The song for today is "Sisters and Brothers" by Sidewalk Prophets. Can we just take a moment and admire their cd cover? I can't stop thinking how good a picture that would be for Andor. What do y'all think?

*Waglington's POV*

"No fair! I don't have my bow!" Tom had just scored himself the winning kill with his bow. Wait one moment! That's my bow! "How did you get my Llama Drama?! Give it back!" He'd just used my own bow against me. That was not okay. I used the little manna I'd regenerated to fire my disarming and blindness spell (appropriately named I H8 U) at Tom while he laughed at me. The spell caused him to drop my bow, and I retrieved it, carefully checking it over for damage.

"Haha. I'm sorry, Swaglington. Did I forget to give you back your golden bag of holding with all your swagilicious loot?" he taunted, holding up my bag—though in the wrong direction. He would be blind for another minute or two. I snatched the bag from him and quickly scanned the items inside. It looked like everything was there, except my arrows.

"Arrows, Tom," I demanded.

"Fine, fine. Here you go, you spoon," He said while handing over the quiver full of handcrafted broadheads. (Broadheads are a type of arrow head made of razor sharp metal used for hunting, not the rounded plastic practice tips people are used to seeing.) "Now about my hair..."

Tom paused as we heard the sound of someone else teleporting into the arena. Tom was still blind; so he couldn't see who it was. I could. My hand started shaking a little, and I tightened my grip on my bow to hide the tremor. I swallowed before calling a greeting, "Hello, Martha." I tried to sound like my usual bright self and attempted a grin that came out as more of a grimace. Tom muttered a quiet curse and started rubbing at his eyes as if that might help his blindness wear off quicker. Memento uttered a low growl and lashed his tail against the dark taupe brick of the ledge he was sprawled across.

At the other end of the arena stood Martha the goddess, formerly Martha the Mystic. The lava light showing through the teal edged glass of the floor cast her features in an orange shade that strangely complimented them. I caught myself admiring her as I had many times before and forced myself to focus, remembering that she was no longer mine (if she ever had been in the first place).

Martha watched me for a while as if something were out of place before she spoke. "It is good to see you up and moving around, Waggles," She said with a sweet grin.

Why was there a hint of sadness in her voice? Maybe I was just projecting my own miserable feelings onto her and imagining it. Oh right, Steve is still missing and hurt. That's probably what she's upset about. I felt another stab at the thought. How many times could a heart feel that pain before it started to dull? Whatever the number was, it wasn't low enough for my taste. I have to be strong for her, just until she has Steve to comfort her again. Then I'm allowed to break down, I told myself, trying to shut my emotions down. "I'll find Steve, Martha. Don't worry. As soon as Donella gives me clearance, I'll go, and I won't stop until I bring him home," I said with as much confidence as I could muster, looking at a cracked brick in the wall behind her rather than her.

Her face fell even more at my words. "Wag, that's not what..."

She was interrupted by Tucker speaking far too loudly as he teleported into the arena as well, "Wag! There you are! Come with me right now; it's an emergency." He motioned me to follow him and winked at me through the visor of his red helmet.

What?

"Oh, this sounds serious. You better get going, Wag. Sorry, Martha; his people need him," Tom said from behind me before starting to push me towards the exit. Apparently he could see again.

What is happening here?

Hell if I know, but you're not leaving me behind! Memento trotted over to wait by the button to teleport us out.

"O-oh, that's quite alright. I'll talk to you later then," Martha reluctantly acquiesced. I almost turned to look back at her, but I stopped myself.

Tucker grabbed my wrist, and Tom whispered "You're welcome" before turning around to distract Martha with some question that he had no doubt made up on the spot.

I was beginning to catch on, but I waited to ask until we were flying away from Wiztopia. "There is no emergency, is there?"

"Nope."

"Tom messaged you to get me out of there?"

"Yep, though I am curious why you needed to be rescued from Martha. I thought you two were tighter than tight. Did I miss something?"

Just Martha throwing the relationship off of a cliff, Memento meowed sarcastically from my arms. Memento was being difficult. He refused to let me put him in a golden lasso, but he also refused to stay behind at the town. He didn't need to be running all the way to wherever we were going with his leg still healing. So now I was stuck carrying him, and he was getting heavy.

I sighed before saying, "I'd rather not talk about it." I did not feel like telling my tale again, though the heartache had subsided for now. My heart had gone strangely numb in the 15 or so minutes since leaving the Arena. I wondered briefly if there was something wrong with me, or perhaps the athar was kicking back in. Surely not feeling was unnatural. I sensed a bit of worry coming across my mental link with Memento.

