The moment they're gone I turn my attention fully on Opall. "You really think you can do this?" I ask her and she nods.

"As I told you, I was only in the Ring for a short period of time, I mostly grew up here in Utopia. I know the rules, where everything is, and exactly how to blend in. Which right now we aren't."

"Um," Brynlynn cuts in. "I can't help but notice I sort of stick out."

I look at her long flowing bright blonde hair and those striking red eyes. "You're right." I agree, then turn to Max. "You're not much better, being as huge as a building and all. And you." I add, looking up at Raven.

He shields his eyes from the light, squinting and wincing every time the sunlight touches him. "Doing my best." He says and I know what he means. We are all just flying with the wind here, letting our instincts lead us. I can only hope that a Demon, Caster, Two Utopians, and a....

I wrack my brain only to find I've never found out where Maxum was from before he came here. "What are you?" I blurt. "I never asked."

He laughs lightly, flicking a bit of my hair off of my shoulder. "Shifter. Thought it was obvious."

Gods, Yael is going to flip when I tell him. We thought Bob was our only shifter friend. I just hope I make it back and get a chance to tell him and grill Maxum for his own shifter stories, because right now isn't the time.

"Right now they'll be at masses," Opall says, leaning around the sparkling building. "The timing couldn't be more perfect. We would have had a much more difficult time of things if we'd gotten here at any other time of day. Utopians are very specific, they'd notice anyone out of place." She pauses to look at the others. "and you all look out of place."

"So what's your plan?" I ask, feeling antsy with a time limit looming over our heads. "Do we just run wherever and get them out and then come back here?"

"Uh, no." She looks at me like I'm an idiot. "That would never work."

I hold in my snips about not knowing as much about moving around in Utopia since I wasn't one of the Worthy who bless this enchanted land, but it's hard. Lives are on the line here and we don't have time for group spats, so I keep my mouth shut and listen.

Opall pulls back her wiry brown curls and smooths them out over her scalp, securing them in a neat tight bun on the back of her head before moving behind me to run her hands through the length of my hair and doing the same. "You and I are the only two who can go inside, anyone else will throw off all kinds of alarms and we will be caught in less than a minute."

"So you don't even need us then?" Maxum asks, almost sounding disappointed to be being left out of the fight.

Opall laughs, obviously hearing the same thing as me. "I didn't say that." She winks at him. "Here's what we're going to do." She takes one deep breath, checking her time once before diving in. "We move carefully up the back roads to a few building to the East, then Max, since you're the best with the horses, you'll sneak around to where the buggies and horses are kept and get them ready for us. Once the buggy is ready, the rest of you will get in while Mali and I go into the chapel and sneak out a few robes." She looks back to Brynlynn, Max, and Raven. "You guys will hide in the back of the buggy and Mali and me will sit up front so if anyone sees us, we don't raise any suspicions. The holding building is just a little ways up the road."

"The holding building?" I ask, not liking the sound of Tawny and Mags being held anywhere. But then deciding that being held is worse than not being anything at all, so I chose to air on the side of positivity for once.

"You don't remember your trial?" She asks me and I shake my head. I remember crying a lot, and begging for my parents. I remember someone saying 'take her away' and then being thrown into the mud that Tawny helped me survive, but I don't remember being in a trial.

One thing does pop into my head though and I frown. "If I'm remembering right, I wouldn't have gotten a trial. The discretion was unforgivable."

Opall gives me that knowing sympathetic smile and squeezes my head. "I'm sorry," Her voice waivers for only a second before she brushes over it with her fierce determination again. "The holding building has two levels, the bottom is where public trials are held when an issue is brought to the courts, or when a person has stepped out of the line of worthiness-."

"What?" Raven balks. "What constituted as worthiness?"

"We don't have time right now, but basically anything we aren't allowed to do. Breaking a rule or a law, falling short in your personal growth. Anything from being greedy, lazy, prideful, selfish, the list goes on. The Worthy of Utopia run a tight ship and if you even step a half an inch out of line, you're out of here." She says, then checks the road. "Walk while we talk," She turns, leading us up the glittering back roads the run the length behind the brilliant tall buildings at our side. Music hums in the background and my stomach growls wanting whatever that smell in the air is. "Anyway, that's on the bottom floor. People waiting for a trial, or sentencing, are held in the cells on the second floor. They're only guarded by two or four men, but to my personal knowledge no one has ever actually tried to break in or break anyone out."

"Great odds." Maxum grumbles.

"None of the negative Nancy stuff right now." Opall snaps at him, while Raven and me as who Nancy is at the exact same time. "Newbs." Opall rolls her eyes, stopping to duck down beside on of the windows as we approach it. She holds up one finger over her mouth and motions for us to stay low.

Once we pass the second building the music starts to get louder. It's a beautiful melody that's building more and more with every chorus progression. It's almost like a memory in the back of my mind as I begin to hum it beneath my breath.

When we reach the edge of the last building I lean with her to see the large crystal and marble wrapped building that reaches high into the sky, the music boasting from all of the open windows in the spiked glass ceiling. "I remember this place." I tell Opall quietly and then I look away from it.

"You had to come here two times a day every day since the day you were born, it was bound to leave a memory." She smiles. "So are you ready?"

"We go in and steal some clothes?" I ask.

"A little more poetically than that, but essentially yes."

"And then we go into the holding building and get rid of the guards and save my friends?" I chew into my bottom lip with anxious nerves.

"Again, essentially, yes." Opall says. "How many do you think you can take?"

"Two, you?"

