"Where are we going exactly?" Gourry asked innocently.

Lina sighed heavily. She stopped walking and turned around to look at her less than genius companion.

"You'd think I'd have gotten used to your cluelessness considering how long we've been together," Lina turned back and continued walking down the mountain path. Gourry followed not far behind.

"Well? Are you going to tell me, Lina?"

"I already did. Four times in fact,"

"You did?"

"I did,"

"Well, I guess I forgot. . ."

"Again. . ."

"Yeah. . .again. . ." Gourry said embarrassedly and scratched the back of his head with a gloved hand.

"It's the beginning of winter. That's when the Atlas City foundation festival starts," Lina informed her dense companion for the fifth time.

"We're going there?"

"Yup,"

"What's the festival like?"

"You've been there before," Lina was beginning to lose her patience.

"Oh. . .well. . .what are we going to do there?"

"Find the best food in town, have fun, make ourselves feel sick. . .what else do you do at a festival?"

"Oh," Gourry simply stated, then added somewhat sarcastically, "Sounds fun."

Lina said nothing, she just continued walking down the mountain path. The infamous sorceress was now about average height for a woman, but when she had first met Gourry she seemed to be no more than a little girl. A strong gust of winter wind descended from the mountain they had just crossed. The wind whipped Lina's long hair in front of her face, she brushed it out with the back of a white-gloved hand. The wind hadn't blinded Gourry despite his outrageously long blonde hair. Recently he had decided to start tying his hair in five and a half foot ponytail. Lina hadn't questioned the odd choice of style, who could tell what a guy like him was thinking?

"So. . ." Gourry started in an attempt to break the ice, "How long will it take to get there?"

No sooner had the words left his lips he realized he should've said something else. He was dense, forgetful, and clueless, but not a complete moron.

"How long?" Lina half-heartedly laughed, "How long? What are you? Some goddamn kid who sits in the back of the caravan and bugs his parents about time constraints?"

"Sorry. . ." Gourry apologized. He hadn't really cared about the answer to his question; he just wanted to have something to say to his companion. He noticed that she was becoming more and more withdrawn from other people and she was also becoming more and more aggressive towards others. Perhaps this festival would help to bring back the Lina he knew.

Another cold winter wind descended from the mountain. A light sprinkling of snow followed the wind, and in a few moments the rate of snowfall increased dramatically.

"Shit. . ." Lina muttered upon seeing the fast snowfall, "Now we've got to deal with this too?"

"Calm down," Gourry commanded, "It's not the end of the world. We'll just increase our pace a little."

Gourry was expecting some sort of counter, verbal or physical, for daring to command the normally-aggressive-and-now-even-more-so woman, but to his astonishment Lina said nothing. They increased their pace and began to approach the foot of the mountain. Atlas City was visible on the horizon.

"Yeah, I think that's a good idea," Lina muttered.

"Huh? What is?" Gourry asked in confusion.

"Speeding up. Like you said,"

Gourry didn't reply. Enough time had passed that to pick up a conversation like that was quite strange.

What's wrong with Lina? Gourry thought to himself, Lessee. . .She didn't visit her family recently so that can't be it. Xellos hasn't showed up for a long time. I didn't make any thoughtless comments about the size of her breasts. The Mazoku have been mostly dormant lately. . .I can't figure it out. . .

Suddenly Gourry got an idea. He slapped his left fist into his open right hand.

"I understand now, Lina!"

"Understand what?" she asked semi-interestedly.

"Why you're in such a foul mood!"

Lina stopped walking. "I'm in a foul mood?"

"Aren't you? You sure act like it," Gourry commented.

"Whatever. So what's the reason?" Lina played along.

"It's that time of the month, isn't it?" Gourry flinched while speaking, he was fully prepared to have Lina punish him for speaking so bluntly.

Lina started walking again, she said quietly, "Yeah. . .that must be it. . ."

Gourry chewed his lip in deep thought, which for him wasn't too deep. He eventually reached the conclusion that whatever was bothering Lina was something he didn't comprehend, and thus, could be a lot of things. Things will work out in the end, he told himself.

"Make yourself busy," Lina commanded Gourry once they were inside the bustling streets of Atlas City, "I have some business to attend to. I'll catch up to you later."

"What is it?" Gourry asked, "Need any help?"

"No. Go away," Lina said bitterly.

"There's something wrong," Gourry said observantly, "Did Amelia tell you something unnerving? Seyruun is where we were last."

"GET LOST!" Lina shouted and walked off into the crowd.

Gourry stood still and frowned in concern. He shook his head sagely and went off to find a café. The streets of Atlas City were amazingly crowded with the preparations for the festival underway. Merchants were decorating their shops and putting sales signs in their windows. A wagon full of fireworks passed through the center of the road pushing people aside like an otter swimming through water. Gourry stood a moment to watch the wagon go by, and then he found a chair at the nearest café and sat down.

"What'll it be?" the waitress asked cheerily.

What a depressing life it must be to be a waiter, Gourry thought to himself, Day in, day out. Always the same. I wonder how they deal with it. Maybe they don't. Maybe they hide their disappointment with their lives.

