We barely make it to the top of the stairs before the dungeons flood. We're all soaked from the massive wave that came out of nowhere in Fauna's cell, though we thankfully all managed to duck just before the water wolves ran in. They jumped over us as we figured they would, but we definitely didn't expect them to become one massive wave of water that had even the rats and mice squirming up the steps to avoid drowning.

It's safe to say that I hate rats.

"Where-"

"Outside," Darius answers before I can finish my question. His eyes are pinned to the long hallway and the King's Garden beyond it.

"Go!" Garrison yells, already bending down by Svenja and the unconscious Hira. We don't wait to argue, and the three of us take off down the halls. I'd worry more if I didn't know that Rohana already called one of her sisters to get them out with whatever mind link they share. She explained it, but I've been a bit too preoccupied to fully comprehend it.

My slight relief that my sister might actually be free again is short-lived. The ground starts shaking, making us stumble and throw our arms out to catch ourselves before we run into the walls.

"What in ten hells is going on?"

"I don't know. Hold on."

I don't have to be told twice and grab Rohana's outstretched arm, Darius doing the same, and then the world's twisting before sunlight shines in my eyes and the ground is-

My feet are kicked out from beneath me, launching me into a thick pool of water. The current is too strong and I am quickly twisted this way and that, losing track of which way is up. Someone grabs onto my cloak and pulls me to my feet, my lungs gulping down air the second I break through the surface. It takes me a second of coughing and blinking to regain my senses, but I'm still knee-deep in water and have to put all effort into planting my feet to avoid being pulled back under.

"She's going to flood the castle," Darius calls over the sound of crashing waves. I snap my head up to where he stares and almost disappear beneath the waves again when I spot the cause of the flood. Thankfully, Rohana keeps me upright, but she herself seems to be just as wide-eyed.

We all look up in amazement, watching as Fauna hovers in the air, arms widespread like a bird as the water from the moat rises to her command. The earth still grumbles louder, making our feet slip beneath the mud. I open my mouth to ask them what we're supposed to do, but then something large and black comes out of the moat, trapped inside the water.

"What in ten hells is that?" A question I'll be getting quite used to, I suppose, along with the answering silence.

We can do nothing but watch as Fauna guides it to herself, and stares at it. I can't see what it is thanks to the obscurity of the water still enclosing it, but it looks like some sort of large balled up...yeah I have no idea what it is.

The water around it seems to shift further and based on the way her hands slowly come together, I'd say she's crushing it. The form gets smaller and smaller, and then it starts moving. What looks like an arm lashes out, the water keeping it from clawing her skin. Another one appears, followed by what could be slightly smaller hind legs that bend the other way.

The water around our legs starts to rise quickly. I hold my breath as it temporarily puts only the top halves of our bodies underwater. I try not to choke and keep what little air I have in my lungs until the water gets above me, and I can breathe again. It flows with her right hand, reinforcing the cage she's already created and squeezing even further.

"What the fuck is it?"

"Is it Xaxias?" Darius asks, his brow furrowed in a way that tells me he's trying to find out for himself.

"No," Rohana answers, taking a step towards it. "It's not him, but-"

"An extension of him." Darius and I jump at the sound of Willa's voice, the woman not caring for the water soaking her as she watches the spectacle. "We wouldn't have known that his monster was beneath the castle until it shredded the entire town to pieces."

"What is it?" I push, still worried that my sister won't make it out after all. It's still alive, still trying to swim to the surface. I can't see its face, but I don't think I necessarily want to, not with its spikey mane and gleaming scales.

"It's a raver."

"A what?"

"Details to come," Rohana and Willa say at the same time.

I open my mouth to argue, but then a loud wail rings out and I look back up to find vines that somehow appeared, wrapping around the - the - raver's neck. I watch them tighten, watch more vines slip beneath its scales, and black, inky liquid starts to pour into the water. I assume it's the color of its blood, but then again, I know nothing about this - this thing. It's seven times the size of the water wolves that reappear around the garden, yipping and barking up the creature.

I'm slightly relieved that there are fewer people in town. Gods know how hard it's going to be to explain this.

