"Veheli?" Nelia called again. She walked cautiously through the first room of her daughter's suite. She knocked on the bedroom door. No answer.

"Alright, Veheli, this has been long enough. You want to attend Calie's funeral, don't you?" Still no answer. Nelia tried the doorknob, and to her surprise the door wasn't locked. She stepped into her daughter's bedroom, and looked over to the bed.

It was empty.

Nelia didn't panic right then. She simply figured that her daughter was in another room, crying or sulking or something of that sort. She walked quietly into another room, and looked around for her daughter.

After about half an hour of searching the rooms thoroughly, Nelia really started to get worried. Could Veheli have run away? Could she have been so mad at Tines that she just left the house and didn't tell anybody? But how could she have gotten out? There were watcher spells at all the exits of the house; they would have caught her leaving. Nelia opened the window, and shuddered. There was no way that Veheli could have gotten down from there, especially as there was no ladder and Veheli couldn't have known any spells to break her own fall.

Feeling sick suddenly, Nelia rushed outside. She walked around the house until she got to the space under her daughter's window, and looked down, searching for some sigh of the remains of a body.

To her relief, she couldn’t find any. But her relief only lasted for an instant. Any number of things could still have happened to Veheli. She was alone, and while most parts of Atlantis were pretty safe, there were the bad parts that were dangerous. Also, her daughter didn't have any food, and might starve.

Tears came to Nelia's eyes. She was panicking now, and all of the 'What Ifs' started going through her head. What if she went into the Kience unknowingly, with all of those Dark Wizards and Sorceresses? What if she encountered some sort of wild animal that killed her? What if she didn't know what in the forest was edible and ate something poisonous? What if she didn’t have enough food, and starved to death?

Nelia turned around, sobbing. She ran towards the house, to alert everyone of what happened to Veheli. They'd find her! They had to!

********

"Don't bother," were the first words out of the first person that Nelia had cried to. She looked at Pedon in shock and anger.

"WHAT?" she cried. "My daughter is gone, she may die, and all you can say is 'Don't BOTHER' when I want to find her?!"

"That's not what I meant," Pedon corrected her hastily. "I mean that she's not on the island. She went after Cuiaree to stop her from killing the normals. You won't find Veheli on this island, so what I meant is that there's no point in looking for her here."

"What are you talking about?" Nelia was still crying. "I was told that the thing with Cuiaree going off to kill the normals was just something that Veheli came up with in her stress…and why could Veheli have gone off by herself to stop her?" The woman was next to hysterical by now.

"They told you that because they thought that. But how could they know?" Pedon answered the first question. "To why Veheli would have gone off…nobody would believe her about Cuiaree. The fact that they told you that she was just stressed proves it. She realized that she was the only one who would go off to stop Cuiaree from doing what she wanted, so she went. Granted she was more stressed than she should have been and made her decisions too hastily--but that was very largely the fault of the officer and your husband."

Nelia, in her grief and worry, ignored the last statement. "How do you know this?" she asked.

"I was there when she decided to leave," Pedon told Nelia quietly. "I tried to stop her, I tried to make her see reason, but she performed this charm…I couldn't stop her, she went intangible. She told me to tell you that she loved you, just in case she didn't make it back alive."

That excited Nelia's hysteria anew. "Didn't make it back alive?!" she screeched. "Why wouldn't she? Is this some sort of thing that will kill her?"

"Probably not," Pedon soothed Nelia, in reality thinking that the chances that the mother's fear would come true were very high. Of course, he wouldn't let her know that unnecessarily. True, if Nelia was sure that her daughter would die, then she would send people after her, and Veheli would be save, and that would be a reason to tell Nelia the truth. However, in that case then Veheli wouldn't be able to stop Cuiaree. Veheli was right-- the deaths of millions weren't worth just one life, no matter whose it was. Veheli shouldn't have been the one out there, but then if nobody else would, then somebody had to.

Nelia was still hysterical. "Probably not?" she whimpered, sounding very young. "Why didn't you tell me?" her eyes started to flash with anger.

Pedon shrugged uncomfortably. He didn't tell her because he figured that she should find out on her own. If she didn't realize that her own daughter was gone, that she didn't deserve to know what had happened. "I guess that I was scared to tell you," he mumbled. "I was afraid of what you'd do, since I wasn't able to stop her from going."

Nelia accepted that as an excuse. "I know that you tried," she nodded, "So I don't blame you."

Pedon returned the nod.

"Now, I have to go in…" Nelia sniffled a little, and wiped a way a few tears. "I need to talk about getting someone to go out and bring Veheli back here."

