Catrin-

Nova, Endey, Corbinian, and Aleakim began shooting arrows at
the dragons.  As they paused to grab more
arrows, we realized that only a few of the dragon had fallen. The arrows were
bouncing off the dragons’ stone skin.  Essrial
laughed a high cold laugh.  “You can’t
kill them that easily,” she said.  Draco
raced forward, her sword drawn. I followed her, along with a few others. We
hacked at the dragons with our swords.  Suddenly
I noticed that the dragons were only falling when the little round gem inside their
mouth was knocked out. “The round gems inside their mouths,” I shouted. “We have
to knock them out! It’s enchanting them!” Draco nodded, and began to advance on
the closest dragon. Essrial heard, and saw Draco. “Oh no you don’t,” she said. “I’m
going to make this harder for you!” She muttered a spell, and the dragons began
to come closer to us, as if to attack. “Uh oh,” 
I heard someone say.

Draco~

As Nova hit the wall and blacked out, as I killed a long, snakelike dragon whose gem Nova had knocked out, Essrial raised her hand and pointed it at the gems. It seemed to do nothing.

"Oh-So-Powerful-Mage-Of-Flintwall, aren't you?" I couldn't help asking. 

She seemed even more furious, and pointed at me, but the seemed to change her mind. "You'll find out soon, little human girl. All of you will."

The phrase made me shudder, but I was too angry to make the connection. Elyana did, however. 

"Draco," she hissed, grabbing my hand, "that's what--" 

But a dragon jumped at us. We set to killing the ragons that Nova had let out, with swords or from afar. But then they ran out, and Catrin shot the gem out with an arrow.

It fell to the floor and shattered, a thick grey smoke coming up from it. It filled the room, separating us. Soon, I couldn't see any of my friends or of the dragons, just thick grey smoke. 

"That didn't happen before,"  I heard Endey. His voice sounded muffled, for some reason. Was it because he was pressed against a dragon?

"No, it didn't. Maybe that one was a trap?" I replied. My voice came out muffled, too.

I felt cold scales brush my arm. There ws a dragon next to me! I wheeled around, and stabbed at random. I felt my sword bump into something fragile, then I heard a crash. I had, by sheer chance, hit the gem.  

Encouraged by my luck, I stabbed at random again. There was a dull 'thwack' and the dragon fell at my feet. I knelt toward the broken gem... And got hit by a facedful of fog, except it was shiny white this time.

I was thrown back, and fell against the wall. I might have yelled, but the gray fog reduced it to a weak squeak. 

The shiny fog was pervading the cave, and as it surrounded me, I felt a searing pain where a cut in the arm I'd gotten while fighting the dragons had been before. Cries echoed around the room; the fog had reached them.

What had I released?

"This will happen each time you try to hit a gem," I heard from above. Essrial's voice echoed around the cavern, for some reason not affected by the fog. Perhaps it didn't have any effect up there, after all, the ceiling was high. 

"It didn't happen before!" I called out. 

"She enchanted them, Draco. Duh." That was Aleakim, probably. 

"Someone with brains, finally. Yes, I enchanted them. Each one you smash will do something different. One of the gasses absorbs all of the oxygen in the cavern. Keep taking out these pearls, and you will die one way or another."

"You've made this impossible!" I screamed in frustration. "Don't you want to get out of this, too?!"

