"Bags?" I asked.

"Check," Nina replied.

"Books?" Gerrard asked.

"Check," Nina answered.

"Laptop, cell-phone, list of numbers?" I listed off.

"Morphology Potion?" Gerrard asked. Nina nodded and patted a small suitcase that we had filled with little vials of the potion. Although the spell we had put her under was permanent until we undid it, we didn't want to take chances with her features changing back to normal. So we made her a large batch of a potion that would keep her features the same as mine. We had ordered her to drink one vial at the end of every week.

"I think we're all set then," I said.

"What about your ring?" Nina asked, cocking her head to the side. My hand instinctively went towards my engagement ring.

"Hell no," I said, glaring at her. There was no way I was giving her my engagement ring. I needed to hold onto it in case I ever lost hope. It was a part of me now and I was never going to take it off.

"Give me that other ring," Gerrard said, pointing to my other hand. I slipped off the other ring that I had on. Gerrard cupped the ring between his two hands and muttered a spell. He opened his hands up to reveal a ring that looked nearly identical to mine, except the stone was fake.

"Here. Now she really looks like you," Gerrard said, handing Nina the ring. She put it on her finger, grinning at it.

"Except the real thing is always better," I said.

"Are you referring to the diamond or you?" he asked. I shoved him and he laughed.

"Okay. Well, I'll be off then," Nina said.

"Make sure to give us reports once in a while," I said. She nodded, picking up her bags and walking away.

"Thank God she's gone," I muttered as we waved good-bye to the Caley-clone.

"I'm going to miss her. She was nicer than you," Gerrard said. I punched him in the arm, making him chuckle. We got into his rented convertible and drove back to the condo, which was now quiet and empty. We had done all of our necessary packing and had cleared up the place. The next day, we would be leaving for the Sahara.

"I still think we should stay until Nina starts classes," Gerrard said.

"She'll be fine. The sooner we get going, the sooner we'll find answers. The Sahara Desert is huge. It took us nearly five days to find Sylvanterra and it probably would have taken longer if Paco and his pack hadn't found us. We don't know if the same will happen in the Sahara," I said.

"Have I mentioned how I'm really not looking forward to walking around in the desert for days on end?" Gerrard said.

"You signed up for this voluntarily. No complaining," I said. He rolled his eyes at me, making a face before walking out of my room. Tomorrow, we would leave.

                                                                       ~~~~~~~~~~~~

I heard a knock at my door and then heard it open. I stood staring at my selection of clothes. What did one wear while journeying into the desert? I looked up to see Gerrard standing impatiently at the doorframe.

"I don't know what to wear," I told him.

"It's not a fashion show, Caley!" he exclaimed.

"I don't want to die of heat stroke!" I cried.

"Just pick something!" he said.

"Is that what you're wearing?" I asked, examining his outfit. He was wearing a pair of khaki colored cargo pants, a white undershirt and a solid green jacket with a pair of combat boots.

"Yes," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Won't you be hot in the jacket?" I asked.

"I'll keep hydrated. I'm not going to let my skin bake in the sun. It gets to be over 130 degrees in the desert," he said. I bit my lip. That was hot.

"Fine, I've decided. Now get out," I said, picking up a white tank top, a pair of green cargo pants and a khaki colored army-style jacket. Gerrard walked out of the room, grumbling under his breath for me to hurry up. We were already late on schedule. We had wanted to leave early in the morning so that we wouldn't get to the desert in the extreme heat. But it was now nearing late morning here and we still hadn't left.

I pulled on my clothes and put on a pair of black boots like Gerrard's. I pulled my hair back into a braid to keep it out of my face. I threw in an umbrella into the shoulderbag that I had enlarged from the inside where all of our stuff was. I figured having an umbrella wouldn't hurt. I picked my bag up and went outside, finding Gerrard waiting with his backpack.

"Ready?" he asked. I nodded.

"Ready," I said.

Gerrard pulled out the map and examined the coordinates that we had drawn up. We knew from going to Sylvanterra that we were extremely off in our numbers, but there was no way for us to get the exact locations of the nations. It was all guesswork from here.

