The blitzing lightning storm picked up its blazing intensity rapidly as arcing tendrils of cyan streaked across the voided Buriti sky. Deafening incendiary cracks of monstrous thunder flood out the cries of the hysterical caravan members scrambling for shelter from the lethal electric onslaught.

As hot plump droplets of downpour turned the surrounding dunes into mucky sinkholes of quicksand, Navah fearlessly helped pull the geriatric Vaygo's flimsy body behind a large shaft resting over a small boulder, one of the few natural protections. I watched as she observed helplessly through the soggy surge with a facade displaying her shock and despair at the gehenna forming before her.

Through huffing breath, I noticed her large brother Beo had been recovering their father's decorated hand-forged axes from their capsized rustic buggy, now sopping wet and annihilated. His brown face was boiling with fury as he scooped the axes by the handle effortlessly while making a brazen dash in my direction. Dark crimson and brown muddy sand spewed with his feet as he approached me.

"I'll flay you...I KNOW YOU DID THIS!" Beo's rage-fueled outcries were hardly audible over the tempest's brutal outrage as he lurked toward me, wielding the glistening chrome axes. My reflexes took over in succinct splashing steps as I weaseled the axe's frenzied chops aimed at my neck and torso.

Beo's lumbering frame and natural strength forced me backward with relentless swings aimed at my soaked temple. "FUCK YOU!" His shouts almost became animal-like as a profound emotional ache flung from his esophagus.

The piercing winds and drowning sheets of rain baffled my senses, overwhelming me to the surroundings for a moment. I only barely noticed as we tipped over a collapsing dune. Displaced from reality by the jarring roll through rough silt, I felt my hand charring with more pain than I considered imaginable. I desperately held in my gasps as I searched for Beo's massive form in my peripheral.

With no alarm, my ears nearly began to bleed before my brain registered the subsequent sound--Calamitous booming clap broke my haunted trance. Mechanical humming and propellers lacerating the atmosphere... Three Buriti War Fleet bombers streaking overhead through the storming black cloudbanks! This single aircraft was close enough for me to glimpse the black Hyena symbols on their red-tipped wings through my darkened vision.

Sweet god...They're pushing to carpet bomb the location thinking it's some sort of Svet attack! I was snagged in typical Vascan military protocol among the sands--'Strike before the adversary understands they've transgressed' would be my fiery destruction...My ear perked to the sound of whipping metal as I sensed hot blood spurt out my right shoulder through wet clothing.

My momentary lapse in the paused but lethal axe fight had left an opening for Beo to hew his rusty blade down at my collar. I scarcely avoided sudden beheading by tumbling on the mud and seizing the axe handle as we tumbled to the earth again. I heard thunder burst deafeningly, corresponding frantic pulsing of my heart...as the acquainted sensation of my life's essence leaking from me sent me into an unmanageable wrath.

Beo attempted to tack me down bloodily, the second axe's blade pressed firmly beneath my chin, stopped only by my hanging steel chains. He lingered while breathing manically, seemingly...To gloat over his perceived victory against his Vascan King. I spat a considerable wad of blood-tasting saliva into his face, yet he was undeterred in his booming remarks that followed.

"I told Pa you we should have left you to die..." He grinned malevolently, rainfall streaming down his face, illuminated by lightning strikes in the surroundings. I felt the searing pain of the axe blade, nearly breaking my collarbone as he held it, violently pinning me to the watery sand.

"Do it...Durik-loving peasa--." my words instantly were swallowed by an earth-shattering mechanical scream from overhead. Another one of the Bomber Fleet planes had flown dangerously low to inspect the freak waterstorm, then spiraled out of control over the campsite with earsplitting velocity.

Its right wing sheered off after being thrashed by a rogue cyan lightning bolt, sending the aircraft into a terminal plunge in a fiery ball of steel. Beo and I both watched Navah as she screamed in horror at the bomber that hurtled groundward, the aviator and co-pilot distinctly visible in the cockpit floundering with the controls, only small specs of screeching terror among the ablaze phoenix.

"Doutros' arse! Brace your-!" Vaygo half-shouted as he pulled Navah back to their small cragged hiding spot on the dune above us, negligently edged next to the precipice of the dune. My heart palpitated as the surge of force propelled Beo off me and the axe deeper into my shoulder, sending shockwaves of acrid pain into my body.

The bomber detonated into the caravan site with a fiery eruption, spewing super-heated fragments of metal and aviator limbs across the sands. I covered myself helplessly clutching the handle of the clan's axe. My dreadlocs muddled my face as they sopped with moisture leaving only seconds of sight that swayed with the tense windblasts.

