"What's going on?" Maddox couldn't help but pant with fear as Kat dragged him through the river of students. The classroom doors had opened like a cage, sending students rushing to the gymnasium like a stampede.

Maddox was covered in dragon slime and eggshells, but all his concern was directed towards Kat's grip on his wrist and the panic welling in his stomach.

"What were those things?"

"We need to get out of here!" Kat was frantic as Maddox stumbled behind him like a puppy on a leash. The panic was making him feel dizzy, images of gardens and flowers worming into his mind. He couldn't tell why his brain went there, like it was some kind of escape from the lies threatening to kill him, but he clung to them just like he had moments before.

His brain drifted between the reality of Kat shoving him through the gym doors to strolling through a garden, stunned by each priceless flower. He could see himself planting marigolds and blue poppies, then slammed against the wall as Kat screamed at him to pay attention. He ached with pain as panic turned his vocal chords to stone, or as he climbed a tree with ripe pears. Kat shouted for help and birds sang from the sky. The realities melded together until he could see a splash of red hair shaking him back to consciousness.

"Maddox, Come on! Please don't become another problem I have to deal with!" Gray was gripping his shoulders with trembling hands, slowly bringing Maddox back to the gymnasium flooded with students.

"I'm...I'm okay." He mumbled, forcing himself to focus. The terror was beginning to fade, replaced by an anxious fear that it was somehow all his fault. Beasts had invaded the school, and one of them tried to take him away. They saw straight through his lies, straight through the entire world he built around himself. Desperately, he wrapped himself in a hug as if it might stop the rest of them from peering into his blackened heart.

"What were those guys doing here?" He mumbled as he sank to the ground, staring at Gray's frantic face. Light danced on his fingertips like a weapon while his eyes darted across the sea of students.

"The um, The Guard paid us a visit." He mumbled, clearly distracted. Each one of his red hairs stood on edge. "They technically outrank me, so I couldn't do anything but...just try and keep Maddox calm, alright?" He told Kat but he only shook his head in response.

"But one of them tried to hurt Maddox!"

"There are about 30 patrolmen on the way to take everyone's statements." Gray rushed through his words, but Maddox hardly heard him. The garden was already tempting his mind again. "I swear I will help you guys through this, but I've got about 2,000 students to take care of right now..."

Gray was already darting over to a sobbing child, her arm mangled by dragon bites.

"Kat..." Maddox whined, the panic rising in his stomach again. He couldn't believe the idea hadn't occurred to him before. "My dragon hatched."

"Yeah, and I'm sure we'll find him buddy." Kat answered, although his mind seemed a million miles away. Patting Maddox on the shoulder, he stared anxiously into the crowd.

"But what if it got hurt?"

"I think we're more worried about you right now."

"I'm fine." He mumbled, finding himself surrounded by a bed of lilies. "I...I just...why did The Guard want to take me away?"

Kat hesitated, his head far clearer that Maddox's. His mind was stuffed with gardens and singing birds while all Kat could think about was the sea of students.

"I don't know." He stated without even looking at him. His eyes were caught on a screaming teenager. "Did you do something?"

Maddox felt his mouth grow dry at the question. Yes, he had done something. He lied and he was still lying, but he never thought it would catch the attention of deadly soldiers. He sifted the lies through his mind, through each change they made in his life. The lies were what brought him to Alfheim after all, so they couldn't be bad, right?

Kat looked down at him anxiously, stunned that he had no response to such a simple question. "You... didn't do anything, right?" He asked again, but Maddox only shook his head. He was already so deep in the lies that there was no reason to stop now.

"No." He mumbled like a mouse, squeezing himself tighter. He could feel his heart growing darker with each word...

"Katlego!" Robin barreled past a cluster of frantic girls. She threw herself in Kat's arms like a rag doll, her face damp with tears.

"Phoenix, Robin!" Kat embraced her back, clearly more panicked than he would ever admit. "Are you okay?"

She pressed her face into Kat's shoulder, sobbing more than her words could handle. "They took it! They took all of it!"

"Wait, what?"

"I was...I was just coming inside when the lights went out..." She gasped between sobs, pulling Kat closer with each lingering breath. "But I had my backpack with me! This monster grabbed my arm and tried to bring me downstairs, but my bag ripped open!"

"And there's nothing left?"

She shook her head as she sobbed, Maddox staring up like a confused child. He was still having trouble distinguishing reality from the garden in his mind. If it was up to him, Robin would be standing in a field of daisies, clinging to the branches of an apple tree.

"He took all of it." She gasped, finally pulling away from Kat. Terror plagued his face. "All the phoenix ashes, the volcano mice quills, the mayberry seeds! He even took the book!"

"What?" Maddox couldn't help but pipe up, utterly confused.

"Oh, Maddox!" Robin's face filled with relief as she lept to give him a hug, although all he saw were dozens of roses. Stiff as a board, he waited for her to let go of him and his darkened heart. "We uhh..."

"Don't worry about it." Kat explained with hardly a glance at him. All his attention was on the missing backpack. "So what are we going to do?"

"I don't know!" Her tears had calmed down, replaced by pure terror. "That was our last chance! I don't have enough time to get them from the forest again or make a new batch before the moon comes out tomorrow..."

"The moon? What are you making?"

Kat deliberately ignored Maddox, wishing away the questions.

