I look behind myself, looking for the mob and Lana, but only see closed doors. 

She's probably in there, but maybe she escaped. I tell myself as I continue running. 

Suddenly, my foot's in pain again as I remember that I broke my foot. 

I've been through worse, I remind myself, recounting some of the times things went wrong. 

For example, the time that I found a baby dragon roaming the Exponentia Desert and attempted to help it. Baby dragons, contrary to popular belief, breathe even worse fire than adult dragons, like snake venom. The baby breathed fire on me and I ended up in the hospital with a seriously injured ear that I couldn't hear out of, hence my extremely good hearing from when the ear was fixed. 

Anyway, I decide to take it a little slower because, as much as Ally thinks I don't know it, an injury, no matter how small, is still an injury. I decide with a quick decision to go to my own house, figuring that if I'm caught I know the place better than anyone and therefore have a good chance at escape. I jog to the outskirts of town and hear something. Someone. Someones. I hide behind a building, just in case, and try to find the speakers. I can tell one of them is Holly, but the other one—wait. It's Kendall. They're talking about flying and I don't want to interrupt them. Kendall explains something and Holly copies, until they're ready to actually fly. Kendall does it first, flying pretty expertly until her landing, which ends in her being very dirty. Holly starts to copy but hits her leg on a tree, becoming unconscious. I try to run over and help but Kendall runs into the woods with Holly before I can get to them. 

It's probably for the best, they'll find Cinnamon. 

I continue with my original plan and quickly find my house. Once I get there, I pause in front of the door, deciding whether it's worth or if there's even a point to coming here. I go in anyway and immediately wish I hadn't. Imagine your own home, as if a burglar came in and ransacked it and stole everything. This is at least ten times worse. I see blood splotches, and holes in everything. I carefully step inside, and feel some dried blood crack under my weight. I don't dare check the upstairs, and instead look for a spot to sleep. I find a small part of the couch that's not completely destroyed and curl up to sleep.

-={+}=-

Something scrapes against the roof of the house, waking me up. I can tell the noise is from the roof, but I run up the stairs and grab the cord hanging from the ceiling. I pull on it and back up, as a panel from the ceiling falls down, a ladder with it, leading up to the attic. I climb up the ladder just as a claw breaks through the roof. It's not right by the ladder, luckily, and I quickly jump up and out of the new hole in the roof. I find myself in front of a dragon. To be specific, it's the dragon that Lily, Ally, and Nari are tied to, but that's not the point. It's a fucking dragon. I leap onto the dragon and grab my knife off of my belt. Before the dragon can do anything I've cut the ropes binding them.

"Ow!" Nari exclaims, reaching over to a deep-looking cut on her leg.

"My bad," I find a long and thin bandage on my belt and handing it to her. 

She quickly attaches the bandage and I stab the dragon. My knife comes out green with dragon blood and everyone else seems a little bit disturbed. 

Ignoring them, I turn to Nari. "Breeze. Now." I seem a bit demanding but she doesn't mind. 

Quickly creating us all a huge breeze rather than individual ones—probably so that we can't separate—and we're off. The dragon must feel our weight leave him and quickly turns around, smoke literally coming out of his nostrils. He turns around and begins to follow us closely.

"Nari," I say as I watch the dragon closely, "you're not going to do anything stupid again, are you?" 

She rolls her eyes, "No. Duh."

"Just thought I would check," I say, chuckling a little. 

The dragon begins to inhale and I instinctively push everyone else down before ducking. I've learned that my little family talent is being more resistant to burns and injuries than others so I've taught myself to put others before me. Nobody questions my pushing and I duck right before the dragon exhales, singing my back but not doing anything too bad. I begin to scavenge the ground for an escape, a high tree or something, but quickly find nothing but the palace cloud (or whatever the fuck it's really called). 

I look over at the cloud, debating if it's worth it, before looking at Nari, "Take us to the palace." 

Nari nods before moving her hands towards the cloud, shooting our breeze towards it. She's not paying attention, however, and we hit the wall before falling onto the cloud.

"Ow," Lily moans.

