The air grew warmer. The winds grew stronger. And as early Kynvalen persisted, the haze overtop the desert waves thickened. At dawn and at sunset, the dust lingered on the horizons, intermingling with reds and blues and oranges, drowning out the light at the day’s beginning and end.

It was prominent enough that Heror could see it from the steppes – past the red rocks to the north – when he rode alongside Adjaash and Ashanji during the days. It was as if the desert had begun to rise up into the sky, and blend the land and air as one. Even at night, the stars were dulled. Heror could smell the husk of sand on the breeze.

Three days came and went, and on the third night, Raldu brought the search party back to the tall tent for another briefing before the final expedition. Three more Midan soldiers from the fighting ranks – Baalu, Ezunsa, and Eaehnu – were added to the team for support by Raldu’s orders, and Heror and Adjaash ensured they were equipped with food, water, and supplies for medical care, torches, and flaming arrows.

They all knew the target: The temple at Dyugan, a little over 100 miles north-northeast of the camp. It was positioned squarely in the middle of the Great Desert Sparhha, and would take at least a full day’s trip there and back. There, if their findings were correct, they would find the Sword of Sparhh – the Divinium Diaphanae.

The briefing was short and direct. They slept. And then the next morning, in the early hours before the sunrise, beneath a calm and clear navy blue sky dotted by stars, they readied for the journey.

By now, Heror’s pain was no more than a lingering echo, and his range of motion had returned. In the dark, he fastened the supply straps on Shaadur’s back. As he did, Adjaash walked alongside him, and placed a soft hand on his arm.

“You ready?” she asked Heror, her voice quiet.

Heror nodded with a small smile, and Adjaash smiled back. Then she turned her attention down the way, to the others in the party who also tended to their horses. Her smile faded. Her focus returned.

“Fasten your straps, and then we’ll be off,” she told them, raising her voice again. “The winds have been picking up lately, and the dust is heavier now. We may have to ride through rough conditions. Protect your face as best as you can.”

Adjaash started to turn toward Ashanji, when she remembered one more thing. She turned back to the rest of the party.

“If we run into trouble and any of you run away from the group,” she warned, “I will shoot you in the foot.”

They untied and mounted their horses, and then they set off – riding first to the western edge of the camp, and then through the narrow red rock canyon. In the silence of the dying night, six sets of hooves echoed against the sandstone walls, as they traversed the downward slope. And when they spilled out onto the desert sands again, the sun was a blotted, reddened orb to the east, barely peeking above the rolling dunes.

Adjaash began the journey bearing north, and led the group while Heror rode beside her. The others rode roughly in single file behind them. As they rode, the parent star rose, and golden light flowed over the many crests. On the wind, streams of stirred sand washed silently over the dunes like water in a creek. Above, a translucent brown smog dampened the sky’s blue hue, and weakened the glint of the sun.

When they rode, they rode at a gallop’s pace – cowls covering their faces. Even through the dust cloud that hovered above the ground, the heat permeated through and pooled in the haze, suffocating the riders like plaster. Heror could tell that the horses were having more trouble. Every so often, Shaadur would stop and bow and shake his head, and Heror would have to gently kick to keep him pressing on.

A couple hours passed. Eventually, they reached a higher crest, and the dust cloud broke for a moment. It was hot, but the clean air was refreshing, and Adjaash halted the group atop the swell.

“We’ll stop here and rest,” she announced, lowering her cowl. “Five minutes.”

Heror pulled down his cowl and dismounted his horse – sweat caked over his forehead – and as soon as he hit the sand, Shaadur crumbled to the ground, tucking his legs beneath his torso with a tired, drooping neigh.

“Whoa, Shaadur…”

Heror rushed behind Shaadur and knelt down, then searched through one of the packs for a water canteen. Once he found one, he rushed back to the front, where Shaadur was panting and sulking on the ground. Heror knelt down again, opened the canteen, and tipped it. Shaadur’s head lifted at the sound of water sloshing inside. The horse drank from the nozzle, guzzling until it was dry.

“There you go,” Heror whispered as his horse drank. “There you go…”

Once Shaadur was finished, Heror closed the canteen and gave the horse a pat, and was met with a thankful grunt. Then he rose to his feet. Adjaash stood beside him.

“How far along are we?” Heror asked her as he squinted in the sunlight.

“About 40 miles, I’d say,” Adjaash replied, glancing out over the dunes. “Once we reach the watchtower, we’ll be around halfway.”

Heror took a strained breath. From the rear of the pack, Brocus approached, bootsteps heavy in the sand as he tugged at his desert scarf.

