Guardians of Magic

"It's not fair," he said, the words heavy with tears. "I just want to be a normal boy!"

The eldest of the four children sat on the hilltop and stared at his brother. It had been another long day. Today they had learned that they were all wizards, able to cast magic by thinking about it within their mind. They had all learnt how to levitate small objects, but only Elgar was able to move a rock larger than himself, which made him arrogant and boastful. The others had tried not to let their annoyance show, but it was hard not to be bitter when your older brother - who has always been the bossiest and meanest - was now getting all the attention.

Now they were making camp for the night under an ancient oak tree, and Yalim was crying because he felt left out. The other three siblings were in no mood to do anything except rest, but Elgar always seemed to have energy after a hard day's work.

He stood on top of a boulder and shouted, "Look at me! I'm flying!" He put his hands on his hips and looked down at them like a proud fool. "You know what? If you're too scared to fly, then maybe I'll choose somebody else as my heir! Maybe I'll choose...you!" He pointed at his sister Randa. She glared back at him and said nothing. Elgar snorted in contempt and turned around before throwing himself off the boulder and landing feet first on the ground below. "See? Nothing to it."

"He's unbearable," said Randa, lying down on her roll mat and putting a pillow under her head. "I don't see why we have to listen to him."

"Because he's older?" asked Samirah quietly from her mat next to hers. She was the youngest of them after all, and still couldn't understand why she had been chosen by Elgar as his heir. The same question had been in Yalim's eyes as he'd cried on his mat further away from them all. Even though they were twins, she knew that Elgar didn't really like Yalim much. She could tell that even in those first few moments when they'd arrived here in this strange new world where magic existed when it hadn't before, there had been tension between them. But Yalim was weak; he couldn't use the staff like she could when she thought about something she wanted badly enough; he couldn't use fire magic like Hamid; he couldn't do anything except eat sweets and cry about being left behind!

She sighed deeply before adding, "Maybe we should just go home."

"Home?" asked Hamid from next to her mat, sounding outraged. He sat up quickly with wide eyes as if he'd just woken up from a bad dream. "What do you mean by 'home'? We can't go home! This is our destiny!" He looked over at Yalim who was sobbing into some spare cloths they'd found earlier that day while scavenging in one of the nearby villages. Hamid shook his head sadly before looking back at Samirah again with a scowl on his face. "He won't get anywhere until he toughens up."

"But...destiny..." mumbled Yalim from where he lay, half-asleep already despite his tears still falling silently onto the cloths beneath him. Samirah watched him sadly for a moment before looking back at Hamid again so that he would stop staring at her brother like that.

"We have no choice in this," she told him seriously as she stroked her own pillow under her head for comfort against her sore body after another long day of learning magic that she wasn't sure she wanted anyway! "Look what happened when we tried not to listen to Elgar." She looked down at herself while she spoke; ever since they had arrived here, weird things kept happening around her when she used her staff or cast fire magic without meaning or trying too hard: birds dropped dead wherever she walked past; plants withered into nothingness wherever she touched them with dry hands; fire started whenever she thought about it while using heat vision through closed eyelids...it made people wary of her despite being children themselves!

Hamid stopped frowning for a moment and looked at her curiously before asking gently, "What happened?" When he spoke like this with such concern in his voice instead of shouting angrily like today when Elgar hadn't listened either...she liked it more than anything else about him! But it was dangerous for both of them if anyone else knew about their feelings for each other - especially Elgar! He wouldn't rest until one or both of them were hurting or dead if he ever found out about such dangerous secrets!