Broken Dreams by James Shearer, age 15

Winner, Teen Fiction, Writing Rammy 2021

Even at this hour of the night, the guns were still thundering from over the horizon. Looking closely, I could see sporadic flashes of spellfire, rising and setting like miniature suns while they shattered the world around them. Huge columns of black smoke rose to beat of the guns, twisting and turning, suffocating the sky.

Today must have been a good day though as despite the conflict a mere three leagues away, I had discovered the hulking remnants of one of the Archon’s Sigil Cores. The structure had probably been abandoned after it had fulfilled its purpose, deemed to be too inconvenient to repair. According to hearsay, the source of the Sigil’s immense power was a fragment of a God’s soul. Although the fragment itself was probably gone, any buyer would pay a tidy sum for the housing case with its valuable rune formulas and instructive energy signatures.

I took out my toolkit, a once red case now worn and filthy from years of use in a warzone. Examining the wreckage, I quickly identified the duct that should allow me entry to the machine. I opened the duct. And the world died around me.

The silence was suffocating, choking my mind. My vision turned grey; rocks, mountains and trees all turning into soundless, formless, shapes. Except for the light. It glowed in front of me, gold, blue, green. The casing had turned translucent, allowing me a clear view into what lay inside. And even my sluggish brain knew what it was. A shard of a god, one of the things that this whole war was being fought for. All that was known that the Archon had found something, something so powerful that it drove them wage war on an entire continent, and it was most probably the legacy of a god. Why the hell was this still here? No sane Archon could ever just forget to retrieve the core… which meant they never had the chance.

I bit down on my tongue, hard, filling my mouth with the coppery taste of my blood. I snapped out of my daze and frantically scanned my surroundings. I almost didn’t see it. Pale as a corpse, the ghoul was twenty feet away, its eyeless sockets staring blindly towards me. I was torn. This was a once in a million opportunity. Finally, finally, I could leave to the safer inner lands. My momentary hesitation almost cost me my life. It whispered across the ground, closing the distance in moments. Reaching amongst my tools, I grabbed the crystal vial of spellfire that I had been given four years ago when I first came onto the battleground and flung it straight into the monster’s face. Its visceral screams sounded like an entire herd of pigs squealing as they were butchered. But that wouldn’t be enough to kill it. So I ran and ran until my legs collapsed beneath me. But I would be back, so I could leave this godforsaken land of ash and blood.