Debris showered down wrathfully, igniting tents and overturning buggies more than the unnatural lightning event had. The now bloody viscera-filled cockpit smashed and tumbled violently near Navah's hiding spot like metallic screeching tumbleweed, the smell of aviator burnt corpses trailing smoke as they were launched violently through the windows....well, what was left of them.

Navah's screams crescendoed my sight of Buriti uniforms ablaze on the dead pilots and nomads that had been assailed by the storm's hateful plasma. A severed hand of the lead pilot still clutching a small heart-shaped lockette, landed inches from my head...through the chaos, my eyes focused on one horrifying thought of dying like my whole family amid flames from above.

The despair of my family's passing finally sank into my gutt, hot tears streamed from my stinging eye sockets uncontrollably as I watched Beo recover his footing. Quickly Grabbing the free axe to finish his tantrum-like coup.

As Beo strode toward me for a death blow, the muddy sand suddenly gave way under our drenched bodies. We both plunged into yielding reservoirs of wet white sand turned to bottomless pits of brown quicksand in the storm's onslaught.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

I clawed desperately at the crumbling dune walls as I sank faster under the muddy surface clostorphobicly. I could feel as Beo thrashed about violently, dropping the axe to grab a hold of nearby buggy wheels that had sunk into the pit- but his mass only made him sink quicker as I slowed my movements. I felt the squeezing python-like grip of the sand with every little movement I made...This idiot was going to kill himself.

"Ancestors save me!" Beo's plea turned to gargling as the viscous sand sucked him further down his torso amid the chaos. I could hear Navah's piercing sobs, trying to reach out to her condemned brother from her sheltered overhang tens of feet away. Another peal of thunder drowned her cries dissonantly.

I watched in silence as she met my sinking eyes with despair...before bright jet-fire blossomed behind her. One of the remaining bombers in the squadron zoomed toward the camp, burning engine parts trailing it. The aircraft lists directly toward Navah's position!

"Navah! Run!" I managed to yank from my throat. The bomber pancaked into their hiding place, missing them by inches before plowing a flaming trench where the lightning had made a large crater filled with water lined by glass.

The old man's saggy and bloody face beamed through the smoke as he clutched the terrified girl. She pushed him off to run toward me and her doomed brother tumbling down the wet dune. She waded slowly through the ground too late...Beo is claimed fully by the sands now...

I cried out to Navah as I was swallowed into darkness--a pocket or cavern must have flooded below me! I saw her face stricken with anguish, the quicksand taking me as retribution...for my actions--or maybe my own putrid existence. The choice lay in her hands alone to make if I ever emerged again from this wet earthen womb...

The quicksand pulled me into strangling abyssal brown darkness. I held my breath as I felt my body dragged down by the immense watery pressure above and the sandy murk below. My legs compressed painfully in the dense muck. I flailed my one free arm trying to grasp anything to avoid the smothering death-slide back under Buriti.

My mind raced as visions of the dazzling female godhead and Cave ghoul rushed back to me. I could not survive any more tribulations of the flesh, spirit, and mind--This day will end me!

My fingertips scratch empty sand walls mockingly just out of reach. As I sank lower, faint rumbles echoed down through what felt like meters of ground above me. Blinding plasma veins web through the sand particles around my head inches before still exposed to the surface bedlam of lightning yet not air. Thunder pounds my waning eardrums.

Is this what the miners felt before the tunnels collapsed? Father...You fucker....all those people....I failed all our people as well...who am I to judge his impunity now?

MY efforts weaken in futility. A hallucinatory warmth washes over my mind, conjuring Aiko's beautiful face scorning me in the dusty palace. Why does she plague my mind in dark times, my whole family failed to come to mind as her large curly hair swayed with ever-crossed arms staring at me, waiting for me to be something I knew I was not

In that flash, I erupt with a desperate life. I scream hoarsely for aid, nearly losing my final lungful of air. The sinking pauses, now only my right middle finger above the churning sandpit. "Huck!" Somehow Aiko's precious voice cut through the storm din and sandy sarcophagi. Her strong gloved grip clamped onto my forearm. Anchor to survival.

With her surprising ever-present solidity, she hauled me from the sandy grave inch-by-inch as I felt the granules of sand scraped into my shoulder open wound. I gasped violently for air once she had pulled me far enough I saw a look of worry on her face I'd never seen before.

I collapsed when fully went free of my shallow sand grave on the solid yet muddy ground near her feet. I would have kissed her buttoned black military boots if there weren't other soldiers around...Through hurried gasps I studied the scene before me--Aiko had successfully landed the bomber and saved the pilot who seemed to be completely shellshocked from the lightning storm.