 "Girl, this is not impossible. If you perish, I will use Hadrian to get the water myself. It will be harder, but doable. I'm giving you one hour to defeat the guardians."

~~~

So, I'm thinking the waterfall requires sacrifices, and the more the better. ANd the water bestows some sort of amazing powers. That's why she brought us alone.

 I also left room for a plot twist.  

TOPTOPTIPPITYTOPTOPTOPTIPPITYTOP!!!!! GO TO THE TOP THREAD!!!!!!!!

Thread, can you tell me what the clue to the next task means? Hmmmm. You can't? Shame, shame. Well, at least go to the top.

 Is is my imagination or.... It probably is my imagination, so never mind.

Hi, everyone. Sorry for not posting in forever... I've had a REALLY insanely busy summer, what with going to New York, going to yearbook camp, going to surf camp in Santa Cruz with no internet access (and no proper toilets... yuck), and other stuff. So, just wanted to let you know that I'm alive, as are Elyana and Xell. And I would post, but Annie says she posted something but it's not showing up. So I get to post after her. :)

By the way... who said the "little human girl" thing that Essrial said to Draco? I know I remember it from somewhere, but I can't think of it right now and it would take forever to search the entire thread for it.

Because all of you have no idea what to post about. I already know how to get out of the situation, or at least out of the fog. And if you don't post, I'll have to end up writing it myself, which would be no fun whatsoever. 

Sorry if this doesn't go with what you were planning, Tiffany. Sorry it's long.

Elyana Rilutdivene-

The thick, white fog was everywhere. It was difficult to breathe, to hear the sound of your own voice, to see anything farther away than a hand in front of your face. I groped around for anything to touch, but recoiled when I felt cold scales brush my fingers. I shuddered.
"Um... guys?" I called. My voice was immediately muffled. I tried again. "Hello! Can you hear me?"
"Yeah..." The reply was faint, and I couldn't tell who said it. I tried to move towards it. The fog got a little thinner...
Then, suddenly, it was gone. I was in a clear part in the very center of the huge cavern.
"Over here!" I cried. "There's no fog this way!" There were a few faint voices, then Endey burst out of the white wall, sword in his hand.
"Elyana!" he said. "Where's everyone else?"
"In there," I said, gesturing to the fog. Just as I said it, an angry Adela came running into the clear air, eyes blazing and smoke leaking from her mouth. I backed up just a little.
"Adela... calm down..." She glared at me.
"Essrial," she hissed, "is going to die."
Endey frowned. "You know, I'd like that an awful lot right now," he said, "but unfortunately, we need her." Adela started to say something, when suddenly, not another person came through the wall of white fog, but a huge, metal dragon. (argh overuse of commas i could probably make that better but i dont have editing time -_-)
"Fewmets," I said, very quietly.
"Dracomerda," Adela agreed. The sound my stolen sword made when I pulled it out of the sheath sounded odd, muffled slightly by the wall of fog. I gripped it in my hand, ready to charge the dragon. I looked over at Endey.
Three, he mouthed, two, one.
We ran. I attacked the massive metal beast, slashing at the scales with all my might. But it didn't go through, didn't even make a scratch on them as it would normal dragon scales. I looked up at the dragon, a sinking feeling in my stomach. It looked down at me and roared. I gasped and dove out of the way, rolling and standing up on the stone floor. The spot where I had just been was singed.
"You monster!" screamed Adela. She jumped and flapped her silvery-blue wings, rising off the ground up to the dragon's head. It tried to hit her out of the air with a claw, but she was too fast. She breathed a long stream of fire at the gem in the dragon's mouth, but it didn't-
Wait.
That gem hadn't been bright green before, had it?
"Adela!" I yelled. "Take my sword!" I threw the sword towards her as hard as I could, praying she would catch it.
She did, and she smashed the gem in the dragon's mouth with a passion. The dragon seemed to collapse, falling apart in a shower of bronze metal scales. There was a gust of fresh air, and all the fog in cavern seemed to disappear. I looked around to see metal dragons standing everywhere, my friends looking dazed among them.
"What did you do?" asked Corbinian. He was looking nervously at the dragons with his one good eye, and edging away from them as quickly as possible.
"Um... I think Adela smashed one of the gems," I said. Draco frowned.
"I thought they did bad stuff," she said. "Essrial said some of them will take the oxygen out of the room, and some of them are poison gas."
"Maybe they all do different things," said Adela. She thought for a moment, then continued, "Probably most of them do bad things, but some of them are good and counterract the bad ones."
"So... how do we tell?" Endey had his back to me, sword up in case the dragon statues attacked.
"We can't," said Nova irritably. "That stupid Essrial person wants us to try to figure it out by chance and get killed." I frowned.
"I don't think she'd make it that hard," I said. "She did say there was a way to get out of here, after all..." I thought of
how the gem had turned green when Adela breathed fire on it. "Hey, did any of the stones change color before you smashed them?" I asked.
"Now that you come to mention it... I think it did, just before it broke." Draco concentrated. "I think... it was red," she said. "Or orange. Something like that."
"That's it!" cried Adela. "We can tell what the stones do by what color they are."
"Yay," said Nova sarcastically. "Light-torch moment. It's totally going to help if we know what color they are the second before they break."
"Didn't it turn green when Adela breathed fire on it?" said Endey, back still turned. Everyone gave Nova a look.
