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Zachariah
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    "Here here!" Gregory called.

    "Here here." I replied weakly, catching a mouse that someone threw at me.

    I bit into it hungrily, watching from the sidelines of the party as Feurige and Ipa partied with the rest of the wolves. He was now Alpha of Aqua pack, a war hero, and had a new girlfriend. Well, technically he had handed down the title of Aqua Alpha to the chief elder until he was done with the prophecy. Ipa was all right, she partied just as hard as the rest of them did. They had even taken down a huge caribou for everyone to eat.

    "Yay party." Jay commented, making me jump.

    "Yeah," I sighed. "Then why do I feel so unhappy?"

    He glanced at me sideways, of course he was off a few inches and it took me a few seconds to figure out what that gesture was supposed to mean.

    "It could be the fact your beautiful twin sister has been missing for about two months now." He sighed.

    I clenched my jaw, trying to stop the rush of emotion. "Jay, how do you know if someone is beautiful if you've never seen them?"

    He waited a long time before answering. "You don't need to see to know someone's beautiful. I wasn't born blind, I still see her face in my dreams. Still hear her voice, especially when she's angry. And she always has this impeccable scent of freshly cut mangoes around her, you know?"

    "Yes actually, I always wondered how she managed to do that. I'll have to ask her when..." I couldn't bring myself to finish that sentence. For some reason it just lodged in the back of my throat.

    For a few minutes neither of us spoke.

    "It's all my fault, isn't it?" I chocked.

    "Not it's not! Why would you say such a thing?" He gasped.

    "I'm the one who killed Gorbchav, I'm the one who set Tenebris free, I'm the one who ran away from my problems like a coward, I'm the one who hurt her." I wheezed. "I deserve the punishment she suffered."

    "Zach. You can't blame yourself for this. At least look at all the good that came out of it."

I twitched.

"Okay fine then. We'll go back to beginning, without the Fyreflower, we all would have died painfully in that Glamora forsaken hole. Or we would have died painfully from your evil-induced possession. Or we would have died painfully from that triplet mother Jamboree, if looks could kill, or we would have died painfully from masses and masses of gooey wolves." He explained.

"Hmm." I grunted.

"And I have complete faith that you will be able to bring us out of this catastrophe as well, with my help of course. The world is in high demand of blind prophets."

"Speaking of that, have we figured out our latest prophecy?" I asked, changing the subject.

"Which one? Our starry ancestors must think we're real thick because I'm starting to lose track."

"How may do we have now?" I sighed, feeling slightly dizzy.

"There's the big one, the back bone for all the little ones they're throwing at us, Lupa's Doom, the marked one comes seeking kin, yadda yadda. That one we've fulfilled. You're the marked one, Feurige joined with his powers and learned how to fly, Lupa and Ignis lived happily ever after."

"There's one part I don't understand." I replied. "Why does everyone keep calling me the marked one? It seems important."

"No idea, but as far as prophecies we've got The search for family, assuming that's us, 'he' is probably the next Great Beast descendant, and he has some sort of curse on him."

"Not exactly helpful." I muttered.

"And lastly, we've got our most recent one. A kit given to the stars, we don't know. A life taken from the jars, we don't know. A brother lost mortality is what worries me. This prophecy keeps speaking of the death of a brother."

"I'm a brother." I commented.

"Brilliant observation, but I get the feeling this death is past tense. I think the brother who died is already dead." Jay explained.

My fur prickled uneasily. "Jay, what if it's one of the missing heirs? Arroyo and Ostend are brothers, do you think-"

"Don't start naming yet, we have no idea of proving this theory and it's not worth pulling your feathers out over. Let's just go through the rest of the prophecy."

"A sister missed by family is probably Zara." I groaned.

"We don't know that, Annabeth is a sister, plus I think Zara is 'A lonely soul through woods she ran.'"

"A wolf overcome of fear is Feurige." I stated.

"Agreed, a darkness itching, inside tears, is probably Tenebris."

"And the tears are those he possesses." I guessed. "A ghost naive into fates plan, what about that?"

"Seriously Zach? How many ghosts do you know?"

"Xanthos, but he doesn't strike me as naive." I pointed out.

"True, but he can't possibly have a hand in everything, can he?"

I tried to think back to a time when Xanthos didn't already know what was going without telling us.

"He didn't know Tenebris possessed his father." I bit my lip, thinking back to that moment.

    "Hey!" A voice called. A few wolves plus myself glanced up, and standing at the edge of the clearing looking bedraggled and soaking wet. It was a fox, she was pure white except for the tips of her tail, ears, and paws. There was a blurry mark on the right side of her neck in dark blue.

    She spotted me staring at her and trotted over, prickling under the uneasy glares of the wolves.

    "Is your name Zach?" She asked me.

    I stood, ready to attack. "Yes, why?"

    She smiled. "I've been looking for you, I met your sister and she was traveling with me to come find you but we got separated in a snow storm. My name's Fulgura."

    "Did you say Zara? Where was the last place you saw her?" Jay asked.

    My eyes widened at that news and I waited eagerly for her answer.

    "It was near the foot of the mountains, about three days travel from here."

Something in my brain jumped. "Did you perhaps come across any caves."

"Caves?" Jay asked.

"Remember, we were supposed to find that cave. Oh, I can't believe we forgot so easily, we could have looked for it when we visited the archives." I groaned.

"Wait, are you perhaps looking for a Cave of Time?" Fulgura asked suddenly.

"What?" I inquired. "We don't know the name of it, but we know we're supposed to find a cave, we don't enough power to fight Tenebris on our own."

"Tenebris?" Fulgura suddenly got a lost look in her eyes. "Why does that sound familiar?"

"Maybe because it's the ancient word for darkness." Said a new voice, rustling in the bushes past my shoulder.

Lysnader poked his sandy colored head out and flashed his bright green eyes at the three of us.

"Well well well. Who are you, and what kind of adventure will you start us on?" He asked cheerfully.

"Lysander!" Sierra popped out next to him, she looked kind of bewildered and tipsy, and she purred happily against Lysander's side. Until she spotted me, then she coughed and straightened.

"Oh, hi, what are you all doing?" She laughed.

"Her heart is beating really fast." Jay whispered into my ear.

"Sierra, this is Fulgura, she was traveling with my sister in the mountains, but they were separated by a snowstorm and she wound up here." I explained. "Think we can fit another?"

"Seems plausible." She ordered regally. "By the way, after sunset, I have another training exercise for you."

    Yeah. I have home work to deal with. But it did'nt matter when your home work was as cool as mine. And it sounded like we we were about to start another adventure. Hold onto your tails.

    If only I had known.