GRACCHIA, CAPITAL CITY OF NAVARRE

“The reports have come in!”

“No, we need to allocate more resources to humanitarian aid. Do you have any idea how many towns and cities suffered?”

“We are running short on supplies and soldiers-”

“Enlist the eldest child of each family, but keep them in patrol areas with at least one veteran scout. We can’t afford to lose them in the field. The Aqrabuamelu are agitated as it is.”

The Sovereign of Navarre tirelessly moved around the government palace, solving one problem after another for the past month. She didn’t get a wink of sleep, nor did she want to.

Problems were piling up.

Families pacified. People reassured.

Plans drafted and carried out.

In times of crisis, they needed a dependable ruler, and she would fulfil the responsibility she was shouldered with. Something only she and her predecessors previously elected could accomplish. Like her father before her and her grandmother and so on.

“The newly formed scout units are awaiting your orders, Sovereign Aaliyah of Navarre.”

“I’ll be right there,” responded Aaliyah as she was prepared to leave the chambers. A golden laurel wreath adorned her head and a palla with red borders wrapped around her robe-like toga. A female soldier fitted her in a golden armour piece specifically crafted for her torso.

Aaliyah’s eyes were focused, her gait swift and steadfast. No one doubted her status or her capabilities as she took office a year ago at the young age of 20.

Maybe she was chosen for her blood and extraordinary powers in earth magic, but she was also widely acknowledged through a public vote—something every new Sovereign needed to rule. No one would accept a tyrant as a ruler.

The Sovereign needed to be benevolent, dependable and headstrong to protect their country alongside every brother, sister and cousin. The threat of the Reiszer sent her country into a deep crisis. They needed a ruler who would waver the storm.

“Enkidu.” Aaliyah stepped before the statue of the First Sovereign ever—a statue depicting a human with long hair and a globe in their palm.

Given the lack of surviving records, the countries Navarre, Idaris and the Southern Beast Tribes would depict Enkidu each with their unique interpretation. Being a human-dominated nation, Navarre, therefore, detailed Enkidu as a human with a neutral gender.

“Grand Sovereign, Enkidu, we’re at a crossroad.” Aaliyah offered the gods a sacrificial sheep and lit several plates of incense. Pulling out a scroll from her toga, Aaliyah burned it in the fire before she finished her prayer. She wasn’t as religious as her father, but too many innocent lives were on the line. She couldn’t risk falling from grace before the gods or nature itself.

An old friend taught her how important it was to be respectful and in dire times to ask the supernatural for help. However, he also taught her to never succumb to idle worshipping and depend on them for everything. Independence was important to keep.

“I don’t believe in idols,” grumbled Aaliyah, but it was inevitable.

Inspecting each and every unit, Aaliyah calculated the odds. She wondered, “What else could I’ve done before sending them out?” All the new scouts and soldiers were around her age. She hoped they would return home safely, but as much as she hated it, they needed their help.

“This will not be an order to seek revenge, nor are you asked to lay down your lives,” Aaliyah began her speech, measuring the heartbeat of those around her via her earth magic. They were anxious, so she sent out a subtle wave of magic through the earth to calm them.

“They took our people from their homes. Their peace was stolen. Time is a resource we can’t spare, so you’ll be sent out posthaste. Navarrien and Idarien veteran scouts have already infiltrated the enemy camps, but from the nature of the Reiszer, we’re to expect the worst.”

With a scowl on her olive-skinned forehead and a shaking fist, Aaliyah took a deep breath. Her long, braided brown hair settled gently against her back. Yet, the Sovereign palace shook from her vexed magic.

“The Reiszer are never to be underestimated. 200 hundred years ago, they murdered one of my predecessors when she showed her back. They’ve raided ships and killed even the children on board. They ruined the Western Silver Road.”

Another deep breath settled in Aaliyah’s voice. Her attendant warned her of how loudly she was speaking. She waved the warning away. Everyone remembered the resentment towards the Reiszer. “It will motivate them to stay sharp.”

