Nade's sword pierced through the head of the doll. It black eyes seeped out of its skull like water spilling out of a bucket.

Tom cringed, as he slowly stepped away.

"This is the part you have to worry about." He said, as he swiped his pistol out.

He pointed his gun at the black liquid that had landed on the floor. It was black and goopy, and the consistency of syrup. Until the black goo started to bubble and made shapes. It looked like something running under a black cover.

"Shit." Nade mumbled under his breath, and then not a second after bullets started firing at the goo.

The erratic sprinkle of light coming from gun fire and the ongoing beat of "boom" "boom" made me feel like I was at a cheap fireworks show.

Everybody flinched every time Nade randomly shot as the goo running around. Andor pulled his hands around my waist and I could feel him sort of jump up every time a shot went off and every time one of those things died.

Then eventually the goo went still, and all there was to hear was the hard breathing of Nade. No one in the bar had anything to say. Most just went back to drinking and gambling, which sounded like Dianites to me.

Tom was wide eyed at the goo. He even tried to blink a few times to see if it would go away.

Then he slowly looked up at Nade, who had gone from an awkward teenager to an adult.

"What the shit!" Tom screamed out. The clanking of bottles and people's chatter followed behind him. No one was fazed.

I took a quick guess. "That fabric baby made burnt pudding,"

Nade smirked at me. Tom freaking out was usually entertaining for the both of us.

"I don't need this from you right now!" Tom pointed angrily at me. "I'm under enough stress without your comments."

"I'm adding necessary comedic healing," I added.

Tom wrung his hands through his hair.

"So it's dead right?" Jordan's voice peaked out from the crowd.

Nade shot him a strange look. "Yes."

Jordan started to beam. "Yes!" He fist pumped to himself, and started kneeling down by the mysterious goo.

I knew Jordan to well to let this continue. "Ew no! Dude don't-"

He scraped his fingers into the black goo, leaving a thin trail in the floor board. As he lifted his fingers to his face, little webs of the leftover goo fell to the ground.

The whole group sighed in disgust.

While Jordan was busy with the overrated maple syrup, I decided to get some answers. Nade's words continued to bother me. "You guys are tuff as hell." And then he pointed straight to Jordan.

Nade also looked battle worn, and tired. The bags under his eyes were dark enough to blend in with the goo, and I knew he was older but still his skin was grey to a way a twenty year olds shouldn't be.

"What happened before you got here?" I asked him, but I implied my question so that it had to be answered.

"When did you get two feet taller?" He questioned, and he was still panting. He took a spot sitting on the ground, and was too fatigued to have a serious conversation.

"When did your hairline start receding." I retorted. "Now, what were you doing before this?"

Nade fidgeted his eyes to Jordan. Jordan was still very interested in his science project on the ground.

Nade sighed, realizing he was going to have to talk to me like an adult. "I was fighting oncoming raiders." And his eyes flickered to the window.

It was raining outside. I could see drops slide down the windowsill and mesh together. A thick layer of fog had taken the muggy street to a whole other level.

"Raiders?" I question. "We're they Ianite's?"

Nade laughed under his breath. He started to unbuckled his boot straps, trying to relax as much as possible. "It's like calling those ballroom Dianites one of us." He sighed. His on edge attitude wouldn't leave. "But, yeah. They're Ianites."

"From?"

"A Kingdom." He said. "There's actually a lot of those around." His eyes motioned to the groggy outdoors again. "Who could have known what was beyond our tiny little island."

And I knew what he was thinking about. He was thinking about his brother. I used to get angry for Nade not being able to handle it. To handle me afterwords, but he was only a kid when his brother died. He was manipulated and used by a God. Who could have guessed he would come around from that.

"It wouldn't have changed anything." I answered. When people were dead, they were dead. Asking questions will drive you insane.

"You'll learn to never say never again." Nade surprised me. "You'll learn what fuels this place."

He shook his head. "This place is more insane than it ever has."

Nade shrugged. "I don't know, though. You were always better at being in Mianite than I was. You belonged here."

He looked up at me, with the most cynical gaze you could have gotten out of a Dianite. "Maybe the Ianites will be great to the people who saved their god. Ragnor kisses ass to that poor goddess every fucking day."

Jordan glanced up at us. His fingers were covered in black syrup, and the vial he was holding was topped with what came from the doll.

"Who's Ragnor?" He asked as he tried to flick the syrup off of his skin.

"An asshole." Nade answered with a straight face.

The bar went quiet. The chatter went down, and the gambling games came to a halt. Everyone stopped drinking their drinks go wait for a motion. They were still, like a bunny trying to blend in.

Nade's eyes flicked to the window again. I realized why he had that uptight beat to him, why he couldn't possibly find a way to relax.

That Kingdom wasn't a small group of raiders ran by an asshole. It was a whole damn army ran by a tyrant.

And they were heading straight to the bar, where Nade had accidentally led them.

I jumped from the podium we were all relaxing on. My eyes followed the patterns running around in the stain window. I could barely see out of it from the rain and the fog.

