Mrs. Jones wouldn't let go of my hand as Sam and I went to the infirmary. Having Sam at my side and the crazy woman who suddenly decided I was her daughter hugging me, made the rasping, purple antechamber more bearable. I needed the help, I wasn't as hurt as Sam, but my cheek was swollen to the size of a tennis ball and the blood dripping down my throat, despite all the spitting I was doing had given me a bad stomach ache.

Sam refused my offer of a shoulder, insisting that he didn't need the help. Considering his size I was secretly grateful. As soon as we entered the empty infirmary Sam dunked his head into a pool of liquid sunlight. The yellow fluid didn't move smoothly, it seemed to stutter, moving abruptly, freezing, moving again, freezing, Sam did the same, it was like a video game on a bad connection or a ghost from a horror movie. When he was covered up to his ears, the stuff began throwing tendrils over his scalp, crawling in the same stuttering fashion until his head was completely covered.

Mrs. Jones pushed me into a seat, and started looking through the plants and bottles that filled the room with no apparent order. I couldn't take my eyes off of Sam, his head had been in the liquid for at least a minute, didn't he need to breathe?

I jerked back with a shout as a slug come close to my face. “Don't worry Amber,” Mrs. Jones said. “This will help you cheek. It eats the pain.”

The slug was the size of my hand, the bottom side which I'd seen first was the ugly mottled grey of most slugs. It's top half was a riot of colours, pink spots, black strips, with orange, bright blue, red and green covering the rest of it. I bit my tongue to keep from screaming when I saw its' eyes. They were on giant candy cane stalks, they turned to me, tiny, brown, human eyes looked at me. They glistened with slime.

My eyes closed to keep from vomiting. Mrs. Jones took that as acceptance, I felt the cold, slimy creature crawl onto my cheek. To keep from running I pinched my legs, hard. The pain kept me distracted for the few seconds I needed before the slug went to work.

The throbbing ache in my cheek flowed out of me. I could feel the pain drawing away from the edge of the bruise, concentrating into a needle of agony at the center of the bruise. I was about to scream as tears leaked out of my tightly clenched eyes, then it pierced my skin and started to vanish. The throbbing lessened, in less than a minute the pain was gone. The slug let go leaving only a cold slimy spot on my cheek.

My fingers brushed the bruise, finding only smooth skin and a lot of slime. Opening my eyes, Mrs. Jones was beaming, “See silly, I told you it would make the pain go away. You should trust your mother. Now, how are your teeth.”

The teeth were still shattered but they didn't hurt, they were just numb as if they'd been frozen at the dentist. “Still broken,” I slurred.

“I have just the thing for you,” she said, bending down to look under a bush.

As she did that, I looked at Sam who was still face first in the liquid. He was slowly tapping his fingers. A funny image of a man getting bored as he tried to drown himself popped into my head. My mom would have been horrified at that thought, I would have been disturbed by it. Now, now I just let myself smile and started making comics in my head of people asking death to hurry up, or looking at their watch as they were about to die.

Mrs. Jones came back holding something in her hand along with three pieces of wood. “Here Amber, hold a piece of wood in both hands, then close your eyes and open your mouth. These will help your teeth but you might not like them at first.”

Thinking about the slug I hurriedly closed my eyes as I obeyed, hoping whatever it was wouldn't be slimy. The wood was smooth and very light, it seemed to shift to better fit my hands. She placed the third smaller block of wood in my mouth and told me to bite down, which I did. The wood was followed by a bunch of hard balls each one about the size of a pea. This wasn't so bad, I thought.

Then the pea's started walking over my tongue. I freaked out, trying to force the little things, Mrs. Jones kept my head still with a surprisingly firm grip, the wood in my mouth kept me from spitting, or moving my tongue. Somehow the wood in my hands seemed to gain weight, becoming too heavy to lift and I couldn't even open my hands to let them fall. I was totally immobile from the weight. The things inside me walked over to my teeth, a crunching, chewing sound filled my head. They ate my shattered teeth, and I could feel them crawling into my gums. I wanted to scream, but only a low moan came out. They burrowed into my flesh, and started to swell up, pressing against the holes they'd made in my gums, against each other and against the unbroken teeth around them. Finally they stopped moving.

“Open your mouth,” the crazy lady said, wiggling the wood that was now severely cracked and and dented from my teeth.

As soon as my mouth was free I dropped the wood in my hand, trying to shake some feeling back into them. As I did that my tongue gingerly touched the formerly shattered teeth, they had been replaced by something else. The things were generally tooth shaped, but they didn't feel like enamel, they felt more like a beetle shell. I pressed one as hard as I could, it wiggled a little, and something below the gumline squirmed sending pinpricks of pain through my mouth.