“Find our lost siblings and cousins, and bring them home safely. Do not engage the Reiszer in battle if you can avoid it. Your priority is your own safety, and those kidnapped. Your lives are not expendable. You’re here to support our veterans. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sovereign Aaliyah!” The captains of the units, scouts and young recruits shouted proudly in unison, placing their right hand on the wreath emblem of their shawls wrapped around their torso.

They pledged their being on the mission, and Aaliyah sent them out to the depths of the Navarrien Desert, where the landmark of the world was—The Achernar. The black obelisk would guide them to those they needed to save and then back home. She hoped that no one she knew was among the victims.

Aaliyah remembered her time in Nippur, the mentoring she received as a child and the few friends she had left behind. She remembered the one friend and partner she left behind, despite the hardships he faced. “I hope you’re not among them.”

Aaliyah pulled her cloak closer around her body. “The winds are restless today. Enlil must be furious.” Night was drawing closer, and in just a few months, rescue missions would become increasingly more dangerous. Time was of the essence. “I hope we can save as many as we can before the Solstice, and if not,” Aaliyah shuddered a breath. “I don’t even want to imagine. Just get home, everyone.”

—☼—

“We are falling- WE ARE FALLING!”

“Njord has descended upon us. His winds are finally judging us.” Cylia fell into a state of deep piousness, holding her hands before her face and praying while Xander screamed his sanity out.

“We won’t die! Stop panicking!” Kiur shouted against the wind they were diving through, but they couldn’t hear him.

They have been travelling like this for a few minutes? An hour? They couldn’t tell because it felt like an eternity to be sent flying through the sky. Vertigo and a sense of disorientation had set in a long time ago. They could barely take a solid breather with all the wind rushing past their faces.

It might have been mere seconds for all they knew, but it didn’t change the fact that the ground was dangerously closing in. Call them crazy, but they were swearing to see sharp rocks at the bottom, too.

Shooting through the first, then the second, and third, and ploughed to a halt at the seventh. Buried by the endless, seeming sand, the three remained stuck in place, unable to move a single sore muscle.

Kiur’s head emerged first out of the dune.

“What a terrible crash landing.” He rolled down the sand dune, where the shadows mercifully shielded him from the sun. Crawling closer to the pair of legs jutting out of the sand, Kiur heaved up his arms.

With a wild tug, he fell backwards but pulled out a bewildered Cylia. “I think I saw the lights in the meadow fields. It was so warm. The goddess greeted me with her felines and her battle swine.”

Cylia’s hands wandered over the warm fields she imagined having seen, still feeling their warmth. “Please get off me,” Kiur coughed with a red face, feeling awkward about how Cylia rested her hands on his chest.

“...I’m sorry,” Cylia rolled herself down from Kiur, lying on the soft and mercifully cool sands alongside him. A whine escaped her. “Everything hurts.”

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“I know,” answered Kiur, withholding a laugh at how his insides hurt. “Where’s Xander?” Kiur wondered and stood up, limping over the shadows below the dune, until he saw a distinctly discernible imprint of a human body.

“Are you still alive?” asked Kiur, who received a groan in response. Xander arose from within the dune like an undead, his arms outstretched, and eyes rolled back. “No need to be so overdramatic.”

Xander lowered his arms. “I’ll never book a flight with your brother again.”

With Xander excavated. They sat together, contemplating silently their options after everything that happened. Cylia hugged her legs. Xander gathered some water drops to drink. And Kiur… he looked upwards.

The orange sky hung above them like a blanket. Stars were already visible to the naked eye. Night was coming, and with it, the cold long nights.

“Soooo,” Cylia was the first to speak and ask the very important question, “What should we do now?”

With no answer to this question, they remained silent with Xander fidgeting and eventually suggesting, “I recommend we go-”

“We move East,” Kiur promptly answered with an uncharacteristic emphasis. “We’re more exposed than ever. Unlike the Reiszer, we lack means of transportation. Finding shelter needs to be our top priority.”

“Sounds solid to me,” Cylia agreed. “Let’s go with that.”

“About that.” Xander raised a gloved hand nervously to say something before it was too late, and they made a decision. “Let’s discuss first which direction we should go-”

“Why should we?” Cylia interrupted. “Isn’t it pretty straightforward where we should go now?”

