bit as he could now put pressure on his ankle without as much pain, only feeling a slight sting on it now. "I can move around better, but what's the stuff you used on my ankle?" "It's a healing ointment, but there's two different kinds, one is cheaper and heals a wound over a course of usually a couple of weeks while the other is more expensive but heals the wound faster. I intended to get the cheaper one, but they only had the expensive one left." Rana explained before closing the vial bottle and putting it back into his pocket. "After a week of applying the healing ointment on your ankle, it should be fully healed." "Alright, thanks Rana." Lulu rolled down his pant leg and sighed a bit in relief. "I'll get some lunch started, why don't you all just rest in your rooms for now? I'll call you when the food is ready." The teens nodded and went back into their separate rooms. "Okay, now what do we do?" Aurora asked as she plopped onto her bed in boredom. "Just relax, we've found out alot about this sorcery realm from those men in the forest, which sounds pretty weird when it's being said out loud." Bora chuckled a bit as she moved behind Josephine and began fixing her hair buns, which got messed up from her changing into her dress. "I mean, look where we are. We've been through some crazy stuff already." Chaz shrugged as she pulled out her phone and noticed it was dead. "Shit, my phone's dead..." she sighed before receiving a giggle from Bora. "I don't think our phones would work out here. Even if they did, I don't think we could charge them since there's no outlets here and I doubt any of us have a phone charger to use anyway." Bora finished up Josephine's hair before looking over at Sabbi, who was sitting on her bed and staring out the window. "Are you alright, Sabbi?" She asked as she got up and sat next to Sabbi. "Not really...I miss my family and Lucius. Don't get me wrong, I would love to explore this place more, but the fact that none of us knows if we're even going back home kinda worries me..." "How come you haven't said anything about how you felt to us? You've always seemed fine when we're all together." Chaz spoke up as she stood in front of Sabbi, looking down at her. "Because I didn't want to dump my feelings onto you guys, especially with everything we're already going through to restore the Crystal Calamity, there's so much we need to figure out and we don't even know how much time we have left to do everything." Sabbi leaned back against the wall and sighed heavily. "We all miss Lucius and want to go home too, but we need to have hope that everything will be fine. Lucius should already be working on the warp machine thing, so we can use the time it'll take for him to fix it and come back to us to look around and put the pieces together for this Crystal Calamity problem." Chaz sat on the floor, still remaining in her spot in front of Sabbi. "You're right, we'll get through this..." Sabbi smiled a bit and nodded before getting up from her bed and quickly brushing her sadness off. "Great! Let's go check on Rana, I'm getting hungry!" Chaz scattered up to her feet and was about to go to the door before Sabbi gently grabbed her sleeve. "Relax, he just started cooking a few minutes ago!" Sabbi laughed a bit as she pulled Chaz back. As the girls relaxed and began chatting away about whatever topics came to mind, Bryan was goofing around with his mythical abilities. Andre was outside the window, being lifted into the air by Bryan creating a gentle but strong enough wind current to keep Andre up in the air. "It's my turn after Andre!" Kennethn called out as he watched his two group members goofing around. "Do you guys always act like idiots?" Malik furrowed his eyebrows as he scoffed at the trio's foolishness. "Shut up, you buzzkill! We're just having a bit of fun!" Bryan turned to Malik, causing Malik to get annoyed. "Don't tell me to shut up, you bum!" "Guys, calm down!" Kennethn tried to deescalate the situation, but ended up in the crossfire. "Don't tell me what to do, you slacker!" Malik grew more angry than annoyed, making Kennethn shut himself up, but got a rise out of Bryan. "Slacker?! He saved your ass from falling to your death when we fought that sea serpent yesterday and you're calling him a slacker?!" Bryan yelled at Malik, who hurled insults at him out of instinct. Lulu watched them argue for a bit before getting up and leaving the room. He noticed Rana cooking the lunch he was talking about and decided to go over to him. "Need any help with the food?" Lulu asked as he entered the open kitchen area. "It's alright, I'm already finished, I just whipped up something quick to hold everyone over until dinner time." Rana smiled as he showed off small stacks of grilled cheese sandwiches. "I added some tomatoes and bacon, do you think the others would like that?" "Yeah, I think so..." Lulu looked down as he grumbled his response. "Is something wrong? I'm getting an iffy aura from you...is it about the Crystal Calamity?" "Sorta...it's about this whole group thing." Lulu sighed as he went to the rocking chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Do you want to talk about it? I'm here to listen if you want me to." Rana followed him and leaned against the side of the fireplace. "Yeah, I feel like this team thing isn't working out too well..."