Get up. You’ve still… work to do, Salamander.

The voice- her own voice, pierced through her dreamless rest, and so she rose with shaking legs and burning wounds. The unfinished entry way to Ophelia’s cavernous mansion was the same as she had left it- save for Matchsticks, standing over the both of them, munching on some manner of crunchy, crispy desert flower.

Saila gathered blankets from his back, then made her way to Noble.

“N… Noble, you okay?”

“R- right… as rain, little lady,” was his response. He dropped the gun to give her a weak thumbs up… and the thumb fell off, broken from his final gunshot. “… don’t… need that.”

“Shush, no more- ow, talking,” Saila grumbled. She did her best to gather the broken pieces scattered in the fight and bundled them up, hitching them to Matchsticks- who’s only complaint was a tired whinny.

“Don’t… need those, either” Noble insisted.

“Yes w- we… we do. We gotta… get you fixed.”

“W- no… you sh- should… not.”

“Shush.”

“Your… wounds first.”

“I said shush, soldier-man.”

An hour’s sleep or so was not enough for this. Already her body was wanning- but she pushed through it, grabbing further blankets, plus the tarp for their tent, and began wrapping Noble safely in it.

She doubted anything here could endanger his mechanical ribcage, but she also doubted having all his organs exposed was healthy, metal coffin encasing them or not.

For some reason, that thought gave her a pained chuckle.

“Not… worth it. Leave me, sa- safer.”

Noble weakly bopped her with his remaining hand- a few fingers fell off in the process.

“don’t need-”

“Like hell it is. I don’t… don’t think your brother is gonna stop, Noble.”

“He…” a groan hissed forth from his lips, a product of pain and Saila’s messy attempts at covering his exposed machine-innards. “He will- if I…”

“What?! No!”

“It… it’ll, work. Just let it-”

“Absolutely not. We’re gonna- we’re gonna get you out of here, idiot.”

“What if…”

“No what ifs. He’s- he made it clear; he’s expecting me as much as you. That won’t stop him.”

“It… will. Don’t,” Noble coughed, harsh and ragged. Some of the gauges on his ribcage flickered. “Don’t know him, like I do.”

Saila finished her wrapping, a little hesitant- not like I could read them anyway- and said “M… maybe so, but I know you. You wouldn’t… wouldn’t want to go like this.”

Noble’s words were a silent sliver of ice through the base of her neck.

“Wh- what was that?”

He coughed.

“What if… I want to…”

She watched as her mother’s tiny form stepped into the fire.

“N- no, Noble, no! You can’t be-”

“I am. I… I want-”

“Noble NO! I’m not- I’m not gonna lose you t-”

“Let me… d-”

“Shut up!!!”

Her shout echoed. She almost fell from her own ferocity. She was too tired, too hurt, too scared out of her damn mind to argue the unarguable.

“I’m not going to jus- just let you die Noble. So, settle… down.”

“… sorry, l- little lady. I… I’ll explain…”

His voice trailed off, weak and raspy. Not that he needed to finish. Whatever he was going to say could wait till he was recovered. She hoisted him- with some difficulty- and tied him into the saddle. He slumped over onto Matchstick, mangled body etching itself into her memory as it settled in.

Saila grabbed Noble’s hat, gently placed it on her head, and took a breath.

Her chest ached. The bloody bite marks on her shoulders and arms burned.

“C- come on… we gotta move. We just gotta… gotta get through these caves, like you said, right?”

No response, beyond a pained grumble.

With desperation nipping at her heels, Saila swallowed her building fear, took Matchsticks’ reins, and started walking.

###

The cave system was, as Saila predicted, as twisting and wild as the proverbial antlion’s den. Almost immediately after leaving Ophelia’s mansion, she was forced to choose a path- deeper into the cavern, or backtrack down the way Noble had clearly come.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Retracing Noble’s apparent warpath through dozens of flower-infested carcasses seemed a fool’s errand. All it would do is bring her back to where they’d first gotten separated- and further from their destination. They needed to go through the cavernous underground.

Part of her contested that was good. That they should retreat- find someone to put Noble back together in Samudr-tat. Rest their wounds, then go.

But the rest of her refused.

Part of it was the fear- that Knave, expecting her to pursue, would visit worse terrors for her cowardice. What he did to Ophelia was a looming threat- anyone or anything that had those strange fangs could be a puppet of his, and the thought gently dragged a knife-edge up her spine.

Part of it was the thought that no one in Samudr-tat- or anywhere in Trestaria for that matter- had the ability to fix Noble’s body. But elsewhere… he said his arms had come from Felisia, and presumably the rest had as well. Zarrhdad had ties to the nation, someone could be there. A doctor, an engineer, maybe some dark magic she didn’t know about- someone had to be able to fix him.

So, the only reasonable, logical choice was to push forward into the unknown.

Maybe that was foolish of her.

Regardless, it set her moving. Deeper into the cave system, deep enough she needed to spit a line of flame across one hand to light her and Matchsticks’ way.

Deep enough that, eventually, time lost all meaning.

###

Truthfully, she’d already lost track of that silvery subject known as time. Twice she’d blacked out, all within the confines of the same rocky caverns, and that really had been the end of it. The only measure of time she had was her injuries- the pulsing in her chest, the long-dried blood from where fang and brambles had bit and sliced. The building exhaustion in her legs.

Her body cried, but she had to keep moving.

It was, at least, not in total solitude. Noble did awake on occasion- though with his level of injury, ‘awake’ had become more a comfortable form of incoherency. He mumbled a few words in Exovan, inhaled sharply when Matchsticks took a bad step that jostled his seating, and on occasion tried to talk with her in a faded voice.

