Fire, the second element that man thought up of. We believed that all the world had been made up of Earth, fire, air, and water. Mianite longer then the Modern World.

Magic lives on these four elements - earth, fire, air, and water, which is why Mianite continued with these elements longer. Most of us purely forgot about any type of science or magic, so the idea of elements just left. We didn't convert to science because if your good enough at magics it's easier to convert to.

"Jordan told me that when they thought up of the periodic table, they didn't have all of the elements at first," I said. My mind had been aimlessly speaking when a theory had popped into my head.

Steve listened, and said. "Is that so-"

Andor didn't answer, and maybe it was better that way. He needed all of his attention on the gun in his hand. He had to shot one of the three targets to win a bet he had made with Steve, and by bet I mean a cheap way Steve had got Andor to finally learn how to shoot a gun.

Really I didn't care if Andor couldn't shoot a gun. He had survived this long in just smarts and luck, even if he became more accident prone, I trusted him to get out of situations anymore. If I refused to let my cuts heal for a whole week, he could refuse to learn how to shoot a gun.

Steve decided otherwise. Since he couldn't get Andor to formally learn how to shoot a gun, he tricked him. They got into one of those arguments about something little, Steve called Vegetarians stupid and then Andor told him to keep his opinions to himself. And then they got into the topic of if killing people for killing others should be last resort or not.

Sooner or later Steve found his opportunity and said, "if you ate meat you would have enough strength to shoot a gun."

And then Andor said. "The protein you get from meat isn't any different from the protein you get from other foods, and what you think otherwise is a blatant lie. Also, I do not need to shoot a gun and you thinking I need to is ludicrous."

"-but you couldn't shoot it-"

"-being vegetarian does not make you weak! If anything I am helping the environment!-"

"-you're eating the animals damn food!-"

"Fine!" Andor yelled. "If I can shoot a gun will you leave this topic alone!"

Steve laughed, leaning back on the kitchen chair. "I mean you won't be able to, so okay." Then Steve smirked because he had caught him.

So now we were outside and I was rambling on about what ifs and how comes. Steve listened to me because Andor wasn't able to, and Steve had answered most of my questions fully but there was one he couldn't.

"Jordan told me that when they thought up of the periodic table, they didn't have all of the elements at first," I said. I was leaning on a fence post.

"Is that so," Steve answered weakly. At this moment he had his arms crossed, trying not to laugh. Andor was failing miserably at loading a gun.

"Yeah so you know how we have the magic elements," I paused, adjusting my arm on the fence post so I could get a better view. Andor but his lip, continuing to stare desperately at the bullets in his hand. He had no idea what to do and it was adorable.

"Yes fire, air, water, and earth," Steve answered. "What's the question, again?"

"Do you think there are more then four magic elements-?" I questioned, and Steve looked up at me in surprise. "-like more we haven't found."

Steve stared at me for awhile as if he didn't know what direction to take this conversation. He had this confused look like he was making some big life decision or something.

Then Steve shook his head no. "I don't know. That's a cool idea."

I sighed, looking back at Andor. He continued to stall time by pretending he didn't know how to load the gun, even though he had loaded and unloaded it several times now.

"Does this mean I can't hear the bunny story now. If he wins, I mean." I asked.

"Which one?" Steve asked.

Andor turned from the targets. He had successfully loaded the gun finally, and he didn't look happy he looked horrified. "What story?" He asked slowly, more directly to Steve then me.

"Did you finally get that gun ready to shoot?" Steve interrupted Andor, deflecting his question.

"What bunny story?" Andor demanded to know, even though I was sure he already knew what story I was talking about.

"Oh." I started to elaborate. "The one where you can't kill the rabbit and then you puked when-"

Andor glared at Steve in complete betrayal. "You told her that-?"

"I was drunk and emotionally unstable." Steve explained then motioned to the targets. "Now shoot the damn gun!"

Andor turned around bitterly mumbling something along the lines of "you are the worst thing that has happened to me" even though he didn't mean it. He held up the gun, his hands weren't even shaking. He went to put his finger on the trigger.

