There are huge birds circling them as they stand at the top of the highest mountain in the range. Below them are the many peaks of others disappearing a hundred miles into the distance. The sun beat's down upon the group and they are hot, but then the wind blows sideways into them and they are simultaneously cold. Ruby wrap's her grey hooded cloak closer to her body. The cloak keeps her warm despite the lightness of the fabric and the delicateness of the knit. She is not sure how they arrived here or why. Ruby can see George in the distance, he is Angry, his face is contorted in a way which makes him appear different to the boy she knows so well. The same features but in an entirely alien expression, as if she were looking at his identical twin. Ruby has never seen her friend so angry before. He is on his knees and he is holding a small lifeless body in his arms. The fallen figure and that of George are wrapped from head to foot in the same grey cloaks as Ruby, although George's hood has made its way back from his face a little now and she can make out the shape of his pointed ears. The others in their group are wrapped in grey cloaks too. They are trying to run towards George. Their progress is slow despite the effort they are putting in, flinging their desperate bodies forward against the driving wind and moving their desperate faces into unheard desperate screams. Ruby recognises the others, although she has not met them yet.
The warm sun instantaneously loses its battle with the wind. The cloak that Ruby wears, is wrapped as tightly as she can get it to her cold skin but it is no longer doing its job. She shivers uncontrollably and holds onto herself. Emptiness and hopelessness plunge into the core of the young girl and her eyes begin to fill with tears. The deepest sadness makes a painful lump inside her throat and she lets out a terrible cry.
The slow lazy circling of the huge birds above them turns into a scatter as they lose all of their gracefulness and disappear into the distance with a loud and panicked flapping of wings. Ruby senses the utter bleakness at the end of this terrible vision and yet she can not leave, nor can she remember what has happened before. The young girl watches as breath leaves her open mouth in thick clouds of steam inside the cold, cold, air.
The desperate figures she had witnessed at the beginning of this nightmarish vision are still stumbling fruitlessly along the stony mountain path, trying to reach George. Everything is unfolding so painfully slowly that Ruby feels frustration rise inside her. The faces of the others morph from one emotion to another as they strain their muscles with the greatest effort.
"NOOOO!"
Screams Ruby at them and the word draws itself into the air around her in frozen letter breaths. No one hears her, or if they do then they refuse to turn around.
"RUBY."
The letters which make up the young girl's name float past her in the breeze. Formed from the bitter cold steam of someone else's breath. She turns to look behind her now and sees another figure also dressed in the matching grey cloak. He is even paler than Ruby with jet black hair and brown doe eyes. The boy looks at her with great sadness and she suddenly feels the stab of emptiness return.
"YOU HAVE TO GO NOW RUBY."
Says the sad boy, she does not hear his words but sees them once again in the strange cold steam that floats out from his mouth into the air. Ruby shakes her head. She can not leave while George still needs her.
"SAVE YOURSELF FROM THIS AND LEAVE, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A WITNESS."
Ruby shakes her head from side to side, straining to make the movement in this bizarre dreamlike state, and as the final "S" in the sad boy's sentence floats past her face she sees her tortured George begin to cry. The others have reached him now and they are helping him to hold the limp figure he is cradling off the bare rocky ground. They move around with frantic energy as they shout between themselves and gesture with their hands, George and the person he holds to him remain still.
Something stirs behind Ruby, the young girl feels it shift the very fabric of the air and it instantaneously roots her body to the ground with a thousand tonnes of fear. The young girl forces herself to look. Her eyes meet the doe brown eyes of the boy again, just in time to see him smile sadly, and then his head jerks sidewards and his body follows as he falls to the ground in a cloud of dust. There is nothing left of him.
Dressed in the blackest robes a figure steps forward to occupy the space directly where he had been standing. This being seems to suck all of the light out of the air around them as if it were made of nothing. Inside the hood is not a single feature but a screaming chasm of pitch black. The nothing seems to look forward, past Ruby and towards her George. A finger made of bone, juts out from the draping sleeve of the black robe and hones in on the figures stood around the lifeless body and the elf.
