Okay, well my reason for not updating is simple. A: Writer's block. B: Busy scheduele and C: Writers blcok again, on another story as well.

Now, to those Celebrating Christmas, MERRY CHRISTMAS! To those who light the minora for eight days, Happy Chanuka (Is that spelled right? Please tell me), to everyone celebrating Kwanza, happy Kwanza, and to other holidays going on around now, happy holidays.

From Previous Chapter:

However, at that precise moment the ground began to shake and I heard a shrill scream (probably from that primping ninny, Blanche) and whipped around, sword already unsheathed and ready to fight again when suddenly… … … … …

…the HUGE head of a water-dragon emerged over the wall, water dripping from its scales. It shrieked and recoiled back at the sight of the "pointy things" pointed at him, jostling his very pretty passenger. I laughed and sheathed my sword, pushing through the guards to go and greet an old friend.

"Put down your weapons you thugs! He's a friend!" I yelled as I jogged over, waving my arms in the air to get them to stop. Skidding to a halt in front of the water-dragon I wheeled around and waved Derrick over

"Hey Derrick! Get over here you big lug! It's Lock! And hey Nessie's here too!" Oh right. Time for a little explanation.

You see, once I had finished my training and set out on my own, I heard a rumour about a legendary water-dragon and dragged Derrick along with me for a little quality time and an adventure. That's where we met Lock, the Water dragon, and found out that the reason he was "harassing" the town that had been built on his lake was because they had been dumping their garbage into it. The Garbage had been polluting the lake and slowly killing its inhabitants, including the small group of mer-people living there, which is where Nessie (or Nestralaene) came into the picture. She and Lock had been best friends for as long as they could remember and then badda-bing-badda-boom, we teach the merchants a lesson, get a peace treaty signed and then there you have it, my first mission summed up. Kind of boring, I know.

"Chrys! Oh Chrys!" Nessie called down delightedly as I ran up with a grin on my face. Lock reached a large, (shaking) scaly, webbed paw down for me to hop onto. There were a few senseless shrieks of 'He's going to eat her!' as the water dragon lifted me to his nose. I encircled his great muzzle with my arms, not caring that it made me sopping wet, before hopping onto it to go and greet the mermaid.

Just then Derrick finally pushed his way through the crowd. I gave him a hand and then Humphrey. Sherry had flown over on her flying carpet.

"Sherry, Humphrey, I believe you remember Nessie and Lock? Well, Ella, this is the water dragon I told you about! Did you know that they're bringers of good fortune, riches etc, etc, I forget the rest. And this here is Nestralia of the…sorry, what is your tribe again?"

"The Leeroonwans."

"Right, them."

"Yeah, I remember something like that…you slapped me!" Derrick exclaimed, pointing at the mermaid.

"No that was me, you were flirting with her." I reminded him.

"Oh. Right, but-hey! Wait! I was NOT flirting with her." He replied, blushing a little.

"Yes you were." Nessie and I replied in unison. She was examining the nails on one hand absently,

"Well, you know what we're like, hate to miss a party!"

"I don't mind. W-why are they staring at me?" Lock moaned. Suddenly a solider tripped and his crossbow fired. The Water dragon let out a shriek of alarm and recoiled. I wind-milled my arms wildly and managed to grab one of his great horn-like things to stay on, however Nessie cried out as she lost her balance and fell off. Several of the guards rushed to catch the Beautiful mermaid, but collided with each other and fell in a heap with bumps on their heads. However, before she could hit the ground hard and injure herself, strange words whispered through the air, something glinted in the sunlight and a small whirlpool appeared below her and, at a further command, two bars of ice appeared under her hands. The mermaid grabbed them and held herself up, getting comfortable in the magically hovering whirlpool (which oddly enough didn't spin her around) and sighed in relief before blowing rather loudly at the dark blue strand of hair that had fallen down over her face.

"Thanks!" she said brightly to Sherry. The crowd took a step back as the exotic woman passed, paranoid looks on their pathetic faces as very loud whispers such as "Witch" and "Sorceress" passed through the people. I felt like screaming. Honestly. These people had no imagination, no tolerance and no LIVES! It was all I could do not to yell 'For crying out loud! Did you not notice the whole magic battle between her and the attention-seeking goth-girl? It's not like she's done anything to you…oh no wait there was that bit where she helped SAVE YOUR SORRY BEHINDS!' But, you can be proud of me. In spite of the numerous rather uncharitable thoughts running through my head, I kept my mouth shut. With considerable effort and at great injury to my teeth (which were ground together so hard you could probably hear them across the courtyard). Instead, I skipped over to the whirlpool and yelled at the top of my lungs

"CAN WE GET SOME KIND OF A POOL HERE PLEASE?" silence met my words and then more discontented mutterings. Oh well. Guess I'd always be the odd-ball. Sweet. Life was so much more fun my way. The mermaid and I shrugged and looked to Sherazade, who returned the gesture and snapped her fingers. The whirlpool and ice disappeared so that Nessie dropped onto a giant floating lily pad. Lock slinked over the rest of the wall and very sheepishly hung by the wall.

