Vampires, drakes, and infidels, oh my.

The first thing I remember upon waking- or, kind of waking- is being able to see when I shouldn't. I was in a box, and it should have been pitch, but I could see, if not well, and there was a voice. It kept telling me to wait, and, not yet, and frankly, I was getting impaitent with laying there.

Then suddanly there was pain and I couldn't see anymore, and the lid was being tugged off my box after I pounded to let anyone outside my box know I was awake and pissed off and wanted out, even if whoever was out there wasn't someone I should let know I was awake. In fact, the person who yanked up my lid turned out to be a very small child who also just happened to be a vampire.

I was, absurdly, not shocked, though I pulled my dagger on her. She pointed and told me that was who I should be fighting.

That turned out to be what looked like another vampire creature made of some kind of brain-matter.

And for one moment I was terrified. I've gotten used to Big 'N Scary things wanting to eat us by this point, and in comparison, this thing, that seemed to be ignoring Ann and I- for I could see Ann, sitting up in a box near mine- for the most part, was about a nine and a half on the Freaky As Hell Count, but not anything that was worse then, oh, I don't know, say for example a giant, half-rotten vampire in the land of the dead, 'gaurded' by other, smaller vampires that looked like that wanted to rape you or eat you or both. Or neither, which is even more freaky.

Frankly, Primov's 'brothers' give me more chills then Primov himself.

No, this thing, as far as I can remember, shouldn't have been anywhere near as mind-blowingly frightening as that ordeal, but I was about twice as frightened as I had been then. And in that moment, the thought I had now makes my stomach tie itself into itty-bitty knots of nausia.

I thought about Damon, and I don't mean wistfully or angrily. I mean, as if I'd not forgotten him. I thought that I had to get out of this and get back to him, because he would have fought like hell to get back to me.

I am just going to sit down and cry. Son of a bitch.

No. Absolutly not. I've made my choice, I've made up my mind, and my subconciouse is not allowed to start confusing me again!

I like that curse, 'son of a bitch'. One can manipulate it to fit any situation, depending on how you speak it.

I have the vaugly disturbing feeling I'll have cause to use it alot in the very near future.

Anyway, up I got my little ol' self and in I charged, Damon or not, fear or not. And when we had the thing, just when we had him- the vampire child apperantly in charge stopped us from killing it. Him. Whatever. It seemed to be a strange matter of honor, of a sorts. I'm sorry, honor is all well and good, but I'm not used to letting something scary and mean walk away.

Not willingly.

But that is what these kids wanted, so we let him go. And the minute he went, so did all thoughts of my husband. The kids took us through the sewers to get us out of the city- and I tell you what, we had a near miss with that little beauty, with all of us playing tug of war with Meyone against this gaint-black tentical THING that grabbed him for a second time and tried to drag him away. We got him back, though, and as we recovered, questioned the kids. We found out that Aveendale had been like this for a long, long time- a city of mindless drones walking around, with very little people who were capible of thinking for themselves but could do nothing about it, terrorized by this black thing that had attacked us- and that was just one of many.

These attack had been the whim of their sire, it turned out, or they were pretty certian, at any rate; and the kid said he'd let the- thing- man- go because it was 'right'. He seemed pretty intense about doing things because they were right.

We said our good-byes, and they slipped back into the city; I found my anger at Meyone for nearly killing himself had spluttered and died out in the time we'd taken to talk to the kids, and the verbal slap I wanted to offer had turned to putty in my mouth. Ah, well, it's Ann's place to repremiand her big, strong body gaurd, anyway.

Oh, that could be taken an entirely naughty direction, if I'd picked a differant way of phrasing it. Allow me to giggle privatly for a moment.

I'm better.

Oh, what? She's allowed to tease me mercilessly and I'm not allowed to return the favor? After the number of poteinally embarressing situations I have suffered through thanks to a certian elf, I am going to milk this for all it is damn well worth.

Anyway, we crept up in the direction those kids had told us to move, and found yet more brainwashed people and gaurds blocking our way out. Meyone thought to bully-boy our way through; Ann and I thought a distraction might be in order. But for now, we went back down to the feild we'd popped out on and slept.

The cows woke us.

The oh. Well, we're just in a lovely bundle of shit now. thought brought me, at least, fully awake.

In the end, it turned out we could use the cows. Ann had the idea to start a stampede, and Meyone and I both took to it instantly.

Sadly, we all got seen.

Strangly, those who had seen us let us go.

