My makeshift sock-shoes did fine in protecting my feet, and honestly having just the light tunic on made my armpits nice and breezy while walking across the stark, suns-strewn mirror-plane. We walked at a good pace, manoeuvring around large jutting shards, climbing ledges, and stamping across particularly badly-broken parts, and very happily didn’t come across any more of the angelfish fiends.
Just as I was wondering how long it would take to cross this place, seeing as I couldn’t see any end to it on the horizon before we entered, Alator piped up:
“Hot breeze from this direction, dry and salty.”
“Must be the Breathing Sands.”
Gradually, the mirror-smooth surface became more and more marred with scratches and dimples, as if the glass softened and sagged on top of another unsteady surface beneath, and the odd wave and ripple that was sent through was weaker, like the foam of a wave broken far beyond the shore. The reflections grew hazier, warping our surroundings to a mess of a wavering mirage.
Then, the glass was gone — pale blue shifting sands whispered before us in swirls. A hum reverberated the air and underfoot was a slow rumble as if standing above an underground railway station.
Soon, we were up to our ankles in rising and falling dunes. The air was also moved about by gusts of wind that stirred the sands into fleeting serpentine shapes that then crumbled back into the spreading surface.
We gladly left the gleaming horizon of the Glass Flats behind us; despite the weird undulation and hum, and the pale blue of the sand, the place felt a lot more familiar. The desert ahead wasn’t boundless, either; whenever we climbed to the height of one of the dunes we were treated to an awesome panorama:
To the west were more mountains, continuing the rugged heights of the Shards of Korgoth, I supposed, but no longer unnaturally spiked. The north-east and east was a far-off horizon, the furthest I could see, but right at the line before the curve of the world there was a thin strip of darkness which I imagined was the start of — knowing Barbican — some awful, inhospitable sea. But the north was our destination: already, spots of orange or red were dotted down at a point.
“That’ll be Corel — I mean Coral Town.”
Alator suddenly dropped to the surface of the sands, and I followed suit in a heartbeat. Warm grains of blue sand were blown about my face as I looked over to him. He put a finger to his lips, then indicated over a dune. I slowly crept forwards, arm-over-arm, until, pressed against the cusp, I peered over.
Within a kicked-up blue cloud perhaps a hundred yards away, a nest of cat-sized scorpions skitted and scrambled over one another. It took me a moment to see that they were feasting on another fiend, four-legged, similar in shape to a mole, but the size of a small car and covered by reflective plates that matched the Glass Flats at our back. Its head moved up to the sky and it brayed loudly, echoing pain over to us. I watched for another moment and touched the Analysis Card in my pouch.
Fiend :
Dune Reaver A, Level 2
Stats :
Str 2, Dex 4, Con 5, Mnd 1
Attacks :
Pincer, Poison Sting
Loot :
Chitin Fragments, Reaver Venom Gland
Weakness :
Unwilling to retreat
XP :
12
Fiend :
Dune Reaver B, Level 2
Weakness :
Unwilling to retreat
Fiend :
Dune Reaver C, Level 2
Weakness :
Easily goaded
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Fiend :
Dune Reaver D, Level 2
Weakness :
Flees when alone
Fiend :
Glassback Burrower, Level 9
Stats :
Str 15, Dex 4, Con 18, Mnd 2
Attacks :
Burrow Ambush, Shattering Claw
Loot :
Glassback Carapace, Essence of Mole
Weakness :
Sensitive underside
XP :
86
Even without pinging [Battle Tactics], a plan started to form — C, A, B, D. Near a hundred Experience (the Burrower being near death) was painful to give up. . . . [Berserk] seemed to have given me back a modicum of energy in that I definitely didn’t feel ready to keel over.
In the moment, the sharp pain in my mind from the mirror-world receding, I suddenly realised that I had felt completely justified in my actions; the overflowing violence had been necessary to me, and the upwards spiralling energy I had felt was more empowering than it had been manipulative. I pocketed that thought. I needed to learn more about the [Berserk] Special, and I was sure it would only kick in while in extremely high-charged life or death scenarios, so it might take some time.
Who am I kidding? I face death every day. It could be tomorrow!
Glancing aside, it seemed the relatively gentle walk (read: intensive hike) had returned some of the skip to Alator’s step, but regardless, neither of us were in any position to take any more hits. And besides, I desperately wanted to find a safe place to sleep.
Unbidden, I daydreamed for a moment about my Assigned MegaCorp Domicile back home — the scratchy polyester sheets, the memory foam that seemed to be very forgetful, the six-by-six-inch porthole in the corner through which I could see the smog and the rising black chemical smoke of the industrial estate. . . .