“Why don’t we travel during the night?” the scholar asked, annoyance in his voice. “That’s what we did on the way back last time, and it was cooler and calmer. I didn’t have to inhale dust every second.”

“If direction was all that mattered, I’d agree with you,” Adjaash answered. “But we don’t know how much of this temple is left above ground. We need to be able to see the landmarks as we approach. It’s easy to miss something at night.”

She glanced up at the sun. It was climbing to the apex now, as late morning came upon them.

“And if this dust sticks around during the night,” Adjaash went on grimly, “we’ll be blind without the stars.”

Brocus eyed the girl, then let out a concedent sigh and turned back toward his horse. Heror stepped to the edge of the dune, peering out as far as he could see. An opaque cloak of dust capped his visibility only a couple miles out. Spores of sand wavered in the air.

“I’m more worried about what’s hiding in the dust,” Heror muttered to himself.

Adjaash stepped up to join him. She slung a hand around the stem of her bow and glanced at Heror.

“We may as well have gotten both of them,” she reassured him. “The last one was wounded. I don’t think we’ll see it again.”

“Is that all there was?” Heror wondered.

Adjaash paused for a moment, then let out a quick sigh and shook her head. Her eyes sank to the sand.

“I don’t know.”

In the distance, a loose tuft of brown dust rose and mixed with a lone cumulus cloud above, marrying the ground and sky again.

“But if we see them again,” Adjaash went on, shooting a confident look at Heror, “we’ll be ready.”

They donned their cowls again and picked up where they left off. Up crests and down troughs, for miles and miles more. Through narrow trenches in the sand, where dunes overlapped and flowed into one another – and through it all, beneath a heavy brown haze that only seemed to grow thicker as the day went on. Every now and then, Adjaash would glance upward, over her shoulder – to judge the position of the sun and ensure they still tracked northward. The parent star was there, but it was dim.

The sun had just about reached its peak in the sky, when they came across the worn watchtower. Through patches of sunlight and dust, Heror could see it clearly, and it was just as he remembered it – a wayward stone structure half-buried in the sand. At its edge, a worn pillar stood about fifteen feet tall. From behind it, a wind-smoothened slab stretched out. The slab was harder to make out this time. On the wind, sand had started to accumulate overtop it.

The three Midans were chatting quietly at the back of the line, but the group went silent as they came across the watchtower. Adjaash slowed Ashanji to a trot and drifted behind the pillar – to try and find shelter from the strengthening wind. While the others waited not far behind her, she rolled out her map and searched for the marking of Dyugan. Her eyes traced back to the scale on the bottom, with which she cross-referenced, as the sunlight faded in and out.

“Alright!” she shouted above the wind. “Less than 50 miles out! Now we turn a bit to the east!”

“Sera Adjaash!” one of the Midans called in rough Kivvenean. “Can we rest? The horses can’t breathe.”

Adjaash nodded, and the party members dismounted. They lined their horses up behind the pillar, where they at least had some respite from the wind and dust. Some horses were wheezing and straining their ribs as they inhaled, while others flared their nostrils and grunted in delirium. All but Ashanji – who still stood resolute, her eyes and ears alert.

Standing out in the wind, his cowl over his face, Heror glanced at Ashanji, and then looked at Adjaash.

“She seems to be doing fine,” he said to Adjaash with a small laugh.

Adjaash now looked over at Ashanji, and then she nodded.

“She’s strong.”

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Soon, the dust clouds broke again, and the wind slowed a bit. The heat from the sun began to sink in, but the air was clear, and the deep blue sky was unobstructed above. They took this opportunity to mount and set off again, capitalizing on the clean air. But when Adjaash and Heror ventured out and led the group past the watchtower, to another large crest, they were met with an ominous sight – a sight Heror had never seen before.

In the far, far distance – past rolling dunes dotted by darkened rubble and marble ruins – a dense brown cloud billowed, crawling across the west-northwest horizon, like a squall moving along the ground. It was not a haze, but a derecho of dust stirred by relentless winds, that appeared to line the western edge of the desert from end to end. And at the top of the dense cloud, monstrous clumps and streams of brown dust climbed into the atmosphere and blended into the blue, until all color was gone – lost in a nebulous darkness.

From where they stood, beneath the open sky and sun, the sand-squall looked as if it was hardly moving. But against the awesome scale of the desert, something told Heror that wasn’t the case.

As they observed the haboob far beyond, Brocus was the first to speak.

“Is that…”

“Sandstorm,” Adjaash confirmed with a solemn nod.

