Death, that was all Ethan saw. Lifeless bodies of Trolls and Natanstrelleans alike lay all around him. A tear came to his eye at such a waste. Both armies fought relentlessly, fighting for a cause that had long since been forgotten by all who lay there.

He watched clouds of black smoke rush out of the gaping mouths of those it destroyed. It then danced its way into the dark blue sky. Ethan's gaze traced the shadows as they snuffed out each star they came across, leaving behind no room for hope.

The darkness was on its way to the very centre of Natanstrelle where a girl stood all alone.

"No, not Beanni! Leave her alone!" Ethan heard his voice echo in the distance. His words, of course, were ignored.

The darkness twisted its coils around her, trapping her in a cage of pure evil. It then slowly, and painfully entered her eyes. Every muscle in her body shook with the torture it inflicted on her, she convulsed until the shadows came to a sudden stop. The girl then fell to her knees, her sweat-clad curls covering her face as she squeezed her arms around her abdomen. She curled herself into a ball of self-pity.

"Beanni?" Ethan heard that same echo.

Beanni looked up, the deep chasms he saw in her eye sockets filled his heart with dread.

"Please, please help me?" she begged, her voice not able to climb above a trembling whisper. She reached her shaking hand towards him, then black tears, as thick as blood, dripped down from her eyes. "I can't stop it! I..."

She then flung her head back and let out a blood curdling scream as the shadows dragged her up off the ground and held her, suspended in the air.

"No! Stop!" Ethan only just managed to shout out before a mighty explosion ripped from Beanni's core, sending out fire and destruction to every corner of Dachan Terran.

The unforgiving, burning flames filled Ethan's eyes and mind, then there was nothing.

He woke with a panicked start, throwing himself against his new restraints. The excruciating sting of his open wounds made his heart leap to his throat. He groaned as he let out the breath he didn't realise he was holding. Desperate, he looked up towards where he hoped Illuminare Trabem was looking down.

"Take it away..." he pleaded aloud towards the darkened ceiling, but death and fire would not stop plaguing his thoughts. Of course, the fear of what may come to pass if he does not take up his place within Troglobha Terran outweighed any anxiety that the King managed to conjure up with his cruel orders. No matter how much physical abuse he had to endure, it would be nothing compared to the suffering that was to come if his nightmares came to pass. He stood there, chained back to the wall in his cell, the only thing he was able to do was sleep again. But the last thing he wanted to do was close his eyes. He daren't stir up the vision again. For how could he stomach seeing it all another time?

When Oslac got back to the palace he headed straight for the dungeon. He didn't have much of a plan yet, but he knew he couldn't wait, he needed to get Ethan out of there. For if what he suspected was true, he could not risk the guards getting to him again, for Beanni's sake.

He got to the top of the staircase that led to the dungeon. He then stopped. A thought occurred to him. How was he going to get Ethan free without the aid of magic? He needed to find out where his father was holding his light orb, but how could he? And how was he going to take it back? It seemed almost impossible, for something definitely had taken over his father and the guards somehow, making them view him as an enemy.

Suddenly, he felt someone grab his upper arm.

"Unhand me!" he protested, pulled himself free, turned around and got ready to fight. But once he saw who it was he relaxed his stance.

"I thought you were one of the others," Oslac said through a long sigh of relief. "Dìl Dìon what are you doing, grabbing me like that?"

"What are you planning exactly?"

"I'm releasing the prisoner of course!" Oslac said with a fire of courage roaring in his breast.

"Really, you and what magic?"

"I... I was..."

"Seems to me, Oslac, that you have no plan." The condescending look that the guard gave rubbed Oslac the wrong way.

"I do have a plan!" he hissed. "I'm getting my light orb back!"

"Very well." The guard threw up his hands in surrender. "I'll escort you if you like, so that no guards give you a hard time." Dìl Dìon then bowed his head in respect, but such an act did not cover the fact that persuading him seemed unrealistically easy.

Oslac chose to ignore his niggling doubts. He had no time. He needed to get Ethan out - to protect Beanni from further harm. He gave Dìl Dìon a sharp nod, then motioned towards the corridor that led to his father's quarters.

They walked in silence all the way to the king's office. Dìl Dìon took the lead and got to the closed door first. He reached his hand forward and grabbed the door handle, then froze.

"Dìl Dìon what're you doing? Why did you stop?"

Oslac's questioning was met by a quiet laugh, so quiet at first that Oslac couldn't be sure if he heard what he thought he heard.

"Dìl Dìon?"

The laughing became louder, and the guard's shoulders shook. He then turned away from the door and the menacing grin on his face made Oslac stumble backwards. The guard grabbed Oslac's wrist, stopping him from running away as deep, dark shadows swirled and danced out of his eye sockets.

Oslac fought as hard as he could against him but he couldn't pull his arm free this time.

Dìl Dìon cricked his neck with an unnatural jerk. "Why do you never learn?" he said in an eerie whisper. Then twisted Oslac's arm with a sudden movement making the same bone he broke in the forest snap again. The Prince's screams of agony echoed along the corridor, but nobody came.

"Come on, Your Highness," Dìl Dìon said coldly after relishing in the prince's pain. "The king is eager to see you."

Beanni awoke with a gasp. A cold sweat made her bed clothes stick to her, they clung around her clavicle with a claustrophobic grip. She threw her covers off, longing for a cool breeze to sweep across her, to give her the tiniest bit of comfort that it could.

Sitting in the darkness of her room she took slow, deliberate breaths to help calm her racing heart.

No, not Beanni!