In the background my eyes narrowed and spotted Vaygo lying bifurcated bloodily across the wet ground, he had tried to hide behind a boulder that was now law scattered to stone across the now brown sand. His severed face made me suck in damp air, still profusely coughing from the near suffocation.

I watched Navah shakily stand her innocent eyes now trembling and her face almost hollow-looking. She seemed to not be moving but alive as she stared at the massacre of her nomad band before her. I had seen many soldiers come back from war with the same haunting look of absolute terror psychosamticly scarred on their now haunted minds...She had experienced the near-warlike trauma and mere minutes.

I felt a small tinge of guilt rack my stomach before the searing pain in my shoulder reminded me that I needed to be done with this whole ordeal...NOW. The smell of seared human flesh and cooled molten glass singed my nose hairs with each passing second.

As suddenly as the apocalyptic squall manifested, the clouds dissipated revealing dawn's radiance. The glowed sigil on my palm faded along with the last wisps of storm vapor nearly too succinctly for my own thoughts. An ominous calm settled on the ravaged caravan site before me as I stood resting on Aiko's arm--She seemed to be eying me silently as always waiting for some made-up explanation I had contrived. Yet I just stood mesmerized by the abrupt tranquility before Aiko clasped my face roughly, staring at my now sand-congealed axe wound.

"Four....days!" She let go angrily before winding sand from her eyes...or was she crying? Her voice rang in my ears louder than the storm. "We all thought you dead...buried amongst the dunes! Do you know how many petty conversations between Yana and Aygu about what to do with the power?"

I felt my heart thumping nearly through my mud-soaked nobleman's shirt, her piercing glare though meant to shoot me dead had only ignited mixed untapped emotion for my only true friend. "My devotions Koi...I'm sorry" The moment the words left my lips I felt Aiko's grip tense on my uninjured shoulder. Her fluttering hands gave away her concern...Had it really bothered her that much, I smiled what must have been a fucking stupid smile by her response but--My death would mean her freedom yet her PTSD-filled eyes nearly cracked with tears before she quickly turned away.

Aiko's stern watch scanned the smoking remnants and sand-swallowed scorched carcasses. Her soft brown eyes settled finally on Navah quaking uncontrollably, clothes rent, unfit to even articulate a single expression. It looked like she was mouthing 'Doutros take me' but through my pain, my vision played small games on me...The now clear sky gave way to blinding hot Buriti heat.

"Dorigan--Sand Hounds..." Aiko most likely sensing me witnessing her near fall off her mask, walked over and grabbed Navah's arm with jagged force. "What happened here...Where is your leader girl? How did King Vasca get harmed?!" Navah only whimpered nonsensically about treacherous goddess and cataclysmic thunder, her mind spoiled and ensnared in my stories and the traumatic events that transpired.

Seeking prospect amidst catastrophe, I inserted coldly. "This clan turned apostate after uncovering me among the pathways...they ambushed me fulminating anti-Vascan taglines once they found out who I was..." I pointed callously to Beo's protruding fingers and half-present face left permanently gasped with sand-filled agape jaw.

I placed my muddy boot over Beo's listless hand, the crunching of his bones and sand delighted my raw ears and mind...He had tried at every turn to further the notion I was a cruel king--He got his wish.

Navah's shell-shocked amber eyes widen at my unexpected treachery. Grinding my ragged heel down forcefully, I added with a similar gravelly tone as earlier. "I want the rest of the living Sand Hounds found and strung on the highways they rove! I will no longer tolerate rampant.....Sedecition!"

Aiko reviewed the convincing scene of casualties with hardened royal discretion then nodded slowly, still trying to hide her stress at me going missing among the sands. "I will alert central command...Huck, I--Lutinent secure her!" She waved over her as she eyed me now with what looked like anger. "Detain the girl for interrogation do not harm her...You will wait here for reinforcements while I fly King Vasca back to safety."

As Navah was quickly dragged past me near a more shady area near a broken wagon. The sparks of innocence and trust had vanished amidst her mute hysteria...For my fatherland, I must know no true attachment, rather welcoming fate's transmigrating blaze stoked and elevated by the goddess forwarning whims and tantric restoration of my body.

The meager caravan's inferno-like smell in ruins matched my own lost soul. Aiko assisted me silently as I painly climbed into the small Buriti Bomber plane. I heard my father's words in my ears as I stared Navah down. "All foundations crumbled so a new empire may rise in their ashes".

...I will not let anything....nor anyone stop me.