"This isn't working! I have to find another way to deal with this monster," Killey thought.

The squirrel was forcing Killey down the road, making toying swipes at him. Bouncing him from the rock wall on one side of the road to almost over the cliff on the other side with it's tail. Even in the confusion and constant attacks at him, Killey desperately tried to calm his mind and find his focus. He tried to contact his rune in his mind.

"Rune of anger, please! I need for you to make more of those fireballs to toast this monster!" Killey thought.

"All right then, I'll do it. Hum…anger rune. That would be a fitting name for me." The rune responded in his head.

He summoned up a fireball and thew it at the monster. But the fire just could not burn its hide.

"This isn't working."

"Let me try a different angle at this problem then."

Killey felt as if someone was moving his arms down at an angle to the road between him and the giant squirrel. He rotated his arms so that the palms are upward. Fire formed and collected in mid air three feet above his hands into two brightly glowing points. A tight beam of energy shot from those points and sweeped across the ground in front of him; at first nothing happened but the air went silent in anticipation. With out any other warning, the ground exploded up ward like a bomb going off. The force of it threw Killey far down the road and he rolled a little further on.

"Whoa, that was loud." He thought.

He staggered to his feet and almost fell over. Killey's ears were ringing and he almost felt seasick. When his vision cleared up enough, he looked over to where the squirrel was and saw that only a pile of rubble remained.

"He, he. That shows you, you freak! Nothing can get in my way! Ha, ha, ha, ha…ha…ha…oh crap." Killey said.

Killey barely heard a pack of some sort of beings moving out from the underbrush behind him. He uneasily turned to see who they were and found himself staring at a gang of rabbits. White rabbits. Three feet tall, white rabbits that and have learned how to stand on their hind legs. Three feet tall, white rabbits holding sharp axes, hammers, and clubs in their incredibly strong paws. Worst of all, they were making noises that sound much like evil giggling and flashing their sharp incisors.

From behind him, Killey could hear the pile of rubble shift and rumble of the rocks. He quickly looked back and saw the giant squirrel rise up from the impromptu burial. It was a bit banged up, but no worse for wear. Worse yet, it was foaming at the mouth in anger.

"This has got to be a bad dream."

The killer rabbits moved around as to completely block the road away on their side and the rampaging squirrel more or less blocked his side of the road. Being pinned in a situation like this was a very bad place to be in.

"Master, I have an idea. When I give the signal, run off the side of the road." The woman voice said from his weapons.

The blades in his hands began to tug Killey nearer and nearer to the edge of the road and almost over the cliff. The squirrel attention was pulled away from Killey to the gang of killer rabbits while the rabbits realized the giant squirrel in the road ahead of them. Everyone stopped moving as the slow realization that if anyone or it should be said, anything made a sudden move, it would become very messy.

Killey didn't notice this at first, but even though the sun is up and shining, the light levels were going down.

"Blades, are you making it darker around me or what? And what do you mean, run off the side of the road?" Killey thought.

"Yes master, I can produce shadows and affect any type of light's brightness as needed." She responded.

"Well that's all nice and everything, but what good does that do me now that I'm stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea at the present moment!" Killey thought back.

"Well they are not looking at us as much right now, so just hold on tight to me please." She said.

Killey gripped his blades tighter. The stillness in the air on the drakemouth pass was so thick, you could almost feel it. From some where, he couldn't exactly tell where it came from, a twig snapped. What happened was fairly complicated, but it could be generally agreed upon that all hell broke loose.

The Blades moved in Killey's grip so that it pulled him off his feet and off the cliff behind him. As he flew backwards, a rabbit threw an axe at where he once stood. Killey wasn't able to see what was happening up there, but what he could hear was that the rabbits were attacking the squirrel.

The fall was not nearly as high as Killey thought he was. Well at least free fall was short, but then he hit the tree line. The branches were blessively thin so they didn't hurt, but they didn't slow him down either. Falling branches and leaves obscured his vision. Tumbling end over end was helping him to complete the confusion for Killey so that he couldn't tell what part of his body would hit ground first.

"Oh god, I hope the landing won't hurt much!" Killey thought.

The feel of the impact was something completely different than what he was expecting. The jar of the landing was strong, but not that much of a problem. He wasn't in pain either. Being face down, Killey couldn't tell what he landed on, besides lots of dried leaves. But it was soft, warm, and sense it was solid instead of being pudding like consistency, he could rule out animal droppings. It also felt very odd; it seemed to be something like a torso shape with two (rather large) soft bumps on the either side of his face. A disturbing fact he could tell from where his face was at is that it had a reptilian like skin. It smelled faintly of lavender and the crackle of dried leaves filled his ears. When the last bits of his where with all recovered from shock, Killey tilted his head back to see what he landed on. What he saw was truly astounding to him.

