I heard a noise out in the hall. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. I still felt really tired and thought that it must be really early. I raised my arm and sent a thought to the device on my hand. It made a noise and a little light flashed.

Then a projection was brought up and it read; "JAN16-2090 03:08:53". I wonder what's making that noise so early. I rubbed the back of my head, rubbing my hair. I got up from my bed and looked around my room a bit. It was dark and everything was quiet.

I walked over to the door that leads outside into the hall of my room. I passed some furniture that had various items on them, some turned off lamps, some digi-cubes, a pitcher and a glass of water, and a small framed picture of a red-haired woman, a small child with blue eyes and brown hair, and even shorter girl with short black hair, she had her eyes closed. She was rustling up the hair of the child and she smiled happily, the boy was laughing delightfully.

I picked up the photo and looked at it, ran a finger over the image of the little girl, I could feel my heart drop remembering what happened to her. It was about a year ago. Me and my party took on a quest and were dispatched to the red forest.

I could still remember it all and could feel how it all felt, the air and the people I was with. I closed my eyes and brought myself back to the place. I remembered the red leaves that would fall softly around the air, the trees would be a very brilliant maroon colour, and I can understand why it is one of the 10 wonders of the world.

"Hey! Could you stop fooling around! We're on a job you know!" A voice snapped from behind me.

I opened my eyes and looked over my shoulder, it was a girl with long black hair and she wore a red and white uniform. There was our crew emblem embroidered into the shoulder of her top. She had a katana strapped onto her back, it looked really skilfully made. The girl had a serious expression on her face. Her black eyes cut through me like the blade on her back.

I flinched at her look. I rubbed the back of my head and gave out a sigh.

"You don't have to be so serious Kiru." I gave a distressed sigh again. I straightened out my black cloak. I started walking towards her, and as I did I could hear the leaves crunching under my feet. Everything about this place was so relaxing. I looked up at the girl again.

"It's not like we found the thing yet. It's been quiet the whole time." I complained to her.

"That doesn't change the fact why we're here. Don't forget, the mission comes first." She waved her finger around as she said that in a very mighty tone.

I groaned at her. We were sent here to find and kill something that was disturbing the peace, or something like that, I wasn't really paying attention to the briefing. Kiru would probably smack me if she found out I wasn't listening again.

We continued walking back to our small camp which we set up just awhile ago. It had a small campfire in the middle with something roasting on it, and there were our 4 tents that were set up. It was enough for each of us.

Sitting by the fire was a large tanned guy wearing a white and tank top, and a blue and black cloak, emblem clearly on the front pocket of his torso. He smiled and waved at us. On his fists were knuckles of some sort, they seemed heavy and I'm not sure what they were made of, but they seemed specially made.

"Where have you two been? We're already cooking the food!" He laughed very heartily.

Sitting beside him was a girl much smaller than he was. She wore a pure white cloak that seemed a little too big for her to be wearing it, she held her head down and I couldn't really get a good look at her face. She looked a little shy. I can understand that considering she is the newest member of the group after me.

"Hey Vuldgur, how's Kuro holding up?" Kiru asked from across the campfire. Hands on her hips, she seemed as concerned as I was. She must be really nervous to be on her first job.

Vuldgur looked over to his right and observed the girl sitting beside him. She shuffled uncomfortably. He laughed after looking at her for a bit, and ruffled up her hair. She seemed shocked at the gesture and jumped up in surprise.

"Don't worry bout' it, she's just a little tense is all, nothing to worry about." He grinned widely.

He can come a bit strong sometimes, but I'm sure she doesn't really mind, after all, she did say she was really happy to join the group, and she made quick friends with everyone.

After that, she looked and she stared at me. I could see her face clearly now, under her black hair, her face gave a very soft and curious look, her green eyes shone brightly. Though she was very shy, her spirit was all that mattered right now and she was happy.

After blushing at her looking up at me, I smiled contently at her. It's fine if she's nervous, after all, we can all work together to be the best team there is. Kiru and I sat down on the logs that were lying around.

After we all ate and talked happily, we went about our search around the forest. It was a tiring search, we looked everywhere, we scoured the inside of yawning cave, and it was just filled with bats and giant cave frogs, not much to say about it.

We got drenched looking for it at the golden lake, Vuldgur ended up falling inside and we had to get him out of there, which would have been easier to do that if we hadn't angered all of the sprites and water pixies that lived there. Even Kuro had to step in to help us, she managed to bring down all the sprites using ice lances, but she ended up freezing the entire lake accidentally.

