A/N: I really have no excuse for this being so late, and I'm sorry for that. I got caught up in some stuff and... yeah. Sorry. Really.

Also, this is not a happy chapter. I cried when I re-read it for editing... you've been warned.

That night, much to Haley's chagrin, the Drake family had ham sandwiches for dinner, because Sylvia wasn't feeling well and Malistaire insisted on cooking. Needless to say, Malistaire had never learned to cook much more than Spaghetti-O's.

"Does it have to be ham sandwiches?" Haley whined.

"Yes," Malistaire said flatly, "unless you would rather have badly prepared spaghetti."

"How do you mess up spaghetti?" Haley asked incredulously, taking a bite of her sandwich. She made a disgusted face. "More to the point, how do you mess up a ham sandwich?"

"Be nice," Sylvia croaked, somehow still managing to sound stern despite a sore throat. Haley figured it must come from being a teacher.

"Yes ma'am," Haley said and continued to eat her somehow ruined sandwich.

"So, Haley," Malistaire said conversationally, "Where were you and Malorn?"

Haley nearly choked.

"What?" she said. She carefully swallowed her food.

"Malorn wasn't in class today and you weren't at Gloria's house," Malistaire said, "So I put two and two together and figured you snuck off somewhere and got Malorn to come with you."

Haley swallowed, both out of nervousness and because some of her food was starting to protest its place in her stomach.

"Nowhere," Haley lied.

Malistaire kept looking at her.

"The Haunted Cave," the girl admitted.

"Why?" Malistaire prompted.

"I wanted to solve a mystery about that gate with the skull on it," Haley fibbed, "I didn't know what was behind it, so I asked Malorn, but he didn't know what I was talking about. So, I had to take him to the gate and show him what I was talking about."

Saffron stared at her in disbelief, but Malistaire seemed willing to accept Haley's explanation.

"No one knows what's behind that gate, and it's likely no one ever will," Malistaire told her. "It's one of the best kept secrets in Wizard City."

Haley nodded thoughtfully. She had actually been curious about the gate for some time, but she'd never asked about it. It was a good thing, too, or her story would have been somewhat flawed.

Everyone continued to eat in silence.

"Well this is a good quality long, awkward pause," Haley said suddenly. Everyone stared at her. "I'll just shut up now."

Saffron grinned.

After dinner, something felt amiss to Haley. She had a bad feeling and she didn't really know why, aside from the looming murder that hung over her head like a sword of Damocles. And somehow, that just wasn't it.

After hours of tossing and turning until it was well past her bedtime of eight o'clock, Haley decided it was time to turn the tables on her little sister. The older girl got up from bed and ran across her room, out into the pathetic excuse for a hallway that separated her room from her sister's, and pushed open the door. She tiptoed over to the bed across the room.

"Saffron," Haley whispered, "Hey, Saffron." Haley shook her sister. "Saffron, get up!" she yell-whispered.

Saffron grunted and swatted at midair. The older girl sighed, and placed two fingers a small distance apart on her sister's arm, then pulled the fingers together, pinching Saffron. Hard.

"What was that for?" Saffron squeaked.

"I need your help figuring something out," Haley said. Saffron tried to glare at her, but wound up looking cute instead of terrifying.

"What?" Saffron asked.

"I feel like something bad is going to happen," Haley said.

Saffron's attempt at a hostile expression turned into one of seeing something unfold. It was a lot like someone's expression while watching the beginning of Hamlet for the second time, knowing what tragedy would soon ensue.

"Just like in the dream," Saffron whispered so quietly that it was barely audible.

"What did you say?" Haley asked.

The younger girl shook her head hurriedly and pulled her sheets up almost over her head. "Go back to bed, Haley," she said, "It's late."

Haley gave the lump in the sheets a curious look as the older girl exited the room, wondering what exactly Saffron had been on about.

A few days later by the dining room window, Saffron was trying to explain how something could be both alive and dead at the same time. It was something she had read about and she was eager to tell Haley about as well.

"But wouldn't that just make it undead?" Haley asked.

"No, but as I'm sure you know, that's not the point," Saffron said.

"Who cares about 'the point'? I like to stay as far away from points as possible, thank you very much," Haley stated. "They're sharp!"

Saffron facepalmed as Haley ran to check the sundial outside.

"I have to go!" the older girl yelled as she dashed past Saffron and slid to the front door. Haley slipped on what looked like black ballet slippers and ran out the door in her sweatpants and a t-shirt.