What he actually told her wasn’t really anything she could understand; he tried to relay map coordinates to her in terms well above her head. If those where to help, or some old memory, she could not tell. He rambled about the floral foes he’d slain, with a shocking amount of reverence given how they left him- that at least Saila tried to remember. She’d like to talk about them more, one day. He babbled half-completed stories with no beginning or end, either stories or thoughts that meandered back and forth.

One time he even tried to dismount, but the ties and his makeshift coverings prevented him, and he simply grumbled something about apologies before slipping back into Exovan.

Despite it all, she felt an uneasy comfort in his weak voice.

How much pain must a person be in, Saila wondered, that the delusional mutterings of a man on the verge of death, was a comfort to hear?

She didn’t have an answer for that, so she kept on walking.

She had to keep on walking.

###

Hours or minutes passed.

The cavern, dark and jagged as it was, was a monster that gave as well as took. It was rough and rock-strewn, and every step hurt, every step seemed to risk toppling poor Matchsticks and Noble with him. But it was a path, of some sort or another, worn by travel- she could tell the way certain steps seemed to rise up to meet her, so natural her feet moved along them.

The stories that Thueban Alghisi was some secret path for those heedlessly seeking their heart’s desires may have held true, and Saila blessed those noble scoundrels for the trail they blazed for her. She blessed the wanton lovers who were oh so stricken dumb, she blessed the strange foreigners who tried to find a place of solace and comfort, she blessed the deserters running from a war they couldn’t win.

Maybe she was one of them- a childish idealism forcing a corpse and a horse through a blank, endless tunnel built by want.

Then she saw it. A light- natural, brilliant, at the end of her long walk. Her feet screamed, she could feel her shoes running through the soles, could feel an icy weakness in her legs and arms, but she had done it. Their exit was in reach- she had chosen right. They’d come out of this hellfire blasted cavern within eyesight of their destination. They’d find a doctor or an engineer or whatever Noble needed, and they could rest and relax and eat a day’s worth of fried fish and desert lizard and anything food shaped she could grab.

What she saw as they breached the exit was an endless expanse of sand.

The sun danced across the shimmering white dunes, the vibrant blue sky cloudless and carefree. The gentle breeze was cloying, gentle, and oh so hideously, cruelly taunting.

Saila took a step forward and fell knees first into that hateful powder of wind-smoothed, sun-bleached stone. The comfort she felt from stopping, if even for a moment, was perhaps the wickedest spike driven into her chest- the sand itself was shockingly comfortable after it all.

Then she stood, brushed off her knees, and kept walking.

###

She had to keep walking.

When was the last time she ate?

When was the last time she slept?

Why had those ladies at the clothes shop lied?

Why did the Anarkali sand sea seem to stretch on for an eternity?

What was it like to die?

Saila drank from what water they had lightly, only enough to wet her lips.

There was food, but to get it would require stopping to rummage through the bags on Matchsticks.

And in that moment, stopping felt like death.

There was little they could do out in the sands like this, if she stopped. They could be attacked, at worst by an impatient Knave or some wild animal- or even a monster, for if monsters like the mantiwhatever existed elsewhere they could surely exist here too.

Stopping meant the wind could devour them bit by bit, waves of sand as teeth, burying them in it. Their weight could press against the shifting sands, and a sinkhole could open up like a gaping chasm of brilliant white and gold and darkness. They could be roasted by the sun, infernal lantern in the sky that rained a chaotic heat down upon her shoulders.

No, stopping was not an option. Stopping meant prolonging their exposure in this beautiful hell.

She had to keep walking.

Night fell, hateful sun vanishing. A fragrant of relief lifted in Saila’s chest just long enough to be dashed by the reminder that the heat of the desert day was matched only by the chill of the desert night. Her limbs, already stiff from an endless march through uneven, unstable sand grew numb. The flame she lit for light barely so much as warmed her, amber embers flickering and weak with exhaustion.

Matchsticks sneezed and grumbled- he felt it too. The poor beast, lugging Noble’s body in a trudging, endless walk. When they survived- must be when not if not if MUST be when- she would treat him like a king of horses.

She’d at the very least get Noble to call him by his name and not horse.

Ah, right. Noble.

The thought of him was like a hairline fissure in glass.

Of all the pain she suffered in this trek, this was the worst of it, without a doubt.

Noble had stopped his mumblings.

He was a quiet man. He was often an unmoving man- in retrospect his machine body probably accounted for that- but this was different.

This was not by choice.

Saila tried not to fret, but every other step, every crunch of sand beneath her foot or gust of wind or yes, even Matchsticks’ horse-noises, was a reminder that these were the only sounds in her world.

It started to sink into her, a certain kind of dread.

Then the sun started lifting over the edge of her world, and she saw that her night long progress had not changed the scenery one whit- it was nothing but sand. Golden-white dunes, swirling in the wind, frozen in place like endless waves.

The heat of the sun danced upon her shoulders.

This was it, Saila realized.

Nothing in her life would hurt- COULD hurt, more than this. If- no, WHEN- she survived this, she would be more than able to face down legions of psychotic, fang-eyed monsters Knave threw at them. She would fight that scorpion-cat with an arm tied behind her back, bare-handed, and win. She would lift Matchsticks above her head and carry him for all the good he did for them. She would… she wou… she wo-

Saila stumbled.

She had to keep walking.

She fell to one knee.

She… had to keep walking.

The sand was so gentle and smooth, so cool and inviting.

She… had to… keep-

Noise-sounds. Words? Delusions of her own? Who knew.

Saila stopped.

######