We all have different ways of decorating our bedrooms. Leela has a life-sized stuffed horse crammed into a corner so it can watch her sleep with its cold, lifeless eyes. Sheira has the fluffiest white rug you've ever laid hands upon. It may look like the remnants of a very unfortunate flayed polar bear, but it's the comfiest thing on the planet! I should know; I've slept on it.

Even Sophie, master of the mad and bizarre, has something particularly out there that makes you think, what the story with that thing? Well, I'll tell ya. For June this year, Chip thought it would be a great idea to get Sophie her own trans pride flag because, for some reason, she hasn't got one yet, and it was her birthday and Pride Month in one fell swoop. It's nice how things line up sometimes. It didn't exactly line up for Chip, though, as, bless his heart, he thought the website he was getting it from was in feet.

Spoiler alert. It wasn't.

A few weeks later, Sophie unwraps this 2X5m monstrosity, and since Chip has the foresight of a teaspoon, he hadn't bothered to check. It was at that moment that Chip knew he had messed up. For her part, Sophie thought it was hilarious, laughing until she needed the loo, returning and then, upon seeing the flag laid out, lost it all over again. She insisted on hanging it up right away, and now there it hangs pride of place, even if it does take up an entire wall.

That being said, their choices in décor were nothing compared to the absolute bombsite before us now.

I'd say we first cottoned onto the smell about three doors down and put two and two together by the next one. By the time we hit Shadow's door, I was re-evaluating my life choices, but as Sheira had the key, I was forced to stand by and try not to gag. That didn't last for long as, by the time the door swung open, I was dry heaving out a window before you could say, 'can you smell that?'.

It was simply awful! There is no other way to describe it. The closest thing I can come up with was a combination of high school boys changing room post cross country run and a green bin left to sit in the sun on the hottest day of the year. I'm sorry for that mental image, but also not really because I'm actually here.

Judging by the scene that lay before us, Shadow must have been to every takeaway in London. There was Chinese, Indian, pizza, sushi, kebabs, Thai, and god knows what else. Y'know, I'd always wondered why Shadow never seemed to turn up for lunch. There must have been a year's supply of food left in here, and I'll be honest, not much of it was fresh. I couldn't see any mould, but it was only a matter of time.

There was no floor, only mess. At one point, I thought I saw a scrap of the carpet, but then upon closer inspection, I realised it was actually just the calcifying remains of a dead mouse. I brought Flame out to see if there were any more furry menaces in there, but he took one look at the room and noped back into his amulet. To be honest, looking at the mounds of discarded coffee cups (I suppose one of the advantages of being immortal is being able to slam as many espressos as you want without the risk of certain caffeine-fuelled death), leaning tower of pizza boxes and rainforest of crumpled up paper, I didn't blame him.

In fact, the only thing that looked spared from the carnage was the standard-issue Stronghold bed which was perfectly made. Too perfectly, actually. Come to think of it, Shadow usually camped out in my room or on one of the couches in the common rooms. Did Shadow even sleep in here?

"Ladies first?" I said once I'd finally stopped retching.

Sheira shoved me instead, a reasonable response, in my opinion. There was actually a bit of a footpath within the trash valley so we could make our way through the mess without too much trouble. While I wiped off a layer of dust that had been around since the dinosaurs, Shiera very gingerly picked up the edge of a carton. Orange goop dribbled from the edge onto her fingers. I've never seen her move so fast.

"Disgusting!" she snarled, frantically shoving her hands under the tap in the bathroom. I could hear her scrubbing like her life depended on it. "Jesus Christ, how could anyone live like this?!"

"More importantly, how the hell are we going to clean this up! There must be a thousand tons of rubbish in here! I'll be a hundred by the time we're finished!"

Sheira emerged from the bathroom and snorted. "Are we both in agreement that no matter what the Harpy says, this is definitely a punishment?"

"Oh, we are well past that!"

She laughed again. "Good, at least we're on the same page."

I plonked myself down on the bed, chin in my hands. "Where the hell are we supposed to do, Sheir? I've seen Hoarders, and they have a small army with those funny white suits and power washers to help them out! Where do we even start?"