When we were finished defrosting it completely, we even went up to crimson peak, the massive dormant volcano there.

It was absolutely exhausting climbing that thing, the amount of Treants encountered was crazy. But after all that, we managed to reach the peak. The air at the top was fresh and it was amazing taking it all in, it was so tall that the pink clouds were just in reach. This place really was is a magical place to be. At the crater of the volcano lived a massive dragon-like monster, it was long and the red and yellow scales matched the environment perfectly, of course we didn't really want to deal with that right now so we noped out of there.

We returned to the camp when it was already really late. The sky was dark and the stars were out and shining very beautifully, it looked amazing, because the atmosphere here changed the light from outside places, so from here the stars looked like they shined bright violet light. It was no doubt one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

We all went to bed after a very uneventful day, the only reason we chose to do this job was because it had a very high pay. 200,000 gilets in cash was something that we didn't see that often. We didn't want to turn down this too good to be true offer. We'd probably have better luck tomorrow. I went to sleep inside my tent and I could hear the calm serenity of the outside, it was peaceful.

I could feel my eyes start to fall and I fell asleep.

I opened my eyes to a completely strange place. It was a dark violet void with fragments of purple ground floating around. It was strange and didn't seem normal at all, even I was floating around in the void. But even so, I didn't feel fear.

I looked around even more and noticed that it was like space, because of all the stars that was around, they were all so nice to look at. It was really relaxing to be here. Just then I had the urge to turn around, and when I did, I saw something.

It was like a person, sitting on one of the massive chunks of ground, she was wearing all white, then I saw something else, she had a tail and wings. She turned and looked at me smiling, she even had horns.

Who- or what, is that?

Then I heard her voice, like she was right behind me.

"Hello, Cameron."

I sat up in my bed, it was a dream? I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and I was sweating a lot, what was that just now? Was that a demon? It was strange, but I felt like I knew her, she seemed too familiar for me not to know.

"Luna." I said aloud for some reason.

Wait, who's Luna? That name seemed just as familiar. It was at the back of my mind, I've met her before somewhere, a really, really long time ago. I could have tried to remember harder but my thoughts were pulled back into reality when I heard Kuro scream from the outside.

I immediately got up and grabbed my silver lance that was lying beside my tent. I got outside and looked around, there was a full moon out, and it was so bright, I ended up staring at it for longer than I thought.

I heard another scream and started running through the forest, it would have been pitch black out here, but because of the moon and these strange floating golden lights were around I could see well enough, the lights were like fireflies except they were made up of some kind of strange energy. The life of the forest was very much awake and I could feel everything looking at me as I ran through it all.

I made it to a wake and I couldn't believe what I was looking at, Vuldgur was lying on the ground, surrounded in blood, I think he was dead. As I stared in horror at the body of my friend.

I looked around and saw Kiru on the ground, she was crawling as she held her abdomen with her hand, and she was also bleeding a lot. Then I saw the thing that caught me off guard the most, it was a massive wolf, bigger than any wolfbeast I've ever seen in my life, maybe even twice as big, there's no way that's an ordinary monster, it stared at me with eyes full of anger.

This must be the monster we're looking for. I rushed over to Kiru to start tending to her wounds, she looked up at me, face filled with agony and pain. She held out her hand in a stop gesture.

"No! You have... you have to go help... Kuro..." She was gasping and coughing blood. After she said that she fell onto the floor. I froze in place at the realization. I looked back at the monster and saw that beside it was another beast, it was smaller than the wolf I was looking at awhile ago. It was dead.

Then the monster turned around again and I could see Kuro sitting down on the ground, and leaning on a tree, she was hurt and unconscious. She opened her eyes slowly and spoke.

"Ca-cammy? I... I'm sorry." She started crying.

Just then the massive beast grabbed her in its massive mouth. I yelled out.

"Kuro! No!" I grabbed my spear and prepared myself to fight, but before I could get to it, a swirling purple void-like portal opened up behind it, and it turned around carrying Kuro.

"Cameron! Help me!" She cried out in its mouth. The massive beast jumped through the portal before I could do anything, but as it did, I managed to throw my spear and it struck its back, but it still managed to escape.

The portal closed right after I hit it.

It was quiet now. The stillness of the forest was all that was left. There was nothing here except the moon and me. Kuro is gone, Vuldgur and Kiru are dead.

And now, I'm all alone.

~~~~~~~~~~

Yo, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. If you did or did not, go ahead and leave a post, I'll be happy to respond to any questions or concerns you have about the story.