"I have to get to Nightside before Daddy today," she whisper-panted, running past the tunnel to Unicorn Way and into the water by Rainbow Bridge. Haley took a deep breath and ducked under the waterfall. Soaked, she walked in the small dirt tunnel behind the wall of water to the bramble-covered doors at the end.

Haley wrenched open one of the doors and ran inside. She was pleased to find herself alone. "Sicca," the girl said, and she was instantly dry. Hooray for unarmed magic!

Haley sat down on the dying grass to wait for Malistaire to appear. Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen, then thirty, then forty-five, then an hour. The girl grew concerned.

"Daddy's never been this late to knife-throwing before," she mumbled, getting up. "Even if class is running late, he should be here by now."

The girl dusted herself off and trudged back out of Nightside, under the waterfall, out of the water, down the path past Unicorn Way and into house number four. She fully expected to find both of her parents at home, Malistaire having forgotten about knife-throwing that day. Instead she found only her little sister sitting alone on the couch, looking shell-shocked.

"Saffron, do you know were Mom and Daddy are?" Haley asked breathlessly.

Saffron nodded mutely.

"Where are they?" Haley asked her.

Saffron shut her eyes as if trying to close out the world.

"Where are they?" Haley asked again, grabbing her sister's shoulders.

Saffron's eyes remained closed and tears were appearing at the corners.

"Where, Saffron?!" Haley demanded, more panicked now, shaking the younger girl slightly.

"We were in here," Saffron began slowly, still not opening her eyes, "Daddy was just leaving to meet you at Nightside, and Mommy was helping me read Ozma of Oz, when she just started coughing and she didn't stop for a long time. But when she stopped coughing on her hand, there was blood on it.

"She just looked at her hand for a minute and said 'is that my blood?' like she couldn't believe it. And then she started coughing again. She couldn't breathe right because she was coughing so much, so she passed out. Daddy took her to a healer, but he told me to stay here and wait for you because he didn't want me to go in Nightside. He said it was too dangerous after what happened last time."

Saffron looked up at her big sister with wide green eyes. "I'm scared, Haley," she said shakily. Looking at her little sister like that, so tiny and helpless, awakened something inside Haley. She sat down next to her sister and put an arm around the younger girl.

"Do you know which healer?" Haley asked after a moment.

Saffron shook her head. "Not for sure, but it's probably Miss Wu. She's the closest."

"We should go," Haley said, withdrawing her arm.

The two girls got up and walked out the front door and down the lane to the Unicorn Way gate, where they saw Private Stillson, a city guard. As the two sisters tried to enter the gate, he stopped them.

"Halt!" he said. "None shall pass!"

"Let us through," Saffron said tearfully. The guard looked pityingly at the girl.

"Sorry," he apologized, "but it's the rules."

"Let us in," Haley said, glaring daggers at the man.

He swallowed. "No one is allowed in without permission from either a resident of Unicorn Way or Headmaster Ambrose. It's the rules," he repeated.

Haley kept glaring.

"Did Professor Sylvia and Professor Malistaire come through here?" Saffron asked.

"I'm not allowed-"

"That's rubbish!" Haley told him. "We have a right to know where our parents are."

Private Stillson hesitated for a moment. "It's against the rules… but… yes, they did."

"Can you please let us through, then?" Saffron asked.

"No," Private Stillson replied, "you have to have permission from a resident of Unicorn Way or the headmaster."

Haley ran up to the barred gate and yelled at the top of her lungs, "Diego! It's Saffron and Haley! Can you let us in?"

A…how do I say this? A gray, white-maned unicorn on his hind legs, who wore a conquistador's outfit minus the hat and somehow carried a sword, trotted up to the gate. Private Stillson couldn't help staring at Diego the unicorn sword master, but the girls thought nothing of it: they encountered stranger things on a daily basis.

"Do you give permission for these two to come in?" the guard asked uneasily.

"Yes," Diego said. That about did it for Private Stillson, who Haley knew was a recent transfer from a far off world called Earth. The guard undid the old lock at the bottom of the Unicorn Way gate and the bars flew up.

Private Stillson groaned and Haley heard him mumble something illegible.

Saffron and Haley dashed through the gate.

"Thanks, Diego!" the older girl yelled back as they neared the gazebo in only a few seconds flat. The sisters ran the entire distance to the end of the way, reaching a house only a few yards away from the Hedge Maze. Saffron knocked a little too quietly. Haley sighed and knocked quickly and rather severely.