"Well, first things first, we need to get the floor clear. The bathroom isn't too bad, thank god, at least that man has standards about something, so we can leave that till last. Until then, we need just one special tool."

"Let me guess," I said dryly. "Bin bags?"

"Righto! I'll get the bags, and you start shovelling. Any last words?"

"I hate my life?"

"Mood."

Ten thousand bags later, and my initial assessment of a hundred years wasn't proving to be far off. By lunchtime, we'd only managed to remove the top layer of trash, and there was more where that came from! Add to the horror that it was already twenty degrees out, and yeah, you get the picture.

I'm going to shower for a week after this.

Arms aching and thoroughly coated in grease, grime and god knows what else, we'd actually manage to get the place looking halfway decent. We weren't five-star hotel quality yet, hell no. But we were definitely at that dodgy budget hotel on the side of the motorway, which always smells faintly of feet. Room for improvement and all that just let's all hope the health inspector doesn't decide to swing by.

With the majority of the mess stuffed into one of the industrial rubbish bins behind the kitchens, Sheira and I could actually get a decent idea of what Shadow's living quarters had actually been like, and all I'm saying is that we were robbed. The standard rooms had a bed, wardrobe, desk, and that was about it. Shadow had a sofa! A bath! He even had a TV! (So what if it had changed colour from the dust a TV is a TV!)

But shocker, there was actually something more interesting. The big round table plonked squarely in the middle of the room was strangely free of the all-encompassing garbage. Yes, it was cluttered, but like my room, contrary to what my mother thinks, everything looked like it had been placed there on purpose.

Papers covered with handwritten notes were strewn strategically across the surface, books piled high in logical stacks, and cardboard files sat open to be read. There wasn't a crumpled coffee cup in sight

I picked up one of the files and perused it, but I read the first couple of lines and got bored. I swear I try to get my head around elemental history, but when it's written in old English, I can't help but see blah blah blabby blah. The next book I picked up was a bit more interesting. It was going on about the Ancients, the first elementals to get the bright idea to harness the primal forces of the earth (often with disastrous consequences). The page described how they were first worshipped as gods, but when the country first started being invaded (the Romans, I believe), they became demons and heretics and made the first clans.

I put the book down. Exciting stuff, but if I wanted to read up about it, I could just pop into the library and grab something from the history section. What I was after was something a bit more...unique. I wanted to find something that was undeniably Shadow's so we could do some proper sneaking. Then, just as I pushed some notes aside, my prayers were answered.

"Woah! Hey Sheira! Check this out!"

As she pottered over, I fulfilled a bucket list by dramatically sweeping papers off a table, revealing the full map underneath. Now the map itself wasn't special, just your bog standard ripped straight from the pages of the world atlas map. No, no, no, what really got my brain ticking was that every single country except for the UK and the America's was crossed out with a dark red X. Now that may have been something you'd expect from a supervillain hell-bent on world domination, but the plot thickened with the introduction of an A-Z of Britain's Towns and Landmarks tucked underneath.

It also had similar marks in the same red pen, striking out every name for page after page after page. Some of the pages were neat, completed with military accuracy and care. Others were scribbled out in a moment of blind anger. There was more than one of the latter kind. I flipped to the last page of marks and surprisingly found all of London just gone, torn clean out. Did this man have no respect for librarians?!

"May I be the first to say what the hell?" I said, turning the next letter of the alphabet. M onwards was suspiciously blank.

"You beat me by like a second," Sheira replied.

"What's the point of all this? There's clearly a method to his madness. Maybe he's just trying to visit every country?"

"Yeah, but then America would be crossed out. He's told me before that he was there to see the Empire State Building being opened!"

I started chewing on a hangnail when a thought hit me. "Well, we know he's looking for his memory. This could just be his checklist. It's probably the reason he left. 'I've been here too long; I need to make up for lost time' and all that."

"So you think he's literally going through the alphabet trying to find this thing, whatever it is."

"Makes sense in a convoluted way."

"But then why wouldn't he take the book?" she pointed out.

I had nothing for that one, so I just shrugged. "Didn't see the point, maybe? Or he could've genuinely just forgotten."

