The End of Magic (Young Adult Dystopian Fantasy)

by GM Gambrell

The fall felt farther than it actually was and Duncan hit a rock ledge with a thud. He didn’t get a chance to right himself, though, as the ground shook again and he rolled off the ledge and further into the chasm. The rock he fell onto was smooth and moss-covered and sloped downward. He tried gripping onto the sides, but the rock was just too smooth, almost glass-like in texture, and he began to slide downward. It didn’t matter how hard he pressed against the walls of what was turning into a chute, he still gained speed instead of slowing. He wanted to scream but could hear Jessica screaming somewhere in the chute below him and instead sighed a breath of relief. At least she was alive.

  The chute became a tube, a perfectly round hole through the rock that sloped ever downward, twisting and turning, spiraling about. If Duncan hadn’t been so scared, it would have been the ride of his life. The few minutes in the tube, screaming through the rock at high speeds, had seemed like hours. The tube took a slight upward turn and he thought he might be coming to a stop. Instead, he shot out the face of a cliff wall, wailing all the way, and crashed to the ground below.

  Jessica was screaming again. “They’re dead…they’re all dead!”

  At first, he didn’t know what she was talking about. Who were they? They’d been alone except for NAME and Sir Dog. She couldn’t be talking about the Golems, could she? And then he felt the pile that had broken his fall. He looked down and, after a brief gasp, started screaming with Jessica. They were lying on a pile of arms and legs. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, and Duncan screamed, wondering how many people had died, how they’d been cut up…the butchers who had done it. He tried to scramble off the pile and then noticed that the arms and legs were hard…made of some sort of plastic. There were sockets in the ends where they connected together. He stopped screaming and started laughing.

  Jessica, still screaming, looked at him for a few moments, her face a mixture of confusion and terror. She finally stopped and asked. “Shouldn’t you be screaming? What’s so funny?”

  “They aren’t real arms and legs.”

  She looked down, started to scream once more, and then picked up a leg. “It’s not real.”

  Duncan laughed again. “No…it’s not real.”

  They scrambled off the pile and rushed to each other, hugging. “I thought I lost you, Jessica. When you fell into that hole…”

  “But you jumped right in after me,” she said as she punched him in the shoulder. “Why would you do that? Now we’re both stuck here.”

  “I…” he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t describe what he felt for the girl. She’d become the center of his world, the biggest reason for wanting to make the planet’s many wrongs right. He wanted to do it for her.

  “It’s okay, I understand. But now that you’ve rescued me, how are you going to rescue me?”

  “What?”

  She spread her arms wide, indicating the massive cavern they were in. Enough light filtered through the many tunnels to illuminate the massive cave. Duncan gasped as he saw what she was pointing at.

  “Now that you’ve started the process of rescuing me, I assume you have a plan?” Jessica asked, half in jest.

  Duncan couldn’t answer. He was staring, slack jawed, beyond her.

  “What?” she asked. “What is it? Should I turn around? Something’s not about to eat me, is it?” She couldn’t help it and turned around to stare where Duncan was.

  In the center of the cavern was a perfectly preserved ancient town from before the Last War.