She heard a muffled "come in" from inside. Haley turned the doorknob and grabbed her sister's hand as it opened. The room was empty.

"Hello?" Haley yelled.

"I'm upstairs," the voice said, now somewhat less muffled. "Just stay down there."

Saffron sat down on the floor of the one-room first story, while Haley tried to interest herself with the various objects around the room. She soon found out that her efforts were futile and she joined Saffron on the floor.

"Do you think Mom is going to be alright?" Haley asked.

Saffron didn't answer for a while. "I hope so."

"There's something you're not telling me," Haley told her.

"There's something you aren't telling me," Saffron responded. "There are really a lot of things, but I just want to know one. Why did you get soap in your mouth?"

"Which time?" Haley asked. The possibilities were endless.

"The morning we had eggs and hash browns," Saffron answered.

"I'm not allowed to tell you," Haley lied.

"When did you start caring what you were allowed to do?" the younger girl asked.

"Good point," Haley said. "I was listening in on a phone call in the Myth tower."

"What was it about?" Saffron persisted.

"You don't want to know," Haley assured her. "Your argument is invalid."

"Okay," Saffron said. "What did you want to know?"

"That dream," Haley replied, "What was it about?"

Saffron took a deep breath. "You really want to know?"

Haley nodded vehemently.

"It happened exactly like this," Saffron said. "Just like what's happening right now. Only it ended with… oh, I can't do it."

"Do what?" Haley asked

"Tell you how it ended," Saffron said, "Because then things would get even worse."

"How?" Haley said.

"Do you remember those few weeks when I was always at Aunt Gloria's bookshelf, even more than now?"

Haley nodded.

"I decided to try some fortunetelling when I'd read about it. I didn't even think it would work, but it did," Saffron said, looking truly haunted, "just not in the way I expected. Things started popping up in my dreams, terrible things. I saw people getting tortured and dying. I know most of those people, but I'm not allowed to tell anyone exactly who or what I saw until it's already happened. Otherwise, things will get worse for all of them."

Haley stared at her little sister. "You're lying," the older girl said.

Saffron shook her head. "Why would I lie about something like that?" she asked.

"To get out of telling me what that dream was really about," Haley answered quickly.

Saffron sighed. "Have I ever done that?"

Haley opened her mouth like she was about to say something, then shut it again, then opened it, then shut it again, then opened it again. "No," she said, surrendering.

An hour or so later, the two girls were at Gloria Krendell's library of a house. Though she'd long since stopped being the Wizard City librarian, Gloria still kept a lot of books around, for which Saffron was most grateful. Today, Haley was also rather grateful for her aunt's bookish tendencies. Of course, Gloria wasn't actually the girls' aunt, but she may as well have been.

The book Haley had chosen was called Legends of the Elements by Franklin Fireeyes, and she found it quite interesting.

"Before time as we know it, there existed the Tritons, it said. They shared the universe with the Dragons and Giants. The Tritons ruled the seas and kept peace in the world, that is, until the Dragons and Giants began to scheme. When the attack happened, the Tritons were ready. They refused to fully destroy their enemy and so, fell into slumber as their price for mercy. The Tritons will awaken one day and only The Diviners can stop them.

Today, the Storm elements still exist. Even now the more potent Storm Magic holds Fire and Ice at bay..."

The funny thing was, though, that the next chapter said something completely different:

"In the beginning there were the Giants who were great in power and ruled the air.
After the Great War with the Dragons and the Tritons, the Giants went into a state of stasis.
But their powers still inhabit our world and it is from this that Ice Magic derives its basis.
And because it is derived from the Giants, Ice Magic will always be more powerful than that of Fire and Storm..."

And the third chapter said something still different than the first two:

"In the days of yore, there dwelled the Giants, the Tritons, and the most powerful of all, the Dragons.

For many eons there was peace, that is until the Tritons and the Giants began to bicker on trivial matters.

Finally, war broke out between the two sides and the Dragons became involved as the universe was threatened.
In order for there to be peace, the Dragons used their great power to stop the war and the world became dormant and silent.
Though the Dragons now sleep, Fire Magic, the most powerful of magics, comes from the essence that the Dragons released into fire and magma..."

Haley thought this was all very confusing, and it managed to take her mind out of current events. Who had started the Great War? Was it the Tritons, the Dragons, or the Giants?

"It's strange isn't it?" a voice asked from behind the girl.

Haley jumped and nearly dropped Legends of the Elements. "Aunt Gloria!" she yelled accusingly. "Don't do that!"