"Maybe..." she stared at the map for a beat longer, perhaps expecting it to suddenly pull marauders on us and start spilling its secrets, but alas, it stayed stubbornly blank. "Ah well, we'll check it out later," and she folded it up and, along with the A-Z, dumped it onto our "reserved for later snooping" pile.

But as Sheira carefully separated library books and I made some NBA worthy shots into the nearest bin bag, something else volunteered itself for snooping.

Thunk!

"The hell?"

"Don't look at me," Sheira frowned. "That came from your end."

We mirrored each other slow, dramatic turn to the metal waste bin beside the table. All I'd been doing was sweeping old tissues and crumpled up bits of paper into it. There shouldn't have been anything heavy. It was like that bit from the Incredibles (although, to be fair, Shadow being hired by a secret government agency wouldn't surprise me at this point).

The decision to go dumpster diving took all of three seconds and a further ten for me to dig out the source of the mysterious thunking noise. When I showed it to Sheira, you would've thought the Rosetta Stone or some other historical McGuffin someone's dug up in a car park (not a joke, we dug up king Richard the third a few years back).

To me, it just looked like one of those cool leather books you get at craft fairs. It clearly wasn't one of ours, though, after all, the books in the library were bulky tomes large enough to club a whale to death and then still have enough integrity to come back for seconds. While this was older than time itself, judging by the yellowed and curled pages, it was closer to journal size. More diary and less bludgeoner of innocent cetaceans. Someone had obviously taken care of it, as besides a few minor scuffs, the leather was smooth and shiny with a silvery clasp holding it shut for dear life.

"I told you we'd find some good stuff in here! This has to be Shadow's!"

Sheira took it from me, carefully examing the cover. "You're probably not wrong. Maybe it's his diary? But it could just be a notebook," she added quickly upon seeing my delighted expression.

"Perhaps, but it's a bit nice to just be filled with 'buy more milk or 'yell at Nick for waking me up at three in the afternoon'."

"...Really?"

"In my defence, who in their right mind sleeps that late! He can't even get hangovers!"

"Can Shadow not get drunk?"

I shook my head. "Something about his cells regenerating so quickly he can't be affected. Like Captain America."

"Lucky bastard!"

"I know, right! But to steer us back to the point, I also don't see Shadow making notes. Paper trails aren't exactly your friend when you can't die. If someone worked it out, he'd be in a world of trouble. I don't see him risking that without storing it in his vault."

"Fair. Fair. So why leave it then?"

At that, Sheira made the terrible mistake of handing the book back to me. There wasn't a brain cell in my head that wasn't cooking up some horrible line that essentially could be summed up with eight little words. "Well, there's only one way to find out," and I undid the clasp.

Sheira's reaction was more in line with me waving a loaded shotgun around, pointing it at my own face, and going, 'hey, I wonder what this switch does!' She practically launched herself at me, seizing hold of my wrists with enough force we both almost went crashing to the ground.

"What the hell! Are you an idiot!?"

"Jury's still out on that one."

"That thing could be cursed!"

"Aww, c'mon. You said yourself it's probably just a notebook."

"But what if it isn't," she hissed. "You know what Shadow's like! You've seen the security measures on his vault. What if it's got a curse on it that'll- that'll- oh I don't know, turn your skin green and give you second head!"

I could've listened to her, but I was feeling like a horrible goose today. So I held the book out at arm's length, opened the clasp, and dropped it. The cover fell open, the pages fluttered, Sheira braced for impact and...

Nothing happened. Of course. "Well," I said after a few moments of panicked breathing, "do you think I should start working on my Zaphod Beeblebrox impression?"

"I hate you. I hate you so much."

With me still smirking and Sheira still sulking, we leant over the book for a better look. But upon closer inspection, I'm not sure why we bothered. Shadow, with literal millennia's worth of languages stored in that noggin of his, and probably suspecting that someone (cough cough) would try to pinch it hadn't actually written it in English. I didn't even look like any language I'd ever seen. The text was flowing and smooth with the strange symbols, each finishing in a sharp point. Languages were never my speciality at school, but this was way above my pay grade.

