Luminous' eyes blinked, staring up at the bright blinding sky. The air around her felt hot and dry. Or maybe that's just because her throat was dry and itchy.

"Terra, I think she's starting to wake up."

Luminous heard a guy's voice.

"Braver back up. She needs her space."

She heard a female voice say.

"Sorry." The guy said.

Luminous' eyes opened up fully to see javelina and a bear standing over her. The bright hot sun was blinding so Luminous shielded her eyes with her arm. Only to see yellow feathers instead.

"Quack!" She screeched jolting up. "My arms! What happened to my arms!?"

She looked down at her orange webbed feet and short stick-like legs. Panicked she looked around the oasis until she found a lake. Running to it she looked at her reflection.

"Quack! I'm a duck! But how?! When!?" Luminous panicked touching her beak with her wing.

"It couldn't be helped, if the townspeople saw you and knew you were human like us they would have hunted you down." Said the Bear. "So we brought you here so the swan goddess could protect you."

"Braver!" Yelled the Javellana. "We were supposed to give her the news slowly."

Luminous looked around at all of the other animals she just now noticed staring at her with intense curiosity.

"Sorry Terra, sorry." Said the bear.

"Human?" Luminous raised an eyebrow. "But, you're all animals."

"So are you." Said, Braver.

"But, I wasn't born like this. I mean..." Luminous spread out her wings to look at her small duck body. "I wasn't uh..."

Luminous' head was spinning with this new revelation. Where was she anyway? Not only moments ago she was in the middle of the ocean drowning while Vainglorious....

"Vainglorious! Wheres Vainglorious!" Luminous yelled so suddenly it startled the others." Or Janus? The Dawn of Fate?"

The animals just looked at her confused.

"Are they other humans who were with you?" Asked Braver.

"No, well one of them is. Vainglorious, he's this ice wizard. And when I first heard about him, I thought he might be an old man like master mouse, but he's a powerful little boy."

"Wait little boy who's a wizard?" Asked the Terra.

"Ya, short white hair, dark blue trench coat."

Terra and Braver both glanced at each other.

"He kind of has this little pointed nose thing going on..." She continued.

"That might be what all the commotion in the town square was today," Terra mumbled to herself.

"The town square?" Asked Luminous.

"Your friend. They might have already found him. If he has magic, he's in huge trouble. They'll probably burn him at the stake this evening." Said, Braver.

"Braver!" Yelled Terra.

Luminous felt her stomach drop.

"Sorry." Said, Braver.

"I have to go into town and find him!" She announced before flapping her wings, lifting into the air unsteadily.

"No, wait! You can't go into the town! The sun will set soon!" Terra shouted after her. "If the sun sets you'll turn human again! That's also when the shadow monsters come out!"

Luminous did a mix of flying and waddling around in the desert. It didn't take long to find the huge clay buildings that made up the town in the distance.

She flapped her wings bobbing unevenly in the sky until they felt too heavy to continue. Falling slowly Luminous landed in the middle of the busy dirt road. A bunch of animals pushing clay carts went by her. A monkey wheeled by right behind her with his cart.

"Quack!" Yelled Luminous with a mix of flying and jumping out of the way.

"Hey watch it! Stupid duck!" Yelled the monkey wheeling by.

Luminous lay on the dirt ground, her yellow feathers ruffled and dirty now.

"Owch."

Luminous continued to waddle around the street past the clay bildings and food stands looking for Vainglorious until she saw a statue of a giant swan in the middle of the town squire. A huge crowd of animals was surrounding it holding torches and pitchforks.

Luminous tried to waddle to the front of the crowd, but it was so crowded that she was pushed and jostled until she was farther back than when she started.

"Dang it, how am I suppose to see what's going on now?"

Something out of the corner of her eyes blinked to life. Looking up she saw lanterns strung up across stone buildings and market stands.

Spreading her yellow wings out she wiggled her tail before jumping/ flying up to the string of lanterns. Her webbed feet balancing on the string of lanterns.

"Flyings a lot harder than birds make it look..."

She painted perched and looking over the crowd of animals to the gigantic sawn statue they were all surrounding.

She saw a huge coyote with a cowboy hat standing in front of the statue speaking out to the crowd.

"Citizens of Maroon city! We've caught one of the witches that have been haunting us since the great rift!"

Luminous heard cheers abrupt over the crowd in waves. Then some monkeys pulled on ropes attached to a huge block of ice. The ice was dragged to the center in front of the huge swan statue.

Luminous leaned over the lanterns peering over at the block of ice everyone was shining a torch on. The moment she saw his wavey white hair and little pointed nose she recognized him instantly.