We took advantage of our temporary good luck- with us, good things don't last too long- and ran for the hills. We didn't stop until we came upon a small refugee camp of others who had fled from Aveendale, or stopped people from entering. The man there knew very little of Fera or anything we needed to know, really, and was in the long run less useful then more information-wise, but he told us his grandfather was a 'dreamer' as well, and had spoken of this 'stone eye'.

We stayed with these people for the night, and told them- or rather, this man- our ideas and theries regarding the stone eye and Jhonna. I just hope we didn't give them false hope.

None of us know, really, what's going to happen, even if we do figure all this out. And while we're starting to be able to see the picture, it's missing some pretty big chunks and up for interpritation.

We left the next day, pretty damn content with ourselves. We'd gotten out of that mess alive and we, hopefully, had some information for Jhonna. We were nearly to Fera, and with any luck, we'd be gone in a matter of days.

I'm more curiouse then ever to find out more about my little pretty rock after everything that's happened. And yes, I did say 'my'. It wound up in my pack, and while I'm sure that's just how things happened, there's no real reason for it, I'm still a touch possessive of it after carrying it around all this time. My responsibility, just like us winding up on this lovely little dream spot in the first place.

But like I said, good things? Good luck? They don't stuck with us too long. And when we nearly got home free, a dark shadow passed over head- one, I belive Ann said, she'd seen before- and a drake and it's rider swooped down and asked us to play.

And it would have been so rude of us to say no.

So. We get a new arrival, yelling at me in a squeaky voice to 'find the stone eye, the dream is short', and Ann walks through a closed door. Down below, in a previously abanded courtyard and the surrounding, equally abandoned area, is an assload of humanity, and a ship. A very big ship, in fact.

So, down we toddle to explore. Meyone and Ann, it seems, were invisible, but I was fully visible to everyone we met, and exchanged polite nods and such with a few of them. The people actually became visible almost in increments, as if slowly coming into reality from somewhere else, far away. We finnally reached the peir and the ship, and, to my surprise, the man on the peir barking orders not only turned around to face me, he removed his hat and politly bowed. And then he called me 'captian'.

I damn near swallowed my tongue.

After a minute I collected myself and ran with it. At least I was 'captian', that was good, right?

Ann and Meyone, dispit being invisible, prooved to still be very helpful, and I was beyond glad I had at least Ann with me. We saw that the ship in the water was listing badly, taking on water apperantly, and I, subtly as possible, asked what had happened. Asked to recap what happened, as Ann pointed out, becuase then perhaps we could get a better idea of where we did so poorly to almost loose the ship.

Turned out we'd really done nothing. We'd picked up what we needed to from an island a few days away, and when we got nearly to Moonpoint we were attacked by something that damn near ripped the side of the ship off. We had made it to Moonpoint none the less, and the ship should be repaired in a day or so. There wasn't much else this man could tell me, so I told him to give me any news if he found out anymore about what had attacked us, or if anything odd was found on the outside of the ship.

As it turns out, I never got the chance to find out. We headed to the 'first floor', or at least to try and find it, but as we walked time seemed to shift, and suddanly we knew we'd just lost preciouse hours. And suddanly there was an obviouse brawl, and some man in uniform was glaring at me with Intent to Kill, or , if that failed, Seriousely Maim.

Now, once again, I'm very much getting used to people staring at me in just such a manner. I still wanted to duck behind Ann and hide for the first time in a while. When I demanded to know what was happened, he demanded I called him sir. I didn't push my luck.

Turned out the men had been like this, irritable and brawling, just about since we got here. I broke up the fight and demanded to know what had happened. My own men told me the same thing, and then a few remained, after the dust settled. They told me that they thought the 'girl' was the cause for this, that they thought she was the reason tempers had been flaring and they weren't alone in thinking it. I assured them that it would be taken care of, and asked them to just be paitent.

Then we started looking for my room again. We were headed that direction when Meyone heard the music, and moved to a door, opening it without hesitation.

Music, drinking, way, way too many people, and in the middle of it all, a dog. A dog that we had seen just moments before at the back door of this place, standing beside an old man.

Or at least, it looked similar. I got a drink at Ann's urdging and wandered over to the dog, knealing to pet. Through some embaressing circumstances, I found out the dog was mine, but the person holding the leash didn't say a word. Not even when I began to half-way force him from the room.

Or rather, her, as Ann told me abruptly from my left. It took me what felt like years to coax, drag, coherce, lead and beat that wo/man into the hall again, and then, suddanly, s/he/it was in the lead, curtasy of my dog.

Er, the captian's dog.

The dog dragged the poor wo/man down the hall, and I followed after, pleased that at least the dog seemed to know where to go. Because I sure as hell didn't. Too bad I didn't get memories to go with this body, hu?