"That's gibberish," I announced to no one in particular.

Perhaps still fearing that it would take one of her fingers off, Sheira gingerly flipped the page over. Alongside more of the same strange scribbles was a drawing this time, a downward pointing triangle under a dome. Sheira tapped the edge of the page thoughtfully.

"It looks familiar, all of it. I've definitely seen that symbol...and I could've sworn I've seen language somewhere before. I think," she massaged the bridge of her nose, "and I'm putting heavy emphasis on the word think; the writing could be in Umbrae."

"Come again?"

"Do you pay any attention in class?"

"Not if I can help it."

"Idiot," Sheira said with a dolloping of fondness. "Umbrae was a language created by the ancient dark elemental as a way to communicate safely."

"Weren't they being murdered by the boatload?"

"God, yeah. Dark's were the most targeted by both humans and their own kind out of all the elementals. By using Umbrae, they could trade secrets, information, even warn them of an attack. It died off in the middle ages when the witch trials were going round, as did most of our culture. Since then, Umbrae and the other primal tongues are dead languages, like Latin. No one uses them anymore."

"Unless, of course, you were around when it was still going."

Sheira grinned slyly. "Exactly. What better way to protect your secrets than with a language no one has spoken in four hundred years." She turned over a few more pages, thoroughly absorbed by the potential mysteries this book had in its pages. Honestly, I felt like I was in the opening five minutes of an Indiana Jones movie. "However, I do think I can take a stab at translating it. There are some books that I can use as a guide."

"What was this about a curse now?"

She rolled her eyes. "Curse or not, this is simply too juicy to ignore now. Besides, I want to know what would be so important he felt the need to encrypt it. And for that matter, why he left it behind!

Then, with no warning whatsoever, Sheira suddenly snapped the book shut and dashed from the room at a pace that could best be described as blinding. She was gone before I could blink, leaving me to dive across the floor to save the skyscraper stack of pizza boxes from toppling over. I've never been very good in goal.

"Oi, Sheira!" I staggered to my feet. "Man down back here, wait up! Sheira!"

Grumbling curses that would've got me smacked by my dear departed granny, I went to chase after her. I got about three feet out the door before the universe decided to remind me why "no running in the halls" is sound advice (always listen to your teachers, kids). I only wish it didn't have to do it so painfully.

BANG!

"Aargh!" I managed to yell before crashing unceremoniously down to earth. "What the hell was- GIO!"

The as per usual immaculately dressed Giovanni Terracina sat up with a dazed expression on his face. "You know," he said, signing, of course, "I probably should have seen that coming."

I snorted. "You can't win 'em all, buddy."

With the help of myself and Omen, Gio's ghostly looking wildebeest, the Italian was hauled to his feet. I'd met Gio a while back now, just after we'd gotten back from our adventure to Scotland. Even though he was only 14, I was thoroughly convinced he'd been a New York mobster in a past life. At the barest minimum, he was in a shirt and tie and at his most fashionable, he could've walked straight off the runway at Prada, wherever that is.

He also had this weird aura around him. You met Gio, and you immediately were overcome with that feeling of 'ah yes, this is a person that I should absolutely never mess around with'. You quickly learned why you got that first impression. Although no one was a hundred per cent certain Gio had mafia connections, he did go to Eton, so there's that.

I quickly flexed my fingers, preparing for the workout of a lifetime, considering I hadn't seen Gio in about two weeks. Ever since meeting Gio, and with a healthy amount of paranoia over my own hearing, I started trying to learn sign language. With some careful tutoring and Gio having the patience of a goddamned saint, I'd gone from not being able to sign a letter to being able to hold passable conversations with my friend so long as Gio went at a tenth the speed he usually did, and I was on my third cup of coffee.

It also helped that Gio could actually hear me, and Omen was always willing to play interpreter. Whenever I inevitably said something wrong, one of them could go 'oh sweetie' and carefully correct me before I accidentally called someone a flat-faced baboon. Okay, maybe that was on purpose, but you get the point!

"So, what's up?" I asked. "You're never in a hurry for anything."

"Oh, I'm fine. I'm just looking for Sheira. I have something to show her."