The thing he landed on sat up on its elbows and revealed it self to be a human, well, at least a humanoid being. It's skin was like pure gold. It's face and body was a mix of human and draconian features. It was totally unearthly, as that Killey never heard of such a being or a race of beings like this one before. Yet as bizarre are this being was, it was also very beautiful in an exotic sort of way. It gave a slight groan as it opened its cat like eyes to him. He was almost hypnotized by them. They wound up staring at each other for a bit of time in silence that was only broken by the echoes of the carnage being done high above them. Eventually it narrowed it's eyes and gave him a lop sided grin in amusement.

"Are you comfortable now?" It said in a supriseingly feminine human voice.

Now that Killey's brain was back in gear, he realized that the being he landed on was a woman, she was intelligent enough to speak and possibly understand things, and that he had his head was resting his head in the middle of her chest. In a shock, he jumped off of her and whipped his right fist around so that the end of the blade was a less than an inch from her nose. Her expression moved from amusement to fear. She slowly raised her hands up in showing the universal sign of surrender.

"Hold on there. I mean you no harm." She said.

"Yea right. But, there is something about you I can't put my finger on it yet." Killey said.

The feeling he felt before in Tinto came back again when he met Alison and Mrs. Leftwich. The words for what he we feeling were forming in his head on their own. He narrowed his eyes as the thoughts formed in his mind.

"You were the one in the chapel and in Lord Gustav house. You look different now, but it had to be you!"

The woman calmed down and had a look of mild surprise on her face.

"So you could sense me then? What can you detect now?" She said.

Her statement caught Killey off guard as it puzzled him. He stared at her as he calmed his racing mind. From deep inside his brain, he could feel words form as he though about her. The thoughts of Sindar were involuntary bubbling to the surface when he pondered about the dragon half on the ground. A realization ignited in his mind.

"Did Zohar send you? Or are you a Sindar as well?"

She sighed and lowered her eyes, refusing to look at him.

"Now that you have seen the real me, I might as well tell you the truth. I am Achika, a dragon half. My master, Zohar, has sent me to watch over you and over see your progress of your quest. I know I look freighting and everything, but I mean you no harm." She said.

Killey narrowed his eyes at Achika in a mix disgust and frustration. But you couldn't tell what he was feeling on his face. Achika tried to look back at Killey and the blade still at her nose but couldn't return the glare. Subtle movements was betraying her feelings of fear.

"I can't believe that Zohar would stick a tag along on me! I'm not his damn puppet! Hum, I should just kill her and be done with it. No. She's afraid of me. That shows that she is weaker than I am. What ever she is, I have no need to kill her." Killey thought.

He took his blade away from Achika's face and stealthed it. He got up and stepped away from her to give her space to stand up as well. She hesitated in moving, but slowly sat up. She picked twigs and leaves out of her purple hair and off her simple leather outfit with her long tail. As Achika stretched out her wings, she yelled out a mewling sounding roar and collapsed to the ground.

"What's wrong?"

"My wing! Oh Goddess, it HURTS!" She said with tears of pain forming in her eyes.

Killey looked over her body and noted that a long bone her right wing was as at a sharp (and no doubt painful) angle. He walked around and crouched down to take a better look at it.

"Looks like you broke that wing cleanly."

He turned to look her in the eyes again. She looked back at him with tears running down her face and clenching her jaw. It was that look again, that look of innocent helplessness. Killey would never admit it, but that look got to him. Of all the hard knocks in his life, of all the reasons that would make any other person completely cold hearted, he still had a soft side. A woman, be it human, elf, those bird folk strangely called wingers, and now even this dragon half, who was in distress he just had to help them. He just chalked it up to being too nice for his own good.

"Hold still now, I'll splint it and put some medicine on it." Killey said.

"'ank u." Achika said though clenched teeth.

Gathering the sticks and cloth to splint her wing was easy. She only gave out a low growl when Killey set her wing bone. As he was applying the medication after tying the final tie on the splint, a badly mauled body of one of those killer rabbits landed in a sickening splat on a bolder several feet away. Both Killey and Achika looked at it and remembered about the savage battle still going on over head.

"We need to get out of here before they remember I'm down here." He said.

"Yes, I know of better way out of here. We just have to continue along the valley bottom here. We'll get into the Two River section of Muse from here on."

"And from there, Muse's capital its self." Killey said.

He helped Achika up and made sure she could walk on her own before gathering up his bags. Achika strangely was not carrying anything except the cloths on her back.

"It's about time we get out of this mad house." He said as they slipped into the under growth onto a hidden path, Killey taking point.

"Yes. Oh and Killey, thank you for helping me."

"Z'all right."