Okay, maybe I’ll stop complaining about Barbican so often.
While lying on the ground, I got my first uneasy justification for the name of this desert; there was a rasping movement beneath the surface, as if an old man was taking his dying breaths. It made me shudder and pull away from the pale sky-sand, and I slid back down the side of the dune to where Alator still lay.
“Give them a second,” he told me. “They’ll gorge themselves fat in a minute and we’ll be able to get by undetected.”
“Oh-ho, the Prowling Beast, hiding from a fight?”
“I’m hiding you from a fight,” he shot back. “Don’t test me.”
“Watch how you speak to me,” I joked, “or I’ll have to knock you unconscious again.”
He turned to me, eyes flashing anger, but emptied his lungs and calmed himself.
Okay, too soon to joke about that.
As he said, a few minutes later we stood and cautiously passed them with a wide berth, and they barely moved an inch, half protecting the still meat-heavy kill, half basking in the sun.
Onwards, the sea closed in on us from the east, and I saw the large patterns of coral were built onto it like a harbour or lake-town. Again, I praised my decision to tie the ripped Linothorax around my feet as the sand underfoot quickly became pitted by gritty and sharp fragments of bleached coral.
The desert’s air, though still dry and searing, became more comfortable as a faint salt breeze met us head-on. Ahead, the Coral Town of Zhai-Khul rose from the ground as the multi-tiered remnants of a great reef. Pale coral structures, weathered smooth, had been shaped into twisting, organic-styled spires. At a certain point a light whistle reached our ears of wind passing through the porous streets.
Just before two walls of hardened coral, which enclosed the town’s entrance but was open towards the sea, stood a line of tall plinths carved from single pieces of coral. Atop each stood a humanoid figure with an enormous half-shell sitting on their back like rounded shoulders and a low head, tree-trunk-stocky legs and almost comically large hands that were covered in hardened leather-like skin. Each held a spear, long enough to reach the ground from where they stood aloft, to protect the gate.
Sheepishly, we approached, but the spearmen gave us no heed — or if they did, their dark, sunken eyes gave no hint beneath the rim of their shell, so we passed by. As we did, I was extremely glad to find the town was alive with bustle.
Despite the bright, natural beauty of the place, it felt a little claustrophobic. Many of the same folk as those standing atop the pillars walked the streets, or laboured away in workshops, or stood behind stall or barrow and peddled wares. But there were many other types of people besides, whether desert tribesmen, skin the colour of the pale blue sands, wrapped in light linen, or those from even further afield.
A tortoise-man stepped forwards on heavy, flat soles and threw his thick arms wide open. Though difficult to tell, he was an older man with a long beard of sea-weed-like hair, braided with bright orange coral shards.
“Welcome to Zhai-Khul, home of the Khalnari! I’m Gatekeeper Fis,” his voice was dry like a desert wind, and he nodded respectfully. As a corporate reflex, I held out a hand. He took it with his plate-sized vice-fists and shook it.
“Talbot, and this is my companion, Alator.”
“Pleasure! You came from the south, didn’t you? We don’t see many from the Flats.”
“We passed through Akhur’shet and are in need of sustenance and rest.”
“Akhur’shet! Oh, isn’t it lovely there? The fruit is absolutely to die for! Deliveries from the Shetari are few and far between, but when they happen, well, I’d flog my shell for a glass of emberfruit juice on a day like today!”
I narrowed my eyes, speaking before thinking:
“They didn’t try to kill you, I take it?” He blinked, and his brow lowered as his head inclined to look me straight in the eye, and I instantly realised how badly that could be misunderstood. “I don’t mean —”
“Whatever your business was with the orchard-folk, you’re welcome here . . . for now. Keep to the main thoroughfare, don’t cause any problems and we’ll set you on your way in the morning, fed and slept well.”
I nodded, deflating. Alator shrugged — I’m certain he wouldn’t have done any better:
Perhaps if he had butted in first, we’d already be chased out.
The coral-man forced a wide smile, cracking his grey-green skin ear-to-ear (did he have ears? I couldn’t properly tell). “Our most renowned watering hole is the Coral Wraith,” he pointed the turtle-elephant arm down the way, “They’ll have a room for you. . . . Oh, and don’t break parts off the houses as a souvenir! Otherwise, we’ll take a hand.”
We gave a curt, polite bow, and shuffled past him onto the main street.
“He means he’d cut off our hand if we stole something?” I said aside.
“That’s fairly standard punishment — quite lenient compared to some of the remaining settlements in my World,” Alator muttered, and even as he did, a coral-folk woman passed us with a bound wrist, missing a hand. I gulped. Clearly, I still had lots to learn about Barbican, and a lot still to learn about Alator.