Pedon opened his mouth to argue, then closed it, not sure exactly what to say to the woman. What could he say? Yeah, that'll make them trust me. 'Missus, I think that you should let your daughter stay out there and risk her life.' Riight, Pedon, that'll go over very well, I'm sure.

He wordlessly watched as Nelia turned and ran into the "house", and hoped that Veheli would do what she had to very quickly.

*********

Cuiaree wasn't there. Veheli was certain of this. She had searched all over the city and not sensed any Eneni power whatsoever. Through the parks, into museums, even in the grimy, filthy roads that she'd been warned not to go onto. She would have sensed something from Cuiaree here, in this Normal's place, so devoid of magick, even if the girl hadn't been working any spells. There could be only two reasons that Veheli couldn't sense Cuiaree: because Veheli wasn't fully recovered from that charm, or because Cuiaree wasn't in that city. All of Veheli's powers were still working at their normal efficiency, so it had to be the latter.

So Cuiaree had outwitted her. Now what could Veheli do? She had no way of knowing where the other girl was, and anywhere else she went could take her farther away from her target, not nearer. This can't be a dead end, Veheli told herself, I can't have come all this way for nothing. I can't let all those innocent people die.

But if there were no leads, then there was nothing to be gained by milling around here. Was this it? Could Veheli just give up now, go back to Atlantis, and hope that Cuiaree would fail? Cuiaree wouldn't fail, not without someone to stop her. The girl would have put together a plan, but she would also have counted on the fact that nobody would have believed Veheli. Cuiaree wouldn't be ready for magickal interference. Veheli couldn't give up.

Yet, what else could she do? If there wasn't even a way to know where Cuiaree was, no ways to talk to her or be near her, no way to know what curses she was casting and throwing out counter-curses. Sitting here feeling worried wouldn't help anybody, and there was nothing else that Veheli could do without finding out where Cuiaree was.

Veheli sighed and stood up. Her best bet was to go back to Atlantis and try to convince someone of the danger and get them to go out. It was a very slim hope, but better than doing nothing here. Veheli was regretting that she'd left Atlantis at all; she should have known that Cuiaree wouldn't have gone where others would expect her to go.

Suddenly, with a flash of inspiration, another though occurred to Veheli. If Cuiaree was in another city-- and she'd have to be in a city, she'd want access to an entire population-- then some strange occurrences would be happening. With Cuiaree, it would be unexplainable deaths, and they wouldn't necessarily look like murders. In fact, the only that it would look like a murder would be if Cuiaree had controlled someone else into killing another. While that was her style, something else was more Cuiaree's style, for much more personal reasons. Veheli had finally found a way to find Cuiaree.

Now where, she thought, can I find out where people have died of suicides?

Now that Cuiaree knew how easy it was to control Normals, she could set her plans accordingly. It wouldn't do to kill one of them at a time; firstly, because that would take forever, and also as a precaution, just in case someone did believe Veheli and came out to the Outside.

No, what Cuiaree needed was a sort of mass control. She couldn't control all those minds, but she could probably set up a network of the more receptive minds. A few normals' brains seemed to have an echo system, so if Cuiaree could set up a few key people with such a mind, she could through them control thousands of people.

"Alright, so first on my agenda is to find at least ten people with echo minds," Cuiaree muttered to herself. She was staying in a very fancy suite in an extremely nice hotel. It was easy enough to convince the hotel owner that she'd given him enough money; besides that, she was also having a lot of fun playing with the minds of the normals here. They were so easy to scare, just push something in their minds and they're terrified.

In fact, it's so easy that it's getting boring, Cuiaree thought to herself. I need some sort of challenge. Perhaps finding these Echoes. She got out the clothes that she had gotten here. They were quite nice, but the fact remained that they were made by Normals, and therefore in Cuiaree's mind they were filthy, disgusting garments that should be burned as soon as she had something decent to wear. However, she had to look like a Normal, so she slipped a shirt and trousers on.

This done, she put up auras of friendliness around herself, making people feel as if they could trust her. As well as slightly clouding the mind of the person near her, the charm did something else; her dark hair didn't look quite as dark, her eyes appeared to lose their intensity and appear less hardened.

Of course, the girl underneath was exactly the same.

Cuiaree left the building, walking along the streets. This culture fascinated her as well as disgusted her; their lives were so petty, so unfulfilled. Cuiaree almost thought that she was doing a favor by killing them off and putting them out of their misery.

No wonder they're so awful, Cuiaree thought to herself. Look at the life they're forced to live. Talk about monotony! She started to pity them.

No! Cuiaree thought to herself. She stopped the thought process right there. She was not sorry for them, she was angry with them! Even if they lived such unimaginative lives, it was their fault for not making it different.