He didn't actually sign out Sheira's full name; that would be ridiculous. Nah, he had a nickname for every single member of the stronghold. For example, the Harpy was "Witch" (we all prayed she couldn't understand sign), Seeker was "Bear", and Gio himself was "Boss", which was fair enough. Sheira and I's names, on the other hand, were a goddamned pun. Before I turned up, she was just "Winter", y'know, because of her last name but post my glorious arrival, we became, and I'm not kidding here, "Fireboy" and "Watergirl"...yep...Gio's a freaking comedian.

Gio winced. "Sheira? In the library? I'll never see her again!"

"Care to join me on this noblest search and rescue mission then?"

"Sure." He shrugged, "I've got nothing else to do today."

So we started wandering in the general direction that I thought Sheira had charged off to, although Gio's earlier comment may still come true. Our library had over a million copies of books, books that shouldn't fit in the space if you really thought about it, but most of us just chose to ignore it for the sake of our sanities.

"Didn't Sheira ask you to research that fire? Is that what you need to see her about?" I asked after five minutes in the twisting labyrinth of dust and bookworms, both insect and humanoid.

Gio smirked. "She tells you everything doesn't she?"

Not sure if that's a dig at Sheira's secret-keeping skills or a compliment.

"They watched the news broadcast together," Omen went on. "She wanted information on the site."

"And to think I thought I was done with homework for the year," Gio scowled.

"I mean, it's not homework if you're doing it for a friend, right?"

He shot me a withering glare.

"Okay, fair point."

We meandered through the corridors for what felt like an eternity before we came across Sheira being very un-Sheira like. She was tearing through a teetering stack of books at the speed of light and with a ferocity, I'd only seen when faced with a plate of strawberries. It was a massacre. Many good fruits were lost that day.

It was like a strange ritual. Sheira would take a book from the shelves, flick through it so fast the pages blurred together, pause, grumble in annoyance and then toss it carelessly behind her. We watched this process about three times before I cleared my throat.

Sheira barely flinched. "I could've sworn I recently read one of these things about the ancient guilds. I'm sure I did! It must be here! Oh, hi, Gio." She threw the latest failure behind her and waved.

"Sup! I found that stuff you were looking for," he patted his beaten up satchel. "Wasn't easy, though. I had to go digging through some dodgy pathways to get it, but so long as the Harpy doesn't find out, we'll get to keep our heads attached."

She gratefully took the bundle of paper. "Gio, you're a hero! And don't worry if the Harpy asks, this was my idea. Your head and neck can stay acquainted."

"Lucky you," I signed, which got a chuckle out of Gio.

Right there and then in the corridor, Sheira spread out the fat stack of papers across the floor. Gio and I peered nosily over her shoulder for a better look, not that there seemed much to look at. As someone who had gotten a little too comfortable with mortgage forms over the last couple of years, I instantly recognised the layout and useless jargon. However, what did catch my eye was whose name was on the dotted line.

Bell & co. Ltd.

"Please tell me that's not what I think it is," Sheira said like she was getting second-hand embarrassment from the sheer stupidity on display.

"Nope, he's really that stupid," Gio said.

Bell was Erden's surname. I knew this because I'd sneaked a look at his records after the Harpy brought me into her office for accidentally setting fire to the roof of the medical wing. I probably shouldn't have looked, but c'mon it's her fault for leaving it out in the open. Once upon a time, the skinny Mongolian with a gravity-defying quiff and terrible fashion sense was part of the Stronghold. Nowadays, he was part of Molly's inner council, so it made sense for him to sign the deed, what with him being the only legal adult who didn't smell like a rotting corpse.

That being said, it certainly doesn't make sense for that dumbass to use his real name!

The signature wasn't the only thing out of place, though. The document had been stamped, once by the retail park and once by "Bell & Co", only it wasn't just a stamp. To the untrained eye, it just looked like a bunch of squiggly lines. To an elemental, though, it was very familiar. Very familiar indeed. It was a disruption sigil, a tool used by us to keep human noses out of our business. It said, don't worry, no need to look too close, there's nothing to see here.

