WARNING: From this point on, prepare yourself for way too much drama and not nearly enough making fun of it.
. . . And thanks for your reviews! :)

Disclaimer: Drat. I hate disclaimers. Anywho, *yells loudly* I DISCLAIM!

Farah: (to Prince) "You were there! The Dagger was in your hand! Why did you hesitate? You think you're cleverer than everybody, but you're just like the rest of them! Those soldiers: all they can do is fight; destroy. Why did I trust you? . . . Why didn't you trust me?"

Chapter 20: Don't Call Me That

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the wind stopped. I dropped like a stone. I couldn't help the little cry that escaped me as something struck my shoulder, and I braced myself for my landing—but the impact never came. Someone caught me. My eyes flew open, startled, and met a pair of shadowed chocolate brown ones. I breathed in his scent of moss and damp earth, and for a moment, just a fraction of a second, I relaxed, because, even though my mind knew better, to my body, Lucan still equaled safe. The next instant, however, I had scrambled out of his arms and put some distance between us. He stared at me, his expression unreadable.

Glancing around, I saw with what little light there was that we were in a tomb. "Prince!" I called into the darkness. "Farah!" There was no reply. We must be in a different tomb than they are, I realized with consternation. With a sigh, I turned back to Lucan. He still hadn't said a word. I met his eyes, searching them for answers.

"I trusted you," I said quietly. "I defended you, and you betrayed me. Why?"

Not waiting for a reply, I turned and took a few steps into the darkness, stopping when my shins bumped up against another crypt. I heard a faint rustling behind me that signaled Lucan's approach, and soon he was standing directly behind me, close enough that I could feel the warmth emanating from him. I closed my eyes, hating myself for the shudder that ran through me at the brush of his breath against the back of my neck, a shudder that, though I wished it were, definitely wasn't one of revulsion.

"I'm sorry," he said in a low voice. I waited for him to speak further, but he remained silent, and I found myself growing angry.

"You're sorry," I repeated mockingly. "You're sorry?" I spun around to face him, shoving him away from me. "Sorry isn't good enough! I want an explanation! What the heck was going through your head? Why did you choose that moment not to trust me? Why didn't you say something before?"

Lucan stayed silent. I waited. Eventually he said, "I don't know. I just . . . I wasn't thinking. Or, I was, but I was thinking the wrong things. I had a moment of weakness and I made a bad decision. Is that so hard to believe?"

I was implacable. The heat of my anger was draining away, but I was still hurt and disillusioned, and certainly not ready to forgive. "I understand," I said. My voice said otherwise.

Lucan sighed. "Freckles—"

"Don't call me that."

He stopped, looking hurt.

Good, I thought vindictively. You deserve it.

But I wanted to forgive him. I couldn't, I couldn't even start, but I wanted to. I wanted him to be my friend again. I wanted him to call me Freckles again. What did you do when the one person who might've been able to comfort you was the source of your hurt?

"Let's find a way out of here," I said brusquely. Lucan nodded, and we started exploring the blackness with touch, scent, and sound, as sight wouldn't do us much good. I prayed that I wouldn't encounter one of the tomb's other, less—um, lively occupants. My lips curled up in a wry smile, and I muttered under my breath, "Kakolukia."

Even as I spoke the word, I heard a scraping noise; light shone up from the newly opened crypt to my left. I stiffened in surprise, hesitantly walking toward the source. ". . . Lucan? You did that . . . didn't you?"

Much to my relief, I heard his voice coming from below: "I did. Are you coming?" In answer, I grabbed onto the rim of the crypt and vaulted down.

"The builders must've put some sort of escape hatch in each tomb," I mused out loud, glancing upward. In case the dead people decide to come back to life. Or a power-hungry vizier decides to take over the world and trap the only people who could oppose him in a tomb . . . Never mind.

"It could be just this one," Lucan remarked. I looked at him, but didn't bother to inform him that there was also one in the tomb that Prince and Farah had gotten trapped in. Instead, I took in my surroundings.

