Rocks, about the size of apples, began raining down on us from above. One of the rocks struck my shoulder, and I cringed at the sharp pain it brought. In front of me, Tinly grunted when a rock, a little bigger than mine, crashed into his leg.

Without any farther hesitation, Tinly swung himself off the sand lizard and gracefully onto the ground. He then looped his arms around my waist and all but dragged me from the saddle.

Before I even had time to ask him what he was planning on doing, he had dragged us both over to one of the carriages and had shoved me underneath it, before sliding under it himself.

" What's the plan!?" I asked him, once he had made it all the way under.

"The plan," Tinly said, ducking his head in an attempt to see what was going on out there, "is to wait until they run out of stones to throw at us."

"Well, do you have a plan!?" Tinly said defensively when he noticed the look of disgust I was giving him.

I nodded. "I get up there and fight whoever or whatever is trying to stone us to death," I said and tried to crawl closer to the edge of the carriage but Tinly yanked me back to my original spot beside him.

"And how do you plan on doing that? Even if you did manage to avoid getting hit by all the rocks, those rock faces are impossible to climb."

I grinned broadly at him, "I never said I was going to climb them," I said, and took a second to enjoy the puzzled look on Tinly's face.

Out of nowhere a rock bounced off the ground, and flew under the carriage, striking me on my forehead, and causing me to see stars.

I scowled at the additional pain, "That's it, I didn't like this dress that much anyways," I growled and scampered out from beneath the carriage. I could already feel hot blood trickling down my forehead from the spot the rock had struck.

" What? Wait, get back under here! You're going to get yourself killed" Tinly yelled, but I ignored him and instead glanced around briefly at the scene laid out before me.

It was complete and utter chaos. The soldiers were holding shields over their head to try to protect themselves from the falling rocks. Some of them laid motionless on the ground in pools of their own blood, while others had taken cover under the other carriages, just like we had done.

The mist reindeer had begun thrashing around wildly in their harnesses and were lashing out at each other in fear. The smell of blood, coupled with all the noise and rocks hitting them had sent them into a panic.

There were no horses to be seen anywhere. They had all probably bolted by now.

I noted that the only thing down here in this mess that was calm where the sand lizards. They just sat there, seemingly uncaring, while stones bounced off them.

"Jade," Tinly repeated and reached for my leg, but I moved away from him before he could grab me. When I was safely out of his reach I look down at him, "Give me a knife, or dagger, or something I can use to cut this dress. I can't do anything with all this fabric tangling up my feet."

He shook his head, "You couldn't do anything even if you didn't have that dress on," he said, a grim look plastered to his face.

I felt my eye begin to twitch with impatience, " I would rather die fighting than die cowering like a bug because they'll probably manage to kill us all before they run out of rocks. Now do you have a dagger or not!?" I all but shouted.

Tinly's eyes suddenly grew wide and he pointed at the air behind me, "Behind-" he began and I turned around just in time to see a huge rock coming straight towards me, but before it got any closer it stopped, like it had struck an invisible wall, and then fell straight to the ground.

I gave Tinly a questioning stare, "Hey, I thought you said you can't use magic here?"

He looked back at me with a wide-eyed expression, his face had turned the color of ash making the black swirling designs covering it more defined. "I-" he began

"Just keep blocking the rocks, while I find something useful to fight with," I said, not wanting to waste any more time by listening to his explanation. I turned and hurried away.

It didn't take me long to find an unconscious, or at least I hope was just unconscious, the soldier with a shield and a sword still on him.

I bent over and picked up the sword, and turned it over a couple times in my hand as I tested its weight, its blade glimmered brightly in the sunlight. Swords weren't exactly my weapon of choice, I was more of a spear kind of gal, but I still had some skill when it came to wielding them.

Without any father hesitation, I balled the hem of the dress in my fist and sliced though it was a ripping sound. Pieces of green fabric fell onto the ground, and the air brushed up against my bare legs. Now, this was much better.

With that problem solved, I turned my face upwards towards the rock ledge directly above me. As I did so the voice of my father began to echo in my head and a memory from my childhood came front and center.

"Sweetheart," my father said and knelt down on the cool pebbles lining the bank of the river, he did so his face was next to mine. I turned away from the crayfish I had been stalking to face him. The sunshine shone through his golden blonde hair, making his head look like it was surrounded by a halo.

It had been a sweltering hot day, so we had gone to the river in an attempt to cool off. Jasper was farther down the river and was looking at something blocked from my view

I wanted to go see what it was, but when my father wanted your attention, you gave it to him fully.

"I want you to try and jump up there from down here to that ledge," he pointed up the tall banks of the river to one of the small shelves we used like steps to ease our way down the bank. This shelf, in particular, was one of the ones in the center of the bank and close to 7 feet off the ground, which was a dizzying height when you were only nine.

"All the way up there," I said in awe at hid request and pointed with my own finger.

My father nodded.

"But even Cream Cheese And Berries can't even jump that high," I told him. Cream Cheese and Berries was the name of my horse.

