"I'm so tired!" George groaned.

    "Stop complaining," John snapped. "I have a no-complaining policy, so start that again and I'll — "

    "Ew, I've got dirt under my fingernails!" Paul cried, looking at his nails in horror.

    "What did I just say?" John said through gritted teeth.

    "You said that you were perfectly okay with hearing us belly-ache," Ringo said. "By the way, my socks are wet."

    "So?"

    "So my feet are going to be like raisins."

    "They already are raisins!"

    Olivia suddenly stopped. "Do you guys hear that?"

    "Hear what?" George asked, looking overly bored. John couldn't blame him. George and Paul still couldn't fly all too well yet, so they were still on foot, and following Mark's trail was easier on the ground. And they hadn't seen any scenery other than trees, trees, and more trees.

    Linda craned her head. "Someone's calling for help."

    "Help!" John crowed sarcastically. "I need somebody!"

    "That sounds like a song," Paul said, looking at him with interest.

    "No," John said, shaking his head. "It sounds like a cry for help."

    Ringo nodded. "Definitely a cry for help."

    "Will you stop joking?" Olivia scolded. "Someone is in danger!"

    "How do we know that?" John said, lifting a single shoulder. "They could just be . . . I don't know what they could be doing, but I don't want any more people in my entourage."

    "Oh, so we're a burden to you?" Linda said.

    "I didn't say that . . . "

    "You said that," Olivia said, crossing her arms.

    "Can we stop fighting?" George said, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Just shut up and listen!"

    John clamped his mouth shut and listened intently. At first, he didn't hear anything but the sounds of birds twittering to each other from the trees above and the sound of a soft breeze rustling through the leaves. Then he heard it. It sounded like a woman screaming as if her life depended on it, and it might have.

    "Oh, yeah, someone's in some deep trouble," Paul said. "Find, Martha!"

    Martha yipped and took off like a shot, her fur bouncing as they ran. They chased after her, John almost colliding into several trees because he couldn't see worth a squat. It turns out he forgot his glasses back at the village. Not that he wore them anyway.

    Martha tackled someone and started aggressively tugging at the collar of his shirt, growls erupting from her throat. There was a young woman on the ground, scooting herself away from the scene, eyes wide with fear. John stopped in his tracks.

    "Cynthia?" he said in disbelief.

    She looked at him, her mascara smudged and running down her cheeks. "John!" she cried and stood up, rushing to him. Before he knew what was happening, she threw her arms around his neck and started sobbing into his shoulder. He didn't know what to do, so he just awkwardly patted her on the back, feeling like a buffoon.

    Paul snagged ahold of Martha's collar and pulled her off the man, whose eyes were fading from their black color. John blinked, not being able to believe what he was seeing.

    "Stu?" he asked incredulously. Wow, today's filled with all kinds of familiar faces, he thought.

    "What — Where — Who?" Stu stammered, looking around, blinking rapidly. He started again, "What am I doing out here?"

    "Trying to kill me!" Cynthia cried before burrowing her head back into John's chest.

    Stu's eyes widened. "I did what?"

    "Your eyes were black," Ringo said. "Must have been possessed. Eat anything in the last few hours that tasted kinda off?"

    Stu thought for a moment. "Well . . . I did eat a pear back there. And there weren't any pear trees around."

    "What a moron," Paul muttered under his breath.

    "Mark probably left it," Ringo explained. "He probably intended it for one of us."

    "How would he know we were after him?" George asked.

    "Probably has some cliche crystal ball that he stalks people with," John said, rolling his eyes.

    Cynthia suddenly pulled away from John and looked up at him, beginning to stammer. Once she stopped stuttering, he tried to say something but ended up not being able to get a single intelligible word out either. He hadn't seen her since they were kids and he'd had a bit of a crush on her, and it seemed it hadn't faded any.

    "Hey!" Stu snapped. "Have you people forgotten about me?"

    "Oh, yeah, and Stu's here too!" John said, glad for the interruption. "How've you been, buddy?"

    Stu grumbled, shoulders hunching. "I've been fine. What brings you guys out here?"

    "Oh, you know. Taking down evil necromancers and all that stuff."

    "Ah," Stu said, standing up and brushing the dirt off himself, eyeing Martha warily, as if he expected her to drag him to the ground again.

    "May I ask a question?" George asked.

    "No," John said.

    "Go ahead, George," Olivia said.

    "Why does Mark want Brian's crown so badly? I mean, what does it do?"

    "Well, if you must know," Stu said. "The crown's jewels hold the souls of the evilest monsters in the kingdom. They were locked away by the Dragon Knights, and King Brian made sure that they wouldn't end up in the wrong hands. Well . . . until now, that is."

    "Oh," George said, and John could clearly tell the wheels were turning in his head. A few moments later he repeated, "Oh."

    "Well, that's not good," Linda said.

    "Not good!" Paul scoffed. "It's downright horrible!"

    Ringo raised his hands as if to calm them. "It's all right. We're going to take him down and everything will be taken care of."

    "Why do you have to be like that?" John asked him.

    "Be like what?"

    "Being a glass-half-full kind of guy."

    "Maybe because I'm not a pessimist like a certain person I know?"

    "How dare you say that!"

    "We should really get going," Olivia said, looking up at the sun. "It's getting close to sundown."

    "I'm coming with you," Stu said, squaring his shoulders and puffing out his chest.

    "I'm coming too," Cynthia said, tilting her chin up.

    "Cyn, that's fine," John said, then looked at Stu. "But why, Stu? Not that you're not a little ray of sunshine or anything."

    "Because I don't get to appear in any fanfics."

    They all stared at him, and he acted a little embarrassed and shrugged.

    "Wall-breaker," Paul coughed.

    "What even is this?" George said. "I don't understand what's going on. Let's just get out of here before anything else really weird happens."

* * *

As they walked, the sun setting behind them, Cynthia began to tell him how she had ended up in the forest. She explained that she began to work at the castle for King Brian as a maid not long after she and John had parted ways a few years back. She had eavesdropped on George's conversation with the king and had followed him in hopes of running into John. Then she'd lost track of George and had come upon a possessed Stuart, almost getting herself killed in the process.

    "All just to see me?" John asked in disbelief.

    She nodded.

    "Oh, well . . . " He laughed nervously. "I have to say I'm rather flattered."

    "Smoke," Linda said, pointing. John followed her finger and saw that there was indeed smoke.

    "What's burning?" George asked.

    "Maybe somebody's s'mores fire got a little out of control," Ringo suggested with a smirk.

    Paul scoffed. "That isn't a measly campfire out of control; that's an entire university up in flames."

    John paled, realizing that Paul's words were all too true.