The first thing I noticed was that the walls and floor were sandstone, rather than the usual granite or marble. There was a short, slightly curved tunnel out in front of us, and a flash of scarlet could be glimpsed in the room beyond. I went forward, keeping an eye out for traps, until I could see the contents of the next room. It was relatively small, although it had a high ceiling. Statues of some goddess or other (presumably So-and-so the Goddess of Death, although I was no expert on Indian goddesses) were on either side of the doorway I had come through, and there were several window slits and a closed gate on the far side of the room.

Oh, and did I mention that it was full of Sand creatures? Blue-clad spearmen, mostly, although there were one or two armored bosses there, swinging their unreasonably huge sabers around threateningly. I felt a smile steal over my face, my hand moving automatically to my scimitar's hilt: the thought of stabbing something was rather appealing at the moment.

I waded straight in, throwing myself into the battle with an unholy glee that probably wasn't healthy, considering that my lack of caution cost me the use of my left arm (I was pretty sure it was broken), countless bruises, and a split lip, just within the first few minutes. I didn't care. I was angry, damn it! And if I couldn't bring myself to take it out on Lucan, then I had no such reservations about sand creatures. I wasn't as efficient as I might have been had I been following my usual backup routine with Lucan, and I had no wall-rebound attacks to take down the armored bosses, but I found that I didn't really care about that, either.

That is, I didn't care until I realized that the sand creatures were still coming, and I was wearing out fast. The first batch had been dealt with rather easily; the second cost a few bruises and cuts, but was also soon taken care of, but by the time we finished off the third wave of sand creatures, my muscles were trembling with exhaustion, all of the injuries I had received were making themselves painfully known, and I was starting to wonder if I could withstand another attack. Breathing heavily, Lucan and I waited in tense silence, I hoping desperately that this was the end of them, and Lucan appearing equally grim.

The brassy sound of sand creatures appearing echoed throughout the small room; Lucan swore violently in his own language, and before you could say 'You will die in seven days,' he had slung an arm around my waist and yanked me into a sand vortex that I hadn't even realized had formed there.

My body was bruised and aching, and my left arm felt like someone had run it through a meat grinder, but I was warm and sleepy and pressed up against something soft, and the first thing that went through my head when consciousness tried to intrude on my dreams was, Five more minutes. I tried to curl further into the source of warmth at my side, but gasped, my eyes snapping open, when the slight movement sent agony stabbing through my injured arm. The pain did a marvelous job of clearing the cobwebs from my head, and it occurred to me that Lucan's hold on my waist hadn't been broken when we traveled through the sand vortex, and that the worn material clenched in my hands was his shirt. I quickly released it.

"Lucan," I said darkly, my voice echoing strangely through the gloaming. He didn't even twitch. "Lucan, if you value your life, let go of me."

This provoked a reaction: he groaned in protest at the disturbance, shifting slightly, just enough that I was able to wriggle out from under his arm. I stood up, being careful not to jostle my arm and wincing as my sore muscles protested the movement. Blinking in the fading light, I looked around me.

Crumbling, dilapidated arches, draped with filmy red curtains and over parapets, surrounded the open courtyard we stood in. Most of the ground was covered with smooth, worn-down gray stone, but the area we had landed in was carpeted with lush grass. A few palm trees spread their branches across the sky, and in the center of the courtyard was a well. The mechanism that should've supported a water bucket was scattered in pieces around it; that's what gave our location away.

We're right outside the underground reservoir, I realized, limping over and peering into the dark space in the well. A cool updraft of air flowed up from the blackness, its scent containing a hint of the depths that I could no longer see in the twilight.

"Freckles?" came Lucan's hesitant voice from behind me.

"Don't call me that," I said without turning.

There was a pause. "Sorry, Jenny," he said tonelessly. The name sounded wrong coming from his lips. And his voice sounded . . . dead. Hopeless. I softened: I couldn't help it. He'd hurt me, yes, and I wasn't going to forgive him anytime soon, not until he'd suffered some too, but . . .

"I don't hate you, Lucan," I admitted quietly. Despite everything, I never wanted him to think that.

