9 UNEDITED VERSION

"WHERE IS FELICITY?!" Somehow I'm up on my feet pounding on his chest with my hands as I yell and cry out loud insisting on receiving an answer to my question.

He doesn't say anything but keeps wearing the same expression that he wore only a few moments ago when I first asked of Felicity's whereabouts.

It's an unreadable expression but I'm not trying to read him, I only want to know Felicity is OK and know her whereabouts so that we could get her and leave.

The little strength I have left leave my body as I feel my limbs grow tired and the exhaustion of everything that happened this night finally gets to me and it hits me with the force and speed of a shooting star and suddenly I go limp and lose the strength to stand.

My body leans into Dion's for support as I rest the little bodyweight my slim frame possesses onto his large strong ones.

At some point, I don't know how but I fall into a dreamless sleep and for a while I am unconscious.

"Aadya wake up, grandmother says it's time for you to eat your morning meal and you would be late for your morning lessons with the elders." The sun's light stream into my eyes as I stir awake from sleep, I stretch my body and release a very loud yawn as I recall the horrid dream I had last night.

"I had the strangest dream, Felicity, we were attacked by people that shoot ice and fire from their hand, we were all trying to escape but you didn't make it out I guess Dion left you behind for some reason, and he saved me before I drowned, I never got to see grandmother and Selene and Aria and Marcus and and..."

"Breath Aadya." I listen to her and take in a deep breath with my eyes closed and I let the air all out. And when I calmed down enough to speak I went on.

"It was simply horrible! I almost died in the dream which led to Dion almost kissing me and I thought everyone died or something." My eyes wander around my room disbelieving the very detailed dream I had only for my eyes to come back to see Felicity giving me a funny look like I have lost my mind.

But I know I've not lost my mind. It felt too real, too detailed.

"You should go back to bed maybe you are sick." She walks closer to my bed and begins to tuck me back in and a thought keeps ringing in my mind.

Maybe I really gave her a scare spewing such nonsense from my mouth about beings that aren't in our scrolls of knowledge, maybe they are, but they aren't popular, and about everyone dying but I'm beyond glad it's all a dream.

"Felicity is Aadya up?" Hold on, I've not heard that voice in years.

She walks into my room like it were the most natural thing to do in the world.

What is she doing here?

"Aadya darling your father and I need to have a word with you in the throne room?" I feel light-headed like I'm about to faint.

I'm at lost for words to say because this is the most bizarre hallucination I've ever had and I don't know what to think of seeing my mother in front of me.

My dead mother.

"Felicity, what's wrong with her why isn't she saying something?" My mouth still hangs open with my eyes opened wide in astonishment.

"My queen I believe she must have hit her head while she slept because I woke her up this morning, and she began to spew all sorts of stories she had in one crazy dream last night about everyone dying." My mother's black long hair is packed up on top of her head with precision and neatness, they are neatly woven together in a very complicated manner, it's still beautiful.

Unlike most of us who like to leave our hairs to flow down our shoulders wild and free. Like me.

Mother, however, wore hers in a confined hairstyle, and she always carried this air of unmatched sophistication around her.

My biggest issue with seeing her standing in my room is that she died a few years ago and her body was turned into ashes so how is she standing in my room? She can't come back from the dead.

People don't come back from the dead like that. Or can they?

"Come on Aadya it's time for you to die."

Huh? What did I just hear? Did I hear right?

"Mother what did you say?" I didn't hear right, definitely didn't hear her right.

"Die Aadya, burn Aadya." She keeps repeating these words in a chant-like manner as her blue eyes roll up and disappear to the back of her head and I could see is her white eyes.

I begin to move backwards to get away from her.

Her chanting doesn't stop as she slowly walks closer to me with both her hands up and stretched outward in my direction, "Felicity what's going on?"

"Burn Aadya, die Aadya." What?! My head whips to the left side of my bed to look at her only to be met with a similar sight.

I open my mouth to scream for help but nothing comes out.

My limbs feel heavy I can't move no matter how hard I try.

Their hands grab at me, mother grabbed my legs and Felicity my arms, and they effortlessly lifted me off my bed while I struggled to make my limbs work or better yet my voice.

They carry me from the bed as they keep chanting, "burn Aadya, die Aadya." I don't know how we got downstairs outside under the blazing sun in the middle of a meadow that's very large on top a hillside, I can't see anything else besides the meadow and the trees that surround it.

The heat from the sun burns my skin and I don't understand how the sun could get this hot in the summer, it feels like fire is burning above my head but it did nothing to them.

I still try to scream for help as they tie me to a pole made of wood, my body feels heavy and without balance and I don't understand how this is all happening.

What is happening?

Their chants don't end as they step backwards. My heart is bouncing in all directions in my rib cage and I can no longer breath well.

I see someone running from a distance to come here, it looks like Troilus.

Oh, thank Boreas he can come to put an end to this madness.

He stops and stands next to them then immediately his eyes glaze over, and he joins their chants, and I am beyond terrified.

Soon I see more people running towards us, first I see my dead father then my uncle, then grandmother, then my uncle's wife, then Marcus and Hero then Aria then Selene and the rest that keep trooping in I know they're from our kingdom but I'm not in any way close to them.

