I


Quentin looked like your average 9th grader. A mop of short brown hair fell over the front of his face covering hazel eyes. As he bent over shoving his hand into a thorn bush, some voices behind him began to bicker.
“Hand.”
“Arm.”
“Hand.”
“Arm.”
“Hand.”
“Arm.”
Suddenly, a multi-colored snake with a feathery collar jumped out of the shrub and bit his wrist.
“Hand, pay up,” said the blue specter behind Quentin.
“Since when was the wrist part of the hand?” a similar crimson colored specter next to the blue one replied.
“Since ever.”
“Hey, could you guys help me instead of betting over where your stupid magical snake bites me?” Quentin ventured annoyingly.
“Sure thing, Fergus, get the poison out of him please, and pay me soon” the blue one said. The crimson one, Fergus, walked, or rather floated over to Quentin, where he put his “hand”, lacking a better word, on top of Quentin’s wound which was beginning to swell already. As he did that, a sort of golden light flew from Fergus’s hand to Quentin’s, and the wound vanished.
“Ow,” Quentin winced, “why do I even need to look for your snake Liberius?”
“Because,” the blue one replied, “it is said to have magical powers, that help the digestive system.”
“But why can’t you just use magic to find it?”
“I can.”
“Then why don’t you already?”
“Because this is your punishment for attempting to use glamour spells to make girls like you! Magic may not be used for mundane things as that.”
“Fine, I’m sorry, but your stupid snake is getting a free lunch buffet out of my arm!”
“Serves you right. Still, I grow impatient, so I’ll help you,” and with that Liberius flicked his wrist and the snake was lifted out of the bush and floated to his outstretched arm. “Ah,” continued the specter, “The rare Meso-American feather snake, thought to be the origin for the Quetzal-coatl myths of the Mayans and Aztecs. Quite rare, not an official species known to man, probably the result of a magical accident when trying to fuse birds and snakes, perhaps an anomaly when a snake tried to eat a bird egg infused with magic. At any rate, it must have traveled a really long way to get to the USA,” and with that motion, he bit its head off.
“Why did you do that!” the boy exclaimed.
“By good for the digestive system, I meant to say, very tasty,” nonchalantly replied the specter.
“But you said it was really rare!”
“Yeah, but not extinct. Besides it was way out of its habitat, it would not have lasted long before a bobcat got at it.” The specter then looked at the corpse, then over at Quentin, “Would you like to try some? It’s really good.”
“Pass. At any rate, school starts in five minutes, and I can’t be late for the first day of second semester.”
“Suit, yourself.”


II


Quentin settled into his seat just before the bell rang, and the teacher Ms. Fallowry walked up to the front of the class with two students, a blonde girl in a very expensive looking dress, and an Asiatic looking boy with shock black hair and very dark eyes.
“Class,” Ms. Fallowry began, “Please welcome your two newest classmates, Andrea Flemming,” the girl nodded, “and, uh, lets see, Ji Isoil?”
“It’s pronounced I-Seul,” the boy corrected, not even looking at her.
“Right, that’s what I said. Anyway, he is an exchange student from Korea, so please be kind to him. You may both sit down now.” As Andrea went to her seat, her necklace caught the light, and Quentin saw that it was shimmering. A voice that he recognized as Fergus’s went off in his head, “It’s the pendant!”
“What pendant?” Quentin thought to the demon inside his head.
“You mean we never told you about it?” exclaimed a voice in his head that belonged to Liberius.
“No.”
“Ok, so basically, the pendant is an inexhaustible source of energy, which is somehow harnessed through it by traveling between dimensions.”
“Which is why it shimmers,” Fergus chimed in.
“Anyway,” continued Liberius, “because it has unlimited power, it can be used to make enormous displays of magic...”
“Or let you run your car without ever needing to fill up on gas ever again,” finished Fergus.
“At any rate, this is a very powerful magic item. I suggest you keep tabs on it. I feel that there is a presence here that wants it for nefarious purposes.”
“Ok, ok, fine. I wouldn’t mind never having to pay for gas again,” thought Quentin, after which he felt like a spectral hand had hit him in the back of the head.
“Blaspheme. Now pay attention!”