For a moment I wasn't sure he'd heard me; but then there was a painfully relieved sigh from behind me. "Really?" he asked. His tone had brightened measurably.

I thought, Don't push your luck, but why the heck did I feel a real smile tugging at the corners of my mouth for the first time since that moment in the Hourglass chamber? All smiley impulses disappeared at the realization, and I frowned. Crap. I suck at holding grudges.

"So, what does your Compass say about where to go next?" I purposely didn't answer his question, keeping my voice carefully neutral as I turned to face him. His features were solemn, but there was a light in his eyes that hadn't been there before as he reached into his breast pocket and retrieved the Compass, then flipped it open.

An expression of consternation flickered across his face. "Uhmm . . ."

"Let me guess," I deadpanned. "We're going to walk down that corridor," I gestured, "turn left, find a mysterious doorway, and when we go through it Prince and Farah will be there. Am I right?"

Silence.

I sighed. "Yeah, didn't think so. We'd better go get some water before we leave, then. You coming?" Not waiting for the part-selkie to answer, I entered the shaded corridor and approached the shallow pool within, kneeling painfully beside it, awkwardly holding my hair back from my face with my good hand, and leaning down to drink straight from the pool. The energy rushed through me in a healing flood, and I gasped as the pain vanished, slumping in relief.

I closed my eyes, just enjoying the sensation of being whole again, while Lucan drank. He tapped my shoulder when he'd finished. "Ready?" he queried. In response, I stood and went back into the courtyard ahead of him, heading straight to the vortex.

I paused when I got there, then spun around, recalling something. "Lucan?" I called, my tone deceptively sweet. His glance of acknowledgment was wary: he knew me well. "I'll warn you once, and never again: if you ever drag me into a sand vortex without warning like that again, and we're not about to be hit by a meteor or something, I'll leave you wherever we get catapulted. Kapisch?"

For once, my threat didn't fall on deaf ears (probably because I could actually carry this one out): he eyed my thunderous expression nervously and nodded.

Satisfied, I extended a hand, waiting for him to take it before stepping into the sand vortex.

The first thing I heard when I regained consciousness was the sound of Lucan's voice, murmuring something in his flowing native tongue. My first thought was that he must be talking to Raya, but a lazy glance in the direction of the sound proved otherwise. He was seated, hunched over, on a familiar-seeming crypt, his contemplative expression illuminated by the flickering light of a thousand candles.

He's talking to himself, I realized. I observed him for several moments before coming back to myself with a shake, at which point I sat up from my place on the floor, taking in the room and confirming that it was, in fact, the place where Prince woke up from his and Farah's—his and Farah's . . . Please don't finish that thought. I shuddered and made a face, understanding with sudden, absolute clarity that there was a phenomenal difference from two videogame characters 'sleeping' together and two of your friends 'sleeping' together. I did not want those images in my head.

Alarm suddenly struck me: had Prince and Farah separated on better terms than they did in the game? Prince hadn't been the idiotic one this time (insert death-glare at Lucan), so I thought that they would've, and I certainly hoped so, but I couldn't be sure.

"They're gone already," I spoke up finally, interrupting Lucan's monologue. I got to my feet and stretched languidly, then froze when I felt his eyes on me. Immediately I straightened into a normal standing position, crossing my arms over my chest defensively and looking at him.

Brown eyes: like chocolate. I had loved his selkie-eyes . . . before. Please don'tlook at me like that, I wanted to say. I'm still (justifiably, I might add) extremely ticked off at you. But that would practically be quoting Farah, and no way was I going to mooch off her lines any more than I already had. So, instead, I looked away and said, "Okay, enough with the puppy-dog eyes. Let's go."

He didn't seem to be listening. Rather than turning toward the exit, he took a step closer to me. My mouth dropped open, my eyes widening and darting back up to meet his. He wasn't seriously—?

My question was answered when he took one more long stride and brought his mouth down on mine. His arms slid around my waist, gently drawing me closer, and resisting was the very last thing on my mind. It felt . . . good, sending electrifying tingles all through me and making me forget to breathe every time his lips moved against mine.

Then I remembered.

