I had no knowledge of the type of path that I was now on, but I did now that there was no turning back for me.

I looked around for any sign of the green fog, that would normally encircle me by now, but it was nowhere to be found. There was nothing but darkness. Then little lights began to appear on the ground, starting at my feet and leading off into the distance. I only saw about nine lights before they disappeared into the darkness. Thinking that this was part of my test I followed the lights.

I found step close to, but not one the lights, and when I got to, what I thought was the end, more would appear.

I followed these hundred plus lights until the path ended. I stood there looking around to see where I was, or why the lights led me to where I was, but there was nothing around. It was as if I never followed the light.

Just then the scene in front of me began to slowly light up. The scene was enchanting. In front of me was a crystal clear waterfall with snow white mist rising from the bottom. It was surrounded by mint green grass, which had just been freshly cut, and above it all was a light blue sky without a single cloud in it. I could smell the freshly cut grass, the crashing of the water and even though there weren’t any to be seen I swear I could hear bird singing in the distance. It all reminded me of the last holiday I took with my family before they both died in an accident.

I reached my hand to touch the scene but it got stopped by a layer of glass. I could no longer hear any noise, I could only watch the waterfall move and the wind blow across the grass. The scene began to fade into blackness, and the only thing I could see at the end was my reflection against the glass. My long red hair was cut short and dyed black. My eyes had dark makeup surrounding them and my skin looked ghost white. My lips had a bright red colour on them, I was dressed in a tight black out and I had knee high black boots on. I did not look like myself but somehow this new reflection showed my true self. I made a small smile and then turned around to look away from the glass.

But when I did I saw Linley standing there, frozen like a statue. On his face I could see that he was ready to fight if I made a single move towards him.

“Linley?”

He turned his head, as if trying to figure out who I was. Then he looked down trying not to make eye contact with me.

“Linley it’s me.” He still didn’t look up, so I thought that I would help him out. “It’s Jasmine.”

He looked up and started to look up and down me, trying to find something that represented my old self. But alas he couldn’t find anything. “Jasmine…What happened to you?”

“I gave into my dark magic.”

He stepped up to me, grabbed my shoulders and as he shook me he said, “Why would you do that?”

“I realized that I was more powerful when I used my dark magic.”

“Of course you are, that’s what dark magic is more power with little to no effort. That is why I wanted you to train your light magic so that you would have that power, if not more, after learning how to properly control it.”

“But thanks to you and your training, I can properly control it.”

“As long as you know what you have gotten yourself into, there is nothing else I can say.”

I turned around to ponder what Linley was telling me. But once again light began to slowly turn on behind the glass. Revealing an army of dragons with people in armor riding them standing on short rocky cliff. I felt scared and slightly terrified that I would have to face them. Nevertheless, I quickly remembered that there was glass between me and them. In moments they would fade away, like the waterfall, and I could return to talking with Linley. ‘Any moment now…Any moment now…Any moment now…Why weren’t they disappearing?’

I spun on my heels to look at Linley with fear covering my face.

Linley could see the scene too, and just like me he had a worried look on his face. “JASMINE LOOK OUT!!!!” He jumped at me and wrapped himself around me as we hit the ground; hard. Inches away from Linley’s head fire was blown.

The fire was so hot that I could feel it burn against my face. When it stopped Linley stood up and yanked me off of the ground, so that I was standing up.

We looked at each other and in agreement we faced the army and ran at full speed, to fight them to the death. The army began to charge at us as well. As they flew across the dark sky the dragons blew blazing fire at us while the people on their backs shot arrows at us. I jumped aside to avoid the speeding arrows and dropped flat to the ground to avoid the fire. When I got a clean shot, at either a dragon or a person, I would raise one of my hands at them and push my anger out at them. When I hit the people with my magic they fell off the dragons, dead; nevertheless, the dragons were harder to kill. Shortly after beginning the fight the dragons figured out that I would drop down to the ground to avoid their fire so they aimed for the ground- so I couldn’t avoid it as easily. I would try and jump out of the way, like I did for the arrow, but the fire still caught me and would either burn right beside me or a piece of my clothes. I was so busy trying to keep myself alive that I never got an opportunity to see if Linley was still alive.