Then he lowered the gun once more. "When were you two going to tell me about this-?"

"SHOOT AT THE DAMN TARGET BOY!" Steve bellowed, slamming his fist on the fence post.

Out of pure shock Andor accidentally shot the gun. Then from the pull that the gun gives when it shoots Andor dropped the gun and held his hand. He stared completely dumbfounded at the target.

And for once Steve looked surprised at something.

Andor had accidentally shot the target. Andor turned back, giving a sly smirk to Steve. "Well look at that." He said confidently. "What can you see Hope? Do you see a bullet hole right in the middle of the target?"

"I see a guy who's running on pure luck," I said quickly, but I still couldn't help but smile.

"Steve-" Andor walked up to Steve. He was grinning like an idiot as Steve glared at Andor with a scowl on his face. "I think -" Andor paused, just for dramatic affect. "- Didn't we have a deal?"

Andor waited for Steve to say something, but he never got an answer.

So Andor just answered himself. "You know - the deal that if I shot that target you couldn't make any jokes anymore."

"Just the ones about how you only eat plants. I got tuns more stuff to say."

"Yeah okay," Andor just continued to shake his head, smiling like a happy five year old. "Good luck with that-"

"You'll give me tons more content! I could write a whole bloody comedy show about you!" Steve yelled. He was getting angry. You know Australians, easily tempered.

Then my wrist watch rung. It had a message on it. From Jordan.

I sighed. "Oh great."

But I read through the message, and it wasn't oh great in a sarcastic way. It was oh great in a good way. It was oh great in a I get to go explore way.

It was an oh great in a "Jordan found the next crypt" way. And who could have guessed.

The element that Mianite had trapped in this crypt was fire.

"Precision is key"

"Dude just pick open the fucking lock!"

Hope continued to be impatient. Sonja stayed kind. Tucker rolled his eyes a lot. Tom broke something, already. Wag held my journal for me. I failed to pick a lock open.

The crypt was hidden in this cave, down in the deepest parts of the earth. Well at least as far as we could without dying because we would be crushed, and the earth would no longer be a shell it would be magma.

Anyway-.

We didn't really go that far. We just went far enough that we had to use torches for light. Th stalagmites on the ceiling threatened to fall and kill us any moment. They dripped ground water on our head, which made Sonja's job to protect the torch a lot harder.

When I found out that we were going to the fire crypt I didn't think damp would be involved. The cave had an unusual amount of underground creeks and streams. The air weighed me down holding so much water vapor, and everywhere I stepped my boots got muddier. The stone didn't even show up, just mud. I thought caves were supposed to have stone!

I swear a saw at least three different new species of fish mating in that underground stream back their.

The farther we walked down the more I had to tell myself that we would find the crypt. I continued to doubt that we would find the gate to this crypt. I always believe that I get the cords wrong until we actually get their.

And we did get their. The gate hadn't been that far down. By the third time Hope made a sassy remark I could see the silver gate glimmering in our torch light. It was to closely corded together for us to squeeze through, so everyone decided it would be a good idea to pick open the lock.

Like that wouldn't open a booby trap.

"Can you move that light closer Wag?" I asked. My hands were starting to turn into black blobs in the midst of the darkness. Wag didn't have much of a steady hand even though he was pretty helpful.

The light cascaded into the room behind the gate, as Wag adjusted the torch as I needed. I fiddled with the bobby pin that I had to work with. How the hell am I supposed to grab the essence of fire with a bobby pin?

Hope made it increasingly harder to pick open the lock because her curiosity was practically pushing me out of the way. The light shining into the room behind the gate gave Hope a good early view of what was coming next in our adventure. She probably decided "wow a nice sneak peak. Let me just push Jordan out of the way and put the whole mission to jeopardy."

"There's not a lot in their," She mumbled, peering through the silver bars of the gate. Mind you this gate spanned at least 6 feet long and 8 feet high, so there was a lot more room to peak into the next room then shoving me out of the way.