The rest of the class passed without much of an incident. However, as the bell chimed for next period, Ms. Fallowry began to say “Oh, and remember, tomorrow is Freshmen Free Day, I mean, Freshmen Fair Day, so you will be going on a bus to the local fair today instead of attending my class, but you still have home-” however, she was drowned out by cheering and all around high fives.

III

Once Quentin had left the proximity of anyone else from the school, Fergus and Liberius appeared, floating out of his head.
“Quentin, tomorrow’s your chance! Follow Andrea around at the fair and try to learn more about how she got the pendant,” Liberius said urgently.
“Let me get this straight. You are telling me to stalk the new girl in class because she is wearing a magic pendant.”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Fine, but if I get put in court, I’m saying the devil made me do it.”
“Technically we are spirits, not devils,” Fergus replied pointedly.
“Says fire and brimstone boy.”
“Point taken.”
“Anyhow,” continued Quentin to Liberius, “ ‘Hey, I want to talk to you because your pendant is one of the most powerful magic items in the nine dimensions’ is not exactly the best pickup line.”
“Just find out where she got it, cool?”
“Crystal.”
“Hey you know,” Fergus began to mention, “that Korean kid struck me a little odd.”
“You mean Ji?”
“I mean he seemed, kinda, I don’t know, distant.”
“Well, he is from another culture.”
“More than that.”
“I think you’re overreacting.”
“Maybe.”
IV

As the students got off the bus at the fair, a bored looking chaperone began to say something, then decided against it, and sorta half mumbled a “You know what, just be here at 1:30,” and walked off, leaving the fairgrounds to the mercy of the fifty teenagers. Quentin began to follow behind Andrea, trying to ignore the smells of stale popcorn and spilled soda that was pervasive throughout the fairgrounds, and saw that she was heading towards the ferris wheel. She approached the ride conductor and paid to get on, but was stopped as she was stepping into the chair.
“I’m sorry ma’am but you’re going to have to take off your necklace,” said the conductor.
“Why?” Andrea inquired, seemingly genuinely confused.
“Because,” the conductor said in his very bored voice, “if you leave it on, it could get tangled in the machinery, ripping your head off, causing the ride to collapse, and then I would have to clean up.”
“Fine, but please keep it safe, it’s very precious to me.”
“Whaaaaatever,” and with that she handed him the pendant which he carelessly put on the counter, and Andrea then got on a seat that a little kid was vacating.
“All right, now go for the pendant,” urged Fergus.
“You’re suggesting that I steal it? With the conductor looking?”
“The conductor isn’t exactly paying attention. I mean he’s reading some magazine now.”
“True, still, Ji is over there.”
“Hey, where did the pendant go,” Ji inquired, walking up to Quentin.
“What pendant?” he said innocently
“Cut it out, I know you’re looking for it, I am too.”
“Huh?”
“I’m not exactly Korean. Or human for that matter,” as he said that, he seemed to go through a slight transformation, and seemed to have an aura of unease around him. At any rate, to Quentin he seemed more menacing now. “So what did you do with it?”
“I’m telling you, we did not touch it,” and at just that moment, the ride stopped and Andrea walked over.
“What’s this about a pendant, and where did my necklace go?” she started.
“He took it!” both me and Ji, or whatever his real name was, said simultaneously.
“Oh my god, what am I going to do, that was a family heirloom, passed down through the... ohmygod my mom is going to kill me!” However, just as she said that they heard a little kid scream in delight. He was jumping up and down, and in his hand was the pendant. Andrea went over and took the pendant back from him, and when we turned around to talk to Ji, he had vanished.


V

“Ji” was not in class the next day, or any other day for that matter. However, Liberius decided that it was still a good idea to lecture Quentin the next day.
“How could you have let something that powerful be stolen by a mere baby! He could have dropped it and created a black hole that would suck the entire universe into it’s maw! And that shadow thing, Ji, was so close to taking that thing. Who knows what horrors he would cook up with it?!”
“Look, the point is, the pendant is back in the safe hands of Andrea Flemming,” Quentin remarked exasperatedly.
“Wait, what did you say her last name was?” Fergus said, dropping in on the conversation.
“Flemming.”
“Oh boy.”
“What’s so strange about Flemming?”
“Nothing, it’s just that she is the descendant of one of the most powerful alchemists of all time?”
“What?”
“Nicholas Flammel. The pendant was his creation, also known as the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Oh boy.” Quentin realized that his adventures were only just beginning.