"It's okay Lock. My fault." Nessie told him when he came to apologise.

The Party resumed after that. I spent most of the time avoiding Blanche, and this annoying little merchant, and most of the nobles and…at least all of the obnoxious ones—which is most…okay, so I'm not too fond of most people in court. But it worked out well. Let's just say my significant other isn't too fond of those guys either (How he'll survive being king when he gets around to it, I'll never know) and we spent most of the party sitting on the wall talking, and then Sherazade, Humphrey and I taught him, my nephews and then when they sneaked over to us, Conrad and Ella some dance moves.

They were really good moves too. Humphrey, Sherry and I had spent the last month in the land of Snow way way WAY up north, and we had some awesome stories to tell whilst we showed the royal relatives some of the Dances from Sherry's homeland in the south in the desert. Needless to say, she had not enjoyed the trip. We'd promised to go to a Jungle for our next adventure to appease her. However, while she'd despised the temperature, she had enjoyed the snow, which she called 'cold sand' and the adventures had been awesome! I recounted them with my partners to my nephews, much to their enjoyment

"…and then, a HUGE metal contraption appeared out of the Blizzard, controlled by Frost-Death! We were in trouble. Sherry was out cold, and my sword was frozen to the sheath! Humpfrey (Okay, really lame name, I am aware, but it's not like I pick these villains names for them) was trapped in the Igloo! I tell you, we would have been gonners if the Northern Light Pixies hadn't arrived in the nick of time and saved us! You see, old Frosty-bones was afraid of them and their magic. And that was that adventure." I finished. The Boys 'wowed' for a moment and then bombarded me with questions. Humphrey relieved me of them so that Derrick and I could have some time with each other, which I was grateful for (Even if he did make me dance with him when the waltz played). In general we had a good time. Humphrey even tried flirting with that pixie-like fairy godmother a couple more times and Sherry entertained the kids with a few simple tricks.

However, something was gnawing at me. Derek and I were good friends with Lock and Nessie, but why had they come all the way over here and out of the water? I mean, mermaids liked parties, but not that much!

So that was why I weaseled my through to her lily pad past the small army of goo-goo-eyed men drooling over her to talk to the mermaid.

"So." I said, "You two came all the way over here, crossed three forests, two lakes and a valley to come to a party. Wow. What's up? Did the sugar-kelp machine break down?"

"Ah. You saw through me. Everyone is candy deprived."

"Ahhh man, and I loved that stuff! I gotta tell you, sea-food will never taste the same again." I sighed "So what's really going on?"

The mermaid's expression grew serious and Lucinda joined us.

"There has been a rash of disappearances." She said in a low whisper. Lock had successfully scattered the eager (and pathetically, hopelessly idiotic if they thought they actually stood a chance) suitors.

"Where, how, who and why?" I asked

"Everywhere. Just disappeared. The sphinx, two unicorns, a wizard, one of the Northern Light Pixies, my brother the Mer-prince, 7 dwarves, 2 princes, 4 princesses, 1 queen and an old hermit." The mermaid said in answer to each of my questions.

"How long has this been going on? Who went first?"

"It started with the sphinx about 3 months ago. My brother disappeared three weeks ago. That's when Lock and I decided to come to you."

"Why don't I know about this already?" I wondered aloud indignantly "This is HUGE! I know most of those people! Oh no, which sprite was it? They had such spunk and--- wait a second I was at the land of snow a week ago, we had to rush home to make the naming ceremony!"

"The Northern Light is the most recent; we received news of it only 3 days ago. These people just disappear in the night, we don't know how. But we think someone from this Kingdom will be next, and we think we know who…"

*****SWITCH TO 3RD PERSON*******

The large clock began to ring out its midnight toll. A dark cloud loomed and descended from the sky, slinking in through the window and filling the chamber of the Queen. It knew that his Royal Majesty was out late at a meeting, but that suited the cloud just fine. It didn't want Conrad. It wanted his Queen! She lay in the bed with her blonde hair braided and across the pillow. She frowned and coughed, then started flashing as the smoke started to force her into a drugged sleep. Odd. None of the others had reacted like this…and no one had really expected her to. Nevertheless, some of these royals always had a surprise up their sleeve…

Little did this one know just how big a surprise this one had up her sleeve. For one thing, when the petit young woman was woken up by her gloating captor—he discovered that she had a mean left hook.