I tore violently away from him, unsuccessfully attempting to stifle the urge to lick my lips. My breath came quickly for an entirely different reason now, and I was almost snarling as I said, "How dare you! You—You odious, repulsive, half-witted excuse for an armadillo!" I wasn't sure who I was more angry with: Lucan, for kissing me when he knew damn well that he wasn't exactly in my good graces at the moment, or myself, for enjoying it.

Lucan's expression was horrified; verging on panicked. He couldn't stutter out apologies fast enough. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, Freckles—"

"Don't call me that!" I hissed. He went silent; his features stilled, and he stared at me.

"Right," he said finally, his voice quiet and subdued. I wrestled to gain control of my emotions, and, taking a deep breath, succeeded. The ensuing silence was downright awkward, but so would breaking it be, so I turned away from him and jogged down the corridor, through the room with the mirrors where Prince had acquired his newest sword, out the shattered wooden door, and onto the balcony, painted in rusty hues by the setting sun. I breathed in cold, clear air as Lucan came through the door behind me, my eyes moving over the scenery.

The small balcony we stood on clung precariously to the face of the Tower of Dawn. In front of us was a brilliant sunset, and above and behind us was the Tower. I frowned, dismayed. How in the world were we going to manage to rejoin Prince and Farah? I might be able to use my ability to navigate some of Prince's path, but certainly not all of it.

"Fr—Jenny?"

I reluctantly tore myself from my contemplation of the sky to look at Lucan.

"If I used the Compass to find out how to get to Prince and Farah, and you teleported us out of here . . ." he drifted off. I heaved a sigh of relief, realizing that maybe we weren't stuck here after all.

"Good idea," I said without rancor. I wanted nothing more than to forget 'the incident'. Lucan smiled a little uncertainly, pulling the Compass out from his breast pocket and opening it once again. A few seconds passed as he stared at the blue-tinted face, then he closed it once again, although he kept it out. He stepped close to me and hesitantly placed a hand on my shoulder (I managed not to flinch away), pointing with the other at, of all things, a windowsill high above us.

"Could you get us up there without getting us killed?" he queried. I looked dubiously at the windowsill, but nodded slowly after a moment of thought. It was a broad windowsill, big enough that, as long as I was careful, neither of us would fall off.

"Here," I said, positioning myself so that we were side by side. "Put your feet closer together," I instructed. He complied, and, looking up, I focused my gaze on the window.

There.

We appeared on the windowsill in a flash of light. Lucan swayed precariously for a moment, but I put out a steadying hand, remembering his comment that teleporting made him dizzy. There was a light, cool zephyr tugging at my sarong. Lucan consulted the Compass once again.

"Up there," he said hoarsely, pointing at another balcony (this one partially crumbled so that I had enough of a visual to teleport), above us and to the side. I glanced over and saw that Lucan was pale with fear, eyeing the drop below us nervously, and I felt an involuntary pang of sympathy. Quickly, I teleported up to the balcony, taking him with me, then looked to him for another destination.

As we traveled, an idea wormed its way through my subconscious, finally making itself known after several seconds: even though I was fairly certain that Farah hadn't stolen the Dagger this time around, she and Prince still had to separate. And this time she wouldn't have the Dagger to help her hang on when she was pushed into that hole . . . My eyes widened.

"We need to hurry," I said urgently to Lucan. "Farah could be in trouble." He glanced sharply at me; I ignored him. As soon as he pointed again, I turned my eyes along the cliff face and teleported quickly to another balcony there. "Tell me if you're going to be sick," I muttered. Then we were off again.

We went from balcony, to ledge, to beam, to bridge, to crumbling precipice, to pagoda roof, to balcony again, until Lucan, looking green, stopped me. "I—" he started. He stiffened, then sprinted over to the edge of the balcony we were on, clutching the balustrade, and hurled. I glanced around restlessly, impatient to be gone. My heart drummed in my chest; my mouth was dry and my palms were slick with sweat. I had to save Farah: for Prince's sake, for hers, and for mine. I couldn't bear to lose her, my dearest friend; my heart raced in panic at the very thought, even though I knew that soon we wouldn't remember each other anyway.

