Joseph and Susan were hurled across the cavern. They landed hard on their backs, and, due to the force of which they'd been thrown, slid several yards before crashing to a halt against the cold stone wall.

Sara's scream echoed through the chilling night air.

Scary Skelitin threw himself down beside his friends, panic eating him from the inside, out. There had to be something he could do. He was Scary Skelitin. He was the most powerful wizard of the modern age! And he was also... too late.

From behind Joseph's limp form, Scary watched as Susan struggled to reach out and touch her true love's cheek. But she never made it. Her hand gave out an inch away, and bounced, lifeless, off of the stone floor.

Scary saw the light in her eyes flicker, and fade. Until a single tear streaking down her face was the only sign of life that'd once filled her body.

It only took a split second, to go from shoving and teasing each other playfully, and simply being... gone.

No tears fell from Scary's face. No droop showed in his shoulders. Instead, rage boiled his blood.

"You should've known better than to bring mortals into this, Scary," came a soft, casual, voice from behind him. "They're far too fragile,"

Gritting his teeth, Scary spun to his feet and surveyed the cavern. Across the cave, Sara stood against the wall, tears pouring down her face, and a dumbfounded Luft put his arms around her.

But Scary focused on the lanky teen up front. The one who stared back at him. The one who's hands were covered in wispy, ghostlike, claws, matching the fatal wounds on the couple's chests.

"You killed them," Scary breathed, staring into the eyes of his longest and oldest friend.

Dare stared back with a dazed grin on his face. "Come on, Scary," he said "You know that everyone in here has to die. Without you all, the resistance dies peacefully,"

"And you are part of that resistance!" Scary yelled, drawing his wand out of thin air.

A moment of realization sparked behind Dare's eyes as he hesitated, to comprehend what he'd just been told. That's right. He was part of the resistance, wasn't he? So why was he-

Scary roared, and blasted Dare off of his feet with a bolt of lightning. But the amount of rage he'd put into the spell caused it to strike himself as well.

Scary was thrown against one end of the cavern, and Dare was shot through a long hallway down the other side.

"I got him!" Simon sprinted down the hall and tackled Dare as he attempted to stand.

Dare put his feet to Simon's chest, and kicked him up through the thin ceiling above them. Then ghostlike wings enveloped his arms, and he beat them once, soaring up after Simon.

In midair, Dare shifted his arms into two large hammers, and slammed them into Simon's midsection. The force sent Simon off like a rocket, disappearing far into the woods. Then Dare landed back in the walkway, his landing creating a cloud of dust down into the cave.

"Simon?" Luft called down the hallway, unsure of how the battle ended. "Answer me buddy!"

"He won't be answering anyone for a while," Dare's silhouette grew in the cloud of dust, and lifted up a wand.

"You're a sorcerer, you moron," Scary groaned. He pulled himself off of the wall and glared across the cave at Dare. "That wand does nothing for you,"

"You don't say?"

Dare lifted the wand high and swung it in Luft's direction. The action produced a long gash torn across the man's torso, also throwing him to the ground. Luft's body left bloody imprints in the dirt as he rolled against Sara's feet.

"Enough!" Scary teleported behind Dare and grabbed the back of his jacket. Before the villain could react he was thrown back against the opposite wall, next to Joseph and Susan's corpses.

"I will end you!" Scary roared.

"For what?" Dare laughed. He slowly stood, and tossed his coat across the floor, using the wall for support before he turned to face Scary. "We all kill, Scary. Isn't that right? Aren't you the one who said that the nameless, faceless, bodies of those you've slain are just for the cause?"

"Those two weren't nameless or faceless!" Scary cried pointing at their friends. "They were-"

"Nobody is faceless, or nameless!" Dare interrupted his seething, with a rant of his own. "They all mattered to someone. Everyone matters to someone! But you wouldn't listen to me. So the bloodshed ends here! With you,"

Dare burst out laughing as he aimed his wand at Scary's chest, but Scott Skelitin was quicker. With a roar of rage, he aimed to put an end to Dare. His best friend.

But he couldn't kill the man, no matter what he did to them.

Scary decided that he had to do this differently. Keep Dare from causing any more damage, at least for the time being. He could freeze him. Hold him in time until the resistance had a chance to neutralize the Committee.

Once they found out who was behind the High Committee's plans, they would set Dare free, and figure out a way to fix him. Until then...

The spell exploded out of Scary's wand, and enveloped the two of them for several seconds. And when the dust settled, the pair was frozen solid. To the naked eye, they were nothing but statues.

So there they stayed, within their shell of stone, frozen in time...

***

Scary sat up quickly, and clutched his wand close to his core. His heart was beating so fast that the walls of his chest were beginning to ache.

"It's not real, just a dream," Scary whispered, taking shallow breaths. But he knew that wasn't entirely true. It was very real, and it wasn't a dream. It was a memory.

He took a quick glance around the campsite they'd set up, and saw both Simon and Luft resting peacefully amongst the trees. Honestly, Scary was slightly jealous.

They all had been through the same amount. They were both there when Dare turned his back on the team. But those two could sleep in peace. And worst of all, they could remember everything.

