**A page has been ripped out here**

No...no...that won't do. I need to say it properly.

When we both woke up on the shore, we sat there and rested, too exhausted to move on, our heads swimming with the memory of what had happened on the ship. All I could think about was how that man saved us, and all Seph could think about...I don't know what he was thinking about. Maybe I don't want to.

Finally, we stood and trudged through the field, filled with flowers and beauty and peace. Is there such a place in this world? Everything has to be tainted...every single little thing. That's why the forest stood on the horizon, like ugly black clouds all bunched together...and seeing it I felt the breath rip past my lungs...

I don't know what happened next very well. Seph looked into the darkness within and under the trees, and some creature...some creature...it glared at us from the depths of blackness, daring us to come in and stand on the same ground as itself. Before I knew it, it had pounced, and I felt something rip through my skin, and a scream ripped through my throat, and all was pain and agony.

I protested weakly, but Seph healed the wound, though I know it's just going to be another scar to add to my horrid memories.

What then? I told him the way around the forest, where it grows thin around those ghastly ruins that Tara and I had seen so many seasons ago. I led him to the thinnest part of the forest I could find, told him we had arrived and stepped into the darkness and...

Like I had written on the darn page I just tore out, I felt a hand clamp over my mouth and I couldn't breathe, a firmer hand grabbed my staff and forced it out of my grip and I was knocked over the head to be silent.

When I awoke, I was tied to one of the trees, and my head was bleeding. Through my blurred vision, I saw the crew of the ghost ship, and fear flowed through my veins like ice. The unshaven man looked up and saw me awake and he...

By Cory, what he did to me...he picked up a branch, with ghastly little twigs sticking out of it, and he started beating me, piercing my arms my legs and my front, and when the pain and agony was over, they were gone. All of them. And I noticed that sunlight had filtered its way through the thick canopy, and I knew that they had been chased away by it.

Somehow, I managed to free myself, I clumsily regained my staff and stumbled through the forest, drenched in blood, falling in mud, until I finally lost consciousness in the middle of the forest floor.

The cuts are still bleeding, but my senses have cleared. I needed to write all that had happened in you, to help me work out everything once my mind is clear. To help me find out what actually happened.

What I am on the outside is nothing compared to what I am on the inside...

**Drops of blood stain the page as they drip from her fingers**




[COLOR=red]Hear us now, our ring of truth, for battles before us yet to be done.[/COLOR]