There was a chuckle as a woman sat down next to the girl. The woman had fiery red hair that was up in a hastily made bun, and kind brown eyes. She wore khakis, a maroon button-down with mid-length sleeves, and rectangular glasses. She looked more like a teacher to Haley than either of Haley's parents, who actually were teachers.

"Who really started the Great War?" Haley asked.

"It depends on who you ask," Gloria replied. "If you ask a Diviner, they're likely to say the Dragons or the Giants. If you ask a Thaumaturge, they'll probably say Tritons or Dragons. If you ask a Pyromancer, they'll say Giants or Tritons. Answers vary with the spirit schools. No one knows for sure."

"What do you think?" Haley asked.

"I think it was all three," Gloria replied, "But none of them wanted to admit it, so they blamed the others."

Haley nodded pensively. "I think it was the Giants; they didn't have much of a story. Maybe they started acting suspicious and the Dragons and Tritons joined in later."

"Maybe," Gloria said.

A bit less than a week afterward, the Drake family had suffered a great scare and several moments of smaller panic as they had gone from healer to healer. No one could figure out exactly how to heal Sylvia, and the desperate family had resorted to traveling to Earth in the hope that they may have seen something like this before.

And so it was that Saffron and Haley Drake sat in the waiting room of Mercy Hospital, white-knuckled and whispering prayers to various deities in the hope that one of them would be real and thoughtful enough to answer. After several hours, though, they ran out of deities. Having prayed to every god and goddess that may or may not exist, the girls just sat in their cheaply-made waiting room chairs, clutching each other's hands for dear life, eyes closed. Despite the fact that the two had stayed up for several days straight without caffeine, neither was even close to sleeping.

"Are you girls okay?" a woman's voice asked from behind them.

Haley opened her eyes and turned around to face the woman, a nurse in the hospital. "What do you think?" Haley snapped. "We're in a hospital and we've been praying for nine hours straight."

"That's a no then?"

"Of course it's a bloody no!" Haley yelled.

The nurse stared at the girl, wide-eyed, as did most everyone else in the waiting room.

"Our mom has been going from doctor to doctor and healer to healer for days and no one can find what's wrong with her other than she's coughing up blood. Of course I'm not okay and I doubt my sister is either, you pillock!"

"I'm sorry,"' the nurse apologized frantically.

"You should be!" Haley snapped.

"It's perfectly alright," Saffron said quietly from her seat, turning around, "But you probably shouldn't ask people in the waiting room at a hospital if they're okay."

The nurse nodded and hurried back of toward the reception desk before Haley could hurl anymore British swears and/or angry words at her.

"You didn't have to do that," Saffron said to her sister as the two turned back around to sit more comfortably.

But Haley wasn't listening, she was staring at Malistaire, who had taken a seat next to Cyrus across the room, and had his head in his hands. After a moment, Cyrus said something; Malistaire looked up; Cyrus said something else, looking shocked and horrified; Malistaire shook his head and said something; a few more words were exchanged in a conversation that neither Saffron nor Haley could quite hear due to the waiting room not being exactly quiet. A woman Haley knew to be Miss Wu came up behind the brothers, who drew their wands then put them away once they saw who it was. A few more words were exchanged, Miss Wu walked away, and the brothers got up and walked through the gray plastic and metal hall doors and into the main hospital.

Haley looked away from her father and uncle to her sister. "What do you think is going on?"

Saffron shook her head.

"I didn't hear what they said either," the younger girl replied.

The two sat in solemn silence once more. Ten minutes passed. Still the two men didn't return*.

"Do you think...?' Haley started.

Saffron ran her hands through her chestnut hair, which was somewhat of a challenge, since she'd neglected to brush it that morning. The girl shook her head again. It seemed she was trying to distance herself from the world for something she knew was going to happen. Haley, buried in her own worries, didn't notice this.

Gloria Krendell walked out of the hall doors, though neither Saffron nor Haley could remember her going in them or entering the hospital at all. Did she have tears in her eyes or was it a trick of the light? The redhead walked up to the two girls, looking like every step caused her unimaginable pain.

"No," Haley whispered. She knew what had happened even before it was said. "Please no."

Gloria took a seat next to Saffron, obviously holding back tears. "Your mother is… she's gone," Gloria said in a barely audible whisper. "I'm sorry."

Haley was in shock. "What?" she asked, sure she'd heard wrong or that the woman had meant something else. Surely she couldn't mean that, could she?

"Sylvia is dead," Gloria whispered hoarsely.