To RandomFanAuthor- cliffhangers are my thing! ^_^

To HoO Fan- (Chapter 46) Old characters of mine! Or, in terms of the story, sssssh can't say! And I don't do New Year's resolutions cos they never work, so yeah :P How about you?

To Anonymous Person- You. You've got the right idea.

"Let's go."

"W-what?"

"Get up. Let's go."

"Um, Lieutenant-" The med attending to Louisa, July, held her hand up, stepping nervously to Lucy-Jo. "She's not well enough, she needs rest."

"She needs a kick up the backside. Come on, let's go." Lucy-Jo snapped her fingers. Louisa glanced at July, wrapping her rope around her hand restlessly. Lucy-Jo sighed, grabbing her by the arm and yanking her to her feet. July squeaked. "Won't be long, stop flapping."

Louisa was pulled along, still in the white pyjamas and socks, each step sending a bolt of pain through her chest. Lucy-Jo had her mind set on something, not letting go. People parted around her, standing at attention along the edges of the halls, setting their fists on their chests.

"What are they doin'?"

"Formal salute."

"Where are we goin'?"

"You'll see. No more questions."

"Where's-?"

"They're fine. With Joel and Neville." Lucy-Jo turned a corner sharply, hurrying down a set of stairs. Louisa stumbled along behind her, pulling her hand free at the bottom of the staircase. "Lou."

"One sec." She requested, groaning. She lay her shoulder against the wall, head spinning. Each breath sent dozens of fiery needles through her ribs.

"Water heals you, right?"

"Y-yeah."

"There's water where we're going."

"Salt?"

"Lake."

"Ugh."

"Still water."

"Lame water." Louisa grumbled. Lucy-Jo held her hand out expectantly. "Where are we goin'?"

"You'll see. It's important." When Louisa didn't move, Lucy-Jo sighed, dropping her hand. "I'm trying to help, Lou. I've known you for a couple of years now and I know what you're like. Fire Boy and the other girl, Catherine or whatever, they told me. About this god-killer thing." Louisa winced, sliding her back down the wall to sit on the floor. Lucy-Jo crouched beside her, resting a hand on her knee. "You stabbed yourself so they could carry on, have their futures, didn't you?" Louisa nodded mutely, sniffing. "I have to show you something."

"Why did ya'll save me?"

"You're our friend. And you're an idiot."

"But it's better-"

"It's not."

"It is!"

"Easy now. July will have my head if you start bleeding out again."

"Can't you just-?"

"Let you die? No. Come on, on your feet." Lucy-Jo pulled her arm around her shoulders, rising carefully. Louisa gritted her teeth, hissing with pain. She leaned on Lucy-Jo a bit too much for her liking, but her legs seemed to have lost their substance. "Let me show you something and then you can decide what you have to do. OK?" Something in her tone caught Louisa short.

"OK." She agreed quietly. Lucy-Jo nodded once, content. She said nothing more, helping Louisa outside. The sun stung her eyes, aggravating her headache. She felt grass squish under her socks, a gentle slope of a hill. Lucy-Jo led her down, her eyes adjusting to the light. As far as she could see, were fields of green, hills and trees. She could see a stable, a large garage with an assortment of cars and vehicles, some sort of obstacle course, running tracks and more. Lucy-Jo steered her away from all this. Louisa looked over her shoulder, seeing the building they had just left- if a Victorian manor and a medieval castle had a baby.

They kept going, Louisa stumbling, putting her weight more and more on Lucy-Jo. The fire in her chest seeped into the rest of her body, sending dark spots across her vision.

"Don't be sick." Lucy-Jo warned.

"Tryin'." Louisa confirmed thickly, biting her lower lip.

Lucy-Jo eventually sat her down on the edges of a lake. The manor-castle had mostly disappeared behind a series of hills, the rooftop skimming above the ground. Louisa scooted forward, limbs buzzing with muted energy as she moved into the water. Salt water would have been a million times better, but she pressed on regardless. The lakebed vanished beneath her feet and she kicked forward, up to her chin in cold water, mildly soothing. She looked back. Lucy-Jo sat cross-legged on the grass, hands in her lap.

"Better?"

"Bit." She pushed away her waterproofing, shivering and splashing contentedly. "What did ya wanna show me?"

"You're in it."