I momentarily stopped and looked at the never ending army coming for us. Just then a bright white light shot in front of my face aiming for the sky. I looked beside me and saw Linley. “Thanks” I said with a sigh of relief.

“This is far from over, there is no time to stop fighting. There’s only time when all of these bastards are dead or you’re dead. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good!”

Linley and I turned so that our backs were touching one another’s and we protected each other from the charging army. If an arrow or fire came toward us the other one would reach behind them and push the other person out of the way so that they wouldn’t get harmed.

Throughout the battle black, white and orange would dance through the air as they attempted to hit their target. However, the longer the battle went on the more my arms got sore, and I could see that Linley was getting exhausted from using so much strength. The ground around us was drenched in dragon’s blood and there were corpses everywhere. It was getting hard to dodge the fire because you would have to jump out of its line of fire while trying not to trip over a dead body. Nonetheless, the more dragon bodies that dropped the more places there were to hide from the living ones.

I came out from behind a dead dragon’s wing and I looked up. I then saw an arrow come directly for me, I didn’t have enough time to jump out of the way so when it was just about to hit me I bend backwards, to let it pass above me; and in that moment time began to move in slow motion. When I stood back up time resumed at normal speed.

Over the crying of the dying men and dragons I yelled, “LINLEY HOW ARE YOU DOING?” There was no response, but I couldn’t look behind me because there were multiple dragons aiming their fire at me. I ducked and rolled on the ground to get out of their path. When their fire stopped I stood up and aimed a hand at each dragon and shot my magic at them, forcing them to both come crashing down to the ground. I waited for a moment to see if I had to fight anything else before I turned to look at Linley.

Since I wasn’t in any immediate danger I turned around and saw Linley fighting out of ear shot of me. I ran over to him, since he was now being surrounded by men without dragons. There was light magic constantly shooting out of his hands and he didn’t have anytime to recover, if he got grazed by an arrow, before he had to aim for something new.

He was almost finished killing all of the men around him, but when he wasn’t paying attention a dragon aimed its fire straight at him. I couldn’t reach him in time before the fire hit his back. He screamed at the top of his lungs as his head shot back in pain. I increased my running speed to protect his dying body. As he fell slowly to the ground I cried out, “LINLEY!!!!”

When I finally reached him I killed the remaining men that surrounded his unconscious body. I dropped to the ground and hugged his body.

In a quiet voice, that was hard to make out, Linley said, “What are you doing? You should be fighting” He then began to cough up blood.

I placed my finger on his bloody lips and said, “Shhhh you shouldn’t be talking right now. I would rather die with you then live without you.”

He went to open his mouth to say something but all he could do was cough up blood.

I hugged him again and whispered in his ear, “I love you.”

In my ear he said, “I do too.” Just then I felt his body get heavy and become dead weight. His head dropped backwards and his hands fell off of my back.

My eyes pooled with tears and they instantly fell down my face in sadness. I didn’t even feel like fighting anymore, I just wanted to sit with Linley’s dead body and not move.

Suddenly I heard a crashing noise coming from above me. Through my tears I could see Grünvolk flying through the sky and fighting for me. He bit the human’s heads and threw them at full force off the backs of the dragons. As for the dragons he was fast enough to go around their fire whenever they shot it at them. Once he got close enough he would grab the dragons by their necks and shake them from left to right forcefully, then he would throw them aside and move onto the next dragon. I just sat on the ground and watched Grünvolk obliterate the army that killed Linley.

In no time at all Grünvolk killed everyone. When the battle was officially over he flew over to me and landed close to me and Linley. Still holding onto Linley, I looked up to him and said, “Thank you so much Grünvolk. I owe you my life.”

He bowed his head and then flew off in the direction that he came from.

I leaned over Linley’s body and refused to let go, because if I did he would really be dead. Just then the corpses and blood around me began to disappear, and everything became black again. When everything was gone the green fog came and surrounded me again. This time; however, I was ready to leave.