*Quin*

"Like...this?" I asked, fitting my hand in the little hand shaped whole.

Hecate nodded. Looking just a bit more serious than normal, she cautiously fit her hand in the slot on the other side of the room.

"Um..." Hatchet said, giving Hecate a glare, "nothing happened."

She rolled her eyes, still smiling, of course.

"Alright then, next idea!" She proclaimed, trotting over to me. "Hold this out to me, okay?"

She fit the little half magic half non-magic stone in my hand then brought my arm up. Trotting back to the other side of the room, she fit her hand back in the slot and held a hand out to me.

"Don't move a lot."

A little ball of light green- pure magic, I reminded myself- floated towards me. I held still, not sure what it'd do to me if it hit. Luckily, her Majesty's aim was on point. I felt the warmth, starting in my left arm and struggled not to flinch. The warmth moved up my left arm and then through my chest, slowing down when it passed over my heart. I panicked a little, but felt relief when it moved down my right arm.

I let out a breath of air I didn't know I was holding when the warmth left.

All too soon, though. When the magic hit the hand slot, the counterclockwise swirl lit up. One the other side of the room, Hecate's magic glyph lit up as well. The room began to shake as the wall to my right moved. The old stone was pushed back by the magic to reveal a door.

The light in our room suddenly dimmed as the other room lit up a bit.

"Alright!" Hecate cheered, pumping a fist in the air. "Woohoo! Good job guys. We did it."

I moved my hand back and stood behind the Magical Queen. "What now?"

"We keep going." She started walking while the rest of us stayed close behind, clearly uncertain about what could really be in the other room.

"So, tell me again," I said, staying close to her back, "what is this place?"

"A magic ruin. Well, non-magic actually. I guess you'd probably be used to something like this being referred to as 'human'."

"Did you just insult our non-magic origins?" Heather asked, eyebrows scrunched, sending a glare to Hecate.

"Hmm, no. Not exactly. Sorry if it sounded mean. I'm in study mode right now."

"Still having a hard time believing you're a specialist on...anything," Hatchet said.

I looked around the room we were going into. It look, sadly, exactly like the last one. The walls were covered in glyphs, some that I could read but most that I couldn't. The ceiling had one huge glyph on it that was lighting up the room. Unlike the last, there weren't two glyphs on the opposite sides, either.

I looked down to Hecate, waiting to finally see her disappointed face, but she seemed pretty happy.

"Care to explain?" Jacin asked. "You seem exceedingly giddy for someone who just broke into a room that seems like a huge disappointment."

Hecate shook her head and walked towards the wall. Her fingers skimmed the wall, following the pattern of each glyph and her smile only grew.

"It's history," she said, looking back at us. She flashed her huge smile before running to the opposite side of the room and running her hands over the glyphs.

"History?" Heather asked, obviously uninterested. "Couldn't you just read a school book instead of dragging us to this god awful place?"

Hecate looked...taken back. She held her hand over her heart in exaggerated pain before smiling again.

"Not the history they taught you guys, I mean magic history."

"Magic came from the old Roman gypsies, right?" Hatchet asked. "They made it didn't they?"

Hecate's face contorted in an expression I've never seen on anyone. She burst out in laughter, clutching her stomach.

"Is that the best excuse they could come up with?" She cried, wiping a tear from her eye. "Di-did they tell you how the witches made magic too. Wa-was it a gift from the devil? Or did they just swallow the right medicines? Ooh, or was it the embodiment of their sins? Christ, those idiots."

I could see Heather glaring at her. Hatchet, on the other hand, was a bit stunned and confused. Jacin was trying to hold in a laugh.

"Oh yeah?" Hatchet asked. "How do you think magic was born?"

"Magic wasn't born, dummy, it's always existed. Since the beginning of time!" She covered her mouth, but I could hear her laugh out, "Rome."

"Really?" Heather asked, accusingly. "And can do you have any proof?"

"Of course I do. Do you have any proof that it started in Rome?"

"That's where magic first appeared."

"That doesn't mean that's when it first existed. Those Blackies back in The City just refuse to admit that magic's completely natural. Came into existence the moment humans did." She turned back to Heather, her arms raised like a priest about to preach. "Can your Blackies back in the city explain life?"

"Of course, it's all a science. Blood flow," Heather said, folding out the first finger, "heart beat, growth, death. Science."

"Yeah, and congrats to them for getting that far. But can they explain why?"

"...why?"

"How are you alive? How can you see and comprehend? And don't answer with brain waves cause that didn't just happen in a way your science can explain."

"Then how can you explain it?"

"It did just happen. It's magic, you see? Magic is everything that science can't explain. You see the room we're in? All these glyphs are words, history. They're everything that your science can't explain. All the piece of history that just don't fit. And it's not just random assumptions because I got it the exact same way your science did. I studied magic and I found runes. I found writings and works and I talked and learned."

Hecates eyes were wide in excitement, her hands held up to the ceiling. She was panting, but clearly happy, excited even. Apparently, she loved her work.

Heather clicked her tongue in disapproval before walking out of the room, dragging Hatchet and Jacin, the two people within arms reach of her, with.

Hecate scowled before turning back to the walls. I watched her digging through her bags, pulling out different papers.

She stopped for a second before yelling, "Hatchet, it's okay to make that rock float," and then got back to digging.

"According to what you just said," I questioned, walking over to her, "then everyone has magic?"

She turned to me, then smiled. "Exactly."

I couldn't help but let out a little laugh. "That's a stupid theory."

"Is it really? If you didn't have the capacity to hold magic, then using that stone would've killed you."

I looked at her, a bit startled, but she kept going.

"Think about everything I've told you about limiters and all that. The limiter controls how much magic you use, but not how much you have. That's your magic capacity." She held her hand up in a tunnel. "Magicians have these things, limiters. Ah, sorry, I might've made it a little confusing two days ago when I said the stone thing gave you magic. It's more like, it gave you useable magic, because it didn't need to pass through a limiter it just passed though you. Anyways, a magician has a limiter that lets magic go in and out. A normal person, like you, not that you're normal, doesn't. But that doesn't mean you don't have the capacity to hold magic.

"In fact, you have magic, but its a bare minimum. I could tell Hatchet was a magician because me, having almost no magic, made me extra sensitive. I could sense that little extra. He has a limiter. You have something like this." She made a fist. "It keeps all the magic inside of you so it's keeping you alive. Basically, a soul. We magicians die when we're completely out of magic cause it's like saying bye to our soul. You don't have that possibility though, so don't worry."

As wild and mismatched as her speech was, it did make sense.

"So, what're you gonna do now?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Read, mostly. Decipher new glyphs. Write everything down. It could take a while so tell me if you wanna go back to the van."

"Can you teleport me?"

She turned back to me, laughed, then said, "Teleportation's impossible. Maybe it'll help if you think of magic as something like...unexplainable science."

"Maybe I'll do some exploring too. See if there are any extra rooms in here."

"Yeah. I might wanna keep you here, actually."

I turned to her. "Think you'll miss me when I'm gone?"

What the hell was that? Was that flirting? I can flirt? That wasn't even remotely good, if it was. What the hell was that?

She laughed. "Maybe. But I might need your help too. You figured out the non-magic glyph, so maybe you could help me out a little."