Gerrard took my hand. He closed his eyes, muttering the coordinates under his breath. I silently prayed that there wouldn't be any desert dwellers in the location where we landed. We already had a lot under our belts. We didn't need the added problem of accidentally exposing magic, too. I felt the familiar suctioning and spinning feeling of going through a vortex at lightspeed. My lungs contracted and I couldn't breathe momentarily. And then, after a few long seconds, it was over and my feet touched ground again. But once my feet hit the ground, they sank.

"Shit!" I cried, tumbling over into the sand. I grabbed Gerrard's hand at the last minute and brought him down with me. He cursed and glared at me. I apologized profusely and then felt like I was gasping for air.

It was so hot.

"Oh my God. I feel like I'm dying," I said, choking on the arid hot air. My face prickled under the heat of the sun and I felt my head begin to throb.

"It's going to take some getting used to," Gerrard said, feeling his face. I rummaged in my bag and pulled out the umbrella as he got to his feet. He helped me up and I opened the umbrella up. He gave me a look.

"What?" I asked.

"Are you serious?" he asked back.

"Do you see how pale I am? At least in the Amazon there were trees to shade us. We're completely exposed out here!" I said. He rolled his eyes and started walking. "You know, I can share this with you if you want," I said.

"I don't need an umbrella. I'm not a pansy," he sneered.

"Don't blame me when you're in pain from sunburn," I said. He kicked sand at me and I yelped, shielding myself with my umbrella. "Sour pants," I mumbled under my breath.

We began our long trek. Gerrard conjured up a direction spell, the same one we used when we were journeying to find Sylvanterra. We decided not to rely on the spell finding the exact nation. Instead, we were hoping the spell would point us in the right direction. We knew the nation would be located in the middle of the Sahara, but towards the north-east direction. That's where we had our spell pointing.

The Sahara, as we quickly found out, was completely barren. Except for the occasional cactus and mounds of rocks, all we could see were endless sand dunes surrounding us for as far as the eye could see. The dunes had ripples over them, making the golden brown sand look almost like water. It would have been pretty, had the heat not been so bad.

The heat was absolutely unbearable. I filled and refilled my water bottle four times in the span of three hours. We had to stop three times to pee. My entire body was drenched in sweat. Even with the umbrella over my head, which we duplicated because Gerrard's skin was starting to redden, I felt my skin prickling. There were times when I felt like I was gasping for air because it was too thick with heat to breathe in.

Wind would occasionally blow around us, sending sand into our faces. The first gust came and I felt relieved to have a chance to cool down for a bit. But even the wind was warm and instead of cooling me off, it merely made the sweat trickle down faster.

After about five hours of treading through the thick sand, we decided that we couldn't go on. We needed to rest and replenish our energy supplies. The direction spell--although basic--was taking a toll of Gerrard's energy because we were exerting ourselves so much in our trek. We stopped by a set of rocks protruding meekly from the sand, enlarged our umbrellas and sat in the hot sand.

"I have such a big headache right now," I told Gerrard, rubbing my temples.

"It's because we're so damn hot. Even with the umbrellas, the sun's beating down on us hard," Gerrard replied.

"When do you think it'll go down?" I asked, squinting up at the blinding white hot light.

"Probably a few hours," he answered. I sighed and pulled out some food.

"I bet you we could bake cookies if we wanted to; that's how hot it is," I said.

"Got any dough?" Gerrard joked darkly.

"I'm starting to wonder if Mikael only sent us on this wild goose chase simply for the fact to torture us," I said.

"I highly doubt that the greatest magical wizard of our time would do that," Gerrard replied.

"He seemed a bit senile to me" I said.

"He's over 90 years old! Of course he's probably a little crazy in the head," Gerrard said.

"Do Magii live longer than normal humans?" I asked.

"Our bodies our stronger because of our reliance on nature. We tend to live until over 100 years old, easily," he answered.

"If we're lucky..." I muttered. Gerrard tossed sand in my hair and I let out a shout, glaring at him.

"Stop being so negative all the time. I'm already annoyed as it is with the heat; I don't need you mucking up my mood with your dark thoughts," he said. I continued to glare at him as I shook the sand out of my hair and re-did my braid.

"I have this feeling that we should have gone to Egypt first," I said.

"How would we have managed that? We don't know anyone in Egypt. We haven't got the slightest clue about where to find tribes of Magii," Gerrard said.

"I could have asked Oralie where she studied," I pointed out.

