After everyone had left, and Gale had gone back to sleep – snoring in an almost comatose state - Bo was alone with his thoughts again. He lay in a mess of restless exhaustion, struggling to drown out the relentless cries for help.

He hadn't slept for almost three days, and his fatigue had built up into a precarious tower that loomed over him - threatening to collapse and crush him at any moment.

All he wanted was some rest, just an hour or two.

Anything. He would take anything.

But sleep stubbornly refused to come, leaving him to lie there. Alone. Awake. His head throbbed, and one of his eyes twitched compulsively - like it had taken on a life of its own. Every sound seemed amplified and grated on his brain like stone grinding against stone.

He just wanted it to stop. But the wind kept howling – battering his tent with primal fury. Gale kept snoring - a low inescapable rumble that travelled through the ground like an earthquake. And worst of all, the voice. It just wouldn't stop shouting and shouting and shouting and shouting and shouting…

"Help me!"

"Help me!"

"Help me!"

"Help me!" "Help me!" "Help me!" "Help me!" "Help me!" "Help me!"

He couldn't get it out of his head – tossing and turning helplessly as he clawed at his ears in vain. Even when he covered them, the voice snuck through, squirming into his brain and wrenching him from sleep's embrace.

In an almost trance-like state of sleep-deprived imbalance, Bo reached a conclusion.

It must stop.

The voice.

He must silence it.

He reached over and fumbled through a pile of parchment, grabbing hold of something smooth and cold. With a tug, he pulled out the dragon's tooth and examined it – staring blankly at its many imperfections.

With the hook gripped so tightly that his knuckles turned white, he staggered to his feet and lurched to the tent's entrance. All it took was one step, and he was out there - in the wind, lightning and madness.

The hurricane lashed sand against his face, stinging like a thousand insect bites. But even that didn't wake him. Not entirely, anyway.

In a stupor, Bo began to walk. He didn't really know where he was walking to – simply allowing his feet to take him where they would. Step after step, minute after minute. He drifted through the storm like a tiny ship lost at sea, trapped in the grips of unstoppable tides it couldn't comprehend.

There was only one certainty in the blinding chaos of it all.

"Help me!"

The voice was getting louder.

He followed the distant sound through the storm like a kite being pulled back to its tether. Gale force winds bellowed and howled around him, spitefully whipping sand across his face. But this only served to slow him down. Nothing could stop him now. Not until he silenced the voice.

As he travelled, he left no trace of his passing. His every footprint was instantly swept away by the storm, leaving him adrift in the mayhem.

All he could see was brown and grey as tumultuous pillars of dust and sand buffeted him from every direction. He had no point of reference, and there were no landmarks to latch onto. After a while, he couldn't even tell how far he'd travelled.

Direction and distance were meaningless in the maelstrom. In the end, all that mattered was the voice.

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"Help me!"

It never once stopped as he travelled - but, in fact, grew clearer. What had once been a muffled shout had grown into a piercing scream that rattled his brain.

At some point during the journey - although he wasn't really sure when – Bo's mind cleared.

The madness of it all had finally snapped him from his daze, but he was still intent on finding the source of the cries for help. If he didn't find it for himself, they might never stop, and he would never sleep again.

He put his head down, forging through the storm with gritted teeth. The swirling sand made it next to impossible to see where he was going, and if he opened his eyes, they would quickly be blinded. Permanently.

Going purely off of sound – Bo walked and walked. His feet rose and fell with the endlessly shifting sand. Occasionally he would trip on a rock exposed by the storm or set foot in a trench, sending him stumbling to the ground. But he always picked himself back up and continued onwards. Forwards was better than nothing.

Bo wasn't stupid. And somewhere along the way, he realised that this was a mistake. He had no idea where he was going or where he had come from. He didn't know how far or how long he had travelled and had left no trail behind.

He was lost. Irrevocably so.

"Shit…" He cursed under his breath, gagging as some sand snuck through the gap in his open mouth. After that, he kept his frustration to himself – not wanting another mouthful of dust.

Eventually, the hours trickled by, and the wind began to die down. It was subtle at first, but as someone being tossed around inside the storm itself – Bo was quick to notice the change.

He could tell that it would soon blow over, and when it did, he had some serious thinking to do. As he shuffled forwards… or backwards… or sideways – he couldn't tell which was which in the endlessly changing chaos – All he could do was focus on the cries for help.

They were his lighthouse in the storm, guiding him to something that he knew to actually exist. Or at least, he hoped existed. If all of this had been for nothing… He'd rather not think about that.

As the wind died down, he no longer met so much resistance when walking. Being able to walk without hunching over let him speed up considerably.

A speed which he noticed to be far faster than anything he was previously capable of.

Without realising it, Bo was walking quicker than most men could run. He hadn't even been trying to do it either; it just came naturally to him - like breathing. Without conscious effort or struggle, he could instinctively move at incredibly high speeds.

He marvelled at his reaction time - which had increased to match his speed - allowing him to glide over the sand effortlessly, leaving barely a mark as he passed.

"Help Me!"

There it was again. The voice was so loud it felt like it was coming from right beside him – as though the speaker was shouting directly into his ear.

Gradually, the chaos calmed into order as the storm blew itself out - and without noticing when - Bo looked up to find that the sky had cleared.

Blue.

So blue that it hurt.

And, of course, not a cloud to be seen in, well... forever.

In an instant, the storm passed, and the desert had completely rewritten itself. Nothing was the same in a profoundly isolating way.

Landmarks that Bo might once have recognised were buried beneath mountains of disturbed sand, and new landmarks had risen to take their place. It was as though the desert had taken on a new face, a new identity — an unfamiliar shape to Bo, who was far, far away from home.

He paused as he walked, taking it all in.

The sand was a slightly different colour than usual – a darker, more yellowy tone that somehow felt even more parched than before. In contrast, the rocks and stones the storm uncovered were lighter than their previous counterparts. Of course, the sky was the same lifeless shade of blue it had always been. Featureless and empty. Bo sometimes felt the sky was even more barren than the arid land beneath it.

He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and felt the throbbing headache returning. Tired. He was so very tired.

If only he could sleep, even for just a short while. That's all he wanted – that's all he-

"Help me!"

The shout was so loud it made him recoil. Perhaps the howling wind had been masking its actual volume because - after the storm had burned itself out - the cries for help had taken on an even shriller quality.

Bo blinked twice, fighting off sleep as he began walking again. Something in his blood was telling him he was close. Very close.

The day dragged on as he climbed dune after dune, his endless search only making him more and more lost.

At this point, he didn't know if he would ever find his tribe again. He might spend his entire life alone out in the…

As though struck by lightning, Bo snapped to a halt. He stood in a daze, watching a spot by his feet.

"Am I dreaming…?" He mumbled. It was certainly possible.

But neither pinching himself nor rubbing his eyes had any effect on the strange egg that lay there. And it was an egg, or at least – it might be an egg. Bo had never seen one quite like it or - truth be told - seen an egg at all.

However, there were certainly drawings of eggs that looked like this. Smooth and oblong, with a curved surface that glistened like polished porcelain. It was covered in red and grey patterns that wove an intricate tapestry that would make an artist weep.

Bo had seen eggs like this before.

But only in drawings.

And only in scrolls about dragons.