"Ok, dude." Tucker shrugged and dropped the subject.

"Where exactly are we going?" I queried after we flew past Dagrun and continued out over the bone dry ocean north of the city. Dried out coral beds and pockets of black abyssal stone stretched out in every direction. Every few minutes, we passed another fissure that had opened when this world's quintessence first started draining. What out here could be worth the trip?

"You'll see," He assured smugly.

After another 20 minutes, the sea floor started rising again to meet what had once been a white sand beach below the rolling hills of a grassy plain. The waist high grass was a yellow white as far as the eye could see, except for a narrow strip of green. A small river wound through the hills before running down the beach and ocean drop off to empty into one of the deep crevices that breached bedrock.

"Water," I murmured in disbelief. It had been almost two weeks since all the water sources around Dagrun had run dry. I couldn't believe Tucker had found this.

"Yup. I was flying around the other day—looking for you, actually—and found this beauty!" He spread his arms indicating the quite peaceful landscape. It was too bad the ocean was gone. This would have been a great place for a picnic and a day of relaxing and goofing off.

We both landed on the fine sand of the beach, and I set Memento down to stretch his legs. He looked around the beach until he heard something our ears couldn't. He crouched and twitched his tail to one side; after a moment, he stalked off into the tall grass to hunt the source of the sound.

"I brought you over here to ask for your help with building something. You know how scarce water's been lately?" I nodded, waiting for Tucker to continue. "Well, I want to see if we can save the water from this river. Right now, it's just running back into the ground. What do you think about building a dam to collect the water?"

A dam? An image of Tucker and I repairing a damaged section of dam wall and making countless dam jokes flashed through my mind. I hadn't paid attention to the scenery at the time, but now I could see the similarities to this place. Talk about déjà vu.

"Wag? You okay there, bud?" Tucker asked.

I stopped thinking about my vision and replied, "Oh, uh, yes. I could definitely see a curved dam stretching from there," I threw a magic light to mark the place to the left of the river. "To there." I threw another light. "We'll need to keep the base of the dam as far away from the ravine as possible. Have you noticed that some of them go all the way down to the void?"

"Yeah I see what you mean," He was looking at the markers I'd placed, concentrating. Finally my last question registered. He whirled to me with his eyes wide. "Wait, what?! Since when?"

I shrugged. "Not sure. I only noticed because I had to cross the one at your house when I was a cat. I climbed down low enough to be able to jump across."

"Well, sh*t. I'll have to tell Mianite. The Deviser told us to report anything changing with the environment, and I'd say that's pretty big." He looked for a moment like he was about to fly off and leave me here, but he seemed to remember something that stopped him. "I'll tell him later. Right now we have some dam work to do."

I chuckled a little at what was sure to be the first of many dam puns. Tucker opened his pack and started pulling out loads of factory blocks. Wow, he came prepared, I thought as my eyebrows shot up. I opened my own bag and pulled out my chisel and builder's wand. "Let's do this thing."

---Time Skip of countless dam puns---

I floated around the base of our shiny new structure, checking for leaks or flaws that the expert builder in me would not tolerate. We had done a d*mn fine job if I said so myself. (I had to get one more in there. Sorry; I'm not sorry. ^.^) Tucker was a decent builder considering he was a mortal. I'd been a bit skeptical of his abilities given how horrid his home had looked before he hired Farmer Steve to build his dojo. I cringed at the thought of the cobblestone structure. Tucker had proven me wrong, though. I would give credit where it was due.

"Nice work, Tucker. We have one fine, functional dam," I called up to my friend where he stood on top of the dam, checking the integrity of the work there. I saw him typing a message on his communicator as I flew up the side of the 100 foot tall build. He closed out of the message as I joined him at the top. Landing on the rim of the dam, I noticed Memento curled up on the sun-warmed metal a few feet away, dead asleep.

"Sweet! I just checked in with Tom. Sounds like Martha's looking for you again. I'm sure Sonja wouldn't mind if you wanted to hang out at her place for a while. Martha and Sonja still don't really get along; so I doubt she'll look for you there. Even if she does, Sonja'll chase her off."

"Good idea. I owe a certain someone some catnip anyways," I whispered, glancing at Memento.

Did you say catnip? He was instantly awake and stretching.

"Figures you'd hear that." I reached down to pet his fuzzy head as he yawned.

"Well, I'd better go give Mianite a call, since we're finished. He'll want to know about the void." Tucker said as he shouldered his pack and waved. "See ya later, Wag." I waved back as he sped away.

