If I were to stay resigned to my gloom, I knew in time that it would consume; it would grow and swell up just like a balloon, so that was the moment my journey resumed. I searched the sands for a forest that the stars would illume, begging the desert to let me find her soul soon. I silenced my mind as I searched as if in a cocoon; I walked the wide wasteland and pressed through the simoom. I buried her body, but her soul found no tomb; she settled my shoulders as I scaled a sand dune. The starry sky was open, but the crypt had no room—she stayed with me since dead flowers don’t bloom. If we could make it to the forest, I knew we would reune, so I pressed through the gusts as if I were immune.
And while I managed to ignore the howling winds and the effects of my body slowly consuming itself, it was not long before I noticed a concomitant of the simoom which sent the desert in an uproar. I could hardly see anything in any direction. Because of my curse, that acute tunnel-vision I mentioned before, I had deluded myself into believing that the only threat this posed was that I may walk past the forest without noticing. But in reality, the most immediate threat was that I could come upon a monster and not know it. It was only after a blinding whirlwind passed that I found myself just a short distance from a towering silhouette. I found myself at the crossroads of that classic question, but instinct drove me to choose flight over fight. I ran diagonally away from the outline at a speed augmented by adrenaline, driving my hungry body forward with what little I had left.
Perhaps it was a whisper of the future coinciding with the past—that was all I could think as I took off running. But even as I ran, I felt like an invisible hand guided me forward, physically pushing me toward a fate I could no longer see. I had not admitted it until that moment, but I confessed to myself that the forest of lost souls was a whispered prayer for a bright future where I could somehow reclaim a fraction of what I lost. As I felt the monster’s footsteps shake through the dense sand, I realized that I never actually planned to find the forest; my rational mind had already concluded that it did not exist in the first place. It was simply a fantasy worth chasing until my dying body would collapse beneath me. It was a dream to die on my own terms so that we could rejoin our souls in death. Everything else was a mindless indulgence of interwoven self-delusions. It was an echo of the anguish I knew before I met her, catapulting back into life now that I was left without her for a second time.
But all the self-delusion in the world could not protect me when a sandy gust struck my side in the simoom. I could feel the shape in the swirling wind step closer by the second; she steered the sandstorm like strings on a puppet. I ran as fast as I could, but I was blinded by more than just the forceful gusts. The sands forged clouds in the sky which blocked out the stars, leaving me to stumble in darkness until I impacted the monster from which I was running. The collision nearly knocked me to the ground, but I jolted back and unholstered my sword, clinging to it as if it could in any way defend me from her. Before I could even steady my sword, she struck me with a kick which sent me stumbling backward. I saw through the faded light that she held a dagger with a symbolic inscription stained upon its blade. The inscription was familiar but not from a place I could recall; it danced at the edge of my brain like the aftertaste of a morning dream.
As if adrenaline itself hijacked my shellshocked head, I threw myself at the towering shape in the sand, swiftly slashing my sword six times in succession. But she effortlessly evaded the first five strikes with a backward step, and then she clashed her blade against mine to deflect the last. She then jolted to the side and lifted her empty left hand as her whole arm flexed. Like a forceful geyser, a plume of high-speed sand shot forth from the ground and shocked me into stillness. If it weren’t for the shockwave of this sandy burst, she would have invariably struck me with the slash of her blade. My stinging eyes instead watched the weapon pass on by, shimmering in the faded light of the shrouded stars.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
I said to the monster with a hate-filled gaze, “A woman once wandered this wasteland for days. I found her half-eaten with her necklace stolen. Are you the one who killed her in this open-walled maze?”
She answered almost as if she were taken aback, “Anyone out here could have done that. It is clear by your words that you came from elsewhere, but that naïveté in itself begs a question in response. If you do not understand how hopeless it is to find a single murderer out in the badlands, then you must also not know how I steer the sandstorm with my hands.”
I retorted as I clenched my sword in both hands, “I don’t care how it is that you steer the sands. I don’t care who killed her and then set me on this track. All that truly matters is that I must have her back.”
“It’s a shame you’re my fuel. I respect your ambition,” said the giant as I ran on despite my condition.
I could practically feel my body breaking with every step, but I dared not try to fight against her. By her own admission, the giant possessed the power to command the sandstorm. Without any true purpose driving me toward victory, I had no means through which to defeat her. Even the sword in my hand was powerless at best. I did not understand at the time what she meant when she declared that I would serve as her fuel, but I could feel her heavy footsteps send tremors through the ground. She chased after me at a faster rate than I could run, so instead I swerved and swung my sword as a desperate final endeavor. She deflected the slash with a clash of her weapon, and a white spark flew forth from the crashing blades like a tiny star which instantly extinguished from the touch of sand. The giant lunged at me for a second time, but I deflected her strike with my sword.
The impact forced me to stumble back against my will, and then I lost my footing. I accelerated backward and stumbled with each step, nearly tripping onto my own sword. I heard the monster exclaim in the background, but I swerved around and realized that there was a reason for my misstep. The impact of her strike had sent me down a large hill made of sand. I ran down the slope and steered my own descent; I let gravity guide me away from the giant. When I reached the foot of the hill, I sheathed my sword and swiftly sprinted through the sand. I resolved in that moment to face forward for the rest of my run. Whether she outran me or not, it made no difference if I knew it. If I were to end, then I would just end, and there was nothing else to it. I resolved to face forward because I had nothing left behind me. The ashes of my failed past stained the world I left behind; the only thing that mattered now was my fragile final endeavor to see her one more time.
Almost as if she were the force of fate now testing my resolve, the giant unleashed a whirlwind of spiraling sand directly in my path. It was a trap surely set to block my escape, but she and I fought two separate struggles simultaneously. She sought to cage me as fuel for her weapon, but I saw her sandstorm as a hurdle. I mentioned before that I watch this world with eyes locked in tunnel-vision, but there is a duality to this condition. Just as I sometimes stumble over the details I disregard, I can also always eye my ambition and the only path there. It was in such a way that I saw the silhouette of towering trees on the horizon, swaying deeply in the wind, even between the blinding gusts of searing sand. Certain that I had found the object of my hopeless hunt at long last, I drove my broken body through the whirlwind with all the strength I had left. I truly felt like I burned a portion of my soul itself just for the strength to overcome the sand. But nature itself was too weak to stop me; even the monsters in the badlands could not keep us apart. I pushed through the whirlwind and raced on toward the forest at the edge of the endless desert.