Ronan---

"I still can't belive we're doing this," I say, staring up at the ceiling. "The quest starts in two days." "Well, I feel the same way," Delilah, my best friend, said. We were in our room at the Charion Inn, a tiny little hut with four rooms in the small town of Bridging-on-Sea, the coastline town where Echo, the 11-year-old fae leader of our quest, had told us to meet. The aim of our quest was to find the Faerage Delert, a seclusive half-dragon, half-fae who knew all the secrets in the world, to find out how to infiltrate B.I.G. "Can I have a bed on our ship?" Delilah asked. "Don't be silly," I said. "You're a fox. You're small enough to fit on my bed with me." "Not true!" Delilah joked, giggling. I laughed nervously. To tell the truth, I was worried that I- or anyone else- might not come back from this quest alive.  

Hey Admins, just a quick question. How are we going to know the other powers, their gaurdians, and when? I've been wondering about this for a long time.

Thanks! 

My guess is that Zephyra will tell us all that once she’s rescued.

Admin

Ronan--- I dream I'm trudging through the forest with a spear in my hand. The oddest part is that lots of men and women in black robes and hoods are marching behind me. It's odd because people never march behind me. I'm so scrawny and weak, people just punch me around. We come to a clearing. In it are a mother and  a father wolf. The mother wolf looks at me and snarls. I get scared.   'KILL THEM!" I yell. But I don't have my normal voice. It's all raspy, which scares me even worse than the wolf did.  Then I realize that the wolves have a baby. "STOP!" I yell, this time in my normal voice. But the black-robed people behind me have already thrown a volley of spears.

The scene changes. I'm now in front of a wooden two-story house at night. There are the black-robed people again, but only a few. They're all holding flaming torches. I scare myself again by saying "BURN IT!" in my raspy voice. The black-robed people throw their torches in a pile at the doorstep. I watch as the house starts to burn. The people all look inside, as if looking for proof that someone is suffering from what they did. I look on, mortified. That's when I wake up.

I sit straight up, my forehead covered in sweat. The sun is just peeking over the windowsill, and Delilah is staring at me. "You talk in your sleep," she said dryly. "Gee, thanks. Good grief, my dreams have been getting odder and odder," I say, stretching. "We go to the Luna Islands today,"  I tell Delilah, throwing my dog tags into the old, holey kit bag I keep my possesions in when I'm traveling, which was all the time until last night, when I checked into the Charion Inn where I was staying. "I don't need to pack," Delilah said sassily.  "Well, I do," I reply. I pick up KNOW off the floor. KNOW is a enchanted piece of paper that is folded into quarters. What you do is you write something- anything-  on the front- say, FAFA, for example- and it gives you as much information as it can fit on itself. After a minute, I head down the stairs, my peg-leg clunking all the way.

I buy one loaf of bread and a head of lettuce at market (I don't eat very much) and go down to Fisherman's Road, the ocean-front road where people fish, of course. I see an array of boats, but one stands out to me. A small, dingy boat with the name MOLLY JANE printed on the side and with holes in it was not my first choice for a way to get to the Luna Islands, but it was in my 50-killok budget. I approach a man sitting near the boat. "Excuse me," I say, "is that boat for sale?" "NO," says the man, who seems to be a bit hard of hearing, "IT AIN'T, M' LAD." "Even for 50 killox?" I tease, showing him one of the gold killox. The man's eyes gleam. It must be rare coming across so many killox, I think. "ALRIGH', 50 KILLOX FOR MOLLY JANE. JUS' MAKE SURE SHE COMES BACK IN ONE PIECE."

"Should we be doing this?" Delilah asks, looking at one of the holes in the MOLLY JANE while I get hold of the oars. "You know it's all I could afford," I reply, using the oars to push off of the dock. Even if the MOLLY JANE doesn't look pretty, it's fast, and we're out in the open ocean in ten minutes. Delilah watches Bridging-on-Sea until it is a speck on the horizon and says, "How long will this take?" "A few hours, if the weather stays nice," I say. "KNOW says it's about four miles from here." Time passes without much occurence until about three o' clock, when I look at the sky and see dark clouds. "Oh no," I say. Within two minutes, the storm is upon us. The waves roll up and down violently, the rain beats down, the thunder rumbles, and to put the icing on the cake, after ten minutes of rain, a heavy fog rolls in. "CAN WE STOP AND SET UP CAMP?" Delilah yells, attemping to make herself louder than the storm. "DON'T BE RIDICULOUS," I yell back, desperately trying to improve my visibility. "ONE, I DIDN'T PACK A TENT IN MY KIT BAG, AND TWO, IT WOULDN'T HAVE FIT!" Just then, a huge wave picks the MOLLY JANE up. We go flying. I smack into Delilah, who smacks into my kit bag, which smacks into the MOLLY JANE. I try to see. Then, it all becomes easier. The fisherman's words, "JUS' MAKE SURE SHE COMES BACK IN ONE PIECE," replay in my mind as the MOLLY JANE smashes into a huge clump of rocks. Whoopsie-daisy. Me, Delilah, and my kit bag go flying. I shut my eyes, not wanting to see what happens next. I hear a SMASH like a window, a small shriek, a  wooden-sounding CLUNK, a CRASH like dishes, and a BANG. I feel something wet and sour, like vinegar, on my face. I open my eyes and see a table on its side, smashed dishes, a bowl of salad next to me on the floor, and a disgruntled-looking, well-dressed fae glaring at me. "Nice dressing," Delilah said, licking herself. "Is this how you enter everyone's house, Ronan?" Echo asked. I blushed.    