I stopped investigating after that. I was already on the verge of hitting myself with a hammer to get them out of me. “Thanks, Mrs. Jones,” I said.

The beaming smile dropped from her wet, wrinkly face. “Thank you, Mom!” I almost shouted.

Instantly the smile returned, and I was enveloped in a huge hug, I returned it. Where I had cried in her arms earlier, now she cried on my shoulder. Sam finally raised his head, the wounds on his face had healed and his eyes were able to focus on me properly, his skin was unnaturally shiny though, and some of the liquid was stuck in his short hair. He was smiling when he saw me and Mrs. Jones.

I smiled back, but didn't say anything, neither did he. I watched him fix up the rest of his injuries, using the slug on his sprained hand, rubbing orange bark on his cuts, and chewing a leaf to a pulp before rubbing it on his smaller bruises.

“Come on you two, we're all done here,” Sam said as his bruises slowly faded back to his natural dark colour. “Lets go have a shower we need it.”

A shower would be nice. I'd been using the tiny bathroom in my room which had a sink and some spare towels, but a sponge bath never made me feel really clean. After everything that had happened, I wanted to be as clean as possible.

“Mrs.- uh Mom, can you let go? I need to have a shower,” I said, gently pushing my hugger away.

She reluctantly let go. “You'll be ok, won't you? And you'll come talk to me afterwards? I know you have you're own room, but please visit me. Don't disappear like you did before”

I saw the desperation in her teary, bloodshot eyes. My mom would say she was hanging by a thread, and honestly so was I. She was crazy, but there wasn't any need to control me or demands to be met. “Yeah, I'll be there for you. Don't you disappear on me either.”

With one last sloppy kiss on the cheek she left first. Sam and I followed half a minute later, again Sam knocked and asked for the showers. The door opened into a surprisingly normal looking hallway, to the left was a picture of a naked woman, and the right had a naked man, They looked like something out of a text book, bored and boring. With a little wave Sam and I split up, I hoped I wouldn't see Paula.

There was a rack of towels to one side, along with house coats, I tried to find one that would fit me, but they were all the same size and made for adults. They were also weird fluorescent colours that made my eyes water. Finally I grabbed an electric blue one and walked into the shower area.

It was a wide open room, with about thirty shower heads close to the walls, There was a cupboard beside each shower presumably for clothes and towels. I wasn't very comfortable with the idea of being naked when anyone could walk in. I always hated gym class because of the showers, and this was a thousand times worse. But I needed to get the blood and sweat off of me. Maybe if I did it really quickly no one would walk in.

I stripped out of my clothes, hanging them up in the cupboard as I did so putting Crier in last so I could reach him easily, and turned on the shower. The water was perfect, not too hot or too cold. My tense muscles immediately started to loosen under the gentle pressure. I pressed a button on the side of the shower that showed a pair of hands. The water turned soapy, and a soft sponge appeared in my hands.

I spent the next ten minutes washing myself. It was the first time I'd really looked at my new body. I had quickly wiped myself off before but I'd always done it with the lights out, or after going to the bathroom with my eyes shut. It wasn't so bad.

In the shower, under the harsh yellow light with no way to disguise myself or pretend I was someone different. The old me was dead and gone. I realized something very important then, I hated my body and everything it meant.

**

Sam and I didn't say anything as we walked back to our rooms. We were both wearing bathrobes, the bloodied clothes we'd been wearing had absolutely no appeal. I saw Sam throw his into a hole at the entrance of the showers, so I'd followed suit. Although I was going to have a problem now as the only clothes I had left were so tight and revealing that they were virtually painted on and shorts so tiny they were almost bikini's.

I peered at each of the faces on the doors looking for Mrs. Jones' room, Sam noticed it and pointed at the right one halfway down the hall. As we passed it I saw that it looked polished and sparkly next to the other faces. My own metal face wasn't nearly as bright, it was tarnished, like dried blood, on top of a scowling face.

Did I look like that?

With a tired smile at Sam I entered my room and closed the door on him and the outside. I needed to be alone. I should have been hungry, it had been hours since I'd eaten but I wasn't. With the way things worked here my inner clock had no idea what was happening when, and my own mind couldn't make much of a schedule when things kept changing. So I just put on my nightgown and laid down.

Crier was waiting for me.

“You have strange enemies and stranger friends,” the tall man said. “I'm not sure which is which all the time.”

I looked up, he was on a balcony of a strange building. Take a building from ancient China, the really old brick castles from the Middle East, an English castle, they pyramids in Mexico, a mansion, and a small mountain, then cut them into little chunks and mix them together in a big pot. After they've melted around the edges pour them out and put them together with a blindfold. That was what the building looked like.