"Do you mind!?" I let out, pushing her backwards.

She tripped landing on the mud. Her pants getting more dirty than they already were, and her boots became soaked immediately. Of course it was Hope so she didn't care about her clothes. She cared about the fact that Tom was laughing at her.

"Prick," she mumbled, rubbing her hands onto her pants. I wasn't sure if she was calling me or Tom a prick. I glanced back at her to make sure she was okay and noticed that her pants had black stains on them, just around the size of her handprints.

The bars were covered in charr. The backside was the exact opposite of the shiny front side that we saw. It was dulled black, like a chalkboard.

The lock clicked open, and I stood up with a smile plastered on my face and excitement surging through my body.

"That's how you do it boys!" I threw the bobby pin back at Sonja, who caught it without a problem. She was the only one who thought my comment was funny.

"Let me through bitch!" And there went Hope again. She shoved through the rest of us, as if her thirst for adventure was pulling her around like a puppet. She had no other motive except to figure out what she saw behind that gate.

"Look look look," she said quickly with a frazzled tone.

She pointed at the ground, and when torch light hit the room I saw why Hope become so excited. She had seen a note.

The note wasn't really a note. It hadn't been written on paper or parchment in pen. It had been carved into the floor, and the moment you glanced down you saw thousands and thousands of crudely written words.

The ground in the cavern was stone. It was the only place in the cave system that hadn't been floored with mud. In the middle of this crevice in the cave was a fire pit, at lest the remains of one. You could see the stains that the constant burning had left on the stone. It was something erosion couldn't even fix yet.

Hope studied the words. Her eyes flickered through the thousands of words, and she followed each sentence with her feet like she was dancing.

"It's the same four stanzas repeated over and over," She then squinted at the letters, like the shaky handwriting made it hard to read. "Except each rewriting of the four stanzas are written in different handwriting."

"What are the stanzas?" I asked. Of course I could read them, but why not give Hope the spotlight.

She cleared her throat, and the room suddenly got chillier. The sound of the dripping stalagmites stopped, almost like time stopped to listen. But why would time stop to listen? They were just four stanzas. They were just words some cave people wrote.

"A gift from a god burns the brightest,

A gift from a women in black kills the most.

The red flower grows with this chant.

Our stay leaves with this chant."

We all didn't have anything to say. Time still seemed to stop at a standpoint. The air was still chilly.

"Well that didn't even rhyme" Tom stated.

Then the cold air grew hot. I no longer had goosebumps but it felt like my skin could melt off of me. I could feel my blood bubble inside me. I could hear my veins pop and crackle open. I felt like I was being burned alive, and the thing is that it didn't hurt. I felt powerful.

Except I wasn't being burned alive. It was an allusion. I could tell by the horrified faces of everyone else. They felt the same as me but they could see that I wasn't on fire. I could see that they weren't on fire. We weren't being harmed.

The creatures in front of me though, weren't an allusion.

The torch blew out. We were plunged into darkness. A big murky shadow stark against the pitch blackness of the room. It only stood dizzily, tipping from one side and another like a puppet swinging from strings.

I already had a knife in my hand before we even got to the gate. My senses were burning, trying to tell me to stop and go away. The ground here was sacred, and it would hurt the souls of people who were killed and trapped here.

I didn't speak up. I couldn't decide what these senses were. This new power I had developed. I couldn't put a machine into action that didn't work. Jordan had taught me enough of that.

It would first start as a ringing in my ears, whispers of space and time and places that we shouldn't hear. My body could shut off the mortal world, and I could hear deeper. My whole body would then mesh with my hearing because I would shut off all of my other senses. Something that would make someone else crazy made me feel at peace

I wanted to keep my secret. I needed to keep my secret.

"Someone grab a light," Tom whispered.

Their was one secret I would give away.

I flicked on one of my knifes, lighting up the whole room. Hope and Tom widened their eyes at my new weapon, they're attention span now on that instead of the wispy shadow. Jordan just smirked at me.

