Hey, everybody.

Most of you probably know of my recent computer troubles, and I'm here to tell you that, for one, I have a new laptop I can work properly on. For two, the story is off hiatus. And for three, My new laptop's name is Eli. :)

Let's get to some long-neglected reviews before you rabid readers get to read the chapter. I know it's short, but I needed SOMETHING out there to show you all I've not forgotten you.

1DJatD: Thank you so, so much for the Favorite Authors listing! *tacklehug*

KiasuEurasian: I'm glad you like it, thanks so much! :3

MusicOfPoetry12: I love your extensive reviews, I really, really appreciate them. It's reviews like these that encourage me to keep writing, and I cannot thank you enough. I'm pleased that you are able to read so in-depth to the story, and that you claim my writing to be such that it could place a reader straight into the fanfiction. *glomp* We are officially best friends!

CommanderHawke667: No, the Rose will not be appearing here. :3 I'm going to make sure that the majority of my Dragonfable fanfictions tend to stay along those lines. ^^ For me, it's a little simpler to keep things the old way.

MissFiyeraba: Glad you enjoyed it! ^^

Jellybelly Puffypants: I'm happy you enjoyed the description! :) And don't worry about Artix, seriously!

Now, quickly, the chapter, then I am going to bed!

Feeling queasy, I swallowed hard to keep myself from being sick, and continued to walk. It wasn't that I couldn't believe what I had seen—I had witnessed death before—but it was more the feeling of being too late, and of failure.

I might have been able to save them, I thought, my stomach churning.

Be reasonable, the rational half of my mind chided. You don't know when they died. They could have died before you were even born. You don't know where they were, who they were, or how powerful that dragon was—is?—or whether you would have died trying to save them. There is nothing you can do for them right now. Let it go.

Damn, my better half was getting demanding.

It took another moment before I could steel myself to look away. I kept walking, even after I heard that cheerful, completely innocent laugh again.

It's repeating, I realized with horror as goosebumps positively shot down my arms and legs. My grip tightened even further on my staff, but I continued to walk. I would not turn around. I wouldn't. I was more stubborn than that…

It wasn't long before I was out of range of the scene with the mother and child, and I was foolish enough to allow my guard to slip. I really thought that would be all I would see along this path. Oh, how horribly wrong I was.

Moments after I was sure that I was finally past the spot where the child's last moments had been, and directly after I thought that was all I would see, I encountered another scene. This time, it was a young woman.

She can't be any older than I am now, I thought with a frown, as well as a sense of foreboding as I quickly came to the conclusion that I might have to pass many more of these scenes. The young woman was in a simple (but elegant) dress, her hands clasped behind her as she walked through the trees. As with the others before, she had no notice of me. She had a calm expression, though, and looked around herself with a pleased air, as though everything was going to plan—whatever it might have been. A small part of my mind kept my feet moving, but I continued to watch as I passed. I discerned a large square of the ground that was slightly different, but did not think anything of it.

But when the young lady fell through the ground with a blood-chilling scream when she passed over that spot, I knew that I had been wrong about the patch of ground being irrelevant.

It must have been a hunter's trap or something that someone forgot about, I thought with a wince as I jerked my head back around. So that's how she died.

As I kept walking, I passed so many more of these… some that I almost didn't notice, such as a person who died when sleeping on the ground—just a quick nap—to ones that I couldn't remove from my memories, like the first one that concerned the dragon. Then there were a handful of others that I, if truth be told, didn't find so unusual, and some were comparable to those that a warrior might receive in the heat of battle. There was a shallow slice across a man's chest that had cut through the leather jerkin he wore; an arrow through the neck above the armor on an older man who looked as though he had seen too many battles; another man's head wrenched horribly around almost so he could see over his back by a shadowy figure wearing battle armor; there weren't just war wounds, though.

I knew from experience that being surrounded by too much death or big thinking could easily cause a person to fall deep into depression. It had happened to me less than two years previously, and it was also incredibly difficult to drag yourself out of. I forced myself to take another deep breath, wondering briefly if I could force all of the bad thoughts out of my ears.

Nah, I decided after a minute more of walking. Probably not. After all, if I couldn't shake the feeling the portal gave me, what makes me think I'll get rid of it this time?