Heror slowly rolled down his cowl; his mouth hung open in shock. The storm looked almost like the clouds of dust that the Zhai Ghi had kicked up when the group was attacked on the last trek. But this cloud was thicker, and it was constant – as if the Aelyum itself had spawned it, to swallow invaders of the desert.

“We’re higher up right now, so we can see farther,” Adjaash observed, strands of hair fluttering in the wind. “I’d say the storm is around twenty miles out. We’ll be traveling north-northeast, so we won’t be heading straight into it. We have to pick up our pace while the air is clear.”

Adjaash glanced at Heror, then turned to the rest of the group – voice firm.

“Keep your eyes out for any shelter as we get closer to the ruins. We shouldn’t punch through the storm. We should hide and let it pass if we can. Let’s get moving again – quickly.”

“Could we just stay here?” a Midan asked with apprehension. “Hang back?”

Adjaash shook her head.

“We’re already in its path. Finding shelter is our best chance.”

Adjaash started down the dune to the north-northeast, and the others followed. At a gallop’s pace – quicker than before – they rode back into the depths of the desert, snaking through troughs and scaling the sand-rises. In the clean air, the horses didn’t strain as much, and so the six glided through the sands, keeping speed. They began passing isolated marble ruins. But each time Shaadur crested a dune, Heror saw the storm inching closer.

There was tension on the wind as they rode. The storm was growing nearer, but for the moment, no sound came from it – only the hollow howl of the frontwinds that came before it. As the horses clopped in the sand, the echoes of their hoovesteps died out quickly in the open air, as if muted by the sand and the disparity of the wind.

They rode for fifteen minutes, and still, there was no shelter. Heror felt the wind pick up as it fled by his skin. With the sun at their backs, the storm was an eerie sight. All around Heror, the sand glowed golden underneath the light of the sun, and straight above, the sky was a rich cerulean. But all of the light seemed to die once it reached the storm’s edge. The brown sand blotted out all brightness. It ate the land.

Five more minutes. The storm was just miles away now, and Heror began to see the speed at which it was moving, and just how high it climbed into the sky. It towered into the heavens over a hundred feet high, like water falling into an abyss, and along the sands, the dust clouds billowed outward as if endless, barreling over the dunes.

They reached another crest and Adjaash halted her horse – wind grasping and tugging at her brown-silver hair. She steered the reins to the right and peered out over the desert. Still, she saw nothing.

“Anyone see shelter??” she called to the rest of the group, voice muffled behind her cowl.

For a moment, it was silent save for the wind, as the others searched. And then, there was an answer.

“There!” Brocus shouted from the rear. “Ruins!”

The scholar pointed, and Adjaash followed his finger to a small group of ruins around a mile away, barely peeking above a low-sloping dune. It was to the northwest – closer to the storm – but they had no choice. Without another thought, Adjaash let out a brisk command under her breath, and Ashanji started onward, quickening to a gallop.

Against the rush of the wind and the stirring sand, they rode across the dunes, keeping the ruins in their sight at each crest. The storm was coming. Its pace was noticeable now – tufts of dense airborne sand exploding sideways, like the updraft of a thundercloud skewed across the ground.

Another crest, and they came upon the ruins. It was a dilapidated courtyard of some sort – a hundred feet wide at most, half-buried in the sand. On the western end, a shoddy stone wall sat, around ten feet high at its highest points. It was worn and cracked at the top, and it jutted in and out of the sand as it spanned the plot’s length. It wasn’t much – but the storm was almost upon them now, not more than a minute away.

A low rumble started to shake the ground. The wind strengthened, and the blue sky above began to blot. From the sunlight, the storm clouds cast great shadows on the sands, and midday became as sunset. Adjaash rode to the broken wall and whirled around, turning to the rest of the group.

“Dismount! Tuck your horses against the wall!”

Now she rode quickly to the wall, and the others followed, filing in with their horses. With a pressing kick, Heror sped Shaadur to a sprint, and then halted him at the base of the wall next to Adjaash and Ashanji. Shaadur let out a complainant neigh, as Heror slid to the ground with haste.

Heror glanced back at Adjaash. She had grabbed a blanket from her pack, which she now used to shield Ashanji as the black horse sat in the sand. The Midans followed suit. Heror wanted to do the same for Shaadur, but as he peered above the stone wall, he saw that the sand clouds were speeding toward them now – a pyroclastic flow of particulates. It was too late. He snuck back against the wall, slid behind Shaadur, and wrapped his arms around his horse, helping him to the ground. And just as Shaadur sat behind the wall and tucked his legs, and Heror leaned over to protect him, the storm overcame them.