The creature screams louder, and despite the water muffling it, the sound still has us throwing our hands over our ears to try and silence its painful ring. My hands do little, and the screeching becomes something that will likely soon...soon...ears...blood...

Gods will someone make it stop!

I hear someone else yell something, but I don't hear more than slurred words over this madness.

"Clarice!" I scream, or at least I think I do in hopes that she'll-

Oh, thank the Gods and their Saints.

My vision attempts at righting itself until small black dots scatter every time I blink, making it hard to focus on what's happening around me. My head feels like it's split in two, and despite my kneeling on the ground, I can't help but feel like it's tilting. Two hands grab my head and only my reflexes have me snatching their wrists and prying them away.

"It's alright! It's okay - it's Tanith! It's Tanith!" I loosen my grip on her but don't let go. My head's still spinning, my vision too bright and still spotted. I look up in the direction of her voice, finding three of her standing there.

Wasn't it Vanya who could duplicate?

"Stay here," she says pulling herself out of my grip. The movement has me off-balance, and I end up falling onto my side and getting mud all over half of my face.

I don't think I'm going anywhere.

A second later and there's another hand on my forehead, though this time it heats up against my skin. I try pulling away but stop as soon as I recognize the sensation. Healing. As soon as I think about it, my head clears, my eyes see in color and focus again, and my ears no longer ring nor echo with muffled voices. Everything becomes clear, and I am suddenly aware of how seriously uncomfortable I am in my soaked suit with mud everywhere.

"We need to get her to the coast. Now." I'm on my feet before anyone else can say more.

The tsunami of a contained wave has dispersed, the harsh swish of the now full moat telling me that it's over. Of course, there's no missing the huge, black body lying dead thing in the middle of the King's Garden. Not sure that the King will be pleased.

"What. The. Fuck."

Called it.

He comes up beside me, Rohana and Willa tight on his heels. The body is dead, that much is clear from its snapped jaw, impaled chest with what seem to be large thorns and a large amount of black substance pooling out of it. The once red eyes are empty, the teeth looking as long as my arm, and the jaw - if it were still intact - could swallow three men whole in one bite. It's not a face I want to remember, and the Gods awful smell of the corpse is something I'd rather never smell again.

We all stay a few feet from the dark pool of blood, but my sister who I didn't even realize was no longer in the air, walks right into it and up to the thing's chest. Both Darius and I lunge for her, but Willa and Rohana stop us before our toes touch the mess. The creature may look dead, but who's to say it actually is? I'm not familiar with the nightmare, and I certainly don't want her to be.

She still has a distant look in her eyes - her two different colored eyes - and the elements run along her arms, the marks bright and not looking close to shuttering out.

She looks so much worse in the sunlight. She's completely ashen, no color staining her cheeks and her lips blue. It hits me like a blow to the gut.

She's not wearing her balaclava.

I push the dread that fills me out of the habit of constantly keeping our identities a secret. It's not the first time Darius has seen her face, and the Ginerva were undoubtedly going to find out soon if they haven't already.

Fauna walks to the thing's chest and looks at its corpse. For a second I think that she's going to shift the dirt beneath it and bury it, but then she kneels down and watches as the vines move once again, penetrating beneath the scales and parting the rib cage. I have to hold back a gag at the amount of black blood that spills out, and at the bit that squirts onto her face. She doesn't do more than blink at it, but it makes me want to grab her and throw her in the moat to clean her off, maybe snap her out of whatever trance she's in at the same time.

This isn't the Fauna I know, but from what Hira says, the Fauna we knew was gone before we could reach her. This just goes to show how much of her is gone.

The chest opens wide, showing the organs and what could be a stomach. She tilts her head at it and then leans forward and shoves both her hands inside. I can do nothing but stare. Darius, however, has the wind quickly moving and fire sparking on his fingertips. I'm partially glad that I'm soaked through and covered in mud if only so that I won't catch fire from one of the stray flares.