With a slightly rueful head shake, I glanced around me once more, having lost count of how many times I'd done it. It was so quiet, even though now and again I came across another one of the death scenes that made a small amount of noise. Even so, it wasn't all that much. For the first one, it had been the child's laugh. For the second, it had been the young woman's scream. For another, it had been only the sound of the body hitting the ground from a tree limb that was higher up. There was one sound for each death scene that I passed, and it could either raise hairs or make you smile and wonder. I had done both while I had been here, in this gray land. The lack of color was starting to unnerve me, to tell the truth.

I mean, not that I haven't been telling the truth, exactly, but… It's just a saying.

Just like 'I love you'…

With a small, miserable, self-deprecating sigh, I brushed away my long bangs that had been blown gently into my eyes by the breeze.

Wait a second… There is no wind.

When I had set foot into this gray world, with floating chunks of earth and depressing aura, the air had been completely still and heavy, weighing down upon you like some solidified empty space. But that had changed now.

No sooner had I come to that realization than the wind suddenly picked up, and began to whirl around me in a vortex that was steadily gaining speed. It whipped my loose hair up and around, blowing it into my eyes and all around my face. I couldn't see anything, and I was (for all intents and purposes) blind. The whistling gust of air that twisted like some unnatural animal around my position tore at my hair and my clothes viciously, and I felt like it was doing its damn best to tug me clear off the ground. Gritting my teeth, I took a tighter grip on my staff, and turned it so it was vertical, and just barely skimming the surface of that bubble of magic, I slammed the base of it against the ground just once.

This was an old spell, one that each magician who learned to defend themselves was taught at an early age—myself included. It created an invisible barrier, not unlike the one that I had summoned in the fight against Vayle, but with any luck it would at least hold back the wind.

It worked. A bubble that, at most, ranged four to five inches away from my skin swiftly stretched around me, and within that oval, the air was calm. My hair settled, still crinkled where it had been beaten about by the vortex. Without that distraction, I was free to look around and make an attempt to discover the source of the sudden tornado winds. It didn't take long.

A shadow that somehow seemed solid was drifting over the tops of the trees, but the edges of it were blurred—almost as though it were insubstantial.

What a paradox, I thought randomly, warily watching it as it made its way with alarming speed towards the spot where I stood at the center of the cyclone. When it was easily within sight, nearly right above me, it almost looked to be just a swirling mass of cloth, I suppose… like a ratty, tattered black cloak. I glared up at it, not sure whether it was friend or foe.

Either way, I thought with a sense of dark humor, I'm not running from this. I'm done running. Ready for whatever I hoped it might be, I looked daggers at the black shadow-cloth thing, face upturned. Bring it, you bastard. I don't know what you are, and I don't give a flying fuck.

…No pun intended, of course, with the flying comment.

Then suddenly, the black thing seemed to fling itself at the ground no more than three meters in front of me, pulling the swirl of air with it. As the wind around me vanished, I dropped the flimsy protective spell that held it back, warily watching the figure that rapidly formed as the more cloth-looking bits fell to the ground. I could make out a head and shoulders, then sleeves, and eventually a long, well-covering cloak that stretched down to the path. The cowl of the hood that appeared was deep, making it difficult to discern exactly what sort of face was within the shadows there. However, when I saw, I took an inadvertent step back.

The face—rather, the place where the face should have been—was nothing but an empty skull with small, red dots in the eye sockets. It didn't scare me, exactly, as I had seen plenty of monsters with a similar face before, but it was the manner in which it had appeared that actually bothered me. What is this thing…? I've never seen anything like it before. Warlic's words about different monsters and staying on the path rang through my head, and I wondered briefly if this was one of the things he spoke of.

Then all doubts as to what this entity was abruptly vanished as one other thing swirled from shadows into a solid, becoming a long pole which the skeleton figure lightly closed bony fingers around. The pole developed a long, curved blade at the top end, and I knew who it was I faced.

Death.

I'm going to bed.

I'll update when I get another chapter barfed out… I can't think very coherently right now. ^^" Don't worry, I won't kill myself.

Also, if you've played through a lot of quests in the Dragonfable chain, you may recognize one or two pieces of dialogue between Magiya and this MYSTERIOUS CRITTER she's encountered.

So tired…

Enough of my blabbering. Night all, and it's good to be back!