"The lake?" Louisa puzzled. Lucy-Jo nodded, picking at the grass. "Not followin'."

"This wasn't here last year." She said, flicking blades of grass about. "Not August just gone, last August. This wasn't here." Louisa still did not understand, surveying the lake. It stretched as far as she could see, tucked in more hills. Considering the roofline of the manor-castle, the lake swallowed up the majority of the eastern side of the grounds. "You don't remember this either, do you?" Lucy-Jo asked, pulling Louisa's attention back to her. Louisa shook her head, fingers tingling.

Lucy-Jo sat up a little straighter, carefully arranged, unreadable expression as she examined her friend in the lake. "Do you… remember anything about this place? About what we do?"

"Um… Joel had ink splats."

"You remember the ink splats." Lucy-Jo echoed, closing her eyes and sighing. "Gordon Bennet, Lou, I meant-"

"Who's Gordon Bennet?"

"Nevermind." She shook her head. "You did this, Lou."

"Did what?"

"The lake."

"What?"

"Go for a swim." Lucy-Jo jutted her chin at the expanse of water. "Tell me what you find at the bottom. Go on, naff off." Louisa hesitated, turning and diving at a steely-eyed glare. Her headache dissolved the further she dived, her chest pains settling to a dull throbbing. It was murky, down here, something was off. She almost reached the bottom, around seventy metres, when she realised what was so wrong- there were no fish. No life, no plants, no nothing.

She alighted on the lakebed, silt swirling around her. Her foot hit something hard, a rock maybe? A swish of her hand and the silt whisked away on a current of her doing.

Not a rock.

A bone.

Green light flooded her palms and her eyes began to adjust to the gloom.

Thousands upon thousands of bones garishly gleamed under her power. Many were broken, fractured, snapped in pieces. The few that were whole were too big to be human, too thick and knobbly, shaped and twisted in a fashion that made her own bones cringe at the thought.

Then she found skulls. All very similar, perhaps slight variations in size, some form of beast. Large, jagged teeth rusted with blood and decay, wide snout, large eye sockets, thick and sturdy. Part of it looked like a wolf, another a bear, and something she could not discern. The smallest skull she found was similar in length to her arm, from cap to nose. The largest could have swallowed her in one bite.

Lucy-Jo hadn't moved when she surfaced. Louisa couldn't quite look at her, thoughts whirling frantically.

"What… what are they?"

"We call them Bloods. I call them Fuckers, personally." She shrugged a shoulder. "They… they attacked one day, last year. They attack often, but not like that." She pointed at the hills beyond the lake, voice tightening. "In all my years here, I've never seen anything like it and I pray we don't see it again." Her tone cracked on the last bit, hurriedly clearing her throat.

"Where, where did they come from?"

"They were sent." Lucy-Jo answered stiffly, dragging her sleeve under her nose. "There's… an organisation that rivals ours. I'll explain that later, it's not important right now. But the Bloods. They're mutations, of some sort, bred purely for carnage." Lucy-Jo's eyes became distant, darker, swallowed in horrors past. "It's part of our job to stop them from getting into civilisation. You were here, the day they attacked. If not for you, our casualties would have been far, far worse, in the hundreds." She focused on Louisa, stubbornness sinking into her features. "Our entire east side was down. If you hadn't been there, we would have fallen." She took a breath, irritation flitting in her eyes when Louisa shook her head, murmuring disbelievingly. "I was there, Lou. I wouldn't lie to you about this."

"No-" Louisa croaked. Temper flared, Lucy-Jo struck the ground.

"You made this lake. You broke the earth. You filled the sky with storms we've never seen the likes of. This lake is your creation, Lou, and you killed the Bloods."

"No, I… I don't- I don't remember, I-"

"We call it the Lake of Bones."

"But I-" Louisa faltered, looking to her helplessly. Lucy-Jo sighed, batting her hands on her legs in frustration.

"If you die," she said slowly, "the gods are saved. This time." Her gaze hardened with challenge, nausea trickling into Louisa's gut. "If you live, you can save something far more than the gods. You save people like us. You've always put people like us first and we owe you our lives." Lucy-Jo rose, setting her shoulders back in defiance. "So, what are you going to do? Die, on the off-chance you'll kill the gods? Or live, get your memories back and show the gods you're not the problem?"