Yes, I really did name my horse Cream Cheese And Berries. It wasn't one of those stories that Jasper wanted to name him Berries and I wanted to name him Cream Cheese so we combined the names. I had named him all by myself, and cream cheese with berries mixed through it had been what I'd been eating the morning my father had surprised me with him. The rest of the story explains itself, or at least I think it does.

My father raised an eyebrow at me, "Oh and how come you know how high Cream Cheese and Berries can jump?"

I looked away nervously. Mom had threatened to take away Cream Cheese and Berries if she every found out I was making him jump. She had told me that her four older brothers had all broken at least one bone in their bodies, during a summer that they had all decided they wanted to teach their horses to jump over obstacles in their path.

"Okay, I'll try," I had said, in an attempt to change the topic. My father laughed and patted me on the head, before rising up to his full height.

I approached the river bank, and I squatted down, and then sprung upwards. I rose a couple of inches off the ground, before landing back on my feet.

"Told you I couldn't jump up to it," I said, and I began drifting towards whatever Jasper had discovered.

"Wait a moment, are you giving up that easily? I didn't think I raised my kids to give up that quickly,"

I stopped in my tracks and looked back at him, "I'm not giving up, you're just being a dumb daddy. So don't say I'm giving up!"

My father frowned playfully at me, his green eyes gleaming "Then if you aren't giving up, come back over here and hold out your arm."

I did as he said and held out my arm, he pulled out his pocket knife. Before I even had time to blink, he had nicked the exposed skin with it.

I pulled my arm away quickly and looked at him with angry and watering eyes. "What did you do that for?" I sniffed, already blood was welling up to the surface of my skin.

My father held out his own arm and nicked it with the knife, "I just want to try something, but look we're even now, so you can't be mad at me." He looked down at the cut that was beginning to ooze blood, just like the one on my own arm.

"Try and jump up to the shelf in riverbank," he repeated "And try to think of nothing except the pain in your arm and the desire to be up there instead of down here,"

I scowled at him, but in the ended up doing what he asked of me. Again I squatted down, and then sprung upwards, but instead of raising only a couple inches off the ground, I found myself standing on the top of the river bank way above my goal.

I looked around me and amazement and then I looked down at my father below. I smiled at him but, that smile dropped when I notice he wasn't smiling back.

"What's wrong daddy? Aren't you happy! I did it even better than you wanted!"

"You will never do that again!" my father said harshly from the ground.

"But you told me to," I whined. He was using his you're-in-trouble voice with me, but I had done what he had asked.

"Never again," he had repeated.

Sorry, dad looks like I'm going to have to do that again. Well that was assuming that was a real childhood memory and not one I had made up. The bank of the river was about fourteen feet high, this was almost twice that height. I wiped some blood away from my eyes with the back of my hand and then closed them, focusing on the pain in my shoulder and head, and my need to get up there. I readied myself and jump.

What happened next didn't happen like it had in my memories. Little nine-year-old Jade had jumped just the right amount of height and had landed safely on her feet. I was a good six feet above the rock ledge that I had needed to land on.

For a brief second, I stayed motionless in the air. From where I was, I could see our attackers, and there were a lot of them. They all resembled that monkey creature that had attacked me when I had been bathing. The only difference between it and them was that they lacked wings on their backs. They were also much shorter, maybe only three and a half feet high.

Besides each of these creatures was a pile of neatly stacked stones.

That was all I had time to process, before the earth found her hold on me again, and yanked me towards her.

I let out a small yelp as a landed on one of the creatures that had just stood there dumbly, and watched me fall on it. It hissed and snarled at me before it was able to detangle itself from me and joined its friends, who had formed a line and were slowly inching forward. The ledge was only wide enough for four of them to walk side by side.

I held my sword out in front of, "Alright, which one of you would like to go first. Do you think it's fun to interrupt people's baths and throw stones? Well, I think it's fun to cut monkey things in half!"

Two of the creatures suddenly broke away from the rest and came rushing towards me. I readied my sword and waited for them to get close enough. Just when they were within reach of my sword, however, they leaped into the air and over me. Apparently, I wasn't the only one here who could jump high.

"Hey!" I yelled before I had to catch myself before I tripped, as all of them rushed past my feet and into a jagged gap in the rocks behind me that I had failed to notice before. I silently cursed myself for this. One of the important rules of battle was to always be aware of your surroundings.

"Hey!" I repeated, and rushed towards the opening, just as the last of them disappeared inside.

I stood at the entrance and peered in, but all I could see was darkness. I could tell just by looking at it that the gap was too narrow for me to squeeze through, and even if I could I knew better. It was plain dumb to fight something(s) that was dangerous in place you weren't able to see the layout of.

I guess they had gotten away this time. I sighed in defeat and wonder how I was going to get down from here. The rock ledge was a good twelve feet off the ground.

"Jade!" I heard someone shout from below.

I took one last weary look behind me at the opening in the rock, before slowly inching my way towards the edge. I peered over it and saw Tinly standing on the ground below me. He was waving his hands back and forth frantically.

"Bad news, they got away," I shouted down to him. " And more bad news, we are going to have to figure out a way to get me down from here."

Tinly dropped his arms to his side and gave me a look I still have seared into my brain. "Jade, your brother and my brother.... they're dead."