After a very long time, Tom and I decided to actually talk. Not about our teams of rivalries. Not about civil wars or rebellions. We decided to talk about whatever the hell we wanted to talk about, like best friends do.

"How did our lives get more insane?" I asked.

Tom laughed, taking a sip from his beer. I didn't have a beer, but drinks were mandatory if Tom decided so.

We stood at the docks, just outlooking the ruble that used to be a kingdom. Staring at a sunrise together, watching fish swim around close to banks. I felt like one of those hunting dad's who finally got to talk to their old running back from the from the good ol' days.

"I asked the same question before I got out here," Tom said and took another sip. "You know those little Ianite things that just showed up?"

"-yeah-"

Tom held his head in his left hand and sighed. "They've been following me around like I'm some fucking deity." He then slammed his beer grotesquely hard on the dock, so hard that I thought the bottle was going to smash. Of course that wouldn't have been a big problem because the bottle was empty.

"What?" I asked, my mouth quirking into a smile.

"You heard me." Then he started to flail his hands around dramatically like he normally does. "I woke up, and at least three of them were sleeping at the foot of my bed like cats!"

I gave a big thumbs up. "Great story."

"I don't know what I'm going to do." Tom shook his head in aggravation, and I almost felt bad. Almost.

"What about Ianite?" I said, and normally with a topic like this I would pick my words carefully but this was Tom. I remembered I didn't need to.

"What about her?"

I thought about the right way to say this. Something so touchy. Not for me or Tom but for someone else.

And then I just fucking went for it. "Ianite looks like she's straight up dying."

And instead of Tom yelling at me, which would have happened if I was having a conversation with anybody else. Of course this wasn't anybody else, this was Tom. The man who had lower expectations for life and himself than a cockroach does.

So he simply answered back. "I'm not the only one who's noticed?"

I decided to let it all out. "I mean she seems pale and she can barely walk. She coughs and it almost seems like it's hard for her to do the simplest things. I know Jordan doesn't want to hear it, but she's dying and we need to figure out why."

Tom tapped his beer glass, and I know he was wishing he had more to drink. "More weird shit," he mumbled.

I agreed so I didn't say anything more.

Our watches beeped and Tom was the first one to check the message.

He held his beer bottle by the stem, and started to stand up with wide eyes darting through the message. Than his eyes passed over the screen again, again, and again.

"What!?" I yelled out. "What is it!?"

By the sixth second of Tom not answering, and him ignoring me for the message I realized I had a watch too.

I grabbed the watch and read the message off. It was from Jordan. It was information about those little red dots on the Mianite base's computer. I also had to read the message over again and again. I couldn't believe what I was reading.

Then I realized why Tom was so excited because Jordan had figured out who the crypts belonged to, and those crypts belonged too-.

"Mianite!" Tom raised his hands up in triumph. "We get to steal from Mianite!"

I gave everyone the correct coordinates to the crypt, so I'm not sure why they took so long.

I thought we could start at 10:00 am so when we finished searching this crypt it would still hopefully be day. I mean I left my teammate who could have died for this adventure. You think they would all have the decency to at least pretend that it's important.

Of course I knew 10:00 was a little early, but I needed at least one hour to calm the troops down when they saw this crypt. Then I would need another hour to explain to them why the crypt looked like that. I would need to explain why they were all standing at the edge of a lake.

That's right, the crypt was smack dab in the middle of a lake. A fifty foot deep lake. To make things better, the lake wasn't empty. Huge catfish and perch were just swimming around. They had no idea they were surrounding a crypt of a God. They had no idea what type of secrets they lived on top of.

I could see the entrance of the crypt from the top of lake where I was standing, which is a good thing and also a bad thing. It was a good thing because we could get to the crypt easier. It was a bad thing because that meant the crypt would be really big, and it would be a lot of exploring.

"Why do I not see a temple?"