"Excuse me. . ." the waitress said impatiently when the blonde swordsman didn't respond immediately.

"I'll have a glass of milk, please,"

"Milk?" the waitress said surprised, "Well, if you say so."

She walked off. Gourry sat thinking to himself. He had been thinking much more since Lina started acting strange, and he was beginning to uncover some actual philosophy in his dense mind. The waitress arrived after a few minutes with a glass of milk. Gourry reached into his coin pouch and handed the waitress a few bronze coins. The waitress left again and Gourry sat sipping the milk while pondering to himself.

Suddenly an explosion rocked the ground, causing Gourry to spill the milk on the table. Off in the distance where the wagon carrying fireworks had gone there was a fire and thick clouds of faintly colored smoke rising in the air.

"What happened?!" Gourry commanded the waitress who was serving another customer.

"I-I don't know!" the waitress replied. She looked rather shaken, as did most of the other customers.

"I'm gonna check it out," he commented. The waitress said nothing, she just watched him run off towards the site of the explosion.

Gourry rushed through the flocks of people who had gathered to watch the city guardsmen attempt to sort out the incident. The wagon of fireworks, or rather, what was left of the flaming wreck, was capsized and all the fireworks were burning.

"What happened?" Gourry asked a guardsman.

"I don't know. Apparently something ignited all the fireworks at once. The curious thing is, we haven't found any injured. That would imply that the wagon had no driver," the guardsman then directed his attention to the flock of viewers, "No one is hurt. There's nothing left to see here. You people go about your business now."

Gourry shrugged. He wasn't sure what had just happened, but he guessed there wasn't anything to worry about now. He was about to walk back to the café and get himself another drink when he noticed a woman staring at him from across the street. He looked towards her. She had tan skin and long white hair, a rather odd combination. She smiled shyly with her arms clasped behind her back, and then she ran off into the alleys.

Gourry ran to follow only to discover the woman had apparently disappeared.

"What the. . .?"

"So when did this begin?" the head of the Atlas City Sorcerers' Guild asked Lina.

"I don't know exactly. I think it was after I had just visited a friend at Seyruun,"

"Seyruun, huh? Did you take any sort of illegal drug that would cause these disturbing dreams?"

"No," Lina simply replied. Had she been in her usual mood she might have been offended by the accusation that she would use illegal intoxicants.

"Hmmm. . ." the guild master pondered for a moment, "So. . .can you describe these dreams to me, Lina?"

Lina looked down at her lap. She was sitting in a small oaken chair across the guild master's desk where he sat in a large leather chair. She looked up into the eyes of the elderly man. He stared intently into Lina's eyes with his chin resting on his hands, causing her to feel quite uncomfortable. He had dark brown eyes and graying hair, his face wizened with many decades of contracting the unexplainable magic forces of this world. Lina stared back at him as intently as he stared at her, but she didn't quite feel as assertive as she usually did. Her face betrayed her bravado against the glare of the guild master.

"Tell me," he spoke, understanding that something must truly be wrong with Lina if she was acting this way instead of her usual take no crap from anyone attitude.

"Everything is white," Lina began, "And then I hear a voice."

"A voice?" the guild master inquired, "What kind of voice? Is it a man or a woman?"

"I. . .I can't tell. . ." Lina said gloomily, "It's in my mind and I can't tell what it sounds like. But I can hear what it tells me."

"What does it tell you?"

"It says, 'Your Apocalypse draws near. Save me, and save yourself,'"

"Your Apocalypse?" the guild master inquired seemingly very intrigued, "Does that mean your death?"

"It could," Lina replied honestly.

"Well, what are you so afraid of? Countless people have wanted your head on a platter and you've always come out on top,"

"I'm not sure, there's something about this that worries me. For starters, I've never received a death threat before in the form of a repeating dream. Then there's the scene that I see after the words in my mind,"

"What happens then?" the guild master pressed.

"I see a woman," Lina stated slowly while looking intently out the window of the guild master's office, "She wears a dark green cloak, almost like a poncho, along with greaves, gloves and a red silk scarf around her head. The scarf is lopsided, so her left eye is visible, but the scarf covers the right. Her hair is an inch or two above her shoulders; it's straight and black but it curls upward slightly at the ends. She has a few light freckles in the area between her nose and eyes. She carries a sword in each hand and I can see malice in her eye."

"What happens then?"

"Her lips move as if to speak, but no sound comes out. She smiles, but her smile sends a chill down my spine. She drops the sword in her right hand and offers her palm as if in friendship,"

"Friendship?" the guild master commented, "How interesting. Continue."

Lina sighed heavily and then continued, "I give her my hand. When our hands touch, I feel an incredible pain. I draw back and look down at my arm. My skin is ashen and shriveled. Then I fall. I fall for what seems an eternity, and then I see a light blue eyeball ahead. As I plummet closer and closer to it, it changes. I can't describe how it changes exactly, but it becomes a gigantic maw. It opens. It's lined with fangs, and then I descend in."