“I mean, eh, listen,” Xander fumbled over his words, unable to articulate his intentions—he liked talking over others, but he hated being talked over himself. “Shouldn’t we vote on that and discuss our options first?”

Kiur and Cylia looked at Xander with uncertainty in their eyes.

Xander continued, “I suggest we go South and-”

“I vote for Kiur’s proposal.” Putting up her hand, Cylia cast her vote nonchalantly.

“Wait- you didn’t even listen to my proposal-”

“What’s there to talk about? Didn’t we just vote on it?”

“Well, yes, but actually- just listen to me!” Xander burst out in anger, his long overdue bath becoming more apparent with his messy long and tangled hair falling all over his face. “Can’t you two listen to my proposal first and then-”

“Shhh,” with a finger on his lips, Kiur shushed Xander. “Be quiet.”

“Wha- I won’t! Listen here, I say we g South, not North OR East-”

Not stopping his rant any time sooner, Cylia bounced at him, shoving her hand over his mouth and grappling him to the ground. Despite her lack of muscles, Cylia easily subdued him—it helped the fact that Xander was even less fit than her.

“Hide, don’t make a sound,” Kiur hushed them and peeked out of the dune’s edges. Sweat rolled down his brow with uncomfortable tension as he spotted the shadows in the distance. “They’re approaching.”

—☼—

In his frustration, Xander had forgotten that the Navarrien Desert was not just the oldest desert but also the most dangerous place in the world. With his only interactions being humans the past month, he forgot the dangers of the wild.

Kiur anxiously pulled them further away, which was the right call—their previous hiding spot was compromised.

Holding their breath, they tried to erase their presence from the hunters. Two men came into view with faces hidden behind brown bandages and cloth. Black tattoos adorned their scar-marked orange bodies.

Their eyes, swimming in a sea of deep red, scanned the area with a sickle sword or recurve bow in hand, but this wasn’t the most bizarre part about them.

While their torso seemed humanoid, their lower body was that of a giant grey or black scorpion with eight hard legs, a dripping red and glowing tail and a pair of cracking pincers the colour of cooled-down lava to snap a horse’s neck with ease.

The monsters’ mouths clattered. They communicated in a language they couldn’t understand, but they left—possibly to expand their search radius.

“What kind of magic beasts are those? I’ve never seen anything like that.” Xander rattled with his teeth. Cylia shook in terror and dug her fingers into Xander’s shoulder. He suppressed his urge to alarm the monsters with a loud, manly cry.

“Girtablilu Aqrabuamelu,” said Kiur. They blinked in confusion. Xander suppressed the urge to say Gesundheit. Kiur translated. “Scorpion People.”

“Are they therianthropes? Are they friendly? Please tell me they are,” asked Cylia, naively hoping for good news, which were not there.

“Worse, they are Guardians of the Sun God Shamash. They once fought a war against the gods and lost. They’re extremely territorial and exceptional hunters- what are they carrying there?”

Case in point. In sheer horror, they clapped their hands over their mouths to suppress the urge to vomit on the spot. The Scorpion People carried with their large pincers the remains of two Reiszer—they punctured their bodies with arrows and missing limbs. They witnessed how the Scorpion People cleaved apart the bodies with one—as if it were some old wood. The Scorpion People left, but the trio couldn’t rest assured knowing what they had to deal with now.

“Colour us lucky, but I guess we have just barely avoided them,” Cylia sighed heavily, but her body was still shaking. “What are they doing here? Did we enter their territory?”

“Hard to say,” answered Kiur hesitantly and surprisingly calmly. “They are very capricious, but rarely leave the mountains to open the gates to the Land of Darkness or safeguard Shamash. We try to avoid them when we see their hunting parties.”

“Mountains, you say? Flash news, but there are no mountains anywhere near for the next 100 kilometres!” yelled Xander in frustration and was shut up by Cylia’s hand, fearing Xander might alarm the monsters—again.