"You could've landed on the actual cloud," Ally points out.

"It's difficult to control," Nari huffs. "It's hard enough to make a breeze go where you want it to go, especially when it's windy, and it is windy." 

I sigh, "Quit arguing," I tell them sternly. "It won't get us anywhere." 

The dragon looks at us, probably realizing that Leila will kill him if he burns the castle down. Now that we're safer Ally turns to my foot.

"Someone in my family put that on. What. Did. You. Do," Ally demands.

"It's nothing, I just bro—," I start, but Ally interrupts me.

"You broke your foot and you're still running around like a fucking idiot!?" she exclaims quietly.

"Yeah, so?" I ask, knowing the inevitable answer.

"You could hurt it more, you could—,"

"I get it," I interrupt dryly. 

She has the sense to shut up as I pull everyone against the castle wall. I put my ear against the wall and everyone copies as we eavesdrop.

"No!" an indistinguishable voice calls from inside. 

I hear someone move before more screeching. Torture. I look at everyone else, and they seem to have figured it out. I feel the material of the building, trying to figure out whether I can cut it with my knife. I can't tell exactly what it is but decide it's worth cutting at. I raise my knife to the wall, ignoring the others who are whisper shouting 'stop'. I cut with a big noise, and leave a huge dent.

"Someo—," I can't catch the whole sentence, but I have to save whoever's in there. 

Still, the others continue with their whispered stops. I honestly don't get it, I'm saving someone! Suddenly, I do get it as a huge bag goes over my head, trapping me completely I scream as loud as possible and I feel some wind. Good. At least Nari's escaping. I can't tell if she escaped with anyone though, but from the sound of the two screams beside me I seriously doubt it. I try to cut at the bag but as I make a small hole with my knife sticking out, it's taken away, held by the blade. I peek out my tiny hole, only to see the inside of the palace. I hear Leila curse before throwing me, and two other bags, in a heap on the ground. I hear moans from inside the other bags as I try to find a way out.

"Use your knives," I hiss at the others.

"We don't have them anymore," Lily whispers back. "Leila took them." 

I hear some screams from outside and something falls on my back.

"Hi," I mutter sourly. 

The new person or people moan and I think I know who they are. Well, sort of.

"I'm Snapdragon," I whisper to everyone in a voice that sounds like one a teacher would use for a kindergarten circle time. "Now let's all figure out who's here."

"Lily."

"Ally."

"Jade."

"Holly."

"Daisy." 

I begin feeling my bag and realize it's made of some itchy fabric. I was hoping it was soft enough to be ripped, but that idea fell down the drain. All of our bags are levitated into the air by Leila and she begins to take us up the stairs. It doesn't take very long before the screaming from earlier becomes a lot louder.

"Stop torturing her. We have some new...guests," Leila says. 

Cassandra and Emira eagerly put the screaming person in one of those old Guillotine things. I gulp as Leila dumps us out of our bags and I can finally see the whole room. This would be a plus, if the room wasn't so—

"Ew!" Daisy whispers. 

Exactly, and shit that's Lana over there.

Emira grabs me while Cassandra debates who to grab. She grabs Daisy as Holly grabs Daisy's leg, attempting to pull Daisy away from harm. Cassandra drops Daisy and grabs Holly while Leila attaches everyone else to a guillotine. Oh yeah, that's something this room has too much of. Guillotines. I'm powerless as Emira violently drags me over to a table thing. I don't have to question what it is for too long before Emira clamps each of my limbs to a different corner. I see Lana's eyes go wide out of the corner of my eye. 

Please say it's not a stretcher, please say it's not a stretcher, I repeat over and over again in my head. 

The clamps begin to move in different directions, stretching me. 

Fuck 

I know that I'll be a little more immune to the stretcher than most people, but only to a certain extent. I hear Holly groan over to right as all the guillotined (or whatever the correct verb is) people gasp. Emira laughs an evil laugh that only her mother and sister can match, and I start to feel some pain. 

Please, please come back for us soon. We can't take it for long, I hope, hoping that somebody will come.