I'm a little tired of not knowing what the hell is going on with me. Um, sort of.

We came out, after a momentary issue with finding the door from the inside, right where Meyone, Ann and I had pulled up in that little boat. In fact, there was said boat.

Much creepy.

Well, it took my dumbass self long enough to realize that the reason I couldn't get any answers out of this person was because she couldn't understand me. Apperantly, she spoke elvish, which meant I got to play Ann's mouthpeice. And we told her- pretty much- the perfectly honest truth. That I wasn't the captian, I was a 'spirit', just- borrowing his body. That my constant muttering to 'myself'- and I had been- was really to other 'spirits'.

She was remarkably okay with this.

She told us what she could, which was pretty much what we already knew; except for that she was there to make sure the girl we'd picked up and brought on board, name of Catalina, got to a place called Aveendale. Catalina, she said, was a Dreamer. Yes, there was a capital 'D' when she said it. You could hear it in her voice. She said that Catalina didn't know how to control her dreaming, and that she was going there to learn.

And then we realized that making sure Catalina got too Aveendale meant keeping an eye on Catalina, and what had I just done? Dragged her away from her post.

Oops.

So we sent her back to the room we'd gotten her from to find Catalina. Meyone went after her, and Ann and I finally located my room, by getting over my ego and asking.

Inside, the first thing to catch my eye was a huge painting of my dog. Erm, his dog- whatever. An nwent over to inspect it as I wandered over to his drawers, at Ann's suggestion finding the key to them on my hip by looking in a mirror. I unlocked them and found a log and a book- titled the Ghost Hound of Mon Pion. Or, Moon Point, if you're spelling 'Point' in the weird, backwards way some that's actually not weird or backwards at all for this place; 'Point' is even spelled backwards on the building itself. Piont.

I barely had time to page through the log or the book. We were alerted, a second time, to unpleasentries up top. We rushed up to find the world's biggest brawl had set to, everyone, everyone trying to kill one another. Now, normally, I'm not nessicarily against this kind of situation, but all things considered, this was not a good thing. And there was no way of breaking it up. We tried, wadding in among the chaos, but in the end only wound up nearly getting dragged into it ourselves. I encountered the man who had scolded me the first time, who knew I had a girl on this ship, and he went off on me. My crew was to be locked up, he said. As for my 'cargo', well, his men would be happy to escort me- or perhaps he would just get her where she needed to go.

I don't take well to being threatened, or blackmailed, and this jackass had done both in the span of twenty-four hours. I bristled, and only Ann stopped me from responding with my hackles up. I bit down hard on my tounge and made myself walk away.

In the middle of all this, ann went to find Meyone and our woman. As I was trying to work my way through the people, I was approched by the same group of men who had confronted me over Catalina earlier. They asked me if ibelived them about her causing this agression in the men now, and that if I didn't do something to stop it, they would handle her themselves. I tried to talk them down, but I doubted they gave my words more then a passing thought.

It was moments later that Ann and I found Meyone, who frantically waved us over to a room. And inside, we found the man named Pheldon, who Catalina had apperantly been developing an intrest in, Catalina, and the woman with my/the captian's dog. Catalina and Pheldon had clearly been- um, busy, and now Catalina was changing cloths with the elvish woman.

It didn't take much to figure out what was happening here. They were changing places; Pheldon planned on getting Catalina out of here. They were shy and embaressed when I first stepped in, a little defensive and scared, but I soothed them with some help from Ann and they were more then willing to come with me when I told them they couldn't be seen. I told them I could get them off Moon Point safely, and almost begged them not to go to Fera but straight on to Aveendale, even though, as Ann pointed out, I knew I couldn't change the past. This was just mine to experiance, not to interact with.

So, the woman who was meant to watch Catalina told us she would make sure we got away safly- that is, dressed as Catalina, or rather as a woman.

Ann told me to tell her something in elvish, that I later found out was a send-off; she'd pretty much told the woman 'have fun in the afterlife'. Much more eloquently, of course.

And Ann followed her. Meyone and I lead the boy and his love- love?- to the little back door. I got them on the little boat, and as we sent them off, Catalina turned to me. She told me she didn't think it was true what they said- and they, apperantly, said that I was the ghost hound of Mon Pion. Or maybe she meant the dog.

Either way, apperantly she changed her mind when she looked back, because she gasped and paled, and the stone- our amulet, the same one Jhonna wore- glowed.

Meyone turned to me and paled, too, and it took me two prodding tries to get him to tell me what spooked him out so badly. For all intents and puposes, I was what we'd seen pulling up here in our little boat; the man and his dog. And above me, the sign didn't read 'Moon Piont.' It read 'Mon Pion'. Simply the way it looked, due to positioning and light, but still, eery.