Scary retrieved the coin from his pocket and traced the engraving with his finger. It meant something to him, he was sure of it. It was something obvious. Something he should never have forgotten. But nowadays he couldn't remember anything.

And somehow, this coin was the key to everything. Find the Puppet Man, get the information. Get the information, make the next most logical plan. Make the plan, execute the plan. Execute the plan, execute the High Committee. And it all started with this symbol, the symbol he couldn't remember.

Scary sighed and sat back against the tree he'd fallen asleep near. Then he glanced up into the night sky.

He couldn't even remember Sara. He remembered loving her. The love he had for Sara McKinney was beyond words, and beyond memories. He still had that love, but nothing more. The answers were all there, in his head. But he refused to see them eighty years ago, and he couldn't see them now.

A skull and a spider. A spider on a skull. What did it mean?

Scary punched the ground. This is usually when he would talk to Dare. Wake him up and see what the two of them could come up with. Dare or Creepy were as much a part of himself as he was. And now he didn't have either of them.

Why couldn't he remember anything? And why did everything hurt so much? Scary had never felt his pulse effected so much by any spell. But all of the sudden, Rivet shows up, lands a couple of blows and he's barely clinging to life?

None of it made sense anymore.

"You good, Scary?" Simon's whisper cut through Scary's thoughts, bringing him back to the chilly, midnight, sky above them.

"Yeah, uh," he casually palmed the coin to conceal it from view. "I'm fine. Just planning ahead,"

Simon watched Scary closely, as he lifted himself off the ground and wandered over to the fire they'd lit before settling in.

It wasn't hard for Scary to believe that most people thought Simon was stupid, even though he knew it couldn't have been further from the truth. He was childish, for sure. But far from stupid.

In fact, he was probably seeing through Scary's whole act without even speaking.

"I was thinking," Simon appeared behind Scary in new clothes, and patted his shoulder. "Maybe we could rest a few days. You know, it's not that easy to get back to running around so soon after being a tree for so long,"

"Speak for yourself," Luft snorted, rolling over in his midair resting place. "I feel as energetic as ever,"

"That because you weren't a tree, or a rock, for eighty years," Scary replied with a snort. "You didn't even get back to this dimension until a couple weeks ago,"

"Yeah, how does that work?" Simon wanted to know "You actually lived these past several decades. Just in a different place. How are you still a teenager?"

"It's simple actually. I only aged in the other dimension. In this dimension, I'm the same age as the day I left," Luft explained with a wave of his hand. "Feels great to not be old,"

"That's oddly unsettling," Simon replied with a half-comprehensive nod.

Scary cracked a rare smile at seeing his friends back at it again, but it faded as quick as it'd come. There was too much to take care of to be smiling right now.

"You're thinking about Dare," Luft guessed, rolling over to face the two. "Aren't you?"

Simon gave Luft a look that clearly stated he'd trounced into the subject they'd agreed not to breech. But Scary surprised the two by replying. "I can't say he hasn't crossed my mind,"

"Don't blame yourself, Scary," Simon begged him. "As much as I wish it didn't have to be that way, we can't always trust everyone. It's the life we gave ourselves when we started this resistance,"

Scary merely flicked his wand, absentmindedly turning the wood in the fire.

"We should have seen it coming," Luft snorted in disgust as he slowly recalled the past. "The Committee always seemed to be a step ahead of us. Like they were reading our minds. Every step we took threw us right into a trap. Of course they had someone on the inside,"

"And then Dare disappeared for a week, or something," Simon reminded them, attempting to add his own two cents to the story.

That's right, Scary nodded vaguely. Dare vanished into thin air for days on end. Then sent them a letter out of nowhere, telling them to meet him in that cave in the woods. He'd said he had an urgent update on the High Committee's whereabouts.

None of them knew he was referring to himself. So Scary went to round up the team. In a lucky twist of fate, Carly had been tied up and couldn't make it. Simon said he'd be there, but he'd be late. So it was only Scary, Luft, Sara, Susan, and Joseph.

Some of it was coming back to him. It was a start.

"That week he disappeared was probably him planning the whole ambush with his Committee buddies," Luft hissed through gritted teeth.

"I just can't believe it," Simon breathed. "I always wondered if someone among us was selling information... but not Dare. Never him,"

"That put you a step ahead of me," Scary admitted softly. "I refused to accept that any of us could be telling any less than the truth,"

"It couldn't be helped," Luft lowered himself to the ground and wandered over to the fire where his friends stood. "Nobody would've suspected him anyway, even if we were actually hunting for a spy,"

Scary looked them both in the eye from the opposite side of the fire. "It won't happen again," he vowed. "There will not be another spy. And if we find one... we will end them. Before they have the chance to do the same to us,"

Luft nodded. And Simon followed along, a little more solemnly.

"So where are we going now?" Luft wanted to know. He waved his hands, and controlled the air around them to toy with the flames.

Scary and Simon exchanged a look, and he took a slow breath before replying. "We'll wait a few days. It'll give Simon a chance to get prepared for the trek,"

And me a chance to figure out where the hell we're going...