An eerie appearance took the horizon as a dark figure drifted across the ocean at a breakneck speed. An icy path froze directly below as Vega as the figure flew above the waters.

It wouldn’t be long now. Soon Vega would find Narice- and then it would fulfill its final given task.

---

Narice scanned the beach as they landed on the island. inwards from the beach - trees filled a hillside and it took on the shape of a forest.

Many sounds from animals sounded through the trees- the water was a clear blue-green. Little hermit crabs dug into their holes. Coconut palms tilted down against the edge of the forest. While they didn't intent to stay for long- perhaps they could take an extended break and sleep here. As the island was quite beautiful- it would be a shame not to make the most of it.

“Man guys... i apologize,” Nick spoke. Narice noticed that Nick certainly seemed inadequate- perhaps with the feeling of holding the group back by being sick on the ship so easily.

"It happens," Narice replied, "If it happened to one of us- we'd expect you to do the same."

"Right..." Nick replied.

The group was very considerate to Nick's plight- not even paying any mind to the exchange between the two.

“I’ll go and catch some stuff,” Johna spoke with confidence.

“I'll get some plant items," Tala spoke.

Nick began to pick himself up from his unstable motion sickness, "I'll try and get something too."

Narice put some thought into it,

“Eh- Nick- just relax here for now. I'll go and do fishing…” Narice spoke, he thought it would be entertaining to add on a task, "by the way- whoever gets the most food for everyone... gets first pick of the food."

The team nodded in assent and Narice split up from the ground towards a different part of shore.

Narice looked at the ocean. He crafted himself a sort of spear using a stick and his sword to sharpen it. He'd had some experience growning up fishing a bit.

He was actually decent- as it was common for his family to go fishing to provide meals. He wondered if he'd still be good at it though.

He waded into the shore and looked for a spot with more sealife.

—

Meanwhile, Tala and Jonah walked towards the forest together- it was decided that it would be easier for them to work together rather than separately. On a side note- whatever things they got would be credited to whoever noticed it in the first place.

“So Jonah,” Tala spoke sincerely, “How do you really feel about the wizards?”

“Hmm?” Jonah responded- ill-equipped for the question.

Tala continued his thoughts, “How do you condone a society that literally imprisons your parents."

Johna replied with a sad-smile, “My parents were fools- they should never taken on the challenge."

It seemed that their father wanted a means to provide for the other two -so he bet their lives on a dual in exchange for housing. In the end the father and mother lost and Jonah was given up for adoption as they were imprisoned.

Tala was quiet in response- picking up random vegetables from the forest with ease.

"How do you do that?" Jonah responded looking at the amount of food already gathered by Tala.

Tala responded, "the wild has a lot of life to offer you ust only respect it and take care of it- and it will give you what you need."

Jonah was conisderate- it seemed that he came from a more elite part of society and stilll seemed humble as he gathered information from Tala treating him with respect as an elder with a lot to learn from. He seemed intent to gain as much information as possible- like a sponge of sorts. It could be said he was a model student.

In response- Tala was more than happy to give him said information.

“This plant is good…” Tala picked out a spikey looking plant and putting it into his knapsack.

Johna kept looking around with open eyes for different fruits and such eventually finding a red juicy looking berry.

As he was about to pick it, “that one is dangerous.”

“Really?”

“Yeah… if you eat that, you’d probably feel quite unwell, even to the point of becoming incapacitated for a couple hours.”

It seems that looks could be deceiving.

–

Nick honestly didn’t think he’d catch much. He’d be happy to get a squirrel or something. However, he wanted to prove that he was worthy of being a member of the group, despite his upbringing.

Thankfully, he was skilled at keeping quiet due to his attunement to water. It made his motions fluid and swift.

Initially he heard only the insects, but more intently he heard a caw.

Upon looking closer to the direction of the sound he noticed different colorful fowl.

And then… he looked through the bushes and saw some sort of elk in a clearing carefully working on some leaves. He started inching towards it.

—

Alongside the coast, Narice made a makeshift spear and net from the supplies. He wanted get a bunch of fish if he could. He stood in the waters and ended up spearing a few and setting them aside.

The net worked after a little while and by the middle of his fishing experience he’d already caught a bit more afterwards. From there he intended to catch a few other critters and then call it a day.

