Amity picked the hat up, the only glow coming from the hat, missing it’s wearer. She tried to move it away from Kaiya, hoping to redirect her search to the rest of them rather than the article of clothing.

“It’s not… Kaiya, can you try to ignore the hat?”

She obliged, slightly turned away, and shifted the utterances to try avoiding the hat in the search. A slight glow came from the distance, but it quickly vanished before she could fully lock on. Kaiya stepped down from the rock.

“Over there.” She began walking to where the glow had emanated from. Amity silently followed, walking just behind her so she would be able to create the wind cover again. They walked together for a few minutes, narrowly avoiding a cactus they barely saw amidst the storm. Just as they saw the end of the storm, a gust of wind flew though the existing barrier surrounding them, sweeping it along with it and leaving the two girls exposed to the elements. Amity tried to form another shield, but as soon as the wind left her hand it ran off towards the breeze.

“Run out!” They sprinted through the remainder of the storm, covering their faces to avoid getting any of the sand in their eyes. A breeze rushed around them, surrounding the two and kicking up more sand. Amity again attempted to use wind, ripping away the unusual effect surrounding them, but she just couldn’t. She wasn’t able to hook onto it, and she certainly couldn’t create anything more. The breeze began to flow faster and smoother, separating from Amity and surrounding only Kaiya, before exiting the spiral it was in and stopping in front of the girls. It gathered sand and began to build a human-like figure.

It built a spinning form out of sand, forming clothes very similar to what Silva had worn. The body didn’t look exactly like her, being ever so slightly shorter, but it was close enough that they could both tell what was happening.

“Hey, you guys!”

They both stared at it, unsure what exactly to do, before Kaiya spoke up.

“Um, who are you?”

The wind blew around, morphing the limbs in a way that was very close to, but not exactly, how Silva moved.

“Oh, right, I need a name… Will the name Copper work?”

“Yeah, that’s fine, but like, what are you?”

“Ah, I’m a wind illusion! Technically, my name isn’t Copper, but it’s fine to call me that when I’m projecting myself like this.”

Amity reached out to shake the illusion’s hand, but the hand simply phased through her, only contacting loose sand particles.

“Oh, yeah, I can’t really hold stuff like this…” Copper contemplated for a second, eventually diving itself into the sand, gathering more of it and leaving a small dip in the ground where she entered. It reached it’s hand out again, this time significantly more solid, and Amity happily shook it.

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“There we go!”

The excess sand fell from Copper’s body, leaving it lighter and less solid, when Amity finally asked the question.

“So, you’re a wind illusion, you’re named Copper, but not really, and you’re coming to us for what exactly?”

Copper thought, eventually deciding to shift it’s form a tiny bit to help answer the question. It was now the exact form of Raleigh, and she used more wind to help illustrate what was happening.

“First, do you know of The Broken Divine?” It formed their symbol, the simplistic lines in a circle.

“Yes, they tried to capture all my friends earlier…”

“They have your friends, again it seems. They know about Silva, presumably because of the man who rescued your friends earlier witnessing it go down, so they’ve gone all out on their trap.” It formed a pedestal with a large rock on it.

“This is the most powerful rock, according to their handbooks. It has powers unlike your entire arsenal.” A simplified scene of fallen soldiers played out.

“They intended for the man from earlier to show you it, not predicting the princess’s actions.” The graphic image of Silva collapsing into the pit, falling for several seconds before the thud rang out played.

“So, where are they?”

“They’re here.” The wind creature dug into the sand to pull out a map, crushed and desecrated after seemingly years.

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It pointed towards the smaller lake on the top left island.

“You’re about here, I believe.”It pointed to the southernmost point of the same island.

“They’re all the way over here.”It then pointed to the bottom island, the small outstretched bit underneath the part connecting the smaller islands that make it up.

“I’m about here.”

Amity studied the map, commiting it to memory as best she could.

“I need you to get your friends, then come get me. I’m currently trapped inside one of The Broken Divine’s holding rooms, a pretty secure one.”

She nodded, accepting the deal.

“I can’t hold the illusion forever, so I have to go now. I’ll try to come back as soon as I can. See ya, Amity.”

“Bye, Copper. We’ll come to get you soon!”

The sand collapsed into it’s usual lifeless form as the wind forming Copper melded itself back into the usual north heading breeze, although it was ever so slightly stronger now. Amity and Kaiya began to think together, realizing that the mountainous landscapes that sat between the two of them and the rest of their group. Kaiya was the first to come up with an actual thought.

“How did they get those three to the south bit of the island so fast? It’s only been twenty-ish minutes, and that looked like probably three or four miles.”

Amity thought about it, coming to the same, or at least a very similar conclusion.

“They have to have cars, you can’t carry three kids almost four miles away in twenty minutes.”

Kaiya looked roughly in the direction of the base that supposedly held the kids, noticing something odd. There was a relatively short sand dune in the distance, but it didn’t look quite right. She thought it was the distance. Maybe the exhaustion of using her searching power in a human body causing her eyes to play tricks on her. Nonetheless, she walked to examine it (dragging along Amity) and found something… strange, to say the least.

There was indeed something that looked just like a sand dune there, but it didn’t look 100% correct. She put her hand on it, expecting it to dig a tiny bit in, but it stopped entirely. The cold surface of the sand dune had many scratches near its bottom, and the blue-ish gray paint designed to keep it looking the same as the surrounding sand was worn away roughly in the shape of a hand near the top. Amity was the first to notice this, placing her hand in the groove left by possibly hundreds of others before her.

It slightly glowed, the dome splitting apart to reveal a staircase.

They both stepped onto the first step.

They heard a sound ring from the bottom.