Yvet was – for lack of a better word – inconsolable.

Her roar seemed to ring with an incomprehensible sadness. A sadness so entrenched and entombed that Bo's heart ached to hear it. He did not understand everything about the tomb, far from it.

But he had gleaned a few things, mainly that the dragon Thuran had been guarding young dragons. Young dragons like Yvet.

He glanced at her, seeing the hurt in her eyes. Had she known this dragon? Had Thuran guarded her egg before it ended up in the desert? Bo suspected as much.

For an hour, Yvet roared and groaned, her throat hoarse as she sang a song Bo couldn't quite grasp the words of. It was a solemn, regretful song - a song that Bo couldn't help but feel in his gut.

When it ended, and silence one more settled on the cavern – its quiet implications echoing throughout the stillness – Bo was left wondering… what next?

He watched as Yvet crawled over to the great stone box, watched as she climbed its side and curled up on the lid of what he realised to be a casket. She sat there, wailing miserably.

Bo glanced around soberly. He had very rarely seen a person act like this – usually, it was the spouse of a hunter who hadn't returned from their hunt… had Fran reacted like this when he went missing? He wondered.

If he had made Fran as miserable as Yvet was… he might never forgive himself.

Trying to distract himself, Bo paced around the casket, taking in the many carvings. The depictions of the dragon's life were collected here, showing Thuran's progression from hatchling to elder.

While Bo didn't understand every intricacy, there was one thing that stood out to him. Thuran was never shown as an egg but instead, a formless being of light – much like the things he had been protecting from the green fire at the end of his life.

Seeing as Thuran was shown beside a river in the first drawing, he wondered if this might be the Ming Yvet had referenced drinking from before her hatching.

Bo didn't know exactly what this meant but thought it was endlessly fascinating all the same. He had many questions about the dragon's birth process – along with a particularly prevalent query about how Thuran had actually died.

Before the time of his death – despite being truly ancient – the dragon appeared as a force of nature. A being of pure magic and might.

How could such a thing die?

Bo glanced at Yvet, wondering if she would ever grow as large as the dragon buried in the enormous casket she sat on.

Probably, he concluded.

She had curled up into a ball, pressing the side of her head against the casket as though trying to reach inside.

Bo bit his lip, unsure of what to do. He felt that if he said something, anything, she would not react well to it, no matter what it was.

Finally, he decided it was best to leave her be for the moment. She would most likely want space and time to grieve privately. Unfortunately, time was in short supply.

Since his ankle was still burning, Bo figured he ought to look for more Horus shoots to speed up the healing process.

Leaving the cavern without a sound, he hopped up the mighty stairs, easily clearing the metre-high gap between each one. His newly strengthened body was filled with explosive power. Power he hadn't taken full advantage of up until this point.

As he climbed, it crossed Bo's mind that he had yet to look into his – so-called – elemental abilities. Yvet had been thoroughly unhelpful, as she always was, and she didn't look in any state to give him advice on the matter.

He continued climbing, pondering on the powers he supposedly had. So far, his only link to any supernatural ability was his sudden indifference to the desert's extreme heat. At no point had he been fazed over the past two days, making it clear to him that something had changed.

Yvet had said her affinities were fire and wind, so logically, his affinity to fire was helping him shrug off the once crippling heat. He just didn't know how it worked. Yet.

After climbing the stairs for an indeterminable amount of time, Bo saw a shaft of light stream in through the gloom. Up above, the utter darkness was replaced by a square of stars.

This square grew to fill his vision as he climbed, stepping out of the pit and breathing in the night air.

He blinked, noticing that his vision was sharper than it used to be. Even in the dark, he could make out the carvings on the pillars with startling clarity. It was with this improved vision that he noticed dark shadows flitting at the edges of the stone forest.

Leathery wings and jagged forms sliced through the shadows, making Bo's back ache. He hadn't expected to see Vespers so soon. Honestly, he had hoped never to see one again, but clearly, the days they spent trapped by the storm had riled them up.

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Tonight would be dangerous, Bo thought.

But he didn't have much of a choice. Healing his ankle was imperative, and the longer he spent without resolving the issue, the worse it would get. If the pain grew so bad, he couldn't move - what then?

As he traversed the shattered granite pillars, Bo noted that the Vespers stuck solely to the edges of the stone forest – warded off by some unseeable force.

He picked a direction and set off, keeping low to the ground and only making sounds whenever absolutely necessary. Despite their fearsome nature, it was common knowledge that Vespers were only a threat to those who alerted them with loud noises.

In general, their eyesight was terrible – which was part of the reason they only hunted at night. During the day, Vespers hung from the underbelly of an Oasis - 'protecting' it from any particularly stupid predators. Not that an Oasis needed protecting.

Bo reached the edge of the pillars and slunk into the night. As he walked, he concentrated on two things.

The first was sound. He had to be quiet. And needed to be mindful of every little noise he made. When the pain in his ankle grew too much to bear – he forced himself to stop; otherwise, he might scream.

