Notice: It's a thought of mine that if there is a ton of an element around, a Mage of that SAME element can cast higher level magic without too much casting time and still get about the same result.

Yurick sighed. Why hadn't he turned the boat around and force Lisa to get off the rowboat when he could? Why had he allowed her to roam on her own on the island? More importantily, why had he allowed himself and Lisa to get caught by Golbins and Spiders?

"Nice going there, brains" Lisa mumbled as she struggled against the ropes that were holding her and Yurick together on a stake.

"Well, I didn't hear you offer any sound solutions!" Yurick grumbled back slightly louder than Lisa and didn't budge.

"You want to get eaten?!" Lisa exclaimed worriedly at Yurick's lack of motion and was about to say something more when Yurick kicked her.

"I would burn the ropes but you keep moving around!" Yurick sighed and tried to send the best glare he could at her from over his shoulder. Lisa mumbled something and then stopped moving, giving Yurick the best chance of not frying anyone or anything by accident.

Lisa felt her wrists get warmer and warmer until she and Yurick fell to the ground with a soft thud. Yurick placed a hand over Lisa's mouth to prevent her from speaking and the two waited a moment before Lisa heard what Yurick did. Footsteps, and many of them. Quickly looking around, Yurick picked a hiding spot that was out of sight for the two of them and quietly rushed the both of them there. Once they hid, Yurick and Lisa listened.

"What do ya say about torching them? I hear woman taste wonderful charred!" A slimy high-pitched voice spoke, obviously talking about Lisa. Lisa flinched and closed her eyes while covering her ears, obviously not wanting to hear the rest if they were going to talk more on the subject of charred womans.

"What about the boy with the weird eye covering?" a much lower and rough voice piped up. Yurick carefully took a look over the edge of where they were hiding to get a look at who was talking. There was five goblins and eight spiders. Not good considering that there was only two mages verses the thirteen of them, and goblins were better at physically fighting than mages were.

"We see what he knows and then slit him! Or we could cook him in the fire and give him to our leader!" The one with the slimy voice answered, it was clear he didn't like the idea of giving food to his leader by the fact that he sounded even angrier than before.

"Leader would be angry if you just killed our prisoners!" Another voice piped up, Yurick wasn't able to identify the source, be he could tell that there was more than five goblins in the area. When Yurick heard the footsteps stop, he knew why. The creatures were in the room where they had tied up the him and Lisa and saw them gone.

"Alert the guards! We must not let them escape! Bring them back dead or alive!" A squeaky voiced goblin shouted and nearly deafened Yurick as he had didn't have time to place his hands over his ears.

'I didn't need the ears anyways... Not like Lisa's a Mouse half the time... Wait, where is Lisa?!' Yurick panicked as he noticed Lisa was no longer where he had last seen her. 'Great, I've lost the entire group. How much worse can this get?' Almost as if to answer Yurick's plea, Two goblins found Yurick.

"There's one! Get him!" Yurick mentally cursed and took off in a direction away from the goblins, turning to face back every now and then to make sure the creatures weren't following him. Much to Yurick's annoyance, the goblins didn't seem to want to take 'no' for an answer.

Yurick wasn't sure what urged him to do so, maybe it was the lack of ideas or it might have been the annoying feeling of himself going to die by the hands of Zael if Lisa was hurt, but he turned around and begun to cast quick fire spells in order to try and get the goblins away from him. The goblins, having not stopped before Yurick catsed the spell to run away, got fried the moment the fire touched their skin. It wasn't the plan Yurick had in mind, but it worked. The goblins went down screaming until their vocal cords were burnt by the searing inferno of the fire Mage... Which had alerted the rest of the creatures of Yurick's location. 'Yep, I'm all brains!' Yurick mocked Lisa inwardly as he bolted down the cave path, gripping his dagger as if it was the only thing keeping him alive.

Yurick managed to find himself in a room with an extremely large bonfire going in the middle. Yurick smirked, the fire would make casting a ton quicker and get things done faster.. If nothing too big came and put of the bonfire. Taking a seat on a smoothed out rock near the fire, Yurick felt himself relax as he stared into the core of the fire, mesmerized.

Yurick laid there in the room for awhile when he noticed he had fallen asleep. Mentally cursing himself, Yurick sat back up and positioned himself back on the sitting rock and looked around. He wasn't sure how long he had been asleep, but fate and luck seemed to have protected him from the monsters while he had been resting unwillingly, or maybe it was his clever planning on where he had sat- behind the fire and away from the doors. Either way, he was safe at the moment. Yurick was going to relax again and let the sleep take him once more when he snapped to full attention. Lisa. He still had no idea where Lisa was!