And then my little pixie, who'd been with us, fretting, this whole time, went 'pop!' With a final squeak of- what else- the 'stone eye'.

And then the commotion started, and Meyone and I were running.

We came upon a slaughter; a giant black creature had risen up from the sea and was attacking everything and everyone. Meyone rushed in to help and I ran after him, but we didn't stand much of a chance; we were crushed in minutes.

The last thing I remember of that was falling victem to one of those huge tendrils, and then-

-I woke up, and realized I was laying on a rock.

Well owie.

Ann was next to me, spluttering, and Meyone was above us, on the peir. Moon Point was water-less and a broken down ruin once more.

Ann told us she'd seen that woman watching Catalina dragged towards Aveendale by way of the river, and we stood around debating what to do for a few minutes before going back inside.We decided to retreive the book and log that Ann and I had found inside.

We got there - the painting, now, with the silver on it's eyes, claws and teeth, covered in cobweb and such, looked even more like the ghost hound then it had before- and got the books without difficulty, wraping them up gingerly- they were, after all, now very old- and as we turned to leave, we heard a voice demand why, exactly, we were in his room.

We turned to see the old man and the dog that was, undeniably, our hound. We tried to talk him down, tried to prevent a fight, but he attacked. There was a moment of oh fucking shit, we can't defeat- oh, wait, this isn't going as badly as we thought.

Becuase suddanly we were doing- well, alright. At first, we were outgunned. The dog seemed almost not to feel attacks on it, and damn if it didn't pack one hell of a punch, but I pulled the man into the room, away from the door, and suddanly Meyone had tripped him like it was nothing. I took the opening and drove my dagger home. It was almost enough, but in the end, the man and his dog- named Nexus, after the ship, it seemed- ran away.

They ran away from us. I felt much better about our chances of survival. We left the room and I wish, wish we had just left with the books and counted ourselves lucky, but we decided to play heros- isn't that what Ivy told us not to do?- and ended up stummbling upon the body of a little girl. She was in the tower we'd come from, hanging above that brazier, cooked. Like a peice of meat.

Silence fell, and then I felt Meyone's gaze on me. I was already flinching, knowing exactly what was to come. Sure as hell, when he spoke, he was about a half-step away from full out yelling as he demanded that now did I know what happened when you ignored childern laughing in the night?

I didn't answer- I couldn't. I was too busy not trying to make an idiot out of myself by crying or vomiting.

It's one thing to accept that death is your fault. It's another to see a child hanging like that night's supper and think that you could have stopped it.

More silence, and suddanly he was appologizing. He said there was no way this little girl could have come from Fera. Besides, no childern were reported missing.

That didn't help, somehow. It was my turn to appologize, and I did. I also told him he was right. And he was right. I've already admitted that here. I have my reasons for doing what I did, but I never said they were good reasons.

I've not done one fucking thing right since we set foot on this fucking island, and I am getting really fucking sick of looking like a fucking idiot.

We stood around way too long talking about what we should do with the child's body, after Ann inspected her for identifying marks. We got her out of the room, but the moment we did, she just- evaporated.

Meyone, all the while, kept exploding at us, and suddanly just- snapped. He went into a rage, attacking the brazier, along with a hidden side door we'd found but could not open. We realized then he wasn't- entirely himself.

Ann found a tiny little necklace that must have belonged to the girl on the end of Meyone's weapon after his manic attack, and we headed down into the cells below us to see if anymore childern- or bodies- could be found. There were none, but Ann became alerted to a warmth in the floors and walls, and the sound of a heartbeat at the same places. And Meyone found a rattle, a child's toy of sorts. We headed back up, and Meyone lost it once more, determined to get back to Fera now without waiting for morning, dispit the fact that water had started around Moon Point once more.

Freaked out by the ghosts behind us and Meyone's explosive attitude, I agreed we should take out chances.

'Member I said I kept fucking shit up?

Yeah. People need to stop listening to me. Or at least giving in when I whine loudly enough. Seriously, just hit me over the head and shut me up.

Meyone took one step into that water and the black monster from before reached up and slurped him down. Ann and I tried, frantically and in vain, to get him back. The water retreated, some, and we stupidly ran closer, even into it. Ann was snatched away from me next, and then my own feet were yanked out from under me.

The last thing I remember, after being towed for what felt like hours, was looking up to see Ann being wrestled to the earth. Then I was pulled from the water and felt something wrong attach to my skull.

There's not a whole lot I remember after that.