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I hope everyone had an awesome holiday!

Justin sat at the cliff face, cross-legged. The bridge was gone, and nothing was visible on the other side; it was all shrouded in mist.

He waited. And waited. And waited. And waited.

But the wolf did not come.

Justin woke up, frustrated. Ever since Max's visit, Justin had been trying to make the wolf come to him. He'd taken his brother's advice; he'd stopped running. For weeks now, every time he fell asleep and was transported to that strange forest in his head, he would sit at the cliff edge and wait for the wolf to come to him, so they could do whatever it was they were supposed to do and he could get his mind back.

But the wolf never came.

And then the mist started. Although unreachable, the fantasy world the elder Russos shared had always been visible, just on the other side. And Justin had always taken comfort in that, in the knowledge that the woman he loved was on the other side, safe from whatever was plaguing him. He couldn't be with her, but at least he could still see and watch over her her, if only from afar. But then mist began to enshroud it, hiding it from view. Now not only was it unreachable, it was also invisible. The wolf had taken the world away...and Alex with it.

It...it hurt him, to have her so close, and yet so far away. He had grown so accustomed to Alex's thoughts and emotions in his mind. At first, it freaked him out, having her inside his head when awake as well as asleep. All his imperfections, his flaws and insecurities laid bare before her. Then he grew annoyed with her constant teasing: her remarks about his 'infatuation' with Captain Jim Bob Sherwood, how he was obsessive-compulsive about his grades, and his beliefs about the impending Robot Revolution.

Justin thought back on all those instances now and found to his surprise how greatly he missed them. He realized now that he found comfort in her constant presence, in the knowledge that no matter how far apart their lives would take them, they would still be together in the most intimate of ways. Alex kept him grounded; she was the force that pulled him back to the real world when he got himself lost in the world of equations and philosophy and advanced magic. He was tied to her in ways he couldn't begin to understand, let alone describe.

But now all he could feel was this...emptiness inside himself. It was as though Alex had claimed a part of his mind for herself when they first touched, and now that her presence was gone, all Justin could feel was pain. Every time he bent his thoughts to where Alex used to reside, he recoiled, feeling as if something important were missing, that something that was supposed to be there was gone.

So even when Alex was physically there, standing near him, holding his hand...he still felt utterly alone.

What am I supposed to do? Justin wondered. How can I stop this and get Alex back?

Justin made his way to the kitchen and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. It took him a while to realize that it was a lot softer than it should be. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and saw that his Frosted Flakes had been transformed into gummy bears .

He smiled in spite of himself...until they began to ooze, and the bears in his mouth, having magically acquired gladiator armor and weapons, began to duel and prick the insides of his cheeks with miniature swords and spears.

"ALEX!"

Justin's yell wafted up to Alex's room causing her to break into a smile of her own. She didn't need to be inside Justin's head to know he was feeling down. She might not fully understand what he was going through, but she could still try to make him feel better. What better way to cheer him up than with a prank? He loved them, or at least, was used to them enough to miss them when they stopped. He even admitted it once.

She had the rest of the month outlined.

Justin was tired of waiting for the wolf to come to him. It wasn't anywhere on his side of the cliff. That meant he would have to go to the other side, into the midst.

It made sense, in a weird way. Max had said that it was using the mind link as its connection to him. If that was true, then it made sense that the wolf was on the other side of the cliff.

He just had to get there. In the end, he used a levitation spell, He used one of the stone pieces of the collapsed bridge to carry him to other side. It reminded Justin of the family vacation they had taken a couple of years back. Only in that instance, Alex had been with him, and she wasn't now.

Which was just more fuel for the fire.

He made it to the other side.

The wolf was waiting for him, in its human shape.

"It's about time," he said, his voice a whisper in the wind, fluid and graceful. "I was beginning to think you would never show."

"You were waiting for me?" Justin asked.

"I have come to you repeatedly, and every time, you would flee at my approach. I thought it best that this time around, I should wait until you came to me."

"I'm here now."

"Are you really? I sense doubt in you; you lack conviction."

"I'm confident enough to do this."

"I will be the judge of that."

The wolf strode forward, and Justin felt himself pulled towards him.

Their bodies collided, and the wolf seemed to melt into him, meld into him. The mist begins to lift and converge around him.

Justin let out a snarl, not entirely human or beastly, and yet both: a God Hound had been born.

Justin awoke feeling revitalized, strong in ways he hadn't been before. He smiled. He'd done it!

Elated, Justin looked inside himself, prying and searching.

His smile disappeared. He couldn't feel Alex.

The mind link was still broken.