"We...we can handle this like we used to." Kat desperately clung to the idea, but Robin only shook her head. "You still have all the locks, and the ropes, and..."

"I'm not doing that again."

They stood in silence while Maddox watched like a shadow, taking in all the pain. It was hard to decipher what came from the conversations or The Guard's appearance, or what bled from the flowers clouding his vision.

"Robin! Katlego!" It was as if a bullet of sunshine soared across the gym, tackling the two with five feet of Anna. "Oh my Phoenix! Are you two all right? Are you hurt? Injured?" She smothered them in a hug, then grasped their faces as if to check for scars. "They started calling parents and we got here as quick as we could! How's your heart? Eyes? Did they harm you?"

They quickly began to assure Anna that they were okay, but Maddox felt his eyes drawn to the shadow of a man that hung back. Kadri stood a few feet away, out of breath and unsure what to do. He had run the whole way there, yet a few feet from Maddox's trembling form, he couldn't move. It was too real for him, too close to whatever raged in his mind. Eyes wide like a dragon under a kitchen light,he stared back as if he could wish the problem away.

"Kadri?" Maddox mumbled as he choked on everything that had happened. He felt so cold, so heartless as the weight of the Guard crashed down on him. "I'm...I'm seeing gardens."

Kadri knelt before him, the fear still covering his eyes with a lens of disbelief. "Gardens, huh?"He stated as if it was nothing out of the ordinary. He shook with each word, but Maddox didn't mind. He just needed someone to talk to.

"There's...roses and lilies...and apple trees..." His breath caught, terrified of what it meant. "I don't know what's going on."

"You're just scared." He answered after a moment of hesitation. "It happened to me as a kid too."

Maddox shook his head, knowing it was too real to just be a fantasy. "It's not fake. There's too many bees."

"Oh, of course it's not fake." Kadri cut in, sounded slightly surprised. He sat cross legged on the floor, chatting as calmly as if it were the weather. "You're just...going somewhere safe. Somewhere where the world can't hurt you."

Maddox threw his head back, letting it knock against the wall as his mind swarmed with gravel paths and bushes of blood red flowers.

"Maybe it's someone else's mind. Someone that you trust."

"Or?" He mumbled, trying to see past the hedges on either side of him.

"...Or maybe you're going nowhere at all. Maybe you're shadowing."

"I don't know what that means."

Kadri tilted his head amongst a halo of mushrooms and carnations, oblivious to the pain around him. How could he not know that Maddox understood nothing? Like always, Kadri's head was in the clouds.

"It's like...you just let go for a bit." He stated, biting his lip as if to contain bullets of energy and unexpressed ideas. "You let go of your body and your life and just...exist somewhere else. Somewhere where the pain doesn't hurt."

"Kadri, I don't want to let go! I don't want to leave!" Panic Welled in him as his face was swallowed by vines, his arms pinned beneath tangled grasses. "I don't want to disappear!"

He couldn't breath, couldn't see as the garden swallowed him whole. He was being eaten alive, murdered by a deadly, carnivorous tree. He couldn't hear...

"...just breathe?" Puzzled by his own panic, Kadri cut through the flowers with his voice, yet he couldn't quite pull Maddox back. "When I was stuck shadowing...I would imagine something I loved. Something here. Something real."

Maddox gasped, but his mind was too clouded with pine trees to think of something he loved."I can't! I can't Kadri!"

"You love your notebook, right? Think of your notebook!"

Again, he only shook his head, sinking deeper and deeper into gravel paths.

"Or you used to play lacrosse, right? Think about a game you won, or a close teammate..."

"I never played to play lacrosse! Phoenix!"

"Then think of your brother!"

He gasped a breath, reaching for anything in the garden. He reached for a stray vine, a low tree branch, or anything that could ground him. Flying through flowers upon flowers, he forced his brain to twist and his eyes to focus, all determination centered on one thing...

Maddox closed his hand around someone's wrist and the flowers stopped as suddenly as if he had hit pause. Petals were frozen in the air like rain as he drowned in the bushes like quicksand, but the hand held him above the surface.

"See, it all gonna be okay." His brother smiled, holding him moments from disappearing.

Maddox grinned with relief, choked up with happiness. Alex was alive, was saving his life. He reached forward until both hands gripped his brother's hand, and with the garden fading away, let himself be pulled to safety.

Maddox gasped as he was thrown into reality, clinging to Kadri's hand with white knuckles.

"Kadri," He breathed as the last of the garden faded away. Biting his lip to withhold sobs, he launched himself into the scrawny man's arms and cried. "I thought I was gonna disappear."

Kadri hesitated a moment, but sunk into the hug with as much awkward energy as he could. "It's okay." He stated, although he couldn't quite seem to grasp compassion. "It happens. But you've really never played lacrosse?"

"Oh phoenix!" He screamed as he sobbed, desperately trying to cover up the slip of the tongue. "Just forget what I said!"

"Oh...okay..." He wrapped his arms around Maddox protectively, patting him on the back with all the compassion he could muster.

"Kadri!"

And just like that, Maddox was thrown from the hug as Anna wrenched her fiance to his feet.

"What?!" He squealed as he stumbled, suddenly awakened to the chaos before him.

"We have a problem." She shot, breathless and eyes wide with fear. "The Guard took Sharise."