Tucker and Wag on the other hand stared at the gaping darkness in front of us.

The figure hadn't been lit up by the light. It stayed blank, like someone had cut out a black piece of construction paper and pasted it in the universe. The black can't even be explained as black. It wasn't black like ink or the night sky. It was black, like nothing. It was darker than black, but burned so strong that my eyes started to sting.

My skin felt heavy and limp, and little goosebumps started to form on my arms even though I wasn't cold. I couldn't move. My legs were buckled together and had the fizzy sensation as if they had fallen asleep. We had all been magically petrified with fear.

My hand shook against the weight of the knife that I had been holding up so long. I couldn't bring my hand down. I could only freeze, but I did have control over my mind. I could empty my other senses.

I stared blankly at the flame dancing on my knife. The orang went to yellow and the yellow went to the brightest blue burning the hottest just at the end of the light.

I stopped feeling, which wasn't hard. I tempered onto the sight of the flame and the breath from the rest of the team. Then I stopped smelling and tasting the char from the gate. The last sense, sight. I closed my eyes and I stopped looking.

I didn't even imagine in my mind. I refused to form pictures. I needed to concentrate on hearing because hearing is the one thing we seem to put away first. I think that's why the world hides so much within it. It's easy to tune things out, but tuning things in is so much harder.

Like switching on a T.V I could hear the motions and the smell and the looks of everything. I could hear Jordan trying to shift away. I could hear Tom breathing heavily, and I could hear Tucker, the closest to the figure, trying not to make a sound. I moved on from their bringing my attention through each detail of each person like a winding maze.

I came to the figure, but I couldn't hear anything. Nothing. As much as I tried to center onto the color or the shape or the presence my mind couldn't. Just a little white noise that couldn't be explained by any mortal ever.

Then the white noise burned brighter, brighter, brighter! It screeched so bright that it stung just like it had to stare at the figure. I struggled to move my hands to hold my ears, but they were pasted against my side. I breathed in and out in and out. Begging, pleading to get back to the world. I wanted back!

My stomach churned, not being able to comprehend the pain I was feeling. My body couldn't understand the pain it was so infinite. I could have puked or bleed or, god, something. Whatever that damned thing wanted from me!

I screamed inside my head. Let me out! Let me out! LET ME OUT!

"Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!" I screeched as loud as I could.

Someone shook me awake.

I frantically glanced around. I could feel from my back that I was laying on the cold ground of the same cave, and I just wanted to leave. I wanted out now!

"Hey. It's okay", Tucker tried to calm me down, but I couldn't take it. I didn't care about the damn crypt anymore. "It's gone. Whatever it is left. It's just some stupid thing Mianite put in to scare us away."

I shook my head no so fast that I could have got whiplash. "No, no, no," I spoke frantically. My heart beating a thousand miles per minute. "Whatever made that wasn't a God. It was more powerful than that."

Hope immediately became intrigued. Her curiosity blew through doubt and she was the only one taking me seriously now. "What do you think it was?"

I thought long and hard. Maybe my imagination took me over. Maybe I ventured somewhere I should have. Then suddenly I grew a strong feeling of dejavue.

"That was a shadow. That was the darkness. That was nothing," I said. "And it came to warn us, not scare us."

"I can't believe she made us leave! I hike four miles to a cave and then go down that whole cave and all Jordan got was some fire ash"

"Why did you go again?" Wag asked. He made me say the reason over and over and over again like I would figure out what he wanted me to know. If someone has a point they should just tell me.

"Sonja saw some," I paused not really knowing how to explain it. I didn't see anything, or hear anything. I didn't even feel a presence. I just couldn't live because it stopped me. "She saw a thing. I don't know!" I exclaimed. "All I know is that we didn't find Mianite's second crypt because she couldn't suck it up-"

"Sonja was right for making you leave!" Martha interrupted. "There is something unnatural about the way Mianite has been taking from this world. He couldn't do it on his own. Not with our magic."