“That’s why it’s weird,” responded Kiur. “I can’t imagine why they would-”

“They’re cleaning up,” concluded Cylia. “What if the Reiszer disturbed them, and they are now… well, taking revenge and cleaning out the desert?”

An uneasy silence fell between them. They didn’t just have a problem with Reiszer hunting them now, but also with angry monsters being on the prowl. Their situation was only worsening. They immediately agreed to the pressing topic.

“We better get the hell out.”

“Agreed!”

Escaping from their current situation was their only option. It didn’t matter where. The main issue was to get as far away as possible! On their last legs, Xander and Cylia didn’t notice that Kiur was ahead of them and taking the lead on where they should go. Instinctively, they followed his directions eastwards.

Trudging forward, they followed Kiur’s track at a more temperate speed, as exhausted as they wandered through the scorching sands. Sweat plastered their wet clothes against their skin, and the arid air made them pant for a drop of water.

Even if they were past the hottest part of the day, it very much didn’t feel like that as the sun cooked them alive, draining them of their precious energy.

However, the same thing didn’t seem to apply to Kiur as his pace increased with each step they took and the dunes they crossed. Winds howled and whipped against their exhausted bodies as it became abruptly colder with the encroaching darkness.

With a lack of proper equipment, the group had trouble maintaining their bravado. Dealing with the elements, struggling with resources, monsters and losing track of time and direction was far different from when they travelled as a larger group. Xander and Cylia were reaching their limits.

Yet, Kiur was more determined than ever to keep going.

His body was accustomed to the elements. He had lived with them his entire life, but unlike him, Xander and Cylia were used to different climates.

“Kiur, please, slow down,” Cylia begged with a ragged breath. She occasionally tripped over her own feet from walking and running all day with no break in between. “Can we sit down for just a minute and-”

“Not yet,” answered Kiur, his eyes focused hard on the path forward. He could see the end of the desert swirling before his eyes. An oasis was near. He felt it calling out for him. “We need to find a safe place to stay. The desert is too dangerous to take a break. The night is almost here. We need to go on, go on, go on…”

Kiur repeated the words, not noticing how his body gave out on him. His vision blurred before him, but he kept repeating the same words over and over.

“I need to go on. Need to go on… for my brother.”

“I think Xander collapsed.” Cylia looked back with a huff.

“What?” Relieved by his stupor, Kiur turned around to see the state the others were in. He was so focused on going further that he almost left behind the rest of them. Cylia was experiencing shortness of breath with her hands on her knees, and Xander was lying on his back as if he were dead.

“Go on without me.” Xander flopped with his arm. “This is it for me. A water mage dying in the desert. How fitting, isn’t it?”

“You are being overdramatic again. You’re just out of breath from a lack of exercise.” Kiur bonked Xander’s chest, who shot up from the pain.

“Shut up! I lived most of my life in a tower! I am not used to this kind of excessive exercise!”

“I worked as a scribe and in the temple for most of my life, yet I’m in a better shape than you are.” Kiur gave Xander an unnerved look. He helped him up, though it took him more effort than he thought and needed Cylia’s help. They were tired and hungry, but they needed to overcome this together. “We’ve got to keep going and find a safe place.”

“Do you believe there is a single place that will be safe for us?” asked Cylia.

Kiur hesitated. “There ought to be one,” answered Kiur. Their survival was hanging on a thin thread. They couldn’t afford to lose hope. He had to keep pushing the group. They stopped on top of a large dune. “Cylia, do you see something from up there?”

“Eh,” Cylia stood on a large rock and scanned the entirety of the desert. She squinted her eyes. “There’s sand, loooooots of sand,” she replied truthfully. There was little they could find in the utter darkness. They sneezed from the wintry winds and rubbed their arms. “Wait, I think I can see a- ahhhh!”

Kiur and Xander gawked at Cylia, who disappeared from their view, only hearing her distancing scream accompanied by falling rocks and sand—and something resembling the sound of splashing.

“Cylia!?” they both ran up the dune to where the rock had broken off. They found a gaping hole that had given in, and where they found Cylia lying in what seemed like a pool of water and palm trees prospering around it.

“Guys, I think I’ve found an underground oasis.”