She looks to be searching for something, and when she finds it, she yanks on it. It takes a few pulls, but then it snaps loose, and she pulls out the thing's heart that's the size of a large chicken. She turns it in her hands, examining it like it's some sort of diamond. If she doesn't put that thing down, then I'm marching through...that, smacking it out of her hands, and throwing her over my shoulder before she can protest.

She's scaring me - like really, truly scaring me.

"Can't we-"

"Wait," Willa commands sharply, cutting Darius off. He and I share a look. Neither of us likes what we're seeing.

It only gets worse when the heart seems to shrivel like a raisin. I half sigh half tense when she drops the dry heart and stands up.

"We need to get her out of here," Rohana says.

"No shit," I mutter, completely unable to hold back my mix of negative emotions. They made me wait here so she could shrivel the funking heart when anyone else could've easily destroyed it.

"She drained more power from the wolves than she could handle. She needs to let it out or she'll die, and I don't think you want anything within a ten-mile radius leveled."

She doesn't wait for me or Darius to agree and mists to Fauna before misting somewhere else. I spin to Willa, but she already has my arm in her hand and mists the three of us out.

My feet land on sand, and I find us on Vandaria's western coastline. It's a little stick of land between the border of the Dearg Forest and Adaeric. Not much of a beach, but it's empty, and thank the Gods for it.

There's a huge wave headed right for us, getting higher and higher with every passing second that it approaches. I look to my right, finding Fauna knee-deep in the ocean's salty water, arms once again widespread. Rohana mists in next to me, and I feel my stomach drop, again, at her darting eyes.

The wave hits the shoreline, its crest so high that I have to bend backward to see. If this thing crashes, it'll swallow us and anything within a few miles. Instead, it curves over us sprinkling our already soaked clothing in seawater, and freezes as if time froze it and we're the only things left moving. I look at Rohana, but her eyes aren't shining silver.

The wave moves again, but it doesn't lean forward, it pulls back. The curve straightens and retreats, shrinking lower and lower before our eyes until it disappears into the horizon.

Today has been way too much for me.

First, we find Eleanor and Charles still alive, then we see the horror of my sister's beaten body, then comes her elemental madness, followed by the reveal of an underworld creature that nested beneath the castle, and now this. A tsunami ready to drown us whole, now nothing more than a normal large wave that crashes into the shoreline and saturates our shoes.

After today, I know all of two things right now. Firstly, the strength and control of my sister's power utterly terrifies me. Secondly, I am not looking forward to washing all of this out of this leather suit.

Rohana disappears from my side, reappearing behind Fauna just before my sister faints. Panic sends me and Darius sprinting over as Rohana picks her up and walks them out of the ocean. She lays her on the sand and kneels over her, already scanning the wounds and their deepness to look for infection. Willa's quicker than I am, and at the touch of her hand the bruises slowly fade away and the skin mends back together.

Her skin is cold as ice when I reach down and grab her hand that feels so delicate and light in mine. I turn to tell Darius to warm her but stop the words from coming when I see his face. He stands a few feet away, his eyes locked on her quiet expression. His own shows no emotion, no hint of relief that she's finally here, finally back. There's no excitement or anger, just...bleakness. I can't get a grip on my own emotions at the moment, but he seems to have none to hold.

"We should get her back to the castle," Willa determines, watching him just as closely as I do.

He doesn't answer, just keeps staring with depthless eyes. I really am worried about him. He's never been like this, not even while we were searching. I thought that it was because of our failed searches that he was distant and disparate, and I thought that when he did see her again, memory restored or not, he would at least improve a little.

There's a pointed cough, and I turn to find Rohana and Willa looking at me with raised eyebrows.

Right.

Despite them being of higher rank than me, a Prince, - according to their odd hierarchy - they've followed Darius's order to put my commands and needs directly below his, and above theirs. The lines at which I may pull such rank are scribbled at best but now seems to be one of those times I can use it.

I nod to both of them once, and they instantly set in motion. Willa takes Fauna's hand, and since I'm touching my sister she won't need to grab hold of me. Rohana walks over to Darius, and I see him numbly take her hand, still staring at my sister, before the world goes dark.