Along the coast in the distance he could see the horizon come to a close and some sort of fog that kind of blurred up the landscape.

The fog became clearer as the appearance of a hooded figure flying over the waters raced towards the island. In fact, it scared even him a little. He picked up the spear from the waters and backed up towards the island.

He braced himself for the confrontation ahead as the hooded figure approached closer to the edge of the island. When it came upon him it spoke.

“Well. We can fight if you want to,” the hooded figure said as he noticed the spear in Narice’s hand. It snapped its fingers and the surrounding area suddenly became still- as if frozen in time.

Narice looked around- somehow relaxing.

“It’s beautiful…”

“Why, thank you,” the hooded figure said.

Narice looked at the figure as it stepped onto the land.

Narice backed up a bit to prepare for whatever this entity was planning as it stepped onto land.

He tried to pinpoint where he knew the figure from. Ah yes.

“You’re the wizard- Vega”

“Ah yes, let me introduce myself…” While it lifted up its hands, Narice prepared for the worst. He thought about all the counters he had to huge spell casters such as this. But instead of taking a fighting stance, Vega took its hands to its hood.

“Some call me Vega,” the hooded figure took off its cloak to reveal a beautiful dirty blonde blue=eyed girl around his own age.

Certainly not what he was expecting, and then he came to a realization. The whole conversation had been in his own language!

“But to you, I’m can actually be the ancient, Elera.”

---

Wait- What?!

He was awestruck. Not only was this masked figure not an underworld creature, it was a girl. And not only a girl, but it was the same beautiful girl from his vision.

“Uh…”

She then clenched a hand near her belly, “I’m hungry…” she spoke.

“Um…” It took him a bit to grasp what was in front of him.

“Yeah... air travel takes a lot out of you,” she sighed- relaxing her posture a bit.

He looked at the path of ice directly covering her travel on the ocean. It made sense that it took up a lot of energy to fly like that.

He looked down at his net and a few fish he’d caught with his spear, “Well, i do have some stuff…but i was saving it for when the group got back… how about this -I’ll let you get first dibs.”

The others would just have to suck it up.

“Ok!” she said happily. She got in ready-mode to help him set up the campfire and other things.

“Uh, so where did you come from?” Narice spoke, trying to strike up a conversation.

“I’m from the guardian council,” Elera responded.

Narice was shocked again. So it DID exist- after all this it was real?!

She continued, “Actually they sent me to have you join us..”

He wasn’t sure what to think about that. How did they know what he was trying to do?

“How did you know that I wanted to join?”

“Huh? I’m only doing this because there was a prophecy about it,”

“What was ‘it’?”

“A way to counter the dark.”

“My father said I’m immune to a lot of magic…”

“I believe there is more to it…” she said setting down the objects that she got ready for the group, “let me test something…”

“Ok.”

She lifted up her hand and around him a great force began to exert itself on his being.

She began to explain as she put more effort into it –

“A standard Aqayan would probably have this much strength,” the landscape turned a frozen tundra already again but it was continuing to change, “but the element’s strength is attuned to personal relationship and understanding of it.”

Suddenly the force became more intense as he felt pressure emit on his core. It felt like the gravity itself began to surge upon him.

His eyes began to droop as his body began to weaken to the chill. He was about to slip unconsciousness.

It was too much!

“You need to defend yourself!”

This was a lesson. He felt a little bit of something inside himself fighting to stay up – like a little ball of light wanting to remain and fight back the suppressor.

Suddenly the cold began to wane as the ball grew and pushed the cold and pressure.

Around him the ball grew until it surrounded his whole body- then it stayed there.

She still held up her end- exerting as much or maybe even more pressure-

Narice felt the warmth coming from the core and walked up to the girl and put his hand out till it touched hers.

For a moment she looked at him while their fingers touched and she moved her hand back.

“Okay, that’s enough for now,” she let down her arm and the cold ceased.

The aftermath of the experience was extreme in the least. A torn up beach, slowly dissolving ice, and a peculiar path of untainted land that stretched from where he walked along to get to her.

“You have something else in your core.”

She laid on the ground exhausted.

His light dissipated and he sat down with her.

“So what do you want to know about?”

“Everything!” Narice responded abruptly, then noticing her exhaustion, “Hm…” he thought, then spoke, “how did you make the dreams?”

“You mean the one with the warning about the wizards?”