The second thing he focused on was himself. He was looking for any sign of his elemental abilities. What sort of thing that meant, he wasn't sure. So far, he hadn't figured out whether it was a physical or mental change.

Something which was frustratingly hard to decipher.

This was the issue at hand: He had nothing to compare his current body to. Only some vague idea of what he had been like before meeting Yvet – making noticing any changes nigh impossible.

He often remembered falling ill but not what the experience was like. Likewise, whenever he was sick, it became impossible to remember what being well actually felt like. His experience before and after meeting Yvet was much the same.

Bo heard a sharp whistle and ducked, throwing himself to the sandy floor. He stilled his breathing and lay frozen on the ground, straining his ears to listen for the approach of beating wings.

Nothing.

For a long while, there were no other sounds, and eventually, Bo's heart calmed. He was safe... for now.

He picked himself up off the ground and continued walking, heading towards a distant boulder that peaked over surrounding dunes.

As he walked, he looked up and sighed helplessly. He felt so very small out there, beneath the night sky.

Examining the myriad stars, Bo saw a twinkling array of flashing lights. And that was all he saw. He wondered what Ethron could see in those stars that he couldn't. If only that old bastard would share his teachings freely, Bo wouldn't be stranded. Finding his way home would be simple if he could read the stars like the old man.

He walked further, finding himself at the great boulder. As he neared the rock, he gave it a wide birth. From what he understood, Sarpa liked to hide near places like this – since it was often in the shade of large rocks that people made their camps.

Turning back, Bo glanced at the distant stone forest, taking it all in. He suspected each pillar belonged to a single dragon, and there were so many that he didn't even care to count them all.

So, why were there none now? Dragons that is. Did Thuran's death have something to do with their disappearance? Bo wasn't sure, but he thought it was a start, anyway.

He spun and kept walking, eventually finding his way to a Horus plant. Sitting down by the spiky plant, Bo gazed up at it.

"Gods," he murmured. Real, actual gods had sent this for humans to use. As evidenced by the sand shark's violent reaction to eating it, the Horus plant was truly divine.

"And there's probably more," He glanced down at his collarbone, observing the red and black flames. What would the next stage of his tattoo look like? He wondered. There had only been one template in his scroll, and if there were further stages, he had no idea what appearance they might take.

Reaching down, he picked shoots off the roots and stuffed them in his mouth, sighing as a calming warmth filled his stomach, trickling down to his wounded ankle. Quickly, he began to feel the pain dull and ebb away, bringing back his clarity of thought.

His ankle throbbed with each pulse of warmth, a warmth that grew with each shoot he ate.

Hoping to heal his wound faster, Bo continued to shovel Horus shoots in his mouth, pushing past the point where the warmth began to burn.

Soon, his ankle released a scorching heat, a heat so striking it blotted out every other sensation.

He could feel something within that heat, something coming from him.

Bo focused on the burning sensation, homing in on it. He pushed aside the pain and the noise, pushed aside everything that wasn't heat. All that mattered was the warmth, the throbbing, fiery warmth.

His mind calmed, becoming a placid lake on which any stone would make a wave.

And soon, that stone was thrown.

Something clicked. Something in him, something he hadn't known was there. His brain shifted, jolting into place, and suddenly, he sensed something within himself, something new.

It began in his heart. Each beat sent a stream of energy that merged with the roiling ocean of heat in his stomach. From there, the stream directed the blazing warmth down his leg and into his ankle.

He was doing this. Not consciously. But Bo was controlling where and what the Horus shoots healed. He was the architect of his own body, directing the energy to where it would best help.

And it was this energy, this trickle – beginning in his heart – that he latched onto.

Sensing it, for the first time, Bo directed the stream towards his fingertip. It split in two – one half heading towards his ankle – the other bubbling up through his hand.

When this stream of energy reached his finger, breaching his skin… nothing happened. Not physically, anyway.

But Bo felt something he had never felt before. He seemed able to touch things. Things beyond sight, beyond the coil.

Bo felt scorching heat and cooling winds. He felt them at the tips of his fingers. Felt them as real as the ground he sat on.

With a thought, he reached out to the scorching heat, allowing his energy to join its flow. Initially, he was rejected, but soon, the two energies merged.

Suddenly, it wasn't so dark anymore. For, on his fingertip, a little fire had sprouted. Blooming like a flower, it swelled and ebbed, blossoming wider the more energy he added.

He gazed at the flickering flame, spellbound.

It was real.

He was doing this.

Bo pumped more energy in, watching the flame grow as his vision darkened. It arched up from his finger, streaking almost a metre into the night sky - a single beam of burning glory.

Bathed in an orange glow, Bo's vision spun, and he passed out.

He slumped back to the desert floor as the flame spluttered and extinguished – leaving his unconscious figure in darkness once more.

Far away, beneath the earth – Yvet raised her head, feeling Bo's mind surge momentarily. But it quickly returned to normal, puzzling her.

It was probably nothing, she mused.

What could that idiot have possibly done?