"How would that have played out? She would have asked why you were going to Egypt when you were supposed to be in Sicily," Gerrard answered.

"I could have said it was for a later time," I replied. He gave me a look and I knew he knew that I knew that my father would assume something was up and would check up on me. Even an exact replica of me wouldn't fool my father.

"I just think we would have been better off if we went to Egypt first. Maybe we could have found someone that could have helped us to find the fire nation so we wouldn't have to walk around in this heat all day," I said.

"What are the chances of people knowing that this nation exists?" Gerrard asked.

"What's the harm in trying?" I replied. "This would benefit us in the end, even if we don't find anyone that knows where the nation is," I told him.

"In what way?" he asked.

"Think of all the things we could learn in Egypt! What if we found something about the elemental water curse? Or about the Blood Oath?" I said.

"What if we get caught?" he asked back.

"Now who's being negative?" I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Honestly, I just want to find the fire nation and be out of this bloody desert," Gerrard said.

"Then let's leave now. I promise you, it won't be for nothing," I told him.

He scrutinized me, his eyebrows furrowed. He was thinking it over, but I was pretty sure that I had won him over. And sure enough, after a few long moments, he sighed.

"Fine. We'll go to Egypt," he said. I clapped my hands in excitement.

"Yes! Should we leave now?" I asked.

"Pull out a map before you get too excited. We have to figure out the most probable location to transport to. We can't transport into the middle of a market place. People will definitely think that something strange is going on and we don't need to attract any more attention to ourselves than necessary," Gerrard replied.

"Good call," I said, pulling a map out from my bag. We smoothed it out on the sand and peered over it.

"There are no cities on here," Gerrard noted.

"Maybe in one of the books I brought..." I said, thinking of which books I had packed. I remembered an atlas and I summoned that out of the bag. We flipped to Africa and found a map of Egypt.

"I think we should transport to a city on the outskirts of the country," Gerrard said.

"Won't there be army soldiers around?" I asked.

"That's true..." Gerrard said, biting the inside of his cheek.

"What about this city? Siwa? It's like...in the middle of a desert. We can transport to the outskirts of that city, go in and then make our way to Cairo until we run into some Magii," I suggested.

"Or what about transporting to Al-Harrah, in the outskirts of its desert? It's closer to Cairo," Gerrard said.

"That's true. We could do that," I said.

"We should go at night, just in case. At least we'll have the dark to cover for us in case we need a few seconds to hide ourselves," Gerrard said. I nodded in agreement.

"Okay, we'll leave at night," I said.

"Do you remember what the spell for temporary invisibility is?" he asked me. I racked my brain for the answer.

"Puro me," I replied. He nodded.

"Good, now put all this stuff away. We should get ready to leave soon," he said.

I did as I was told and packed up my bag again. We picked up our umbrellas and looked around for a second. Gerrard took my hand and, muttering the exact latitude and longitude we had read from the atlas, he transported us to the town of Al-Harrah.

When we landed, we found ourselves still in the middle of a desert. The only difference was, at a bit of a distance, we could see a few camels and some men sitting around a fire. They hadn't seen or heard us when we transported. I stowed our umbrellas into my bag and we emptied out our water bottles next to an old dried up plant. Then, making ourselves look even more fatigued than we were, we staggered towards the group of camping men.

"Nazra!" one of the men shouted when he spotted us. He came forward, helping us to their campsite and sitting us down.

They were all dressed similarly in long white robes with red and white checkered head scarves that covered their long hair. Some of them had mustaches and a few had beards. There was only one that had no facial hair. Each had dark set eyes that showed that they were Magia-Non. They were just normal people.

"Min anat?" asked the man that had helped us.

"I'm sorry, we only speak English," I said.

"Ah! English! Amrikkan!" one of the bearded men said.

"Amrikkan!" a few of the others chorused, nodding their heads.

"I am Jameel," the man that had helped us told us.

"I'm Caley. And this is Gerrard," I replied. "Thank you so much for helping us. We seem to have wandered off in the wrong direction. We're looking for a way to get to Cairo," I explained.

"Ah, Cairo! You want get to Cairo?" Jameel asked enthusiastically. Gerrard and I nodded.

"We can't find our way, though. Could you possibly help us get to the city?" Gerrard asked.