"Vainglorious!"

"What are we to do with it? It's protected itself in the ice." Said a tortoise.

"How are we supposed to make it pay for haunting us with those shadow creatures for all these years now?" Asked a pig.

A commotion began in the crowd of various animals until a desert rabbit in a cowboy hat pulled out of his vest what Luminous could only describe as a weird metal boomerang. He pointed it up at the pink hue sky and some very loud popping sounds could be heard.

BOOM BOOM.

It was so loud that Luminous almost fell off of the lantern lights.

"Well quiet down and I'll tell you what I'll do!" Shouted the huge coyote. "We'll melt this witch out of its ice prison, then we'll burn it along with the others until them and all their shadow creatures are gone!"

The crowd cheered as the coyote held a torch up to the ice. The flames licking the ice with Vainglorious sleeping peacefully inside.

"No don't hurt him!" Shouted Luminous.

She flew from the lanterns down to where the coyote was. She crashed right into him before falling to the ground.

"Why you! That's heresy little duck!"

Luminous stood up on her webbed duck feet holding her wings across her heart.

"I won't let you-"

Right at that moment, the sun dipped under the stars. The pink hues of the sky going completely dark.

"Hurt him!" She shouted, completing her transformation from duck back to a girl.

The cowed of animals paused looking at the naked human girl that stood in the middle of their town square.

The coyote who was the leader of the crowd was the first to speak.

"It's one of the witches! Get it before it uses magic!"

Out of the corner of her eye, Luminous saw the desert rabbit take out what looked like a metal boomerang. He was holding it like an upside-down L right at her. She remembered the loud popping sounds it made from earlier. Was it some kind of weapon?

Luminous went to hit her heart-shaped armor button but slapped her bare shoulder instead. That's when she realized she didn't have the Dawn of Fate or her armor button on her. She was completely naked on this new battlefield.

A loud bang could be heard coming out of the desert rabbit's strange weapons. A tiny piece of metal flew at her when a huge muscular man with braided red hair jumped in front of her.

"To save another soul from perishing down below, another leap of faith to stop another foe!" Shouted the naked man.

The tiny piece of metal lodged itself into the shield the man summoned, cracking it. Luminous though she recognized the voice and it was quickly confirmed with his next words.

"I would run if I were you little duck!"

"Braver?" Asked Luminous staring at the man's muscular tan back.

The desert rabbit ran to the side of the shield firing at them again. The man switched his position so his shield blocked the next built cracking his shield again.

"Time to leave kid!" Said a naked woman picking Luminous up and slinging her over her muscular shoulder.

"Wait a minute! I need to get Vainglorious!"

Luminous kicked and swarmed reaching her hand out for the boy trapped in the ice but it was useless. She was being carried away by the tall tan women with long brown hair out of the town.

"The portal is up ahead right?" Asked Braver who was now running beside the woman carrying Luminous.

"Ya, I've been timing them. It usually shows up right about-"

Luminous looked over her shoulder just in time to see a rift tare itself in the middle of the air. In the middle of nowhere, where before there was nothing but the desert. Was now the oasis she woke up in earlier.

The man and women who rescued Luminous jumped through the portal with her. Right as they did that the rift closed, the town with all the animals and Vainglorious disappeared right before her eyes.

"I, I have to go back!" Yelled Luminous as soon as she was dropped on the grass. "I have to save Vainglorious before they thaw him out!"

"Whoa there, you can't leave now. It's nighttime. The shadow monsters are out there now." Said the tall curvy woman who Luminous now recognized as Terra. "It's best to stay here and rest for now.''

"Besides even if you leave now there is no way you'll get to that boy in time.'' Said, Braver.

"Braver!" Shouted Terra.

"What? What do you mean by that? The town is just right there.''

Terra and Braver bit their lips looking at each other.

"Uh, actually,'' Terra spoke smoothing her long curly hair. "The oasis moves every time a portal opens up. When before we were minutes away from the town, we are now days away. We couldn't possibly reach your friend in time before Mayer Widely coyote and his sheriff Peter rabbit figures a way to thaw him out of his ice prison spell and kill him."

"Then that only means I have to try harder to get him back," Luminous said biting her lip.

"Wait you can't walk out of this oasis at night, no one has ever made it back before!" Said Terra. "The shadow creatures will kill you!"

Luminous shook her head before exiting the oasis onto the sandy desert that blew around in the cool night wind. However, it didn't take long for the growls of shadowy creatures to surround her.

A corrupted coyote came out of the shadows barring its teeth at her.

She reached for the Dawn of Fate on her back. But quickly remembered that she lost him to the bottomless ocean. When her hand griped nothing but air.