All those threads combined with a grainy but still very obvious CCTV still of our favourite stupidly tall, cowardly moron was all we needed to tie this sucker up.

"So, our theories were correct. The building was Army owned." Sheira grinned slyly, "Oh, I do like it when a plot comes together."

"I still can't wrap my head around that he'd be that idiotic," I stared in dumbfounded amazement at the photo.

"We are all aware of who we're dealing with here. She may be dead, but Molly is the only one with a working brain!" Gio signed.

"Never has a truer statement been said," I agreed.

Omen pawed the faded carpet. "This is all we have managed to find at such short notice. We still have nothing on the actual fire. There wasn't much to go on in the first place."

"Omen, G, this is more than enough! We have a starting point now!" Sheira exclaimed. "You've already done so much for us...."

Gio flinched. "Ouch. I can sense a 'but' coming up."

"We need more of your help."

"And there it is."

"Please! It's important!" Sheira begged. "Y'know Shadow?"

"I am aware of the concept."

"Well, we were cleaning out his room, and we found this," she said, waving the notebook like a red card. "We want to know what's written in it, but it's in another language. Now, I'm ninety-nine point nine eight per cent sure it's in Umbrae, but I need to find a translation guide, and I saw one in a book on the Necromancers-"

Well, that was enough to drop my jaw like an anvil off a cliff. "Necromancers!" I yelled to be shushed by two humans and a walking piece of lion food. I knew necromancy well. Maddox, the pint-sized Frankenstein, had brought all the dead of Anglesey to the undead last summer, not a fun experience, two stars out of five. Shadow wasn't a necromancer, was he?

Surprisingly Sheira just waved her hand. "Oh, calm down, you worrywart. Necromancer was just a catch-all term for Dark's back in the olden days. Shadow hasn't been messing around with anything like that, I promise...I hope." She snapped the latest book shut and sighed. "Look, Gio, can you do this one more favour for me? Nick and I still need to finish clearing out Shadow's room, and no doubt the Harpy will be sticking us on some upcoming missions. I swear this will be the last thing I ask of you."

"I highly doubt that."

"Oh, come on! Look, I'll buy you a new game; how does that sound?"

He didn't even pause to think about it, the cheeky bastard. "Resident Evil 2?"

"Done."

As Sheira busied herself with tidying up the dusty carnage (and probably calculating how much Gio had screwed her over), writing down the titles for him to go through, the man himself gently tugged on the back of my t-shirt. I turned to him, expecting to see his smug grinning face, but instead, I got an eyeful of frowns. Something was up, I could sense it, and it could only be bad with a face like that.

"Gio...?"

He actually turned his back so Sheira couldn't see his hands. Yeah, scratch bad, I'm a dead man.

"I need to speak to you. Privately," he added.

My only thought was, What the hell could he want? We just went round to the next aisle but surrounded by such joyous reads as "Elemental Politics Through the Ages", I couldn't help but feel a bit isolated. Trust me, no one was coming down here.

Happy we weren't going to be disturbed, I quietly signed, "So c'mon, spill. What's going on?"

Gio glanced around once more, perhaps expecting to see Sheira's face popping through the WWII section. He took a dramatically deep breath, slowing his signing so I couldn't miss a word, and they weren't good words. "I had a dream about you."

I'm going to die, yep, that's it, I'm doomed. Done for. Soon to be deceased. My heart was sputtering away like a diesel engine in minus ten, and my usually toasty internal heat source had simply evaporated. You see, Gio didn't have normal dreams. I mean, my dreams were weird, but his were bloody dangerous. Nine times out of ten, if you pop up in one of his nighttime adventures, your life will be very sucky for the foreseeable future.

Then again, there's always a chance, right? I swallowed hard and tried to put on a smile. "So a good dream, a bad dream or a fun dream?"

I got a kick in the shins for that one.

"I'm serious, you idiot!"

"So a bad dream then?"

Okay, so a quick history lesson. When it comes to elementals, two varieties are about as rare as you can get, and they have held on to those pole positions since the dawn of civilisation. Their names? Time and Space.