Kathleen~

I heard a crash, and then a thud, and liet out a small shriek. I'm not the best with loud noises, and with my previous experience, much less so. I heard Echo's dissaproving voice as I raced into the dining room. Rajjk had beat me to the disaster, and was now cavorting in-was that a salad?-with a small fox. A boy lay on the floor, turning the kind of red that I do when meeting a new person.

"Is everything okay?" I say, hurriedly. My face feels numb and pale, and I realize that i'm in shock. With last night and this crash reeling through my head, I feel overwhelmed. 

"Echo," I hesitantly say, "what happened?" I clutch at my head, feeling dizzy and scared.

"Oh," she said, sounding more than a little annoyed."This is Ronan. Ronan, this is Kathleen. And-well-I think Rajjk knows Delilah by now."

"Yeah!" yells Rajjk, his golden eyes bright and alert.

'Hi," says Ronan, "Ummmmmmm...Sorry."

Echo looks like she's about to lose it-and I see why. Delilah and Ronan must have broken clean through the window, and into the salad, which was once our lunch. I moan a little as pain shoots through my head.

"It's not okay!" she yells, and I see what looks like a nasty temper under the collected fae surface. "Do you know what you did! Not only did you break a window, and scare poor Kathleen out of her mind, but you have nothing to say except SORRY! I'll give you-"

Suddenly, the whole world went silent and black.    

I came. And I saw. From shadows, I watched them. I saw it all. Their journey. All of it. 

"Do you think Kathleen is-" "JUST SHUT UP!!!" Echo screamed at me. My face turned red again, but not from embarrassment. Slightly-okay, very affronted, I said, "WHY DON'T I JUST QUIT! YOU DON'T NEED ME ON THIS QUEST..." I stormed out of the room and down the rope bridge connecting one tree to another. Stupid quest, stupid Echo, stupid Kathleen, stupid salad... I thought. I looked at the base of the tree, where a man in a lab coat was cutting into it with a chainsaw. Stupid man, stupid chainsaw... Man? Lab coat? Chainsaw? I put two and two together and raced across the bridge. "ECHO! ECHO! ECHO!" I yell. "WHAT?" Echo yelled. I didn't need to put it into words, though, because the tree gave a huge shake.

I awoke suddenly, and realized that my newfound friends were looking over me anxiously. Echo looked sad as she stared at my eyes, and I thought I saw something that looked like tears in her own.

"Echo..." I began, "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to worry you..."

"It's not that," she moaned. "I just lost a member of the team. And I didn't mean to! I hate my temper..."

"Ronan?" I ask, and Echo nods. Poor Ronan-that boy must be having a hard time of it-and come to think of it, Echo too. "it's okay, Echo. It was my fault. Just I had-well, I'll tell you later. You might want to apoligize to him."

"What!" she stammers. "Er-no. Nonononononononono. I can't, Kathleen. I just can't. I'll bet he hates me now. Can-can you? Please? Just convince him that I'm sorry. I am, truly, Kathleen." 

Even Rajjk looks serious now.

My inner voice taunts me, "No Kathleen, you can't do it. You're too shy. He'll hate you too, and Echo will be even worse off. Prof. Hornshaw was right-" 

"Well, fine," I say, determined to rove my parent's murderer wrong. I stand up and brush my skirt off. "I'll do it."

"Thank you!" Echo says relieved. But at the very moment that i walk out the door, I hear Ronan screaming Echo's name.

"What!" she yells back. but the nois of a chainsaw fills my ears, and I understand.

"Echo!" I scream in panic. "It's your tree!"

Echo turns pale, as does everyone else, as we run across the bridge near her home-hoping that it isn't too late!