I was reluctantly impressed when Lucan, though he made a face, didn't protest when the next round of teleporting started. I realized that he was worried for Prince and Farah too, although he didn't know exactly what the danger consisted of, as I did.

Pagoda, ledge, crumbling wall, partially demolished floor, rampart, another balcony, and we were almost there. By this time even I was swaying slightly; a headache hovered behind my eyes. I let go of Lucan's arm and walked forward. Above me was a narrow tunnel of sorts; I couldn't get a glimpse of the room above, but I knew it was there. But how to reach it? There was the pillar that Prince had used . . .

"Lucan!" I said, spinning around to face the part-selkie. He was already looking at me. "Could you lift me up so that I can grab onto that pillar?" He glanced up at it, considering, then nodded. Without further ado, he lifted me by the waist until I could wrap my arms around the pillar. I shifted upward a couple feet, then hesitated, glancing down at him.

"Here," I said, feeling foolish as I extended my foot. "Hold on tight!" His expression was dubious, but he complied. I hope my feet don't stink . . . Astonished at my own vapid idiocy, I pushed the thought away, instead focusing my gaze on higher up the pillar. It should work, since I was already in the correct position . . .

There.

I gasped in pain as Lucan's full weight was suddenly hanging from my ankle, and clung desperately to the pillar. Without my magic-enhanced strength I would certainly have fallen.

"Do you mind?!" I hissed. He quickly transferred his weight to the pillar, and I sighed in relief as the pain dissipated, although there was a lingering dull throb. But I had more important things to worry about. I scrambled upwards as fast as I could go (although that wasn't very fast) until I could see inside of the top chamber of the Tower of Dawn. My breath caught in my throat.

Farah was clinging with all her strength to the rim of the opening in the floor, trying desperately not to fall. Even as I watched, though, she slid backward a little before getting a new grip; her features were tight with fear. Prince was on the other side of the room, separated by a short, decorative balustrade and, more importantly, almost a dozen boss sand creatures. His face was set in a fierce snarl, and he was battling furiously, but he wasn't going to reach her in time. He pushed frantically at the switch in the hilt of the Dagger; however, it was empty of Sands.

With a yell, I launched myself from the pillar, grasping the edge of the floor and scrambling up gracelessly, then sprinted with all the speed I could muster toward the hole in the floor. Farah's eyes widened as she saw me coming, but she was sliding, sliding until one of her hands slipped completely, so that she was only holding on by the fingers of one hand.

I reached her side just as the last finger slid off the rim. I dove to catch her, but she just escaped my grasp.

In that moment, I could swear that time slowed down. I could see every dust mite, every air current; more importantly, I could see Farah falling, her face contorted in terror. My mind, without any influence on my part, made a decision all on its own. My eyes on the floor of the Hourglass Chamber, I thought, There.

And I caught her.

Well, sort of. What really happened was that time started acting normal again, and Farah bowled into me at the speed of light, sending us both sprawling. Despite this indignity, there was one notable advantage to my choice of action: Farah was alive. More or less.

"Ow," I mewed. Farah groaned incoherently, sitting up and massaging her temples. She looked at me.

"Thanks," she murmured, her tone slightly dazed. I waved my hand dismissively from my spot on the floor, listening to the thumping of my heartbeat gradually slow.

"Sure, sure. But you do realize that you owe me forever, right?"

Farah rolled her eyes.

I looked around in amazement, using a nearby pillar to pull myself into a standing position. Farah was saved, the Hourglass was right there, waiting, and all I had to do now was go get Prince so that he could use the Dagger to turn back time.

I should have known that it couldn't be that easy.

AN: Dun-dun-dun-duuuun! Aren't I so beautifully evil? This chapter was super long, though (for me), so you can't completely hate me.

OPOD: *snarl*

OPOD! Watch your language! If it'll make you feel better, I'll let you preread the next chapter. You get special benefits.

OPOD: *happy burble*

Yup, that's right: next chapter's done already. So, review! The faster you review, the faster you'll get Chapter 21.