If anybody can lend me some of their spare time, that'd be great. As of now, I have none.

A quick update – I think this is one of either 3 or 4 chapters left in the story. Not much more to go now. We've just got to pull through to the end.

Who's with me?

Disclaimer: Brandon Mull has dibs on most all of the stuff included in my story.

Seth's neck was beginning to ache from staring up for so long.

Even with his training at being able to see past distractor spells, it was hard to keep his focus for long on the falls. The wards placed on the prison were very powerful. Bracken commented early on that they had obviously been placed there by an potent magic user.

So they were at the right place - but where was the door? Not anywhere at the bottom. They'd scouted the perimeter thoroughly for entrances to secret tunnels or something similar to a concealed entrance.

"Okay," he said (more so shouted to be heard over the thunderous roar of the falls) at length, dropping his gaze to Warren, Vanessa, and Bracken, who all were still sizing up the daunting falls from a distance. "I'm stumped. How in the holy-Viola are we going to get to the top of that thing?"

"I don't even see an entrance up there," Warren hollered, looking at his wife.

"It'll be hidden behind the waters," she answered as her eyes roved the wall of rock. "As a prison, it was designed to be hard to get into."

"Impossible to get into, you mean." Seth breathed out hard through his nose. "Unless you're a dragon or something."

The rock was too smooth to climb, and not to mention too wet. There did not appear to be any stairs, or hidden entrances. They couldn't just walk in, they couldn't climb, and none of them were capable of flight – nobody could think of anything else, and for all they knew they were running out of time.

Warren scratched his beard covered chin. "Well, we could… Hey what are you doing?"

Bracken was rolling up his sleeves. Without looking at Warren he replied, "Trying to save Kendra."

Bracken went and pressed himself against the wall. Seth watched in amazement as Bracken grabbed hold of a crevice and heaved himself a few feet off the ground. It took him a moment, but Bracken managed to steady himself.

"Bracken wait…"

"Not now Warren," Bracken yelled searching for another foothold.

"But Bracken…"

"Please stop talking," Bracken snapped.

Warren clamped his mouth shut angrily and crossed his arms over his chest.

Bracken made to grab another piece. His fingers slipped.

They all sucked in. Vanessa started, but Bracken shouted over his shoulder, "I'm fine!"

"Bracken! You're being unreasonable." Vanessa was still tensed, ready to go to his aide if need be. "The falls will knock you down before you even have a chance of getting to the entrance!"

The unicorn kept on.

Bracken was now at least ten feet off the ground, progressing steadily, finding holds in the most obscure places. His movements were precise and lithe – like a ninja. Seth had to admit, Bracken was pretty awesome. Kendra was sister, and even he didn't have the man parts to do what his friend was doing.

"You all don't understand!" They strained to hear him. "I have to find her. I have to tell her!"

Seth shook his head. "Dude you're letting your emotions cloud your judgment. Just wait a sec… Bracken!"

It happened all too quickly. Bracken lost his grip, nearly twenty feet into the air, and slipped. He plummeted to the ground.

Vanessa was the first to move, but she got there a moment too late. The Fairy Queen's son tried to keep his legs straight to increase his chances of survival.

Bracken hit the ground, ankles curving out in opposite directions, the sound of breaking bones slicing cleanly through the air. Bracken cried out. Warren and Seth ran to where Vanessa was already kneeling beside their fallen friend.

"Idiot," Vanessa hissed.

"You totally just pulled a me," Seth said, half-joking, half-scolding, half-admiring.

Warren came to crouch beside his wife. "What I was trying to tell you was that I know of a way to get in."

Bracken, who had been in the process of trying (and failing) to adjust himself to a sitting position, looked at Warren exasperatedly. "Why didn't you mention that earlier?"

"Because my way is dangerous, and the plan I had was less than full-proof. I wanted to make sure we had no other options before we tried it. I was about to suggest it when you went bat-crap crazy."

Bracken turned his face away. Seth couldn't tell if he did so from pain or humiliation. He suspected it was a combination of the two.

"Don't bother with me," he said quietly as Vanessa leaned in to help him adjust. "I just have to apply this." He held up a pearl-sized ball of wax.

"Unicorn earwax," Vanessa identified it.

"Okay I would never have guessed that. It kind of looks like a chunk of Kendra's lip balm."

Vanessa did Seth the favor of ignoring his comment. "Unicorn wax in small amounts can disinfect fatal wounds, fill an empty stomach for days, just by licking it, and I'm guessing it can heal broken bones?" Bracken nodded distractedly as he fumbled with the wax ball.