"Yes, yes. I help. We help!" Jameel said, smiling at us. I couldn't help but smile back. He had a kind face and twinkling dark eyes. He spoke in rapid Arabic to other men, relaying our request to them. They nodded, now understanding what we were saying. I was guessing Jameel was the only one who knew any English out of the group.

"We have..uhh...how you say...?" Jameel trailed off. "Uhh...camel! We have camel for you! It long journey!" he said.

"How long?" I asked.

Five days. It was a five days journey by camel. Five days we rode uncomfortably on the awkwardly humped desert horse. At the end of each day, when we set up camp with the group of men, I felt my back and inner thighs aching from riding all day. It was during the nights when I told Gerrard how happy I was to be a witch with the ability to transport. I couldn't imagine how difficult life would be to travel all over the country on a camel.

After five days, we reached the city of Cairo. Cairo was a bustling city full of people. There were tourists that stuck out very clearly admist the black abayas (which Jameel explained to us were the long black covering that women wore), the long white kurta tunics that men wore and the haphazardly put-together American clothes. The markets were lively with shouts of Arabic and English surrounding us on all sides. I felt like I had walked into the scene of a movie.

We had ditched the camels at the outskirts of the busy market place. Jameel left some of his buddies to attend to the camels while he brought us in to the city and helped us find a place to stay. I wanted to just ditch Jameel and go searching for a Magi, but Gerrard told me that would be rude and that he was tired and needed a place to stay.

"This hotel...best in Cairo!" Jameel told us, taking us to an elegant looking hotel near the banks of the Nile River.

"Highly doubt that," Gerrard muttered to me. I elbowed him in the ribs.

"Thank you so much, Jameel! We really appreciate all of your help!" I told the old man.

"Of course! Of course! Happy to help!" Jameel replied, smiling toothily at me.

"Well, I think we will go inside and find a room to stay in," Gerrard told him.

"Ah yes! Enjoy!" Jameel said. He didn't leave, though.

"I think he wants money," I whispered to Gerrard.

"Of course he does," he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet. "Here's 50 American dollars. Thanks for all of your help," Gerrard said. Jameel looked ecstatic at the money he had just received. He grasped Gerrard's hand and kissed it, saying something in Arabic while smiling all the way. Gerrard looked horrified for a moment before composing himself and pulling his hand away.

"Thanks again, Jameel!" I said, waving to the man as we turned and walked into the hotel.

Immediately, we stuck out. Even moreso than in the marketplace.

The hotel was classy inside, white sleek floors and high ceilings and large chandeliers. People in suits walked around, looking professional as ever. There were a handful of people dressed similar to Gerrard and I and they were very obviously tourists getting ready to take a tour.

Gerrard and I walked up to the front desk to get a room. The woman at the desk scrunched up her nose slightly as we neared her. I didn't realize, but we probably smelled disgusting. We hadn't showered in about a week. We probably smelled like a mix between the alcohol that Jameel and his buddies drank and sweat from the desert heat. All in all, probably not an appealing odor.

"Hi, can we get a one-bed room, please?" Gerrard asked the woman. Her grimace disappeared when Gerrard flashed her his winning smirk and batted his blue-grey eyes.

"One bed suite?" she asked. Gerrard nodded. "On your honeymoon?" the woman asked, nodding at me.

"No, we're just..." Gerrard began. I elbowed him in the ribs.

"It's more like a pre-marriage honeymoon. We just got engaged," I said, holding up my hand to display Trey's ring. I felt a pang of guilt strike through me when I realized what I was doing.

The woman raised her dark, arched eyebrows and nodded, muttering something about strange American customs.

"There is one room available. It is 90 American dollars per night," the woman said.

"We'll take it," I said before Gerrard could object. I could now smell my own stench and it was making me dizzy. I needed a hot bath fast or else I would pass out from my own body odor.

"All right, I need a credit card to reserve the room under," the woman said.

"Do you have a credit card?" Gerrard asked.

"I do, but my father has access to the account," I replied in an undertone. He pursed his lips, understanding the dilemma. If we were to use my card, my father would see that I was spending my money in Cairo, Egypt. And that would definitely look suspicious.

"Can we pay in cash?" he asked the woman.