Grumbling, Yurick looked around the room to see if it was okay to move around, stood up, dusted himself off, and went back to trying to everyone.

Walking along the cave path, Yurick wondered about things. Why did the caves seem so man made? Since when could Goblins talk? Why did the island... Seem to be more than an island to Yurick? Where were his teammates... No, where were his friends?!

Yurick snapped out of his thoughts when he tripped and fell down a series of evenly spaced stairs. When he arrived at the bottom, Yurick remained still for moment as he listened to sounds. When there was nothing, Yurick let out a sigh he had been holding. Another question formed in his head.

Where were the monsters from earlier?

Surely the screams of the burning goblins had echoed around the cave, so why was their absolutely no sign of life other than his own? That had Yurick worried. Yurick closed his eyes and listened again, hoping that there was a faint light of life or something thing that could be used to suggest there was another living THIING around. Again, nothing.

Yurick sighed and begun to stand up again from his laying posistion on the ground at the foot of the stairs. An sharp ache ran up Yurick's spine, which he had expected when he took the trip downward, and he had to grab onto a nearby ledge in order to steady himself. "Broke a few bones I bet..." Yurick mumbled under his breath. He tried to get a view of where he was, but the faint light at the top didn't reach down into the new place.

Yuick turned to try and go back up the stairs, but stopped when a few pebbles rolled down the stairs, quickly followed by a few bones. Skeletons. No wonder Yurick wasn't sensing anything. They were all dead. That gave Yurick another thought; What if there was undead around?

Horrid thoughts of Zael and everyone else being dead made Yurick's blood freeze. 'No, their much stronger than this. They can take care of themselves! That's how we lived through solo-jobs!' Yurick tried to reassure himself and nodded, then realized another fact. It was normally Zael that did all the work- always taking out the enemy before anyone could finish casting any magic or in the case of Dagren and Syrenne, before they could rush in and provide support. Yurick chuckled, maybe it was because Zael was like the glue that held the group together like a family, or maybe it was his ability as a leader, but the group had nominated Zael to lead them. That included Yurick himself, who was a little jealous of Zael, but of what Yurick couldn't tell.

Yurick jumped out of his thoughts when he felt a hand wrap it's self around his ankle and he let out a small shriek and toppled backwards and landed on his rear. The hand was dry, cold and very boney. He looked back at the skeleton that had fallen down the flight of stairs and felt the colour drain from his face. It wasn't a skeleton, it was indeed an undead, and one thing worse than an undead skeleton chasing you is an undead skeleton that's on fire chasing you... '

It would make a good torch however...' Yurick thought as he spared a slight glance to the pitch black hallway. The only good thing about this one skeleton was that the fact skeleton hadn't fully formed.

Yurick kicked the small collection of bones with his spare leg and managed to pry himself free of the grip and stumbled up onto his own feet. Yurick took a few steps back and focused his energy on the skeleton. When the undead creature had fully formed and begun to stumble its way to him, He let out an inferno upon the thing, hoping that he didn't just turn the thing into nothing but a pile of ash. Fate must have been on Yurick's side that same moment because the skeleton stumbled a little and then straightened it's posture and begun to chase Yurick down the corridor.

Running down the hallways, Yurick made sure to get a good look around. The place was like a miniature palace! Elaborate pillars decorated in tiny, detailed pictures that told the tale of daily life style and beliefs and complex pathways that made Yurick circle around many times made him come to terms that who ever had lived in the area was advanced in architecture.

Turning back to make sure the skeleton hadn't gotten too far away and lost interest in its chase, Yurick nearly came face to face with the flaming skeleton. Startled, Yurick sent another fireball at the skeleton and realized his panicked mistake as the flames dies out in the undead and the enchanted bones vanish into black dust.

Yurick was going to light a small fire and hold it so he could see, but a few seconds into the darkness and a faint glow begun to light up the area, each glow coming from the tiny inscriptions within each of the many pillars that adorned the hallway. Yurick also noticed that there was small balls of energy floating around, then it hit him. Vono Island must be an island of condensed magic!

After following one of the small puffs around for what seemed like hours, Yurick ended up in a room with three rows of beds, each row being twenty beds long. The puff floated over one of the beds, a bed marked O-256, and then faded away. Yurick stared at the bed for a while and decided that since he was indeed tired from his run with the undead and he couldn't feel any life presence that was hostile, he would take a small nap. After making himself comfortable on the bed, Yurick was surprised to find him rather warm and the moment he closed his eyes, he slipped into a peaceful, and rather deep, slumber.