Instead of being the voice of Tom, or Sonja, or Tucker, or even Hope it wasn't. That voice belonged to Wag. I decided that after all the help he's given us, he deserved a watch. His magic powers also seemed to be helpful in a situation like this.

I pointed to the lake, and Wag drew a great big sigh from his lungs. Wag saw what I had been pondering over since the whole team had been late.

"There's you temple." I motioned to the lake. At the bottom of that lake sat the entrance of the crypt. An underwater temple that seemed to be made out of limestone, and was big enough to be seen by the naked eye from the top of the lake.

"I quiet liked it better when you hadn't shown me," Wag answered.

I smirked a bit, trying to be happy. Most of the time I would be excited - it's not everyday you get to dig up a gods temple - but nothing seemed that fun without Hope. I just felt a little empty.

I heard some rustling from the trees behind me. We were only a mile away from the Mianite's base, so it wouldn't be that hard for the rest of the team to find us.

I could hear from the faint laughing and witty arguing that Tucker, Sonja, and Tom were coming. They always made everything into a joke, even stealing from a God that could probably disintegrate us at any second.

I heard Tucker stop suddenly in his footsteps. It didn't take long for him to see the temple in the lake.

He paused for a while, didn't start talking immediately which was weird. He always started to talk immediately.

Then he said. "How the hell are we supposed to get down there?"

"Is this why you wanted me to bring the potions?" Was asked quickly. I prayed that an argument wouldn't ensue.

"Potion - what now?" Tom asked. His words were scrambling, he smelled like beer.

Christ sake. Had he been drinking?

I waved my hand around, trying to think up off a good excuse. Something to elaborate on. Maybe this time they wouldn't get upset on my plan that I thought up of on the spot.

"We may or may not be swimming down to levels that are-" I paused, going through the whole thesaurus in my head. There has to be a better word for this. The water levels won't 100% kill us. There was no better word, just the obvious one. "This might be a little dangerous."

"Oh Christ-"

"- c'mon Jordan"

"I THOUGHT I WAS JUST GOING TO GET TO ROB SHIT AND HAVE A GOOD TIME!"

"Okay! Okay!" I tried to calm everyone down. "Look if we make it to the levels that are dangerous it means we're most likely going to make it."

"Oh are we swimming!" Sonja exclaimed. "I would of brought my swimsuit."

Meanwhile as Sonja had found a silver lining to the situation and Tom was just excited to steal things from Mianite, Tucker still seemed understandably nervous.

"When has my magic ever let you guys down?" Wag said, coming in to save my ass with some comforting words.

Tucker rolled his eyes, which made me sigh out of relief. Where most people have an eye roll as a bad thing that just means for Tucker that you broke him down.

"Fine okay. Hand them over to us."

Wag shuffled through his bag, grabbing the five potions. One for each. The potions should last us 12 hrs, and if worse comes to worse Wag can teleport us back home easily.

We each held our potions. I didn't really need to tell the plan. They kinda knew at this point. They had followed way more complicated procedures.

"Drink on three?" Sonja suggested.

No one said otherwise, so it was decided yes.

"One"

"Two"

"Three"

"Hello gums, get ready stomach here it comes!" Tom screamed out then took a big chug of his potion. Lastly he slammed the bottle on the ground, littering the forest more then his language and breath had already.

They had my hands wrapped up in gauze.

They had my hands wrapped up in gauze like I was some helpless child.

I wasn't drugged anymore. I didn't need help. I could take care of myself. I had dealt through worse.

Oh no her hands are a little scraped up. LET'S WASTE A BUNCH OF MEDICAL SUPPLIES.

I tried to lean up, but Mianite's fucking puppy of an intern had sliced so many gashes into my stomach that it was hard to move. I couldn't remember anything that happened. Not really. I didn't remember the pain or where exactly he had cut me. I had been so doped up that I couldn't remember, almost like someone purposely overdosed me so that I wouldn't.

