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She feels a breeze; it’s soft on her skin.  Kyra opens her eyes and gazes upon the beautiful hills and valleys of Enchantus.  She is in the world of her dreams once more, except it seems different this time: it is as magnificent as she remembers it, only now it is different, somehow more vibrant.  A flock of birds flies overhead; they all chirrup at her and continue their journey over the hill and onto the next.  To Kyra the chirrup sounds like “hello,” but that can’t be possible can it?  But of course, Kyra thinks, she is in Aisis Lip, her fantasyland, where truly anything is possible.

The undulating hills surrounding her are covered with grass, except it is a deep royal blue with yellow tips.  Kyra watches the breeze sweep through the grass, moving the blades; it looks like a grass Tsunami approaching her.  The wave reaches her and she feels the grass flick onto her shoes and tickle her ankles.  She takes a deep breath: it smells of honey and lemon, with a rich earthly aroma.
    
Kyra cries out in joy and skips down the hill.  At the bottom, running along the small valley, she finds a gently meandering stream.  She lightly touches the water and finds it to be like mercury: thick yet soft.  She touches her lips to the surface and drinks; it tastes like . . . heaven!  She smiles as tears of happiness come to her eyes, and it is now she realizes that this land is no longer one bound by her dreams, but it actually exists!  It is real and she is here now.  Her dream came true.  And while this is still a dream, nevertheless, it is a dream of the world she now lives in.
    
Kyra continues skipping, following the stream, not knowing where it will take her, but also not caring.
    
Gradually the stream widens into a river, the current growing stronger.  There is vegetation along its banks: colorful ferns that move in synchrony, like nodding heads, always in agreement.  Within the stream, Kyra sees fish, angelfish.  One of the fish looks at her, open its mouth and out pops a bubble which quickly rises to the surface and pops: “Hi!”  The beautiful fish turns away and joins the rest of the school.
    
“Wow!” Kyra cries with delight.  She runs, following the river to wherever it leads.  It soon spreads out into a shimmering lake of silver.  “Paradise,” she mumbles.  Tall trees surrounding the lake, grouped into different colors: green, brown, purple, ochre, all different tones and hues.
    
It is now that Kyra notices the lack of animals by the lake: no birds in sight, as she looks through the grass and up into the tress; no fish in sight as she looks deep into the lake.  She finds this a little odd.  As she watches the surface, near the center bubbles begin forming and breaking the surface.  They increase until most of the lake is bubbling, like it is boiling; steam rises from it.  Then a great mass rises from the silver water.  At first it is a gigantic ball, then it takes the form of a head, with two huge round eyes the size of swimming pools, open and watching her; two lips form and open, revealing a wise smiling mouth with sharp pointed teeth.
    
WE ALL KNOW WHO YOU ARE, KYRA, the mouth speaks to her in a vicious growl.  AND YOU WILL KNOW US SOON.
    
A frown forms on Kyra’s forehead, while a grip of fear takes hold in her mind.
    
DO NOT WORRY; YOU WILL KNOW ALL IN DUE COURSE.

It smiles one more time and then breaks up, falling as heavy rain back into the lake.  The surface returns to a mirror of perfection.
    
Kyra gasps for breath, realizing she has been holding it all this time, and gazes up into the sky.  Up above the hills surrounding the lake she sees a large, dark gray cloud that has appeared from nowhere.  Jagged bolts of white and red lightning form, shooting through it. 
    
Like the watery mass, the cloud takes a shape of a head, this one different.  It is a cold, cruel face, with evil in its eyes.  It doesn’t smile at her, but grimaces like she is something that shouldn’t be here.
    
Kyra understands that this creature doesn’t want her here in Aisis Lip; she feels the evil and anger it is directing towards here.  It can only be one thing, and with this realization, the grip of fear explodes into a white sheet that covers her like icy water. 

“Jolus the Malignant,” she whispers to herself.

The grimace turns to a sneer, the fleshy upper lip raised and she sees a long yellow fang.
    
AND I’LL BE READY FOR YOU, it roars at her and laughs at her at the same time.  It sounds like crushed glass scraping against metal.  Kyra’s skin rises up in sharp pimples and she begins to shiver, wrapping her arms around her.  She covers her face and begins crying, falling to the ground.
    
The noise stops and she opens her fingers and peaks through to see the cloud that is somehow Jolus the Malignant still there, mouth now closed, watching her intently.
    
She slowly moves her hands away from her face, her body shaking with sobs, wondering what it will do to her.
     The mouth forms the wicked sneer again and then the head lunges at her, growing and encompassing everything; it roars at her, as the sharp teeth come closer.
    
It is now that Kyra screams for her life . . .

. . . And awoke to find herself in a room and no longer by the lake.  She looked around, but didn’t take in any details, thinking she was back home, safe in her bed.
    
It was a nightmare, one of the bad ones, she thinks.
    
She felt like she’d been on a long journey and was now physically and mentally exhausted, the sleep doing nothing for her.
    
She rubbed her eyes and looked around the room once more: it had all changed.  Her room was now a collage of soft colors, the bed a clear cerulean blue, the walls hues of orange.  Her bookcase and desk and all her other belongings that had been a part of her old life were gone.  Kyra tried to remember what her old room had been like and discovered that the memory wasn’t there anymore.  She tried to recall other memories of her old life . . . there was nothing!  It was all gone!  There was just emptiness where the memories used to be, as if her old life had never happened or someone had opened up her mind and scooped it all out.
    
Panic streamed through her body, she started hyperventilating.  She was here permanently and would never be going back, would never see her parents, her brother, her world again.
    
She began to cry, sobs shaking her body, just like her nightmare.  Then she heard a voice coming from one of the walls.