"Let me." Vanessa took the wax without much protest from Bracken. Unceremoniously, she started applying it to his ankles. He winced, but was otherwise impassive.

"Everything about you guys has some kind of magical power," Seth noted, looking at Bracken. The unicorn smiled crookedly.

Seth turned toward Warren. "So, what's the plan?"

Warren hesitated. Vanessa nodded once in his direction.

Her husband shrugged his knapsack off his shoulders, and stuck his hand into the mouth of the bag. "I have these." He procured three glass vials. Each vial contained a luminous, thick, yellow liquid.

Seth leaned in for a closer look. "What's in them? Florescent snot?"

"Try a combination of dragon drool, deadly plants, and some other very nasty stuff. Tanu concocted it for me a long time ago. It's a liquid explosive." Warren held it up closer so they could all take a better look.

"I've had some on reserve for a tight spot for a while." He retracted his hand. "Patton invented it. He called it Patton's Fail-Safe – and Tanu told me he called it Idiot's Last Resort. It can dissolve almost any substance, even magically enhanced ones."

"Cool," Seth approved. "So let's blow a hole in this mountain and get on with it."

"It's also highly unpredictable," Vanessa said, finishing off the last bit of the wax on a rather swollen patch of Bracken's leg.

"Meaning?"

Warren tilted his head back and forth. "Fire acts as a catalyst. Once Patton's Fail-Safe is activated it becomes aggressively acidic for a period of time."

"The minute it explodes, the residue that's left will begin to eat away at whatever it's landed on."

Seth held up his hand. "Wait, so you're telling me if we set this stuff off it won't stop until it's devoured the entire jungle?"

"Not exactly. Now remember I'm not a chemist," Warren wagged his finger. "But from how Tanu explained it to me, eventually the stuff will run out of juice."

"How long is eventually?"

"Long enough to leave a sizable cavity in that rock." Vanessa spoke.

"Considering that walls are fairly thick, and the height…" Warren squinted his eyes. "We'll have about an hour before the situation becomes really dangerous. As in, cave-in dangerous."

Seth drug a hand slowly over his face. "We have one hour to battle the super-sinister criminal dragons, a zombie dragon, and the evil dragon king, find Kendra, save Kendra, and get out. In the dark. No way of scoping out the situation, of sizing up the enemies. No way of scouting the area. Our unicorn is damaged, so that leaves the three of us – a boy with judgment problems, an ex-adventurer and his wife."

"I take offense to that."

"Have you any better ideas?" Bracken eyed Seth steadily.

Seth thought hard for a moment. "No," he admitted.

"Help me up."

Instead of helping him up, Warren scooped Bracken up in his arms.

"You're right. I won't be able to even limp." He ran his fore-finger over his eyebrow. "As much as I loathe admitting it, it looks like you'll have to leave me behind. It will be awhile before my wounds heal. By the time they have, if you all aren't out I'll come in after you."

"Put me over at the edge of the forest." Warren crossed the clearing several yards away to the jungle doorstep.

Vanessa and Seth waited together for him to get back.

After a few minutes of silence Seth turned to Vanessa. "You know, if I ever do something that stupid for a girl, I give you full permission to beat me into my senses."

Vanessa grinned and cracked her knuckles.

Seth frowned. Maybe giving Vanessa Santoro-Burgess an indefinite free reign on physical punishment was not such a great idea.

Warren jogged back over to meet them. "Bracken and I talked about it – he suggested - and I agreed - that we should only use two of the vials instead of all three. It should buy us some time. And if we end up having our backs against the wall, maybe at least one of us can use the last vial to get out."

Warren's caused all three to pause. Though nobody said it, they became aware that they were unlikely to make it out of the prison alive.

Apparently deciding to not dwell on the unchangeable, Vanessa took her pack off her back, and started rummaging around it. "How are we going to find Kendra once we get inside?"

"We wander around until we come across her."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Seth raised his hand. "Has anybody considered that by leaving an opening for us to go into, there will be a way for the bad guys to come out?"

"Can't be helped." Vanessa looked back and forth between Seth and Warren. "Are we ready?"

"As we'll ever be." Warren handed Vanessa the other vial. "Nobody engages in combat unless it's absolutely necessary." He looked at Seth hard.

"Yea, okay." If he found that traitor there was no way Seth was letting him off the hook.

But Warren didn't need to know that.

"We'll need to find a dry spot, but let's get as close as we can to the falls." Seth hurried to keep up with them as they jogged off.

Vanessa and Warren stopped short about a foot away from the wall. They were at least a hundred feet away from the falls. Every now and then, a gust of wind would throw a puff of cool mist onto Seth's face.