"We don't accept cash payments," she replied. He tried to flatter her again with a smoldering look, but she wasn't buying it. I guess we shouldn't have told her we were "engaged".

"We don't have credit cards with us, though. We were told that they wouldn't work here, so we left them back home and only brought cash," Gerrard said.

"Well, I'm sorry, sir, but we do not--" the woman began.

"Rego," Gerrard interrupted, looking directly into the woman's eyes. Her eyes became slightly unfocused as the control spell took effect.

"What are you doing?" I hissed at him, looking around to see if anyone had seen.

"She's giving us trouble," he replied. "You will let us pay in cash because we do not have credit cards," Gerrard ordered the woman.

"Yes, sir. You may pay in cash because you do not have credit cards," she repeated in a monotone, robotic voice. She typed in some numbers and then handed us our key cards. "Enjoy your stay at the Intercontinental--" she said as we walked away from her.

"I can't believe you just did that," I said to him.

"It was necessary," he replied.

"It was very Elijah of you," I said.

"Would you stop with that? Of course my actions are going to be semi-reflective of him. He was like a father to me," he defended, pushing the button to the elevator.

"We're supposed to be the good guys," I told him. He laughed hollowly.

"Whatever we are, we are not the good guys," he said.

I crossed my arms over my chest, remaining silent. He was right; whatever we were, it wasn't the good guys.

"Oh my Merlin. I feel so much better now," I said, coming out of the bathroom after having showered.

"Took you bloody long enough," Gerrard grumbled under his breath, picking up his clothes and brushing past me to go into the bathroom.

"I had nearly seven days' worth of dirt and sweat on my skin. It took me a while to get it all off," I replied as he shut the door behind him.

"Yeah, yeah. Noise, noise," he called back. I rolled my eyes at the door and then rummaged through my bag, pulling out my cell-phone. I had put a sim in in so that I could call from whatever country that we traveled to. Since Gerrard was in the bathroom, now was a perfect time to call Trey and ask him how he was doing. But mostly, I just wanted to hear his voice.

The phone rang a couple times before he picked up.

"Hello?" I heard Trey's voice say. I didn't say anything for a few seconds, just relishing the sound of his voice in my ears.

"Trey," I breathed after a few moments.

"Caley?" he said.

"Hi," I replied.

"Well, it's nice to finally hear from you," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"You never called when you got to Sicily! We were all worried sick! But then your father called the university to see if you had moved in all right and they said that you had, so we knew you were alive," Trey said. I internally cursed at myself for making such a stupid mistake. In the excitement of wanting to start the journey, I had completely forgotten to call my father Trey, telling them that I had landed safely. It was such an incredibly stupid mistake that could have caused more problems than necessary.

"I'm so sorry! I just got so caught up in sight-seeing!" I lied.

"That's what I told your father, but it didn't stop him from being worried sick about you," Trey said.

"Ok, well, even if the airplane had blown up or sunk into the ocean, I can easily transport to safety. I would have been fine regardless," I said.

"That's not the point, Caley..." Trey said. I knew he was probably rubbing his forehead with his knuckles, something he did when he was frustrated.

"Ok, let's not fight. I just wanted to hear your voice. I miss you already," I said, changing the subject.

"I miss you, too," he said, sighing.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"It really is a pain being here alone with all of these couples around. You know Jason got himself a girlfriend?" he asked.

"No way? Who?" I asked.

"That Elaina girl from France? They're completely attached at the hip," he said.

"How'd he manage to score her? She's hot," I said. Trey chuckled.

"That's what I said," he replied.

"I mean, Jason's a good looking guy, but Elaina's like a Victoria's Secret model," I said. He laughed.

"I miss you so much," he said, sadness evident in his voice. I smiled sadly and stared at my ring.

"I miss you, too," I said.

"It's only been a week and I feel like I'm going to go insane," he said.

"Hopefully it'll fly by," I told him, more to reassure myself than him.

"Doubt it," he mumbled. I heard the bathroom door unlock and knew that Gerrard was coming out.

"Hey, Trey. I have to go now. Some of the girls on my floor want to go out for dinner," I said.

"Oh. All right. Don't wait this long again to call," he said.

"I won't," I told him, not sure how much truth there was to the statement. "Tell my father I say hello and that I'm doing just fine," I said.