In the last second, the storm seemed to accelerate, and it swept over the ruins at racing speeds, like a tsunami wave. A powerful pulse of wind shook the wall and kicked up sand all around the group, and the ground trembled. One second, the sun was there. The next, it was only a halo. And in just seconds more, it disappeared.

Where the wind had once been a whisper, it now howled and screamed. Somewhere, a horse let out a cry, but the noise was lost against the sounds of the storm. Heror closed his eyes at first, hugging his horse tightly – and when he glanced upward above the wall, all he saw was darkness. Encased in a thick cloud of brown smoke, through which almost no light could pierce.

Now Heror heard Shaadur let out a small whimper, and he tightened his hold. Tucked in the small crevice between Shaadur and the wall, Heror could feel himself losing his breath. The wind was deafening. The quake of the sand shook his bones, and as the horse Shaadur leaned against the wall to stay behind shelter, Heror felt himself compress.

Heror closed his eyes and strained to breathe. His pulse quickened. His heart drooped in his chest. He felt the sand pelting and stinging his skin. The wind grew louder, and louder. Howls turned to wails. Wails turned to cries. Sand turned to glass and metal, and spears grazed his skin. Blood flecked against his face. He opened his eyes again. Against the howl of the wind, he saw a row of spearmen charging toward him from the fog and the pines – cries on either side of him, as metal met metal and body. A sense of doom overcame him. He tried to crumble away, but he couldn’t. He tried to yell, but his voice had left him. He was cornered. Speartips flared. The howls rose, until they layered and overlapped and flowed through his ears and flooded his head, telling him of death and nothing else. He saw brown and red, saw it fade to black, saw it fade to red again. Piercing, piercing… piercing red… piercing–

“Heror!”

Heror opened his eyes. The sandstorm was gone. The air was calm. The sky was blue.

As Heror sat up slowly, he felt a weight lift off his side, and he turned to see Shaadur lifting his muzzle. The horse had been protecting Heror, after Heror had lost consciousness.

Now Heror sat up with his back against the wall, and as his eyes went right, he saw Adjaash kneeling beside him, blocking the sunlight – a look of frantic worry on her face, cowl tugged down around her neck. It was only now that Heror remembered to breathe, but when he tried to inhale, he lost control and started to hyperventilate. He wrenched down his cowl and tried to catch his breath with a gasp, but he couldn’t. He shivered, and his eyes started to water, and his chest heaved and heaved, until Adjaash leaned in closer and placed her hands on his shoulders.

“Heror… Heror, look at me…”

Heror stopped and looked at her. His glistening blue eyes met hers.

“It’s alright,” she told him in a slow, soothing voice. “You’re alright…”

Adjaash lifted a hand onto his cheek and left it there, and slowly, Heror started to catch his breath again. His pulse slowed. He breathed in through his nose, and out through his mouth – slowly, slowly – until he began to calm down. He dropped his eyes for a moment, and then he met hers again. He suddenly felt at peace.

“Is something wrong?” Brocus called from the left.

They idled like this, eyes intertwined. And then Adjaash gently dropped her hand from Heror’s cheek and tucked her arm under his armpit, helping him to his feet.

“Everything’s fine,” she said, tilting her head in Brocus’ direction.

Now on his feet again, Heror gave Shaadur a light pat as the young horse walked in front of him. And then Heror glanced to his left. The others were stowing their blankets, emerging from the shelter of the wall. The horses rustled their hair and manes to shake off the dust – but aside from that, they were unharmed. As Heror looked to his right, to the east, he saw a light brown haze on the horizon below the afternoon light, and nothing more. The storm was long gone. The winds were calm behind it.

As Heror reached up to brush dust off of his own hair, Adjaash turned and went back to Ashanji. She quickly mounted her horse and fastened her grip on the reins, then peered above the dunes in the distance. From the top of her horse, she tried to get her bearings again.

“Sun is in the south-southwest…” Adjaash muttered to herself as she glanced over her shoulder, “… which means this…”

Adjaash turned Ashanji slightly, then pointed.

“… this is north-northeast…”

The Midans mounted their horses again, and so too did Brocus, straining to get his foot into the stirrup. Heror took another deep breath, then turned back to Shaadur. He gripped the reins, placed a hand on his horse’s side, and vaulted himself up onto the saddle. Once he was settled, Shaadur trotted lightly with his front hooves, letting out a small murmur.

“Thank you, Shaadur,” Heror said quietly.

The riders reorganized, and Heror rode up alongside Adjaash. Adjaash glanced around the group, then turned back to the north-northeast and nodded to herself.

“The air is clear. Let’s get moving.”