Jordan followed after me. He was wiping the goo on his shirt.

He noticed the army too, but he was looking at the royal purple flags. He took that color as a saving grace. It was a way for peace and justice. To be fair everyone we had met who was Ianite was unreasonably kind, like Martha and Andor and the whole Kingdom of Aura.

But I knew better. I knew there was evil in everything, even something I believed in so strongly. I was looking at numbers. The countless and countless lines of soldiers they had. No wonder the Dianites has no choice but to cower and bargain.

"Maybe they will reason with us?" Jordan tried to say.

The bar tender dimmed the lights, trying to blend into the environment more. They had no choice but to hide from the predator.

And I saw the leader of that army. The army of Ianites. I remembered the comment Nade made about the ballroom Dianites. The ones I had to steal from oh so long ago.

A man with pale blonde hair, and darting eyes was at the top of the line. He was searching the ground like a rat.

"They're not nice Jordan." I said.

Jordan got pale. "What makes you think that all of a sudden?"

I glared out at the top of the armies line. My fists dragged together, and my nails dig into my palms. Anger started to swell up in my chest.

"Because there leader is a pedophiliac cheese lover."

I missed having umbrellas. They were the greatest companions for a rainy day. You could pick one with cute little patterns - my old one had purple foxes on it - and it was a piece of your personality. It also kept you dry, which I was not at the moment.

Jungle leaves do keep a lot of protection on top of you, especially the thick leaves of the Mianite jungles. Still, sometimes enough water collected on one leave, and all the water would dump on you like at an amusement park.

Those were not enjoyable moments.

Jordan had the idea to talk to the raiders, which was then swiftly changed by Hope and Tucker. Instead we were going to sneak around guerrilla style, and try to ambush them from the back.

The small Dianite army that had been collected would soon follow suit. The idea was to chase them from town instead of attacking. This way there would be as little conflict as possible.

"I swear if one more jagger bush hits me." Tom grouched out. He had gotten increasingly angry about his lack of aged beer. This made no sense because the beer was already aged before the ten years.

He had his machete out again, and was cutting a path through the jungle for us. Tucker kept lookout around us so Tom could quiet down when we got near the Ianite raiders.

Jordan turned to us. He was opening and closing his hands a lot more, since he realized that his journal hadn't been at the house. He only had the copy, which wasn't good enough.

"Do you guys know that those annoying thorn bushes are called Scrubs, and that they're actually an invasive species-"

"No offense, Jordan," Tucker interrupted, "But were dealing with actual invasive Ianite's, and I rather not have my attention on a plant fact instead of keeping us alive."

"Right," Jordan nodded his head maturely. Sometimes he got caught up in any type of knowledge with a childlike fascination. I never had the heart to tell him to stop talking when he rambled on.

"The invaders." Jordan mumbled.

He had a hard time saying Ianite Raiders. By a hard time, I mean he never had. He had gone over the complete plan with Tucker without saying Ianite Raiders once. Instead he went and called them invaders, almost by instinct.

"I think I remember this." Wag said, and he was vaguely squinting at the direction Tom was taking us.

Wag stared at Tom, hoping he would say something, but Tom continued to cut away.

"I do too." Hope answered. Her voice was shaky in a way that made me feel sick.

"Yeah." Jordan said. He started to squint and turn, glancing through the gaps in the jungle as best as he could. They were all trying to find some way to know where we were going before we got their.

Hope gasped. "Is this the-?"

And suddenly we all stopped. Tom almost tripped over the front porch steps. He still had a few more vines to cut through.

Looming over me was a huge Victorian mansion, worn by time and careless tenants. The blue paint on the siding had crisped off in most places, and now the outermost of the house was green with the moss growing on the wood.

The door had fallen off of the hinges, and I could see even from down at the ground that the grey roof had sunken in at multiple places. The place was more broken than it had been when the Modsteps owned it, which I didn't think was possible.

"Shit." Hope mumbled out. This is the last place she ever wanted to be.

"Well this is where all my hard work went." You could tell it was hard for Wag not to yell. "You build one nice house for a Dianite and it becomes completely destroyed."

Tom glanced back at us. His foot was trying to find a stable place to stand on the front porch. He had a sheepish look to him.

"This isn't a Dianite thing." He let out. "This is a Modstep thing."

We all entered the house with caution. The place could have crumbled around us at any moment. The support beams had to have been as rotted out as the rest of the house, and when you stepped on certain floor boards they were more creaky than they should have been.

The Modsteps mansion had always been creepy. The layout had so many twists and turns that it was easy to get lost, and the basement was as big as both the first and the second floor combined. The whole place screamed dark and bad. I felt like a fire was forming under me and burning around my feet when I walked through the halls.

And as we walked through that hall, I could tell Hope was leading us to the main living room. Two stairs spiraled up to the second floor from there, and I could tell she wanted to see how desolate her room had become. So many of Hope's memories had been scattered around places in Mianite. It was like the whole place was her bedroom, just not one single place in one building.

