Chapter Two

Celina awoke with a start, immediately sitting upright in bed. She was covered in sweat and breathing heavily. It was the nightmare. She had had that nightmare again!

Celina remembered having nightmares when she was a child. Her mother would comfort her by saying that nightmares were just representations of real life fears turned into scary monsters at night. If the real fear was destroyed, the nightmare would go away. Celina didn't have too many more nightmares after that.

But they were coming back. After her mother had been killed and her village massacred six years before, the nightmares had begun to return. Always the same one. There was always fire. It wasn't her house or the village or the Callinacta festival. It was a different fire.

She was in a room. A stone room with brightly colored fabrics and lots of toys. It was night and she was laying in bed. All of a sudden, flames would rise up and surround her bed on all sides. It was bright and hot. She would scream and kick but she was trapped. The smoke would fill the air and make it impossible to breathe. Then, out of nowhere, two large hands would pick her up and shelter her from the fire and smoke. Celina would look up and see a young woman. Her face was covered in sweat and bleeding on one side. She would run holding Celina tightly against her chest. Celina would see trees.a forest. The forest would open up into a clearing. There would be a small house there..

She almost never remembered any more than that. It was always the same. What was this trying to tell her? What fear could this possibly represent? She could never understand it.

She looked to the west and saw the sun rising through the trees. It was morning. She gathered up her few belongings, packed them onto her black horse, Janabel, took her bow and arrows and hunting knife, and went hunting for her breakfast. She managed to catch a Rafi bird and two Tree Scramblers. A small meal, but ample for a strong warrior like her, who needed very little to survive, especially in the Corialis Woods.

Suddenly she heard a noise behind her in the bushes. Celina tensed up, pretending not to have heard a thing. She slowly reached down, grabbed her daggar from her side, and whipped around, flinging the daggar through the air. It missed the wood nymph's head by less than a quarter of an centimeter.

"Oh, it's only you Razagen," Celina said in annoyance.

Razagen just stood there paralyzed with fright.

"Well, aren't you going to explain yourself? I could have killed you! You can't sneak up on me like that!" Celina scolded.

The wood nymph looked behind her to where the daggar had embedded itself in the tree millimeters from the top of her head. She pulled it out and found one of her own green hairs stuck to it, sliced right down the middle. Her eyes went wide when she realized just how closely she had escaped death. Celina looked at her with an expression of "see, I told you" on her face.

"Well, what did you come here for anyway?" Celina asked the daughter of the forest.

"I came to bring you a message from my brother. He says he has found the way."

Celina smiled with satisfaction. At last, Regino had come through.

"Go back and tell your brother from me, thank you and I'll be there shortly."

This was it. It was time for Celina to get her revenge.

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