*****

"How is she? Is she hurt? Does she need anything? Can I help? I-"

"Kat. She's...she's okay." Kat's shoulders slump, her face relaxing at the words.

She's not the only one waiting on the third level of the healer's tower for news. The Bhaltayr are here, Ozzie, Al, and Alex stopping their pacing when they notice I'm back in the hall. The Ginerva are lining the walls as told to do by me since they wouldn't listen to Willa's order to sit still and they kept trying to clog up the small room Siscilla put my sister in. Blaise, Reynald, and Julyan are off seeing the friends they left three months ago who now guard the castle, also on my orders.

Claritia is still here with Thea too, each holding a twin in their arms. They were dozing before I came out. Siscilla's inside with Willa and Roseia who refused and threatened everyone who tried to take her from Fauna's side. Aside from me, Darius, The Ginerva, Willa, Siscilla, Svenja, and Garrison, no one's seen her. She wouldn't want anyone else to see her right now.

Speaking of the pirate, she and her group must be settling into the Canary Wing, keeping Levi and Mira out of trouble and away from the depressing atmosphere. Levi tried staying with Thomas who's standing silently behind Darius as if he's still a servant, but Cliff - who Kat assured me was harmless - managed to convince the boy to go along with them.

Siscilla, Willa, and Roseia just kicked me out of the room with demands to force everyone to their own chambers for some rest. A few of them might go without a fight, others...I think the Bhaltayr would rather fall asleep on the ground than leave. There's only one way that I can think of to get everyone out of here, but it's going to postpone the sleep my body is begging me for.

"We need to talk. Not. Here," I add when Rohana opens her mouth.

"We aren't leaving our posts," she states.

"I'm not asking all of you to do so, just one of you. Take your pick."

She stares at me blankly, though I know better than to think that her mind's not debating whether that one person should be her or not. I'm thankful that she's so keen on protecting my sister, but there are other things we have to worry about. Like where the hell Xaxias is and why he hasn't yet begun his reign of terror.

"Tsil." Tsillah steps from her post on the wall and walks over. "Go with the Principe."

"Do you mind grabbing Svenja?" I ask her.

"Of course not, Principe."

"Lance," I insist. "So long as you protect my sister, you may call me Lance."

"Alright. Lance. Where is it I'll be taking the pirate Queen?"

"There's a council room on the top floor of the Highland Tower. Oh, and, take Thomas to the Canary Wing. He looks bored." She nods and then walks over to Thomas who stiffens at her presence, and then they're both gone, a black mist quickly fading from where they stood.

The Bhaltayr perk up a little, all likely to have tuned into our little conversation if I've taught them anything. "Let's go."

They don't argue as Darius stands up and already starts walking down the hall to the stairs rather quickly, I note. He avoids everyone's gaze, and I begin to get that sinking feeling again. He stops once in front of me and Rohana, only addressing her. "If my mother won't go to her chambers, then have her take the room next door. She needs rest." Rohana bows her head, the complete compliance and utter loyalty still astounding me.

He continues on, The Bhaltayr on his heels, though they all glance to the door behind me as they pass. Rohana gives me a glare, and I pointedly ignore it before following the rest of them. Kat goes to sit with Claritia, but I grab her hand and pull her along with me. First off, I missed her like hell and don't want to let her out of my sight with Xaxias and Visha now roaming freely. Secondly, she's got a keener mind than all of us at the moment. We're all physically tired, mentally drained, emotionally dead, and all-around idiotic when it comes down to the important simple things. We need a fresh mind, and she tends to see and hear things we don't.

The walk to the Highland Tower is silent and agonizing. The Jade Assassins were easy enough to signal over after we took back the castle. They all showed up at the gates, and Rykiel began stationing them about the castle to take shifts among the still living water wolves. The assassins aren't as many as the castle guards were, but until Darius and Aillard get their own system up and running, my three hundred sentinels and an additional two hundred on standby are the ones we're dealing with. Lesser numbers, yes, but their advanced skills even out the differences equally enough.

The wolves just lay about the grounds and go about their normal business. Lazy bums if you ask me.

It's the