A/N: Wow, thanks for the hundred reviews, you guys! You all ROCK!! :-) -K

OOOOO

Jane stared around herself in horror. The carnage was appalling. There were bodies everywhere. Invaders, defenders… it ceased to matter in death. Their blood all ran the same color, soaking the muddy ground a ghastly crimson-black. The tragedy of so many lives lost was overwhelming.

Slowly, she began picking her way through the nightmarish landscape, her eyes moving restlessly from one mangled body to the next, searching for anything – anyone – familiar amid this human wreckage. And praying, even as she searched, to find nothing.

Her prayers were not heard. One after another she found them in the muck; beloved face after beloved face. Rake. Smithy. Jester. She thought her heart would break. But that wasn't the end of it; worse was yet to come.

Her legs failed her when she found her father, lying in a pool of his own congealing blood, empty eyes reflecting the stormy, turbulent sky. Her quiet, gentle, methodical, scholarly father; how could he have been destined for an end like this?

(He wasn't destined to die this way. This is because of me. He had to fight because I couldn't.)

Even this grief was eclipsed by her anguish a moment later though, as, kneeling beside him, she raised her streaming eyes to the horizon – only to notice a body that she had somehow missed before.

A body roughly the size and color of a small, grassy hill.

"NO – !!"

She was running then, scrambling to her feet and running before she'd even realized that she was moving at all; running to Dragon.

"No, no, no, oh Dragon, no!" It was as she buried her face in his flank, sobbing, that she heard the sounds of combat behind her. Her chest hitching to the point where she could barely breathe, she spun around.

There was a single pair of combatants left, battling their way with locked swords over the treacherous, corpse-strewn ground.

It was Gunther and Edgar, of course.

Her heart leapt at the sight of Gunther still on his feet amidst so much death and destruction, but her relief was short-lived. He looked beyond horrible – exhausted, and ashen, and bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, scrapes, and abrasions; his reflexes were shot, he was struggling to hold his own, and even as she watched, Edgar was gaining the upper hand.

No! No no no, oh God please no – Frantic, Jane cast around for a weapon. A bloodied sword lay nearby, half wedged beneath a fallen soldier. By the time she'd tugged it free, though, it was too late.

Things were moving too fast. Just as Jane looked up again, sword in hand, Gunther stumbled. Jane saw Edgar move to take advantage of this moment of vulnerability, and screamed a warning – which only served to distract Gunther further.

(Just like Pepper said, oh God, she said that this would happen!)

His head jerked toward the sound of her voice, and so it was that his eyes locked on Jane's just as Edgar struck the fatal blow, driving his sword hilt-deep into Gunther's chest.

He looked down for a second at the blade embedded in his body, then raised his eyes to Jane's again. He looked… puzzled more than anything in that moment, puzzled and sad. His lips moved and she had a sense that he was trying to say her name, but no sound came out. His sword fell from his hand, clanging dully as it hit the ground.

Jane was running then, running, running, and not seeming to get any closer at all. Edgar for his part yanked his sword free and stepped back, knowing that Gunther was as good as dead, content to let nature take its course. Gunther, his grey eyes never leaving Jane's, took a single, staggering step toward her, and then his legs gave out, spilling him to his knees. Still running, still no closer to reaching him, Jane watched helplessly as the light in those eyes flickered… flickered… dimmed…

And then she woke up, screaming.

OOOOO

She rocketed into a sitting position, strangling the cry in her throat. She was drenched in cold sweat, heart and head pounding in time with each other, breath coming so shallow and rapid that she halfway felt as if she was hyperventilating. Violent chills were assaulting her, making it clear that she was running a temperature, and probably a substantial one at that.

She sat there for several minutes gulping in air, taking stock of her body and her situation. She was sure she had cried out upon waking, but there was no sign of Pepper and so Jane concluded that her friend must be off on some errand or other, out of earshot. The pain in her back had subsided, as long as she remained relatively still, to a constant, fiery ache… but when she flexed her muscles experimentally, it ratcheted back to an agony so intense that it made her breath catch in her throat and tiny starbursts bloom before her eyes.

Trying to banish the pain from the very front of her consciousness, Jane focused on assessing the nature of the light that was filtering into the kitchen through the room's high windows. The light suggested that it was midday, but midday of what day? Had it been a few hours since her dawn conversation with Pepper, or had more than a whole day passed? Was it possible that the battle was still being waged, or had it already been decided, for better or worse, in her absence? She had no idea; Pepper was not there to tell her, and while in her stupor she had lost all concept of the passage of time.

Already her memories of the previous night, from the time that Gunther had found her on, were fading – leaking substance, losing form. One thing that was perfectly clear, however, was the dream from which she had just awoken. It hovered at the forefront of her mind with an urgent immediacy that was unlike anything she had ever experienced before.