Simultaneously, the married duo uncorked their vials. Holding them out away from each other, they interlaced their free hands.

"One," Seth called out. "Two." He said a silent prayer. "Three."

Vanessa and Warren flung the contents of their vials out onto the wall. Quickly Warren reached into his pocket and sent a cloud of sparkling, crackling black ash after the goo.

Instinctively, Seth hit the ground.

The blast from the explosion was minor, thankfully, or else they might have all been goners right then and there.

Seth sat up coughing. "You two alright?"

"I got nicked in the head." Warren stood, massaging a swiftly forming purple bruise on his forehead. "But I'm in one piece."

Vanessa nodded her head at the wall. "Looks like it's working."

Seth saw the disturbing sight of rock wall vanishing out of existence. The goo worked rapidly. Already there was an sloppily arched hole big enough for the three grown men to walk abreast.

"Move." Warren commanded. And they did.

What they didn't do though, was notice a small, dark blur come in behind them.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

All he could think was one word, the one word, interchanged with his name at random intervals.

Hija. Hija.

Los Malditos.

Hija. Hija. Los Malditos.

Los Malditos' hija.

He had to find her. Why had he ever left his daughter? He couldn't remember. He had to find her again. She would be worried for him.

The Cursed flew speedily back to the place where he'd left her. Hopefully, she was still there.

*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*

Cautiously, huddled together, taut and ready to spring into action at a moment's notice, the trio of rescuers entered the dark. Light poured in from the outside world illuminating the scene.

Their gazes were first drawn above, miles upward, to the swirling mists.

Seth would later describe it as having looked like a flock of fairies lost in a foggy whirlwind.

As their gaze shifted downward, and adjusted to the dark, they froze.

"Let death come quickly!" Seth found himself crying out involuntarily.

For several minutes they waited.

"Oh God. Warren." Vanessa buried her face in her husband's chest.

"What the... Oh," Seth choked, swallowing back down the bile.

There were dozens of them. Dragons of all shapes and sizes. Cobalt, vermilion, jade, rust, titian, immense, paltry, slimy, crusty, hairy - every kind of make. Or, to be more precise, pieces of dragons of every kind of make.

A head here, a pile of legs there - a small tower of corpses were crudely arranged in loo of a monument.

Some closer to them still resembled something like a whole dragon. That's what had made them think that they were still alive initially.

Seth took a step forward. He lifted up his foot, to inspect a crunching sound. White, sharp, small teeth littered the gray, slate floor beneath him. The stench of disembowelment permeated the air.

But the worst part wasn't the carnage. It was the faces.

Dragons are not familiar with the concept of fear. There is little one can do to a kill a dragon, and even less can be done in the businesses of intimidation.

Eyes, ranging from dull yellow, to black, unblinkingly stared in sheer terror of their last glimpse of life.

Years from then Seth would still wake up in a cold sweat on occasion, blinking away the memory of horrific expressions.

"Not that I really wanted to battle a whole bunch of dragons, but this..." Seth trailed off in a whisper.

Vanessa detached herself from Warren, but kept her eyes averted.

"We've got to keep moving." Warren pointed across the way. Not far from them was an arched doorway carved into the stone lining of the cavern.

They made their way, still in a huddle, doing everything possible to avoid suffocation from the deluge of death.

Upon reaching the mouth of next unknown, they exhaled in relief, each one certain that whatever lie ahead could never be nearly as awful as what they had left behind.

Vanessa pulled a handful of glowsticks out of her pocket. She cracked them, handed one to Warren, and went to hand one to Seth, but could not find him.

"Seth? Seth, where are you? I swear he was just right here."

Seth was right next to her, standing stock still, forgetting that his shadow charmer abilities concealed him in the dark when he didn't make himself known.

"What if Kendra is in that mess?"

Vanessa's grunt of surprise at finding him so near was stifled.

"I - "

A scream pierced through the air, an auditory blast, hitting them all distinctly.

Seth could have cried with relief, and doubled-over with pain at the same time. Caught between the desire to do both, he instead mustered and focused his anger on a point.

"Kendra," Warren confirmed. He looked out into the hole. Tentatively, he put a foot down. "Solid stone." He reported. "Stairs leading both directions. The scream sounded like it came from that direction." His finger pointed down.

"Come on then!" Seth took the lead, practically flying down the hall with Warren and Vanessa hot on his heels.

The stair seemed endless. With every minute that passed it was getting warmer, harder to breathe, forcing them to slow down a little.

The end of the stairs found them inside a smaller cavern than the one they'd left, marked by a steaming river.