Panic jolts Ruby forward, towards death, with her arms outstretched and her scream written in the fog of her frosty breath, but she can not reach it in time. A light as bright and blinding as the midday sun leaves the boney outstretched digit and crashes into another of the children at Georges side. This time the grey cloak folds to the floor with a strange beauty as the figure inside completely disappeared.
"BLANCHE"
Utters Ruby, and as she sees the name form in the air before her, it renews the young girl's anger, pushing her onwards. George's face contorts even more now and he gently places the body he has been clutching on the floor beside him. The three remaining of his friends flank him fearlessly as all four children turn to face death.
Ruby pushes herself the few last desperate steps to where the light begins to disappear around the black cloaked figure. It does not seem to notice her as she approaches just inches from it, and then with all her might she draws her hand into a fist and hits the thing, square in the face exactly where she would expect its jaw to be. Ruby's hand disappears inside it's hood and comes back out the other side. Pain slices inside her arm and she withdraws it back towards herself. Nothing happens to the thing and it fires off another stream of blinding light towards her friends.
The group advances on the figure now and at the front is the tallest. Ruby massages her poor arm but the burning will not stop and so she grits her teeth and runs head first into the hooded thing.
Everything around the poor girl is pitch blackness, and an all engulfing pain burns every inch of her skin searing through her whole body. Ruby scratches and tears at her own flesh as she begins to fall. She plummets and plummets until she lands on the ground beside the hooded figure. As she looks up she sees the fastest of the group has reached them and attempted to run the dark creature through with his huge sword. The hooded figure is too fast, it grabs the sword which crumbles into dust and fires another beam of light from its finger. The tall grey figure side steps the beam and charges again. This time he manages to knock the creature from its feet and pin it to the ground. Ruby looks towards George from where she is laying upon the ground and sees that he is tinged with blue sparks that dance about his body and leap out from the tips of his pale silver hair. The small girl drags herself up onto her feet as the grey cloaked figure fights with all his worth. He extends two pearl white fangs of considerable length ready to bite, but the figure on the ground has wrestled free its boney arms and as Ruby holds a hand in front of her face a white light shines again and the vampire has disappeared.
"SIR GILES."
Whispers Ruby and the letters float off into the breeze.
Now comes the small caped girl, her soft black skin has been replaced with ebony fur, and her delicate human features have become the canine snarl of a wolf. She roars into the face of death and knocks it back into the dirt. A stray shot of its magic light fires off into the air completely missing any of its intended targets.
Ruby scrambles to her feet and makes her way towards George who is buzzing blue from head to toe. From behind her comes an audible whine, and Ruby winces as huge tears fill her eyes and spill over her bottom lashes.
A blue scaled boy is the only figure now standing between George and death. He is holding his hands in the air, summoning the element of life from miles around. The ground shakes, and the crashing of great waves can be heard as he commands powerful jets of water from behind, up into the air. He knocks death from its feet again but this time manages to push it backwards along the floor. The jet black robes of the creature are now soaked, and the evil being fights with all the weight that they create to get back to its feet.
George stops tingling as the sound of an almighty crack and a terrifying bang rip apart the air. The smell of electricity floods Ruby's senses, and then the sound of dread rumbles all around the mountain range echoing into the furthest distance. The sky rips open and the jagged edges of its torn fabric whip back and forth in the wind like a tattered flag. Behind it lies the thick blackness of another dimension, scattered with a billion stars and planets. Out from the ragged strands of sky come huge claws and a terrifying jaw with teeth as big as the mountains that surrounded them. A beady serpents eye looks through at them and Ruby almost falls upon the ground with shock as she reaches George. The young boy stands still, he looks at the approaching creature who has finished almost all of his companions, with a coldness that shakes Ruby to her core. she tries to reach up and touch his face but her fingers pass straight through him.