But now I knew where I was, and Mrs. Goddess and her children of flowers couldn't baby me anymore. I knew Jordan had run off to some crazy adventure without me. If I knew where Jordan was, I was well enough to go kill a couple of monsters and enter a gods heavily guarded crypt.

Logic.

I started to pick at the fabric around my hands. They rapped it extra tight, probably having a good idea that I would try to take it off. Used to do that with my scabs and the bandaids Sonja put on the infected scabs.

"Don't you dare."

And it was actually Andor talking. I mean I expected Martha or Steve to tell my petty self to knock it off, but Andor?!

"Help me," I whined out. Of course I knew it would be hopeless anyway. He wouldn't let me out of his sight and would find a way to be more protective then my whole team combined.

"I put that on your hands for a reason." He almost looked mad, at me. Like this was all my fault.

He continued to stare at me with this condescending face, and I didn't know how to react. He was mad at me. He was mad!

He sat on the chair in the corner of the room, and he didn't stand up to walk over. He didn't come to hug me.

"You shouldn't have wasted the stuff on my hands," I said softly, starting to feel more and more guilty. He stared at me with his eyes that could hold so much emotion, and he seemed disappointed and I couldn't tell at who.

I felt like apologizing simultaneously for every bad thing I had ever done or said.

He forced his face to not be as mad, but I could still tell by the way he glared at the ground. Something was wrong, and I was afraid it was because of me.

"Your hands were the worse, actually," he said.

I smiled, trying to make everything a little bit happier. "Oh-"

That's the only thing my brain could think of. Oh.

He got up suddenly walking over to the bed. I thought that maybe he would tell me what I did, or he would hug me and it would all be okay.

He didn't do any of that. He reached into the drawer grabbing more gauze - which really was a bigger a more sweaty version of a band aid.

"What are you doing" I asked, still keeping my voice quiet.

He started unraveling the gauze. "I know you hate socks so the bandage probably feels horrible right now."

"Yeah" I muddled out. Everything became awkward, so awkward that I scratched at the comforter as a nervous tick.

Then Andor suddenly stopped everything, braking the string of ignoring me and trying to push feelings down. He sat on the edge of the bed, hiding his head in his hands.

I found the strength to lean up against the bed frame. The normal comforting words that popped into my mind were "what's wrong" or "it's okay" but I needed something better. Something more raw.

"Whatever it is it isn't your fault," I said. I grabbed his hand, trying to get him to look at me, talk to me. If he could only do something.

"I didn't realize my problems were that obvious anymore," he muffled, still not showing his face.

I toke a deep breath, grasping as much extra calm I could cypher from the environment around me. I obviously didn't have enough. "I just-" I broke off because honesty hasn't gotten me far with anybody except him. "I get it."

"Get what?" He finally looked up at me, slowly moving closer to me. He knew I had something to say. Something that would be hard for me to say, but I had to say it.

I never did learn how to craft my words carefully. I never understood how people could decide what emotion to show at the perfect time. I couldn't be manipulative or trick a person if I wanted to. Every word I said was true. It would either be said because I'm an open book or stay in and kill me and eventually come out like word vomit.

"Don't you constantly feel like your fucking up and it's not even your fault-"

Word vomit-

"-I feel like I'm nailed to these tracks, and normal people can feel the nails in their feet. When it happens they know what's wrong. They know how to fix it, but me, I don't. I don't know what's wrong because I've been nailed to the same damn tracks for my whole damn life! The moment I was born the nails were in my feet, and the normal pain people would get is numb to me! I don't know what to fix, and as much I try to pry myself away from the tracks, I can't!-"

"Hope!" Andor grabbed my arms. "It's okay."

I didn't even realize. I must have been crying and screaming. My eyes were puffy and my voice felt horse.

"I get it," Andor spoke, he forced a smile, but he wasn't me so he could make it look genuine.

And I wondered if a person wasn't born with their feet nailed to the track, if they did feel the pain constantly. Or maybe they went numb to it too.

Maybe that person was Andor or Jordan, and they just had to grin and bare it.