Leave her alone!

No! Stop!

A man's voice swirled in her mind with the words he said in her dream. However, the more she tried to remember what was revealed to her in her unconscious state, the more faded it became. The memory of her dream seemed to break apart like a cloud drifting in the sky. All that was left was a name - Ethan. The possessed man's face filled her thoughts.

A violet hue began to push away the shadows of night.

"Beanni?" Beanni heard the voice again, but this time it wasn't a drifting echo from a memory, it sounded like it was coming from somewhere in her bedroom.

"Beanni?"

Her focus was pulled towards her mirror, there, the violet magic within her eyes reflected with a mighty glow. She struggled to stand, stumbling upon weakened ankles and an unbearable tingling in her feet. She made her way clumsily across her room, sat in front of her mirror and stared at the violet glow within her irises. After blinking a couple of times the violet magic revealed a dimly lit, dirty prison cell. The sound of laboured breaths and an eerie dripping sound filled Beanni's ears.

"What, what's this? W-What am I..." Beanni thought out loud, but her questioning was interrupted by a desperate, pain filled croak.

"Beanni, you're alright!" Despite being said in a strained groan, it was clear that whoever spoke was relieved. A long calming sigh followed. Beanni could think of only one person that this voice could belong to. The one that she had heard inside her mind before. However, she couldn't understand how he was managing to do this - her not being near Luna Lake or Prophetic Smoke.

"Ethan?" she whispered, aware of the stillness of her house.

"Yes, Beanni, it's me..."

Suddenly the sound of footsteps took over, filling both Ethan and Beanni's hearts with dread. In strolled two of the king's guards. Dangerous looks plagued their barely lit faces.

"Ah, the Slànacus healed him again, look!" One of the guards said to his colleague. With a cruel smirk, he glared at Ethan through his prison cell bars and his dark eyes bored into Beanni, as if he knew she was there watching everything from her seat all the way in Iarest.

"A waste of her talents if you ask me," sneered the other guard, and without taking his dark veiled stare away from his prisoner added, "So, shall we?"

"No time better than the present," the first guard responded then unlocked the cell door with a touch of his darkened light orb. Ribbons of white light desperately swirled amongst the vicious moving dark smoke within its smooth, rounded surface. Such a sight made Beanni's stomach clench. She recognised it from an illustration within the Noir Era section of her history book. Darkened orbs were a phenomenon only ever seen when the dark one tried to take over during Astrid the First's struggle.

The guards made their way to a table where a number of tools were laid. As Ethan's gaze followed their movements, the mirror revealed that his aching arms, were in his peripheral vision, hanging from their restraints. Ethan was trapped and exposed. Beanni rubbed at her wrists as she felt the cold metal of the shackles chafe against her own skin, although she still sat free inside the comfort of her room.

The guards turned away from the table and stepped menacingly forward.

"Ready to talk?" One of the guards said, beating a hook against his palm in a steady, unsettling rhythm.

Ethan didn't respond.

"The king wants to know how to defeat the trolls once and for all," the guard spelled out. He obviously had to say this to Ethan a number of times, and was getting tired of it. "Give us something to report or else!"

Still Ethan said nothing.

Then the other guard stepped forward pressing the knife he held against Ethan's throat.

"The King knows who you are, Ancient One!" he whispered with an unnatural croak. He then drew back, pointing the blade at Ethan's face. It looked as though it could pierce its way through the glass straight into Beanni's room.

"Speak!" he barked.

The two of them then waited again for an answer. But, of course, Ethan was not so easily broken. Beanni couldn't help but wonder, if she knew what Ethan knew, would she be so courageous.

However, his silence only angered the possessed guards and without another word they went for him. Beanni didn't have time to brace herself for what she was going to witness. The guard with the hook stuck it deep into Ethan's skin and began to slice through the muscle. Ethan's screams tore through Beanni's mind as he endured such excruciating pain. Beanni squeezed the side of her desk and gritted her teeth. She tried her hardest to not fall off her seat as she felt the ghostly metal rip across her own skin. She then collapsed forward and lay her head upon her hands. The ripping stopped, and they were both given just a second to catch their breath before the second guard slipped his knife across Ethan's cheek. Beanni felt a stinging heat on her face, then blood began to gush down to her jaw and drip into the deep, angry red wound on her chest.

Her vision then began to blur, as did the scene within the mirror and darkness took over.

Out of the murkiness Beanni saw Ethan crouched upon the ground. Everything around him looked twisted and dead, animal bones were scattered around him upon barren land where the flowers were withering and the leafless trees were turning to charcoal. He looked up towards her.

"It's all gone, everything is gone..." he said with a blank look in his eyes, as if all hope and all life had been taken from reality. "I failed."

"No! Ethan, don't give up! You can't give up!" Beanni yelled towards the broken man. Her voice sounded like a distant echo on the breeze. She listened to her voice decay into nothing and watched Ethan disappear into the shadows.

"Coinsum urra aig an Iar Uisqua." A gentle voice fluttered into Beanni's mind, the sound managed to distract her from the growing fear that sought to devour her. "Ursad feumti relibh a ninc!"

"What?" Beanni questioned the strange, angelic voice. It was a woman's voice, but not one she'd ever heard before.

Violet light then broke through the darkness and a woman, adorned in gold stepped into Beanni's vision. This woman looked somewhat familiar. Her eyes glowed with the same violet hue as Beanni's, and her long ebony hair flowed in a silent wind. She opened her graceful mouth and out came the melodic sound Beanni just heard.

"Meet me at the Western Lake. You must go now!"