"Fighting isn't my strong suit," she says nervously, pointing to her blue stone bracelet. "I'm a much better thief." She winks, but I can tell she's uncertain about that part of her plan, and that makes me worry. I feel confident I can handle two men, but not four. "Ready Max?"

"They don't call me the horse whisperer for nothing." He cracks his knuckles and shakes out his limbs.

"Let's move then."

Bryn and Raven stay hidden in the shadow between the two buildings and Max walks behind Opall and I with his head down. We cross the glittering road, my feet getting burnt as we go, heading straight for the large white stairs on the other side of the street that lead up into the huge chapel. I feel like at any moment someone is going to jump out, instantly knowing we don't belong.

All up and down the road in front of the Chapel, just like Opall had said, are small and large horse drawn buggies. The horses vary from shades of white to even tan and almost blonde looking ones, but not a one is dark. They idle in the streets, shuffling their hooves in boredom and nicking at the flies that buzz around their long snouts.

Maxum ducks to the side of one of the larger ones parked against the far side of the road that seems to be out of view of the windows. The horse doesn't make a sound as Maxum unties its reigns and leads it slowly up the road, the clop clop clop of the hooves echoing inside of me.

I look away as the other two quickly come out from behind the building and get under the tarped back of the buggy.

"Don't talk, eyes down." Opall whispers as we begin our ascent up the stairs. The music settles to a stop and Opall juts out an arm to stop me. We wait a few seconds and then as another song begins we finish our climb and Opall holds open the door.

A blast of cold air blows out into our faces, ruffling our very out of dress code clothes. The doors open up into a large lobby, the floors spun in white and gold that flecks with glitter mixed in as you walk over it and the ceiling over us in almost nonexistent as it reaches for the sky and ends in that crystal tip. On either side of the lobby are two long walls of hooks with flowing white and gold robes hanging from them.

I pad quickly over to a white one, dropping it over my shoulders and tying the strings at the neck and waist, hiding my black clothes beneath. I glance over my shoulder and see Opall securing a gold one into place and we both turn towards the doors to leave at the same time as a door behind us, leading into the sanctuary of the chapel opens.

"Madams," A man's voice coo's and I scream on the inside as Opall and I turn to face the tall golden skinned man with the full golden brown hair pushed back his pronounced forehead. "Leaving so soon?" He asks. "Surely you've not reached personal fulfillment so quickly." The last part sound like an accusation, and by Opall's quick response I know it was.

"Oh, no, of course not." She says, inclining her head up towards him, but still keeping her eyes down. "We could never so quickly, we both require much more immersion in the truth, but my sister is sick. I'm to take her to her home and pray with her there."

To sell it I slump my shoulders a little, sniffling as I wipe my nose.

"I see," the man says suspiciously. "but without a booklet or song sheet?"

Opall nods once. "I planned to stop at the store on the way to pick us up new ones."

"No, have mine." He passes her two booklets. "Hurry home, feel better."

"Thank you, sir, how selfless you are." Opall sounds so unlike herself I want to stare open mouthed at her but I keep my head down. "Worthy be yee."

The man turns and returns to the chapel hall and we both breathe a heavy sigh of relief as we burst back through the doors, looking up and down the streets before rushing to the buggy. Opall climbs up onto the bench first and then reaches down to help me up. As she gathers the reigns and gets the horse moving, I peek into the back. "You guys good?" I ask and the three of them nod.

"Except it took you longer in there than expected." Bryn says, twirling her hair nervously. "We've got to hurry. No more slowdowns."

"Agreed." Opall says beside me.

I adjust the tarp and turn back to face the street ahead of me.

"It's beautiful." I say begrudgingly. It really is. All the shiny perfectness of it all. The sidewalks are smooth, vibrant green shrubs and bushes line fronts of buildings and the sky above, even though it is the exact same sky as what's over The Ring, just looks so much...more here. "It's not fair."

"I know it isn't." Opall replies.

I watch the beauty continue to pass as I prepare mentally for the next part. I have to be ready to find out that they're gone. It is a very real possibility, and if it's true, I won't have time to break down, even though at the moment my eyes water just thinking of it. I'll have to put the fate of my other friends first and get us back to the meeting spot so their lives aren't ruined too.

But if we make it, if they are still in this holding place, I need to be ready for that too.

"Will there be anyone on the first floor?" I ask.

Opall shakes her head. "At the most one of the guards from the second floor could be on the first floor." She shrugs. "The building isn't very big, and everyone else is in mass so there isn't any trials going on at the moment, but it will be over soon and they'll be back."

That news isn't comforting, but I already knew we were in a hurry. "So we deal with the first floor, move to the second, hope there isn't four men, knock them out and then free the prisoners?"

"We can't free them all!" Opall exclaims. "Just who we are looking for."

"You can do what you want, but don't ask me to leave people in cells."

Opall rolls her eyes. "Do what you want. They likely won't leave, too afraid of being prosecuted further, and plus they can't go anywhere else. They'll just end up back there."

"We get them out," I say, ignoring her. "and then we run back to the buggy and get the hell out of here. This place gives me the creeps."

In all honesty, it didn't give me the creeps, it just trudged up things I've worked years to keep down.

We ride a little further up the road when she points to a smaller white building on the left. "That's-." She's in the process of saying when out of nowhere two men who I instantly recognize as patrolmen who go through The Ring jump out into the street in front of us, startling the horse and making it rear up and neigh loudly.

"Stop right there!" the one on the left shouts.

I look to Opall who has gone pale.

Shit, this is so not good.