Turning to my familiar—I still needed to get used to that idea—I asked mentally, Have any luck hunting?

There are fewer quail in Ruxomar than there were this morning, He purred, licking his lips in satisfaction.

Nice! I complimented, slightly jealous. Those are good eating. I looked up to see the position of the sun. Mid afternoon already. We should be heading back. We'll have to fly unless we want to go all the way back to Wiztopia. I'd last slept in my brothers' town; so my home spell would send us there if we used it.

Let's not, He grumbled, holding a mental picture of Martha where I could see it through our link. I could tell he didn't like her. Between his reaction at the arena and now, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to scratch her at some point in the future.

"Memento," I spoke out loud to get his attention. "I get why you don't like her, and you can think whatever you want. Can you at least promise me you'll never actually hurt her?"

He folded his ears back in annoyance. Fine. You mortals and wizards are too complicated. I'd have beaten up my opponent and claimed my female by now.

That was as good an answer as I was likely to get. I picked Memento up and started heading for home. The flight back was uneventful aside from the wind picking up enough to make flying difficult at one point. Without the water to drag at the air above it, the winds around Dagrun had gotten stronger and more temperamental. When we got back to the mainland, I headed for my tower. I wanted to get some food before we went to visit Sonja. I had worked up quite an appetite between slaying zombies with Tom and building with Tucker. We wouldn't stay long though; Martha would definitely check here if she was looking for me.

I opened my front door for what felt like the first time in weeks, though it had only been three days since I'd left for the jungle. That reminded me of what had started this whole ordeal; I had needed cocoa beans. I checked my robe pockets to see if any of the pods had somehow stayed there all this time. Only one small pod was left. I sighed in relief. I'd almost completely forgotten about my blackouts with everything else going on.

"Feel free to look around, Memento, but please don't destroy anything," I called as Memento disappeared into the living room to explore. I took my elevator to the small top floor with my tea garden. The large windows turned this room into something of a greenhouse, keeping the temperature and humidity up for the fragile plants. I walked to a small jungle sapling growing in a pot off to one side. I'd have to move it outside soon, but the precious cocoa beans could grow here in safety for a few days at least. I used a bit of magic to attach the pod to the trunk to let it continue growing. I had a spell on this room to encourage quick plant growth; hopefully more cocoa beans would be ready to harvest before I needed my next sleeping potion.

As I headed back down through the floors of my tower, I tidied up. Jordan had searched here for any clues that might lead him to where I was before he called the others, and he'd left a mess behind. As I started a kettle of tea brewing on the stove, dread crept up my spine. How carefully did he search? I quickly took my elevator down to my basement, where I had to take the majority of the blame for the mess. I moved two chests away from the back wall and checked the hidden compartment there. My dark green resonant armor lay in its box, undisturbed. Thank goodness. If my friends had found that armor, no good would have come of it. I carefully moved the chests back into position, hiding the invincible armor.

Why don't you just wear the armor? Memento asked mentally. No one would dare mess with you then.

It does its job too well. Something about it lends itself to arrogance and wanton destruction. I don't feel like myself when I wear it; I don't know how Guard Tom could stand having it on constantly. The thing that made me most wary of using the armor again was how much I wanted that feeling of invincibility and power. I hadn't been able to bring myself to destroy the armor despite my conviction; it had taken weeks of tedious work to craft. I found myself staring at the place I knew the armor was hidden, and quickly left the room, turning off the light as I went.

Arrogance and wanton destruction? Can you imagine your zombie friend with that armor? Memento laughed as he sent me mental pictures of everything burning and the world imploding while Tom sat on a pile of gold and diamonds, laughing maniacally.

I laughed at his prediction. That's exactly why I keep it hidden.    

If Tom had been on when Wag made his resonant armor, you all know something like this would have happened. XD It's too bad Tom never got to see it in action, but at least that avoided the temptation. I wonder if Wag will be as OP in Season 3 if/when it comes around? I can totally understand Tom delaying it, what with the game and all. Plus, he probably subconsciously associates Mianite with his grandpa's death now (why he was gone for part of S2 if you didn't know). :(

Speaking of which, an update on my aunt:

She's back in the hospital for the 3rd time in less than a month. This time she has fluid on her lungs, on top of liver issues and her crohn's disease; so they can't give her much in the way of IV fluids. She still can't eat much without getting really nauseous. She also might be trying to develop pneumonia. *shakes head in despair* I'm hoping she can make it to after Christmas; then my family can go visit her.

There's a saying: Christmas is a big magnifier. If things are going well; they're great this time of year. If they aren't going well; they're horrible. #Truth