The blue scaled boy has used the last of his water and he turns to look up at the dragon. Sheer terror and horror is written on his lovely scaled face. The boy's gills open and close rapidly at either side of his neck. He rips his eyes away and turns towards the small form they have left upon the ground behind them.
Ruby jumps up and down in front of George, she shouts in his ears, but nothing that she does is met with a response. His eyes are locked upon his foe as the most terrible thing that he has summoned rips apart the sky some more and squeezes itself through with a roar that wipes all sense of hope from the world around them. Death lifts his finger to point at George. The young elf smiles, and then a bone melting draft of flame bursts from the creature in the sky instantly annihilating everything within three feet of where the death figure had been standing. The rocks themselves crack loudly from the heat, and nothing will ever grow again where the deadly flame has touched the earth.
"GEORGE"
Ruby grasps at either side of her best friend's face. He can not see her. He is still smiling. Not the super mega watt grin, but a smile that she has seen somewhere before.
"GEORGE PLEASE!"
She begs him as her ghostly words float around them, nothing.
The blue scaly boy bows over the figure on the ground now, tears flowing freely from his eyes. He lifts up a hooded head and pulls back the fabric. Ruby forces herself to look. Forces herself to admit what she has known from the beginning of this Vision.
She sees her own cold face, pale, but not just because of her marble complexion. This Ruby stares sightlessly past everything up into the air. There is nothing to show that she is dead except that the light has gone from behind her deep brown eyes and a trickle of blood flows freely from the corner of her mouth. The horror of seeing her own dead body makes Ruby collapse onto her knees.
The dragon crawls down from the sky and lands at the edge of the cliff face, sending up clouds of stones and dust with the beating of its huge scaled wings. The creature growls, a low and violent sound that vibrates inside the fibres of the atmosphere. Ruby's teeth began to tingle inside her head. George walks towards the huge creature still smiling unnervingly, and it lifts back its head, roaring with a deafening force that would have stopped Ruby's heart from beating inside her chest had she not already been dead.
Douglas picks up Ruby's body effortlessly from the ground.
George mounts the dragon. As he climbs upon its back the huge creature shakes its head and ruffles the scales upon its neck and head.
George looks down at Douglas, "Leave her," he commands.
Douglas shakes his head. "I'm going to take her to where her parents are buried. I'm going to lay her with them."
Now it is George's turn to gesture no. "I have a dragon now." He shouts in a cold voice that Ruby does not recognise. "I'm going to bring her back. I'm going to go to the witch in the mountains and learn how to put her spirit back where it belongs."
Douglas' eyes plead with George, but he can see as well as Ruby that it is pointless, there is a manic look to the young boy's smile, and a feverishness in his pale blue eyes. "She would not want to be brought back like that George. She would hate it."
George shakes his head again and the dragon knocks poor Douglas off his feet with a swish of its humongous serpentine tail, he drops poor Ruby upon the ground as he falls. The dragon picks up the body in a huge clawed front foot. Douglas gets back to his feet and stares at George. "I cannot let you leave."
The young elf pauses for a moment, and Ruby thinks she sees something of her former friend flash in his blue eyes. She screams and screams his name but nobody can hear her. The fleeting sense of George is replaced with a shake of the young elf's head and he raises his hand. The dragon draws a breath which sucks all of the oxygen out from the atmosphere around them. Ruby, who had been watching the scene unfold with horror, jumps between the former friends and tries to make them notice her, but they don't. The dragon's eye looks cruel as it fixes Douglas with its cold reptilian pupil.
Douglas raises his hands above his head and as the dragon bursts forth its flame he meets it with a jet of water. The water holds for a few moments, and then gives way, as Ruby looks back at George and sees that he is laughing. She realises in the final moments of the vision that he reminds her of Miss Grimm, then with an all consuming blaze of heat which tears flesh from bone and then melts both, Ruby writhes with pain until there is nothing