Her feelings of pity safely gone, Cuiaree kept walking down the street. She wasn't really going anywhere, just getting used to the culture. Not that I WANT to get used to it, she thought to herself, but really, if I want to be able to create the network, I have to understand certain parts of this "culture".

Cuiaree was suddenly aware that she was one of the only children that walking around the streets. Of course, the charm that she had up prevented any Normal from realizing that she was out of place, but if she wanted to meet other young humans fast, she should check out the education system that they had. The children didn't seem quite as bad as the adults.

Probably because they haven't been fully diseased by this culture yet, she thought to herself. Of course, they were still contaminated, and still deserved to die. Every Normal deserved to die.

Cuiaree shook her head.

Now she was straying from her goal, which she shouldn't be doing. She should find out about the education process of humans.

Cuiaree could rip the thought out of somebody's mind easily enough, and she figured that she shouldn't make more work for herself; the quick and easy way was fine for now, they'd all be punished later. She lifted the thought from a man's head easily enough.

The idea of their school that she pulled from his head sent her thinking. She'd have to take great care in choosing what school she attended; did she want intelligent people, or ones that were so stupid that they'd follow her lead without question? She should probably have both, but could she find that at a school around here?

I need to do research, Cuiaree realized. But where? Were there any places where she could have access to all of the information she'd need? Cuiaree sighed, walking down the streets, thinking. It would probably be beyond hope that this culture would have such a place, where you had access to lots of information in the same place. I could always pull the thought from someone's head, she considered. But she should be saving her strength, and pulling too much information at once would be draining on her powers.

What else could she do? She wasn't sure, after how exhausted her mind must have been, exactly what would happen to the person. It would be suspicious that someone had just gone brain dead with no reason; if any of the Eneni were searching for Cuiaree, they would know what it meant. But this was something that she sorely needed to know. Cuiaree yelled at herself for having used her power so carelessly earlier when she didn't need to, and gathered her strength to pull one last thing from some unfortunate person's head.

*******

Jessica ran a hand through her hair and looked into the mirror. She looked awful, as usual. After just two periods her hair was a mess, with her clips falling out and all. Not that Jessi particularly cared about how fashionable she was--she wasn't going to be popular either way-- but she did like to look nice. She also liked to get people to shut up, yelling things such as "Why don't you brush your hair?" and "Why don't you take a shower?" It was so annoying because she did brush her hair; it just came out so easily. She also showered, they just said she didn't to find something else to say about her appearance.

Jessica was also accused of not having any friends. Technically, this was true. There were a few people that Jessi would hang around; eat lunch with them, sit in class with them sometimes, etc. But she didn't have anybody whom she'd actually invite to go somewhere, and definitely nobody that she'd ever confide in.

Jessi actually considered herself something of a psychic. She had these feelings, and they were normally correct, much more than they should have been. It scared her, and made her pull away from people. Pulling things out of the air, knowing things that she shouldn't have known; about her subjects, but also about people, which scared Jessi most of all. She couldn't be a friend with someone when she was constantly in danger of getting a blast of his or her feelings.

Jessi's watch beeped madly, breaking the girl out of her reverie. It was signaling that it was a new hour, and therefore Jessi had only had two minutes to get to her next class. She grabbed her books and raced out of the bathroom.

English wasn't quite as bad as some of her classes. It was an advanced class, one of the few that her school offered, so the kids weren't quite as immature. Many of them didn’t even snicker whenever Jessi put her hand up for every question and was able to correct the teacher's grammar.

Today, the remaining kids who hadn't yet were going to read their stories out to the class. The only person who hadn't yet was, of course, Jessica. This assignment was as close as the class ever got to having to write a story about what they wanted, and Jessi had risen to the occasion.

Jessica considered herself a writer; she was trying desperately to get one of her stories published in a magazine. While she wasn't a professional, or even near one, most people would have to admit that the girl had some talent. Her main problem was discipline--she'd never be able to finish a story, not quickly. She'd write a little, then put it off forever, and then write a little more. The only things she ever really got done were her poems, and those weren't very good.

Jessica stepped into the classroom, and walked quietly to her seat, looking over her story. She'd worked very hard on it, and she was sure that it was okay. It couldn't be awful…could it? Jessica scolded herself for worrying so much about what the others would think. I don't care what they think, she told herself over and over, trying to make herself believe it. I DON'T!

Suddenly, a cold chill seized Jessi. It was as if something awful was going to happen. The dread filled Jessica, and she knew that it wasn't because she was worried about reading out her story.

Something awful was going to happen; she knew it!