"An eyeball? A giant mouth?" the old man looked down at his desk and scratched his chin, "Then what?"

"Then I wake up," Lina simply stated.

The guild master was silent for a moment longer. He followed Lina's gaze out the large window. It was growing on evening and the crimson sun was descending behind the horizon. The large crowds that were setting up for the festival were retreating to their homes to rest up for the next day's festivities.

"There is one more thing," Lina interrupted the old man's pondering.

"Yes?"

"When I wake up, I find these marks on my arm," Lina commented as she took off her long white glove to display the flesh of her arm. Two small red marks that resembled a puncture wound were about halfway between her wrist and elbow.

"Is that the arm that is pained in your dream?"

"Yes," Lina affirmed him, "After a day they seem to disappear, in fact, these ones are quite faded, but they come back every night when I have the dream."

The guild master chewed on his lip as he again pondered about the dream.

"Have you told anyone about this?"

"Only you, sir," Lina said. Why had she called him "sir?" It wasn't like her to admit subordination, even if it was true in the case.

"Well," the guild master stated as he leaned back in the chair with his hands behind his head, "it's pretty obvious someone wants you dead. And apparently this person can use some sort of sorcery to penetrate your id."

"If that were so, why do I remember the dream when I awaken?" Lina pondered.

"I'm not sure," the guild master replied, "It doesn't seem to make sense. But what I'm wondering about most is when the voice tells you 'save me, and save yourself.'"

"Yeah," Lina muttered, "I wonder who the woman is."

"Whoever she is, it would appear she wants to kill you as well as the person that voice in your mind belongs to,"

Lina chuckled, "Great, not only do I have to save my own ass, but I've got to look out for someone else?"

"Perhaps. That's how I interpret this. Of course, dreams are tricky bastards. There could easily be another meaning to this. This whole thing could very well mean absolutely nothing,"

"Then what about the marks on my arm?" Lina brought the point back up by raising her arm to again display the marks, but to her amazement, they were gone.

"That was fast," she commented simply.

"Look, Lina," the guild master said, "The festival starts tomorrow. Why don't you just try to take it easy and relax a bit, okay? If someone really is out for your life, there's no way he or she'd do it during the festival; too many people around."

Lina sighed and stood up from her seat. She walked towards to oaken door of the guild master's chamber. She was about to turn the doorknob when she stopped and began laughing.

"Lina?" the guild master asked quizzically with a raised eyebrow.

Lina just laughed for a few seconds longer. Then she turned around to look at the old sorcerer. Her eyes were wide with an emotion that very well might have been fear. But. . .Lina? Fearing something aside from her elder sister? Something definitely was not right.

"I hate this," she muttered awkwardly, and left the room.

"So, Lina. Where'd you go to?" Gourry asked in a friendly manner.

"Nowhere," she shoved the question off.

The two were sitting at a table in the commons room of one of the local inns. Gourry ate with his usual hearty appetite, the most probable explanation for why he was such a tall muscular person. Lina on the other hand, who commonly ate just as much as him, if not more (and still retained a rather petite figure. . .hmm. . .fast metabolism? Very fast), had barely touched the food before her.

"You gonna eat that?" Gourry politely asked pointing to the sashimi on Lina's plate.

"No. Take it," Lina commanded. She looked out the window of the commons room and chewed her lip thoughtfully. It was quite dark outside, the hour probably approaching midnight.

Gourry looked at her with a furrowed brow. He swallowed what was in his mouth and cleared his throat.

"Look," he began, "Something is wrong. You're going to tell me what it is."

"Shut up, yogurt-for-brains," Lina scowled.

"That does it!" Gourry stood from his seat and slammed his fists down on the table. The few other patrons looked at him for a moment before returning to their conversations.

"Something is wrong. Despite how dense I may be, you can't hide that from me. You're going to tell me what it is,"

Lina like-wise stood up in a fury. "I am?" she commented sarcastically, "Funny. . .I don't recall ever promising that."

"You're so difficult!" Gourry whispered in frustration, "Don't tell me this is just a women's thing, 'cuz Amelia was never like this! You wanna know why the majority of people we meet think you're a bitch? It's for this reason! I wanna help you, and you're just blowing me off!"

"I'm not the kid I was when we first met," Lina whispered dangerously back, "Don't think for an instant that I need you around any more. My problems are none of your business, so you can just go shove it, Romeo."

Gourry clenched his fists and ground his teeth in frustration. "What do I have to do to convince you to let me help you? I'm your guardian, remember? Your problems are mine, and I don't like not knowing what my problems are,"

Lina shook her head and chuckled, "You're my guardian? My problems are yours? Maybe that was true a long time ago, but not anymore. I don't need anyone else anymore. I'm perfectly comfortable with being alone! Why don't you understand that I want you to go away? I can deal with my own problems!"

With that Lina left the table and walked up the staircase to the guest rooms. A few moments later, the sound of a slamming door again caused the patrons left to turn their heads.

". . .now you've done it, Gourry you idiot. . ." Gourry muttered as he sat back down in his chair and nibbled at the food left.