"I will."

"I love you, Trey."

"I love you, too, Caley," he said. We remained on the line for a few seconds longer before hanging up. I sat on the bed and sighed, holding my head in my hands. I heard Gerrard come out of the bathroom. He tossed his towel onto the bed and sat down next to me.

"Did you just talk to Trey?" he asked. I nodded, not the slightest bit surprised that he knew who I was talking to. "Just keep you mind on the end goal, Caley, and this will all be worth it," he said.

Oh, how I hoped he was right.

                                                           ~~~~~~~~~

The next day, Gerrard and I decided to go hunting for some Magii. We needed to find people that knew about magic so that we could be pointed in the right direction. We had already wasted a lot of time in getting to Cairo. Now we needed to move quickly so that we could find the fire nation in the Sahara.

We decided that the best place to look for practicing magic users would be a fortune teller. We found the locations of the ones that were closest to the hotel and then set out to find each one. We marked about seven of them and each was an enormous fail. They were all phonies trying to get some money. But we would know a real fortune teller if we saw one. Because a real fortune teller would be a seer and would have violet eyes and would have an aura of energy around them that told us they were magic users.

When we walked out of the last shop, in my frustration, I kicked a rock that was launched into the air. It hit squarely in the back of a hunched over man that was sitting on the sidewalk. Probably a beggar.

"Oh my goodness! I am so sorry!" I exclaimed, rushing over to the old, balding man to see if I had hurt him.

"Leave him, he's just a beggar," Gerrard said.

"I have to see if he's all right! I could have injured him!" I exclaimed, crouching down in front of the old man. "I am so sorry! Are you all right?" I asked, slowly and loudly, in case he didn't speak English or was hard of hearing.

The old man was a horrid sight, indeed. He had missing teeth, spots on his face and graying hair that was so wispy that I could see his scalp underneath. His eyes were a milky bluish color; the pupils, instead of being black in color, were gray and dim. I wondered if he was blind.

After a moment, he grinned at me. I kept myself from recoiling backwards. The man's smile was completely toothless and his breath smelled worse than Gerrard and I did the previous day.

"Are you hurt? Did I hurt you at all?" I asked the man again.

The man grunted in response, shaking his head no. So he had understood me.

"I'm really sorry; I didn't mean to kick that stone at you. I was just angry," I said.

"Angry at what, Caley Lucia?" a voice asked.

I stared at the man in horror. The voice had most definitely come from him. But he was still grinning at me with that toothless smile of his. His mouth hadn't moved one bit. Where had the voice come from? And better yet, how did it know my name?

Then, the old man began shaking. Gerrard pulled me back away from him. Before our eyes, the old man seemingly unzipped before our eyes. The skin fell apart sideways and up rose a darkly cloaked figure from the remains of the old man.

"What in the name of Merlin's mother..." Gerrard said, trailing off as we stared in horror at the rising figure.

"I think we should run..." I said to Gerrard, pulling away from him.

"Good idea," he agreed, turning.

And so we took off.

_______________________________________________________

A/N:  PLEASE READ THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH!!!

This concerns those of you that have been telling me to update because I am supposedly "ruining the story by taking forever to update". You people have clearly NOT been reading the notes that I put at the end of every chapter. There's a reason I take forever to post and that is because writing this story is NOT MY FIRST PRIORITY. My LIFE is my first priority. I am currently in a VERY difficult semester. Studying for this medical school exam is LITERALLY my ENTIRE life right now. I took a practice exam and did HORRIBLE on it, so it's more important than ever for me to focus on getting the score I need. That means that you need to be patient with me. Any free time that I get, I'm studying for that exam. I won't be able to update regularly until AFTER THE EXAM. All I'm asking is for you all to be PATIENT and NOT POST COMMENTS TELLING ME TO "UPDATE NOW". Because I'm not going to UPDATE NOW. I'm going to update whenever the hell I have time to update.

To those of you who have sent me encouraging comments wishing me luck in my future, I love all of you. YOU are the fans that truly care and understand. Thank you for not rushing me and understanding my situation. I only wish that others could be as patient as you.

Sorry for the ramble. I just had to get that out of my system. It's been bubbling up for quite some time now.

As always, comment and vote! Who do you think the creepy old man is?

Until next time...

XOXO