“I don’t know, but we have to accept that they won’t go away if they didn’t die after so long. If it eventually happens, I think we should just go with it and accept it the way it is or pretend like it never happened, but I don’t want that to ruin such a great friendship.” Derick thought about what she said. She was right, he had missed her as much as she had missed him, and the past few weeks had been hell without her. “Ok, then I guess it’s settled then,” he said. Joana gave a sigh of relief after Derick’s response. She couldn’t believe that she was actually scared that he wouldn’t accept her suggestion, but since he did, she was glad that they were finally settled and that things were ok between them now. “Let’s head back to the castle,” he told her. “The others would have been back.”“Ok,” she said.He held her hand, the move sent a small chill down her spine and they walked through the woods to find an open space where they could bo

After they had rested for a while, Joana got off the bed and began to put on her clothes.“Where are you going?” He asked her. “Back to my room.” “So soon? Don’t you want to stay here for a while?”“No, I can’t, I don’t want the others to catch us here.”They’re not going to do anything if you tell them, you know.“I know,” Joana said. “But I’d rather they didn’t know about it, especially Dana, promise me you won’t tell them about this.”“Ok, suit yourself.”“Thank you,” she said. As soon as she finished putting her clothes on, she gave him a goodbye kiss before going back to her room. She entered and threw herself on the bed, smiling to herself as she recalled everything that happened with Derick a while ago. Her thoughts then drifted back to Andrew, she hadn’t seen him in almost a year and now she wondered how he would be doing. There were times in the castle where she would wish to go home, even if it were just to visit grandma Jen and

Joana didn’t know if she had done it right, it had been a week since she had prayed unto the river spirit but yet she still hadn’t been called. She wondered if there was something wrong. “I don’t know,” she complained to Dana in her room that day. “I did everything the way you told me but still I haven’t heard anything from her yet.” “You’ve done your best, maybe you should wait for a while and be patient. In the meantime, you can start your search for the next ingredient.”“Yes, I’ve already gotten started on that, the tears of the black dragon. I’m thinking maybe I’ll have more luck with that. In the books I’ve read they all seem to be pointing to a specific location.”“And where is that?” “The watery cave of the Heilongdawang Temple, I found out that it’s in China.”Upon hearing what she had found, Dana began to smile. Joana wondered what she said that was so funny. She tried to read her mind to see the plan that she was hatching, but Dana

It was already morning when they reached the Beijing Capital airport as they had travelled through the night. Derick had already woken up from his faked sleep, Dana then handed each of them a bottle of vamscren she had in her carry-along bag to protect them from the sun when they would highlight. They gulped it down while waiting for other passengers to come down from the plane. It was a large airport, Joana had even read somewhere that the Beijing Capital International airport was the busiest in the world, you could tell this was true by the large crowds of people going in different directions. Never had she thought that something like this would bring her here to come and experience it herself. They came down from the aircraft and went into the terminal, they walked for a while before reaching the arrival area, where the passengers met with their various country hosts and pick-ups at the airport. Their tour guide, Mirabelle was already holding a placard waiting for them t

They all took their vamscren and started out of the hotel. They boarded a taxi, and although it was a struggle to fit all of them into one, they all managed. The taxi drove them off and stopped at a street along the outskirts of the town, these streets less populated, there were plenty of buildings packed into each other, and instead of the skyscrapers that were in the business district, these areas were filled with the traditional courtyard homes, the ones you see in those Chinese historical movies, the homes were tucked away in the city’s alleyways. They continued walking until they reached the more deserted parts of the area, the housings here were less sophisticated, some were even abandoned. The commoners that inhabited the area looked at the five of them as they walked through, this wasn’t one of the places tourists liked to visit, maybe they should have dressed in rags, Dana thought. She just hoped that they would be able to get away with this. Who would