This is the scene they saw before them.

It was dark, what little light there was was faded, and so it was hard distinguish fully what was happening. Two figures, one broad and dressed in robes, filled the cavern with a malevolent chanting; the other, lean and hunched over the former's shoulder. Their backs where to Seth and his companions. Not ten feet away from them, Kendra appeared to be bound in chains to none other than Gavin, Navarog's human avatar.

Light burst forth from the space between Gavin and Kendra. Kendra was weeping, presumably in pain. Gavin had his eyes closed, his mouth drawn into a hard line.

"Stop!" Seth bellowed with all his might.

But the chanting didn't stop. The two figures didn't even acknowledge him.

There was only one who did.

Gavin opened his eyes, to lock gazes with Seth.

He appeared to be trying to decide something.

"Seth." He heard the whisper behind him, a warning.

The chanting had stopped. The glow had died out. Kendra was unconscious. And Gavin was still staring.

The two figures had turned around. It was not hard to decide who their previously unidentified enemy was. Seth could feel his blood freezing in his veins, hypnotized by the wild, cold-fire burning in those steel gray eyes. He felt something akin to the sensation of his stomach flopping on a roller coaster.

The tall man who had an unhealthy look about him, was saying something to the other.

The other man nodded, closing his eyes and grimacing.

The tall man then proceeded to grow into a dragon. Seth had to say, he liked him better as a regular, gross-looking dude.

Facing Seth and his companions now, in place of the aforementioned man, was a cobra type dragon, with citrine eyes.

Now Seth really couldn't move.

Macaroni for brains, he mentally face-palmed. You should have moved when you had the chance!

He could feel his thoughts becoming muddled by the seething enchantment of the bright, yellow stare. He struggled to remember why it was that he had felt a sense of urgency.

If he could just get a hold of Kendra, he thought. Kendra would have remembered what was so important. But Kendra was passed out, and too far away for him to inch over to.

The dragon quickly slithered closer to them, his wispy tail flicking back and forth. The grin he favored them with was revolting, and it triggered the instinctual release of the phrase, 'as good as dead' in the recesses of Seth's mind. Though, in his hypnotic state he could still not recall why this was troublesome.

Seth Sorenson, Shadow Charmer Extraordinaire, realized he was going to become dragon kibble. He frowned slightly, and faintly hoped nobody would put that on his tombstone.

Just before the end came, two things happened simultaneously.

The cobra dragon passed by Gavin and Kendra, tail coming close to hitting Gavin's impassive face, but - Seth could tell - not quite making contact.

The split second that the tail had whipped so close to Gavin's face, Seth watched a patch of midnight graze past his traitorous ex-friend's face, scratching a thin line across his cheek.

Gavin, obviously thinking it had been the other dragon's tail that had cut him, switched his gaze from Seth to the cobra dragon. Seth, who previously assumed that the cobra dragon was Gavin's ally, promptly dropped that assumption.

Gavin's face contorted with fury. Then, he snapped. Literally.

He broke the chains that had bound him, eyes blazing, and attacked the cobra dragon. Within a span of a second, right before the cobra dragon pounced on Seth and his companions, Navarog lunged at the cobra dragon. The cobra dragon through Navarog off with a hiss.

As the cobra dragon broke eye contact, Seth regained use of faculties. It suddenly became abundantly clear to him why dying was not on his agenda.

The two dragons roared terrifically fearsome roars, yellowish-green and vivid orange flames spurting forth from their massive jaws. They were instantly biting, clawing, and slashing at each other with their claws and teeth.

Hysterical laughter filled the cavern. Seth caught a glimpse of the guy who he figured was the dragon king, eyes still closed, head flung unnaturally far backward.

There wasn't a minute to spare to marvel at the insanity of the situation. Seth ran to his sister's side where she had fallen. Vanessa and Warren shadowed him.

Gingerly he lifted Kendra's blonde head. He could feel the heat radiating from her. Her eye-lids were half opened, but she didn't see him. Her eyes moved rapidly underneath the skin of the lids.

Seth looked at her torn, over-sized dress, and the black tattooed words freshly seared into her chest, words that made no sense to him. He saw his sister as he'd never before seen her.

Broken.

"Kendra? Come on, Kendra. Please be alright," he pleaded with her. "Look I could really use your help right now? See how bad it is? I'm even admitting to needing your help, so you're going to have to get it together for me. Now would be a good time."

Kendra's eyes closed completely. A shiver shook her body.

Then her eyes reopened. Focused and confused. Her voice came out as a croak.

"Seth?"