Crier stood on a thin upside down stone balcony, he tilted his head up to look down at me, his dark eyes glistened with tears. He stepped onto a marble stone case which twisted up and over rough stone steps leading into a building with the curved brown roofs you see in China. Entering the building he appeared before me pushing open a dusty door in a pale brown brick wall.

“Where were you?” I asked.

He cocked his head like a cat. “I was with you all along. Did you not feel me at your side? Taste the blood I shed for you? Felt my strength in your arms?”

“I mean I didn't see you when I slept. I thought you were suppose to be training me,” I explained.

“I cannot train one who is so exhausted they cannot think. I cannot come when your mind is fogged and guarded,” Crier explained. “But do not think that I stood idly by. How do you think you vanquished two enemies? With your skill? Hardly,” he said, his lip curling, showing me his bloody teeth. “You are good at scampering. You can learn. But you are still weak. You almost surrendered to your enemy this day, denying my help. You have much to learn. So tonight we train.”

A chill wind blew through a grim stone doorway, I saw the possible future me, her blue skin splashed with red, step into the daylight. Her eyes were gone, leaving two weeping holes in her face. Where she stepped ice and frost formed, on graceful legs she circled me, her arms began moving creating patterns of frost in the air, hiding her movements behind the ever growing glittering shapes.

“Your enemies take many forms,” Crier said. “They hide their movements behind trickery, minions, lies, and smiles. To survive you must learn to see through the lies. To work by feel and instinct when all about you is false and your own eyes are blind.”

I saw my enemy move towards me, I slashed downwards hoping to cut her leg. Her hand lashed out, slapping me across the face, instead of feeling hot, my face turned ice cold. I brought my sword back up, swinging a little wildly, but my doppelganger simply jumped back, easily avoiding me. The wind laughed.

“Strike too soon, you will fall into a trap. Make mistakes. Fail, Failure means death or defeat so bad you will wish you were dead,” Crier yelled from the top of a pyramid.

Knowing that she would use kicks, I started moving backwards into a hallway with paper like walls. She followed me smiling. Figures appeared on the walls, ink drawings. One man was in all of them, I could tell it was him because of his eyes, they glowed with hatred. Sometimes he was armed only with a stick, other times he had a suit of armour and a weapon dripping blood. He moved in an intricate dance, enemies came at him. He fought on, he was stabbed, beaten, bloodied, but he was never broken. He would fight until numbers overwhelmed him, and as he died he would take his killer with him.

I saw all of this in the blink of an eye.

The walls were plain white once more, the woman came forward. She stomped and slid her feet at random, moving forward and jumping back, looking for an opening. I kept Crier between us, waiting for her to make a mistake.

Crier clapped. “Good, you have changed the battle ground. Do not face your opponent in his area of strength, or you will be forced to risk all to win. And even if you win, you have still lost something.”

A small stab from me made the woman jump back. As her toes touched the ground, she grabbed a round wooden post and swung through the thick paper wall. Before I could even comprehend what she was doing, her feet slammed through the wall beside me. I flew through a third wall, Crier fell from my numb hand, as I landed with a painful crunch.

Still blinking stars from my eyes, a foot came down on my throat just hard enough to cause some pain. I looked up at the blue woman staring at me with her eyeless sockets. Crier stood beside her.

“Always watch your surroundings. Expect attacks from all angles and you will never be surprised,” he handed me my sword, and helped me up. “Let's try again.”

**

It seemed like it was days later. I watched my other self jumping from one marble pillar to the next, her face turning in all directions looking for me. She was coming towards me, unsure were I was hiding. The round attic window was dark enough to hide even my red skin. As she came to the balcony below my window, I jumped down not making a sound.

She somehow saw me, her foot lashed out, catching my wrist. My hand went numb and Crier flew down to the stones below. The woman smiled as her hand went back ready to strike me as she'd hit me so many times before.

Shifting my weight, I brought my left hand down on her skull. The brass candle holder I'd been holding smashed through the bone, dust flew from her skull covering me. The woman stopped moving, her frozen blue skin turned to ice, cracks spread from the wound, flesh turned to snow and blew away in the wind.

Crier stood at my side. “Good, do not do what is expected. Use whatever it takes to win. Only by fighting as hard as you can do you honour your opponent. Use hatred, falsehood, cunning, trickery, love, anything to win. Only then will you truly be free.”

Looking into his darkly glowing eyes I asked a question. “Who's next?'

I woke up in my room. Criers laughter echoed in my ears.