They all chant those words as their eyes turn white. My body is still paralysed and I keep trying to scream but to no avail.

Their voices get louder to the point they are screaming and it's deafening.

The forest floor begins to shake and the sun's heat begins to get unbearable.

Suddenly, the pole I'm tied to begin to grow slowly and it lifts my feet from the ground as my body is being carried upwards towards the sky and closer to the sun.

I see fire out of nowhere begin to burn everyone at once like they were all simultaneously lit on fire like a burning torch but their chants don't stop, if possible it gets even louder.

The fire spreads from their bodies to the grass below their feet which continues to spread to the trees around them and everything below is on fire.

My mouth is opened wide to scream but nothing comes out, no one can save me.

My body is lifted into the sun it feels like someone placed fire on my skin and it burns!

Suddenly, the ropes holding me to the pole burns and I see myself falling from the sky down to the ground.

I no longer see anything but water instead of the ground that was once on fire. The sea is dark and scary like a storm is brewing within it.

My body hits the water hard.

The force at which I woke up from that horrid dream made me shoot up from the position in which I was laying in only to have my head collide with that of another.

"Owww! Aadya!"

"Oh my Boreas! I'm so sorry?"

"It's alright. Are you OK? You were screaming in your dream and I've been trying to wake you up." Everything I dreamt of came rushing into my mind as they all flashed before my eyes.

Fear courses through my body and it cause me to shiver visibly.

Dion wraps his arms around me while he pats my head but says nothing, he obviously knows it was a very bad dream, one I would much rather forget.

But the more I try to forget, the more the images of my family and people on fire haunts my mind.

"Dion?" He replies with a grunt to acknowledge my call.

"Where is Felicity?" He lets go of me and rests his back against a nearby tree while we both sit on the forest floor facing each other listening to the crickets nearby singing their songs of the night.

From the side view of my eyes, I spot Arcotos still fast asleep and I'm left momentarily wondering how he can still be asleep after all that noise.

I shake my head and I almost smile.

I also notice that we are no longer in the meadow but within the forest and the trees here are very big and thick in width.

They look much bigger than the ones around the castle. This alone tells me that we are nowhere near home.

How did we get here?

"Aadya?" I'm eager for some good news at least but the sad look he is carrying on his face tells me all I need to know.

"She didn't make it." His eyes shift from my face and look at the ground in shame.

"What do you mean she didn't make it? Why would you leave her behind?"

"I didn't want to leave her–"

"Then you shouldn't have!" I'm up on my feet and I use my hands to dust off the dirt from my hair and clothes.

"Where are you going?" He too rises up to his feet but doesn't bother to dust off the dirt from the cloth hanging dangerously low on his hip while his chest is bare and covered in dirt as well.

I quickly avert my eyes from his hip and stare him straight in the eyes with a lot of effort I might add. It's very dark here with very little light provided for us by the stars up above.

"I am going to get Felicity, we leave no one behind, I can't believe you would leave her!" His hands wrap around mine as he stares back into my blue eyes.

"She's gone Aadya." What?

"I don't understand Dion, where did she go to?"

He doesn't say anything to satisfy the questions raging war within my head.

"Answer me, Dion! What happened out there?!"

"Calm down please, I'll tell you just calm down." I hear him release a very heavy sigh and his chest heaves up and down and then bulges outward as he crosses his arm.

I wait impatiently for him to speak.

"When we went back to distract those people, we managed to mislead them away from the direction you went in and when we were trying to find you we ran into another one and I tried to fight him off with the thing I was holding but..." He pauses for too long.

"But what Dion?"

He took in a deep breath and closed his eyes as he recalls whatever happened, "but I wasn't half as good as he and he dislodged the thing from my hand, I had no idea where Felicity was I hoped she ran away." His chest moves up and down quickly and I know he's in distress but I need to know where Felicity is, so I say nothing and wait for him to calm down before I urge him to continue.

"I picked up a big stick that was next to me where I stood and I used it to try to hit him. When he tried to get rid of my stick I lunged at him and tried to beat him but somehow he ended on top of me with his strange sharp object in his hands raised in the air and I knew right then and there I would die."

My hands instinctively fly up to cover my mouth, so I don't make a sound to stop him from finishing what I asked him to tell me.

"I heard Felicity release a war cry and I looked to my side to see her running towards us with the strange object I once carried in my hands, she thrust it into his stomach, and he bled."

OK, they killed the man so where is Felicity, I don't voice out my thoughts so that I don't interrupt him.

"He falls off me but grabs her hand and before I knew what was going on the strange thing he was holding passed through her heart, and she died on the spot."

I can't believe it.

I'm beyond shocked.

Beyond stunned.

I have no words to describe the horrible the feeling that goes through.

"Aadya?" Dion takes a step towards me but I put my hand up for him to not come near me.

The whirlwind of emotions causes bile to rise up to my throat and out my mouth as I heave the night meal I had moments ago but it feels like many years ago when I sat at the food table surrounded by my family eating rice and corn egg soup.