But me, I was blessed with being numb.

"How did they even manage to build things like this?"

"Don't try to questions them Tom," I answered him. "You'll just hurt your head."

The murky temple creaked and groaned under the lakes weight. The air felt heavy on my shoulders, and the air filled with humidity made my skin feel damp again before I could even dry off. Not to mention my hair got soaked on the swim over, so little droplets of water slid off my bangs into my eyes.

We had broke down and went through with Jordan's plan, even though none of us believed it would work. We all glanced at each other with this one signified look that said "we are going to die". Not that became a problem. The idea of death was part of the job now.

Swimming down under the water is what bothered us, and to have the adrenaline to swim that far seemed impossible. When we say lake, we don't mean a dinky pond with a few lilly pads. The only factor stopping the lake from being an ocean as the fact that it didn't have salt water. Jordan then told us that we would be given potions from Wag. He could use the same technique that he used for Hope's moars - which had to do with hormones in your brain and manipulation. The potions could give us more energy and the strength to breath underwater longer. The potions were also trustworthy because they came from Wag.

The potions did work, obviously, because here we all were, in this temple that could brake and crumble over us at any second.

"I can sense the air better down here," was said. He stared heavily at the stone walls, feelings at the chips and markings cut into the brick. "The water muffles the sounds of outer life better."

"That was oddly profound Wag," Tucker practically said for Jordan.

Jordan almost walked into another stone pole, the poles in which held up the ceiling. He couldn't keep his eyes off of his journal. He walked, scribbling in the black bound book, so convinced that if he missed writing one detail down about the temple that he would fail miserably.

"It's not profound." Wag left his eyes from the wall just so he could give Tucker this tired glance. I guess him not understanding that Wag could speak to the air was very bad. "It's helpful. I can feel what area is hollow or not. I can tell that were about to answer a maze."

"-a what?" Tom asked hastily.

The echoing from my footsteps sounded longer, more complex. It bounced through several walls and went through several directions. I could tell what wag was talking about. Down under the water you could hear more things that life normally wouldn't let you. I could hear the blood pumping to my ears and my heart beating. I could also hear the extra leftover sounds from our conversations trying to explore too. We were about to be stuck in a huge maze.

"You know what happened last time we got stuck in a maze," Tom said, interrupting my thoughts.

Tucker sighed. "Yes Tom, we were all their."

"Demons that shredded your ears off," he said frankly. "That's what happened."

I smiled at Tom. We were reaching the end of the long hallway, and I could see a turn. I could hear my heartbeat get faster. I heard the air rush around, get more adrenaline. The leftover noise was exploring just like we would be.

"I don't think there are demons," I said to Tom. "Just turns."

We broke the turn leaving the hallway to the maze. We had the choice of three turns; straight forwards, to the right, or to the left. I tried to ignore the sounds of my body and fixating on the echos and bits of trapped wind that found their way down to the temple and whistled with the corners and crevices.

"Which way do we go," Jordan asked, finally taking the time to look up from his journal. I knew they were asking Wag, but I still tried to figure it out.

I could tell from my gut feeling they we were supposed to go to the left. I could hear the most lost noise from the right, but the most empty space was to the left. They had to have stored something in that empty space.

"Right, " Wag said surely. I jumped in my skin hearing that. Wag had been tricked. Whoever built this crypt purposely put more space to explore in the right so that's where people would go.

"What -' I interrupted, "It's the left."

Everyone stared at me strangely, except Wag. Wag just gave me the same tired look he had given to Tucker.

"I understand that Wag knows what he is talking about, but I can feel it. I can hear it. We're supposed to go left. They want us to be tricked to go to the right."

Tucker stood up straight, clearing his throat. "-Sonja-"

"- I mean it." I tried to elaborate more on my point. I usually had to if I wanted people to listen on me. "-We have to go left. The space - you can tell- they could store something there."

Everyone still looked at me like I was crazy.