“You also told me to meet you in the tree of time… uh about that to… ”

“Wait- no I didn’t, or… hm…” she paused and then slowly got up, “maybe I haven’t told you …yet…”

“Uh,” Narice wasn’t really sure how it worked, “Anyway- the plan was to figure out where to get the last stone.”

“Right, I bet the finder points to the tree…right?”

Narice shook his head in agreement.

“I can help you get to the tree,” she said.

“Okay,” Narice spoke in happy to have her assistance.

They both took a chance at a breath in a peaceful moment.

–

Tala and Johna came back first. Initially they were both talking together not really paying attention to the campground. It seemed they had a slew of different foods in a small satchel and a shirt-made bag between the both of them.

“We decided that we would-” Talasaid looking up. “Oh… hello.”

“Yeah we were going to split the amount fifty-fifty.” Johna said not realizing the reason for Tala stopping.

He looked up, “so…” he paused, “…oh, hi.”

“Hi,” Elera responded with a small wave.

“Who’s the girl, Narice?”

All of the sudden, they heard a shout, “I got the biggest!” Nick said joyfully running across the beach. Slung across his shoulders was a wild elk looking animal.

Nick ran towards the group where he proudly placed the elk in front of the group not realizing until a moment after.

“Uh…”

Narice interjected, “guys, this is Elera, the girl from my dream, and sorry, but Elera’s getting first dibs…lady’s first, good job Nick.”

“Of course,” Tala said.

“That’s fine,” Johna looked a bit upset.

“Wow,” Nick was awestruck still looking at her, "nice dream."

—

They were all eating together.

“So, this girl from your dreams- huh?” Nick spoke. “You never told us how pretty she was.”

Narice smiled and tilted his head down a bit.

“Hey… he’s turning red,” Nick spoke.

“Anyway, where do you come from?” Tala spoke.

“Err… I lived with my dad while he was on the council.”

“Where’s that at?” Nick responded.

“Uh, I’m not allowed to say, sorry.”

“Do you have any sisters?” Nick said.

“I had an older brother…”

“Hm…”

“What happened?” Tala spoke.

“Well… he died in an accident when I was four…”

“I’m sorry.” Tala spoke.

“It’s ok…”

“I had a sister once…” Narice said.

“What, you never told us that!” Nick interjected.

Tala turned curiously to Narice, Johna even looked up from his gloomy look.

“It’s not a story I really like to tell; her name was Airi. She was cute, she was pretty curious and energetic…” he paused for a bit reflectively, “Ka’atra killed her… along with the rest of my family. I guess she would be around my age now,” Narice mused seeing as how he’d been sent to the future by five years or so.

Everyone looked pretty grim.

After a moment of silence- the tension thickened.

Elera tried to break the silence, “uh wanna see something?”

"Sure?"

She started floating and making a little ice circle around herself that spun in a sort of spherical design. Followed by transforming completely.

“Ooh,” the team was impressed. It was quite beautiful.

She sat back down after she was done, after which the rest of the team all did their separate tricks and abilities, Nick showed off some card tricks that he did with a pack of cards he’d brought. Tala pulled out an instrument from his sack and sang an old song. Johna did some acrobatic stuff with the wind jewel that he had. Narice showed off some of his sword skills flicking away anything thrown at him by cutting it with his sword.

They ended up all laughing and sat back down in a circle around the fire pretty relaxed.

Tala got up, “I’ll be back.” and walked off.

As Johna and Nick were in a casual conversation, Elera leaned in and whispered to Narice, “uh, i have to talk to you soon,”

Narice looked at her intently, “ok.”

“Excuse us,” Narice said to the two still at the fire.

“Uh, ok,” Nick returned. Johna nodded from his leaned position in the sand.

Elera walked ahead of Narice into the edge of the jungle.

Elera started, “Is Johna a wizard?”

“Yeah,” Narice spoke… “I wanted to tell you about him but it was hard to find the right time. Initially we weren’t going to but the wizard council kind of insisted we have one of theirs to protect the wind jewel.”

"It's 100% that he's working with K'atra...” she replied.

This sort of news was certainly integral.

"Is there anything you suggest we do?"

"We'll leave him on the island tonight."

Suddenly a voice was heard from behind the two,

“Oh you will, will you?”

Narice turned to see Johna with a group of wizards surrounding the two.