The air in the hall got thicker. Not in a way that was humid. I felt as if I was being weighed down mentally instead of physically. Everything just felt sad and heavy, as if I needed to sigh a thousand times just to get through the day.

Tom rounded the corner.

Then he screamed. It was the most high pitches scream we had ever got out of him.

He rounded the corner back.

We were all on edge. What in the hell had scared Tom so much that he had jumped in his tracks and ran back to Tucker to get back.

He said nothing. He just pointed to where the main living room was. His eyes wide and his skin a bit greenish.

Hope just rolled her eyes at him and continued on. Before Jordan could even try to fight back, she had him by the arm and he was taken along.

The rest of us went on the ride for the sake of compassion.

And when I saw the two stairs, spiraling up to the top floor balcony, I realized why Tom had screamed bloody murder.

"Jesus shit!" Jordan yelled out. "It's like The Island of The Dolls and Pride and Prejudice had a really ugly love child."

Lines and lines of those dolls say on the stairs. They were all faced to the entrance of the living room, which really made them look like they were faced at us.

Shivers went down my spin. I couldn't help but remember the ink black eyes of the doll Nade had killed.

"Are they animated?" Wag asked. He didn't seem as nervous as the rest of us. He was more aware of magic. It seemed like these were just normal dolls.

"You tell us!" Tom yelled from the hall. He refused to enter the room.

And Wag was going to tell us something productive of comforting, but he didn't have a chance. Before he could get a word out Tom had sprinted into the living room.

I remember thinking. What could be so horrifying that Tom went into the scary rooms of doll?

A gun shot off. The room echoed, and the window right by Jordan's head had shattered.

Tom scuttled right up the stairs, answering my question.

"IANITES!"

"Boom" "Crack"

"Boom" "Crash"

"Boom" "Clink"

My head tried its best to pin itself under my folded arms, but the only protection we were getting was from the boards that had been sloppily nailed to the banister.

We had ran upstairs, because it seemed to be the only place that we could run to. I now realized, even though I was half paralyzed in fear, that there was three other exits we could have taken.

I knew that we always got ourselves in situations like the one we were in at the moment. My brain realized that, at least the rational part of it. My body still thought it was a life or death moment, so my adrenaline was raising and my pulse was pumping so hard I could feel it in my ears.

The Ianite's has found the house. I couldn't even understand how they could have followed us. We were behind them, and Tucker had made sure of that.

Then as soon as Tom ran up the stairs, incessant shooting started. It went on like that forever. They were shooting blindly at the area around us, not trying for a broader plan. I think they believed that eventually we had to leave, and this way we wouldn't have time to think. It was scarily genius.

Their bullets hit walls and windows and pots and pans. Beams had been shot to bits, and walls had holes the size of my fist in them. I could hear the house creak and moan in pain as they continued complete warfare .The whole Victorian building was crumbling even more around us. If they continued like this the whole place would knock down.

And I think they realized that, because as soon as the thought popped into my head the shooting stopped. My stomach lurched at the odd silence. My ears peaked at the whispering. Whispers so silent that they sounded like mice skittering across the floor.

We all had our backs pinned against one side of the wall, and it's felt as if our body's were overheating. I wanted to sigh so hard but the only thing keeping us safe was me holding my breath. We had to stay stiff against the wall, trying not to let any noise escape our body.

Hope got tired of biting her tongue. She slowly slid up the wall, her head slightly tilted above. She was forcing herself to not just jump out of thin air. I could tell how horribly she wanted rid of them. I couldn't tell why though.

She popped up from behind the plywood. Looking down the stairwell, she saw no one. We were all relieved. She was disappointed.

"What if they go back to the village?" Hope asked. Everyone was prepping to search the area. Around her we were all collecting weapons. She stood completely still.

"They won't." Wag said. His voice had become eerily quiet. "They're going to come back here."

We all glanced at each other. Tom looked a bit sick. No one was happy about trying to fight Ianites.

"Really?" Hope reached for her bow. "Why?"

Wag shook his head, trying to force the words out of his mouth. He even turned pale when he peaked over the banister. All the dolls were still seated neatly on the stairs.

"I think-" He stammered. "I think they're necromancers"

We all became silent. Jordan's nervous foot tapping stoped. Everyone was still.

Necromancy was illegal. Very illegal. It was so illegal that everyone in Mianite was able to agree that it was very wrong and very illegal. Necromancy manipulates the dead, wakes them from their rest, and uses them to destroy the living. It's a dark magic. It was so dark that Dianite wouldn't even touch it.

Sure it was shocking when Mianite lit up his undead solders like it was the fucking fourth, but at least they could rest. Mianite only manipulated their bodies, not their souls.

Using a dead humans energy to your own benefit is sick.

"Is - is that what the dolls are for?" Jordan's voice drew out slowly. The emotion side of his brain was braking away from the science side of it.

"Yes," Wag has to take a minute to swallow. He took a deep breath and the continued to speak. "That's what they are for. They are making an army of sour patch babies."

"Cabbage patch kids," Jordan corrected.