Now Space is about as easy to come by as tartan paint, but Time's are a bit commoner, but they don't have the full moveset, and they aren't called Time's. We call them Prophecy's, and they do exactly what they say on the tin. While they can' break the universe by messing around with all that wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff they can see into the future. It's all part and parcel, the whole Prophecy gig. Backer exclusive previews into the infinite madness of the universe, but one of your senses get taken as compensation.

Most of 'em lose their sight or hearing, but Gio's a weirdo. He's mute, he can hear us all, but he can't say a word. No talking, singing, zip. For a while, I thought I was a Prophecy, what with all my weird dreams (You don't need to be full-blooded Time for future-vision, but it helps), but Gio ruled out that little idea sharpish. His exact words were, and I quote, "aside from crippling anxiety and PTSD, there's nothing wrong with you."

Cheers for that, mate.

"Alright! You made your point! Just tell me what happened and don't miss a detail.

He waved his hands about frantically. "That's the thing, not much happened. I just saw you surrounded by these dark flames. It only lasted a few seconds, but it scared me, Nick. It felt–"

Oh boy. Gio made a sign I didn't recognise. To badly explain it, it looked like he was pushing the rock'n'roll out of his chest. I tried for a moment, but I just got nothing, chief.

"Sorry, G, I'm drawing a blank here," I apologised out loud. Time to hazard a very dodgy guess. "It felt...bull?"

Bless him, he was trying not to smile. The final result was what you'd give an old bemused Labrador who somehow can't see the tennis ball right under his nose. "Not even close. It's like bad or terrible. What's is Molly?"

"Dead?"

He chuckled, "besides that. She's cruel. Horrible-"

"Evil?" I guessed.

"That's it! Evil."

"It does look like a cow, though."

"Nah, this is 'bull'." He pinched his nostrils with his thumb and forefinger and blew out gently. Wouldn't you know it, but it looked exactly like a bullring.

"Got it, so 'Bull' and 'Evil'." And I repeated both signs back to him. Learning Sign Language with Nick, coming soon to CBeebies. "Let's be honest, neither sound good for my health."

"The odds aren't in your favour."

"Thanks." I sighed miserably, "did you get anything else? Was it just the bad feeling?"

He shook his head. "It wasn't one of my finer moments, but I promise if anything else comes up, I'll let you know straight away." After a bit of consideration, he added, "and I also won't tell Sheira if you don't want me to."

"Well, that goes without saying."

Sheira was already frazzled enough without the knowledge of my potential impending doom. Worrying wouldn't do her any good, but then again, I hated the idea of keeping a secret from her. But counterarguing that I didn't know any more than she did, heck, even Gio was still in the dark.

If given suitable alone time and a full-blown panic attack, I could go around that roundabout of pain for the next three days. Luckily for me, just as I was seriously contemplating lying face down on my bed until tea time, my phone started buzzing like an angry wasp. I pulled it out, and there emblazoned on the screen in all its flashing red glory was the message

ALERT. YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED FOR AN EMERGENCY MISSION. MAKE YOUR WAY TO THE ARMOURY FOR A BRIEFING

"Nick!" Sheira yelled. She appeared out of thin air at the end of the aisle. She was holding her phone too. "Have you..."

I held up the message. "Joint mission. The Harpy ain't playing around."

"You two go. I'll get started on the books and keep you posted if anything pops up."

Before I ran off, I slapped Gio on the shoulder, "we'll talk later, okay?"

I went to walk away, but a loud bang distracted me, Gio. His fist was still connected to the bookshelf. Something about him, his stance, his expression, I dunno, it just set me on edge. What he said next certainly didn't help. "Just stay safe, alright?"

Even though my mouth was drier than death valley, I managed a nod. "You got it."

As I ran for the armoury, I couldn't help but get caught up in those words. What if Gio wasn't telling me everything? Something was wrong; I could feel it. Something had changed. The Stronghold hadn't felt the same since this morning, and I knew; I just knew it was all connected to that fire somehow.

When I got outside, it was like my point was being proven. Grey clouds had swallowed the summer sky, and the wind was already ripping hats and flags from their owners. A storm was coming. The question was, were we ready for it?