Rather than fading in the light of day as dreams usually do, the vile images that this particular night-horror had dredged up hung before her now with a terrible, haunting vibrancy. Her friends, her father, Dragon. Dead, all dead – and then Gunther. Gunther sliding silently, almost gracefully, to his knees. The sword slipping from his numbing fingers. And the light fading, fading, slowly but inevitably, out of those steel-grey eyes.

Had it only been a nightmare? The fevered product of a troubled mind? Or had it been something more, something infinitely worse – a vision or premonition of some kind?

I have to get to him.

The thought was immediate, and absolute. It left no room for doubt or second-guessing. It left no room for hesitation or procrastination, either.

It didn't matter that she was hurt and sick. It didn't matter that she could barely move.

She had to get to him, and she had to get to him now.

OOOOO

Interlude: Gunther

OOOOO

Taking advantage of a momentary lull in the fighting, Gunther wiped his blade on the body of the invader he had just dispatched, shoved his sweat-soaked hair back out of his eyes, and glanced around himself, quickly assessing the battlefield. Like the breathing of some mighty beast or the ebb and flow of a tide, the combat was surging first in one direction, then in the other. Gunther swept his immediate area with his eyes, looking for any friendly faces nearby that might be in need of assistance.

Jester was fighting in the vicinity, but surprisingly enough (to Gunther, anyway) he was holding his own quite well. His natural, nearly acrobatic agility, swiftness and grace were compensating quite decently for his lack of formal combat training. He kept switching his weapon from one hand to the other with dexterous, lightning-quick speed, confounding his opponents as he fought equally well either way. He almost looked like he was dancing as he wielded the short, light sword. Perhaps in a way he was.

Of course, it wasn't as if the invaders were any kind of highly trained crack fighting force, either. In truth, they were little more than an overlarge and heretofore overconfident band of brigands, who were finding the men of Kippernium to be considerably fiercer opponents than they had anticipated.

And then of course there was Dragon. Mustn't forget the fire-breathing dragon.

Overall, Gunther was cautiously optimistic that the tide of the battle might be starting to turn decisively in favor of the defenders.

Which was good, because he was tired, and sore – one of his shoulders, especially, which had been painfully wrenched when he'd deflected a particularly well-aimed and brutal blow. He had a gash along his side, too, which though shallow was bleeding quite freely; he hadn't had any time to bind it. He wondered briefly if there was enough time to dress the wound now, but then a sound from behind caused him to whirl about, just in time to meet a new attacker head-on. More cunning than most of his compatriots, this man had been in the act of sneaking up on Gunther – and had very nearly managed it.

My guard is slipping, he thought a moment later as this most recent foe lay twitching on the battle-churned ground. The tide may be turning, but the battle is far from won. I need to get a hold of myself, and now.

And so he employed a tactic that he had already used quite successfully several times in the course of the fighting thus far. All he had to do to ground and focus himself was close his eyes for a heartbeat's worth of time, and envision Jane.

The images that assailed him were crystal clear and staggeringly powerful. Jane's copper hair darkening to scarlet at the tips, where it had been pasted to her back by her own blood. Her split lip; the angry bruise spreading up the side of her face; and worse than any of it, the expression on her face when he had asked… asked her…

God.

In that instant, he'd been able to read her like a book – and what he had seen in her eyes had ripped him apart. The memory of it caused a whole new set of images to spring up before him; and though these were pure conjecture, they were no less powerful for that. To the contrary, imagination can often be far worse – far crueler – than fact.

He imagined Edgar striking the blow that had bruised her face so badly; imagined it dazing her for a moment, knocking the fight out of her long enough for the invading king to drag her down into the mud. He imagined her struggling, her arms bound and pinned helplessly beneath her, as fabric was ripped and shoved aside, Edgar positioning himself above her. He saw her shaking her head in a frantic, futile negation as she realized exactly what was to come; saw Edgar's large, grimy hand clamp over her mouth, muffling her scream as he drove himself in, her entire body arching with the shock and pain of his intrusion. And then, worse than all the rest combined, he imagined her eyes rolling back, her body going limp, her spirit and will to fight deserting her as Edgar continued to use, abuse and violate her exactly as he saw fit.

Then he had whipped her.

It was almost more than Gunther could stand and still retain his hold on sanity. Perversely, however, it was exactly the image he needed to call up in order to focus his mind and flood his own body with the energy he needed to keep battling on.

Opening his eyes again, he found that he was literally cold and shaking with rage.

That was good. Cold rage was better than hot fury. It was easier to channel into something productive. He was ready to wade back into the fray. He just needed opponents.

Some hundred yards away, Smithy was looking beleaguered. His size and strength made him fearsome in single combat, but now a handful of invaders had joined forces against him, intent on using cooperation as a means to take him down. He was very nearly surrounded. Gunther began to move toward him.

He would go to Smithy's aid.

And then, so help him God, he was going to find Edgar.

Or die trying.