Chapter 1

✩~✩

The thief was a woman in her early thirties.

The path before her was clear and spacious enough; tiled floor extending down to the road to her house. Her breathing grew heavy, and her pulse quickened as her short legs trotted forward. She dared not turn to look back.

She was with a goal and one goal alone. To make it home before it's way over to her.

The wind whistled a soft tune to her ears and she could feel her heart racing. The tips of her medium length brown hair cascaded down her shoulders. With the stolen item in her left hand, she held the treasure carefully, making sure it didn't fall from her hand.

Swinging both arms back and forth to increase the speed of her motion, R. B ran as fast as she could.

The image of her brown bungalow could be seen now as she made it close to her house. Just a few long steps forward and she could finally brag that--

Crash!

With a loud bark, the big hefty beast pounced on her, it's heavy weight bringing her flat to the ground.

"No, nooo!" were the last words that emitted from her lips before the moisty saliva landed on her nose, mouth and eyes as the golden retriever showered her one of its common affectionate series of dog kisses, barking subsequently as it wiggled it's tail wiggled in excitement. "Eww, stop it Dora. Stop!"

With several attempts to push the furry beast off her, she lowered her face down, avoiding contact with its long tongue.

"Dora stop it, come on. I get it, you won. Here," she struggled to bring the red shiny ball in her hands, and threw it as far as she could. "Alright girl, fetch!"

As soon as the dog fell for her distraction, she rose up to her feet and darted forward to escape from the overexcited furry friend.

Hopefully, she would arrive inside before her other nemesis got to her...

"R. B!"

'Holy Crap!" cursed R. B. Standing in the center of two arch nemesis in her game with her arms akimbo, she felt defeated. To her right, Dora was seen to have already been making its way back to her with the shiny ball in its mouth, and to her left, the owner of the furry dog and her friend, Ashley, was now trudging forward to meet her. "Holy crap! I am such a loser," she said slowly in a tone that slowed like she sang out her words. "Again!" She yelled out, not directing her frustration to anyone in particular.

The aim of the pointless game had been to prove that Ashley had gotten a good dog and not wasted money as R. B had said to her one week ago. And every time, through various challenges, R. B had always lost one way or the other.

She was a lawyer and she had to make her point by backing it up with evidence. Too bad she lost to Ashley and Dora all the time.

With disappointment written all over her acne face, she muttered under her breath just loud for anyone who had been near her to hear.

A word she used quite often whenever she felt astonishment, disappointment or even just a slight anger.

"Typical."

✩★✩

"You really should be alone now preparing for your next big case," Ashley advised her friend. Her big brown eyes shone vigorously on R. B, trying hard not to break their staring contest.

R. B let out a choked cough. "I will." She said, rushing her words. "I am one hundred percent ready actually."

"You better be. This case is going to redefine your entire career path as a lawyer." Ashley commented. "You are going to be rich."

"And famous." R. B added impatiently, her brown eyes still wide open.

Dora was playing somewhere outside while Ashley and R. B sat opposite to each other in R. B's room. The purpose of their staring contest had been Ashley's idea, stating that whoever lost would pay for their dinner.

Ashley was married with two boys, but since her boys were at a boarding home, and her husband was on a business trip at the other end of the city, she was all alone. Cooking would be boring and thus, came the idea of their contest. And it was so obvious that R. B was always completely disastrous whenever she tried to cook, so she never even bothered again.

Both girls had been friends since high school, and the fact that they had still been in touch for over eighteen years of their friendship was considered a blessing to the two friends.

Finally, R. B was the one to break the contest by blinking. "Holy crap! Why am I such a loser?" She whined and Ashley gave a satisfying grin.

Ashley was two years younger, and two times more prettier—according to R. B.

The long black and silky hair she had tried so hard to grow over the years was something Ashley possessed naturally as she claimed that from her tribe in India, long hair was a must for them. Then there was the issue of her effortlessly flat tummy and slender physique she did little work to maintain.

There was no gym class R. B hadn't registered to lose some of her flabby flesh, though Ashley always teased her, claiming she had to be patient enough and following the fitness program for a week or two, and then giving up later was probably not going to help.

But R. B was thankful for her successful career. It wasn't huge yet, but things were about to change once she won the big case she had in the next sixteen hours.

"Fine, I'll go order some pizza." R. B frowned, then lazily rose up.