"Yup," said Adela, grinning. "Definitely a light-torch moment."
At that moment, another dragon sprang to life.

Endeyrory Pracea

It has finally occurred to me what Nova meant when she said, "How on Earth did she get the guy?" she meant something along the lines of "How on Earth did he every fall in love with a crazy weirdo like her." I'm sorry! But I had been chasing dragons for four hours, so my brain was a bit weird. I opened my mouth to yell at Nova exactly why I loved Draco so much, but then shut it when I realized that right now was probably not a good time, considering that Nova was dangling from a rope shot from an arrow in a cave room full of dragon statues shooting fire. But afterwards, I was going to yell at her.

"Hey, what's this?" Anex asked. He stood next to a large stone slab that somehow we hadn't noticed. Which was pretty odd, considering that it was right in front of us. More magic.

I couldn't read it, of course, but I did recognize the word "dragon" somewhere in there. I kind of have to be able to read that word, considering my chosen career.

"I don't recognize the language," Anex said. "Arlen, do you?"

Arlen shook his head. "Nope."

Aleakim squinted at it. "It kinda looks like Draconian, but not really."

Adela nodded. "I think it's an older form."

Essrial twirled around. "It tells you how to get across!" she cackled. Ok. Weird. Why couldn't they read it?

"Why can't you guys read it, then?"

Aleakim glared at me. "Well, Endey," she said in an icy tone, "we can't read it because we don't know the language."

"It's not that hard," I said. I walked up to the slab and tapped the word "dragon". "See? This one is dragon. Don't know about the others, but you guys can figure out the rest, can't you?"

Adela looked at the word I had tapped. "Endey, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. That looks more like the word for 'plumber'."

"No," I said, "that's definitely the word for dragon."

Essrial doubled over laughing. "Oh," she said, "this is just golden! Absolutely golden!"

"Why is this so funny?" Draco growled. "Because, it's really, really not."

"A little help here!" Nova called down from above.

Adela sighed, then flew up and got her down. "Finally," Nova said. "What's the big fuss about? This rock?"

"Oh," Essrial said, "the gods do have a sense of humour! Give him the power to understand, to speak, to write, to read, to communicate in the dragon gods' own language, but guess what..!" Essrial choked up with laughter.

My stomach felt like it had rocks in it. I couldn't stop her from saying what she was going to say next, nothing could stop it. "What?" Draco asked.

"He didn't even tell his girlfriend! He doesn't trust her enough, not enough to tell anybody, that he CAN'T READ!!!" Essrial fell to the ground, pounding the floor with her fists, shaking with laughter.

Everybody stared at me. Even the dragon statues were staring at me, their lifeless eyes staring at me.

"He's the only one who can read it, this ancient Draconian language, and he can't read!" Essrial lay on her back. "Misericordia and Immitem, I really must send you a thank you note." She paused for a moment, as if listening. "And you too, Hank."

"How on Earth did he get the girl?" Nova asked.

"Shut up," Draco and I said at the same time.

"So you don't trust me?" Draco asked.

"No, no," I said. "I do. Of course I do! I totally trust you! I mean, why wouldn't I trust you-" I was babbling, and Draco cut me off.

"Then why didn't you tell me that you couldn't read? It's totally understandable that you don't want everybody to know, some specific people," he eyes slid to Nova, "but why didn't you say anything?"

"I didn't think it mattered," I stammered.

"Yeah, right," Essrial said. "Did I mention that the dragon statues are ever so slowly going to get bigger and that means the fire will get bigger until this entire room is engulfed in flames? Oh, and the door back is shut."

"You'll get burned too," Corbinian said, but his face looked unsure.

"No I won't," Essrial said dismissively. "So, Endeyrory Pracea, your friends are going to die by fire, just like your little sister Lizta. And to think of it, if only you'd taken the time to learn how to read, or admitted it earlier and Draco would have taught you, none of your friends would die screaming, like they will in an hour or so."

"Oh," she added, "the dragon gods only provided a mental translator in his head, it's not like they taught him to read the ancient Draconian languages. Good luck!" Essrial disappeared.

Nova began to laugh, too. "There's no way out of this!"

"Are you inebriated?" Arlen asked.

"What the drake does that mean?" Elyana asked.

"Drunk."

"Nope," Nova said.

Essrial reappeared. She sighed dramatically. "It appears that I'm going to have to go the waterfall myself. And I'll have to sacrifice poor wittle Hadrian." She spoke a word and waved her hand, and Hadrian froze. I'd nearly forgotten about him. She grabbed his arm and they both disappeared.

The others tried to figure out what to do, but I couldn't stop thinking of what Essrial the Mage had said.

If only you'd take the time to learn how to read, or admitted it earlier and Draco would have taught you...

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. But I never would have admitted, because I wouldn't want Draco to be ashamed of me.

____________________________________

I noticed two somethings:

1. We have a lot of 'a' names. Arlen, Aleakim, Adela, Anex...

2. What happened to Lupus? Was it Invisible who was writing him after Deren died, and therefore Tiffany W.? I forget, and I'll go look it up, but still, it might be another enemy to face, because I figure, once we get rid of Essrial, then we get rid of all undead dragon armies and gods and smelly unicorns and stuff. Then we'll have to deal with Ketira and King Troner and the Knights of Flintwall.