“Kyra, Kyra?  Are you okay a’girl?”

It was Marie.

“No,” she said, letting out a loud sob as she said this.

“Can I come in?”

“Yes,” she said, holding herself.

Marie came in and rushed to her side, taking her in her wings, letting Kyra rest her head on Marie’s breast.
Kyra cried for some time, but Marie held her the whole time, then when she was done, Marie laid her gently back on the bed and the girl was soon asleep.  She slept for four hours and Marie never left her side. 

His mind was distracted; something was forming inside the withered organ he called a brain . . . a vision.  He focused his thoughts on the vision’s meaning and a face formed in his mind.  He felt no sense of recognition, no admonition of the fact he thought he already knew her.  What he did know was that she was . . . was the Chosen One, the one that was supposed to come and save Enchantus.  No, he hadn’t read the Scriptures, it was one of those things he knew, it was instinct.  But now he had to get rid of her, because she was the one thing standing in his way, the one person who might have the power to stop him from taking over everything.  He didn’t know how it all worked.  He just knew that this girl, this Chosen One, existed, and was a major threat to his domination.

He had to stop her.  It was time to let loose his new creation.  Sludge had been more of a personal pet, a toy, but now he needed something specific to get rid of this little girl.  And he knew just the thing.

Jolus the Malignant got up from his pulsating throne and walked down the hall to a rusty spiral staircase, spinning down into darkness; a pit leading to the very depths of Hell.  He descended.

Quark slowly raised its heavy, disheveled head, its nostrils flaring like a baboon that has picked up the scent of Man and has murder in mind.  He smelled the cascading stench that was Jolus the Malignant, its father, its creator, its master.

Quark stood up and walked to the wall of bars that was its prison, its sanctuary.  It lifted its pendulous, gray-skinned arms and wrapped its three-fingered hands around the cold metal bars.  It looked toward the foot of the stairs, where they ended and its pit began.  Its green, forked tongue began slithering in and out of its mouth, while its weighty scaly tale swished from side to side, pushing the piles of dead insects around the floor.

The despicable creature Quark waited for its master, patiently, waiting to carry out Jolus the Malignant’s every bidding.

As Jolus the Malignant continued his descent into the labyrinth of dungeons below, the light weakened, as if it didn’t possess the power to reach this deep beneath the ground, and Jolus the Malignant was soon enveloped in blackness.  A hazy green glow formed around him, a luminescence.  He didn’t need light, for he’d traveled up and down these many stairs thousands of times. 

He stepped onto the cold ground that was the floor, some hundred feet below the world’s surface.  Unlike the rest of his lair, this floor and room wasn’t a living entity, but made of stone, an ancient catacomb.  When Jolus had first stepped into this world, he knew he would need a lair from which to control and command his minions, and as he stood there on the beach, breathing the new air for the first time, he saw on a distant hill a stone block.  Inside it he’d found nothing alive, just small stone rooms with skeletons of different species.  He didn’t know if they were Enchantan or any other kind of people from Aisis Lip.  There were some that were very tall, most likely a Mesolan.  But they were all very dead, and Jolus the Malignant thought this would be the perfect place to create his army of monsters.

This was what had become of the stone block: a point from which the rest of his castle could literally grow around it.

The cavernous room had once been a dungeon, but it was no longer needed; Jolus had since converted it into his laboratory, where he created from death and decay his hideous creations.  It was all laid out before him: the small rooms on each side, all with iron bars, cages for his creatures; and along the floor of the walkway his operating table stretching from where he stood to the far wall in the distance.  There were still some “experiments” in progress along the table: mostly limbs, some attached, some lying on the table, seemingly dead, but waiting to be used; half-finished things little more than organs held together in some way, waiting to be completed and made alive.  There was blood and mud everywhere: the two key ingredients to creating something from nothing, Jolus knew.  They caked the floor and ceiling, they ran in rivers on the tables, dripping slowly to the ground with their thickness.

He walked up the corridor and stopped at the fifth cell on the right, turned and looked into Quark’s beaming face, as it panted back at him.

“Hallo massster,” Quark slurred.
    
“Good evening my revolting creature,” Jolus the Malignant replied.
    
Quark was used to being insulted, had no idea it could be addressed in any other way, and took the insult as an endearment, its happy face never faltering.  After all, this was its creator.
    
“Quark,” Jolus the Malignant said, “I have a job just for you.”
    
Quark began jumping up and down.
    
Jolus the Malignant smiled back, revealing a line of crooked misshapen splinters of teeth, and two large fangs.
    
“Now, time for dinner.”
    
At this announcement, a serene look of bliss showed on Quark’s face.  Jolus the Malignant turned and walked to the cell directly opposite Quark’s.  He raised his hand toward the lock, there was a bright flash and then he held a key in his hand, its head twisted and distorted like Jolus the Malignant’s.  He inserted the key into the lock, turned, and swung the door open.  A squealing sound ripped through the silence of the dungeons, as he did this.
    
He stepped into the doorway and the green aura surrounding him strengthened, like a body halo, illuminating an old and withered Ewlap, chained to the walls.  He’d fifty years in this cell for disobeying a simple order.  He’d made a good test subject for Jolus the Malignant, but the helpless Ewlap had now outstayed his welcome and use. 
    
Jolus the Malignant raised his left finger and a beam of red light burst from his fingertip and enclosed the Ewlap, paralyzing him.  Jolus the Malignant stepped from the doorway and pulled his arm across the corridor to Quark’s cell.  Now weightless, the Ewlap followed his finger.  As he approached Quark’s cell, the door opened and Quark jumped out and seized its prey, dragging the little body inside its cell.  The door slammed shut.