"Outta girl," Ashley smiled. "Where are you going?" She asked when she saw her friend heading towards the living room.

"My phone. I left it in the living room." She replied and her friend mouthed an; "oh".

On her way to the entrance to get her phone, she paused, accompanying a thought. Then she turned back to face Ashley. "How about I cook?"

Ashley did not hear her clearly. "You want to cook? Are you for real? Your kitchen has been lacking the heat in like, what? Ten years now?"

R. B rolled her eyes. "It's only been six months. It's not that long."

Ashley sat up straight. "Okay, so what would you prepare? You don't even have any ingredients!"

"Yea yea, I know. But, I'll always find something to make. Uh, how about...uh, well," there was nothing on her mind, a fact well known to both she and Ashley. "Whatever. But you know, I'm suddenly feeling like burning some weight. I really am in for the burn! How about I make some toast?"

"Toast? Burn some weight by making a toast? Girl you must be high. You know what, just order some pizza already. I'm starving."

"Why do you have so little faith in me, child?" R. B said in a medieval accent. "I really want to cook."

"You have a big case in the next--"

"--yea I know. Next twenty or twenty five hours."

Ashley's eyes widened. "Sixteen hours, you moron! How can you be so incompetent? How'd you even graduate law school?"

"Ha ha, very funny." She rolled her eyes. "Of course I knew that. The sixteen hours part and not the incompetent part, you know."

"Whatever." Ashley rolled her eyes, then stretched forward to reach her phone on the far end of the bed, and began dialing a number.

R. B sighed loudly. "Come on, Ashley. Trust me, let me cook. I'll prepare whatever it is that you want."

"Can you prepare pizza?" Asked Ashley in a sarcastic tone.

R. B shot her a scary frown. "Seriously? You know what, I'm going straight to the kitchen to whip you a... well, something to eat, right now."

"That's it, I'm ordering pizza already."

✩★✩

It was raining, and the thunder was booming furiously. Droplets of rain pattered across the glass window, the faint tapping consoling R. B that she wasn't alone.

The night was calm and serene, and there was a comforting coolness in the air. The rain seemed to follow a pattern, carrying the sound of the wind along with it whenever there was a slight change of its motion.

The lawyer was in another world. A world filled with wonders of nothing but impossibilities.

A talking dragon, a village where the lots of them were supernatural beings with magical powers, a legendary hero who they called the Protector. Sometimes it felt nice to get lost in a whole new universe where the obvious impossibilities became a common occurrence.

That night, she was visiting a castle known as the High Realms, where divine beings who were known to have been the very founders of mortals, dwelled.

The whole kingdom was in fact a heaven on Earth, although, R. B was beginning to doubt she was still on Earth. How she had gotten there had still been a mystery. But there she was.

Vibrant color gave the atmosphere a soft warmth sensation, and the entire vicinity was brimming with celestial grace. Instantly, the powerful feeling of tranquility surged through her whole body, empowering her with a divine nimbleness. What was that feeling?

As her foot reached the entrance of the mighty gates leading to the throne room of the spiritual beings, darkness came.

It wasn't an alerting kind of darkness, rather, one that brought her mind to peace.

Every night R. B got to the final volume of the story, something happened. Since she was eight years old, when her mother read the book to her before she passed away, R. B's mother never had the opportunity of to telling the end of the tale.

Then as she grew up, she read the book and for months she would stay up all night, reading through every passage, carefully observing each scene like she too had been a character from the novel. And once it got to the ending, R. B would skip through the it, then find herself starting the book all over again like she had never read it before.

Ashley had once told her that the only reason she skipped through the final volume was because she was afraid it would all end. Because she didn't want to lose her mother permanently, since she was the one who had introduced her to the novel in the first place.

And maybe she was not entirely wrong.

That night, her eyes closed tight and drifted into a new era—to slumberland.

She thought she was asleep, until the dream began.

She was up in her room, jumping down the bed not too long after her alarm had woken her up. However, there was another of her as well still laying in bed, sleeping peacefully.

But she was up. Yet she could see herself still lying on the bed. R. B being certain that she went to sleep all sobered up the night before, began to grow worrisome.

She had a big case in the next three hours and there she still was, sleeping like a baby.

Just out of the blue, for a split second, the image of a young lady with orange hair and a set of strange combinations of eye color; pale blue and gray, flashed before her like a hologram.

Then the ground opened up its wide mouth and swallowed her whole.