His surroundings were bright and blurry. He heard the sound of waves crashing against the shore behind him. The air was hot and dry, nothing like he had ever felt before. All around him was nothing but sand. Sand in his eyes, and in his mouth. Spitting out the sand, he tried to prop himself up while rubbing his eyes. At least a hundred feet behind him was the shoreline, and in the distance he saw the broken mast of a ship protruding up from a pile of wreckage. At once he felt the adrenaline surge through him, and he stood up with all the strength he had.
“Olivia!” Lucullus called out. “Aela! Johannes!”
As he hurried through the sand, his steps slowed by the looseness of the ground, his vision blurred. His steps were erratic, and his legs failed him. Sweat rolled down his face. It felt like he had ran for an hour, yet the shipwreck was still just as far as when he started.
“Lucullus!”
He gasped, and ran as hard as he could toward the figure that suddenly appeared several feet away from him.
“Lucullus!”
A smile crept up his face as he ran toward the figure. He stumbled every few steps, but pressed forward with determination.
“Lucullus!”
As he approached the figure, he almost started to laugh. “Where are we? How did you get out here?” He stretched out his arms, and went to hug the figure. “M—” The figure disappeared as he fell down into the sand, only able to hug the air. “Mother,” he muttered to himself, nearly choked up. He looked up, only seeing sand. His muscles began to quake, and he yelled as loud as he could. Looking down at the ground, he noticed red spots in the sand. Blood. He tried to put the thought out of his mind.
The image of his mother flashed in his mind, and tears began to stream down his cheeks. “Why?” He yelled. “Why me?” His hands slowly turned red from the blood. “Why did you choose me? What could a heathen farmer like me do?” He squeezed the sand through his fingers. “Everything has been stripped away from me. I will never return to my farm. I will never again see my mother, except in the illusions you abandon me to. Why have you forsaken me? I do as you ask, and still you burden me with more! Have you led me away from Lucium so I can die in this strange desert?” He let out one more yell before collapsing in the sand in sobs.
“Lucullus!”
He began to mumble to himself, “If you only brought me here to die, then just let me perish at once. Do not use my mother’s voice to torture.” A hand touched his back. He looked up to see a woman standing over him. “If I reach out again, will she vanish?”
The woman tried to help him stand, but was only able to get him to his knees. “You’re condition is not good. Can you stand at all?”
Reaching out, he embraced the woman in a hug with all of his strength. Feeling that she was not an illusion, he cried with great relief. His tears flowed like blood from an open wound. “You’re not an illusion,” he mumbled.
“We need to get you to Aela before you get any worse.”
He gasped weakly. “Olivia. Is that you?”
“Yes. Are you able to stand?”
He mumbled something before forcing himself to his feet, using Olivia as a brace. Each step they took was interrupted by him collapsing into the sand, but they made it to the others. Looking around, he saw two people sitting by the shipwreck. “Aela. Johannes. Are they here?”
“Yes,” Olivia replied.
“Crew?” He mumbled, heavily slurring his speech.
“Only us four.”
Aela darted over when she saw Lucullus. “Johannes, I think I’ve done all I can for you. A far worse situation has arrived.”
Lucullus crashed into the sand at Aela’s feet. “He led me here to die.”
Aela squatted down next to him. “Try not to move too much. I need to stabilize your wounds as soon as possible. Olivia, make sure that Johannes is well enough to travel. I fear we may have a long walk ahead of us.” Taking in a deep breath, she began to recite some prayers, and laid her hands over Lucullus’s worst injuries.
Lucullus let his eyes remain closed. “Aela.”
“What is it?”
“Is it the will of the Savra that I should die here?”
“What?”
“Never mind. I just feel the darkness taking me.”
She touched his forehead with her hand, and recoiled it back with heavy breathing. “This is worse than Mystic Cicero’s curse…”
“What did you feel? Did I catch an illness at sea?”
“Worse than that.” Her hands began to tremble. “Chaodis has an uncanny ability to destroy the mind from within. He can bring your worst fears and anxieties out, and have them fill every thought.”
He coughed blood. “I have no fear. I have made peace with my death. If only it could come quickly.”
At last, she stopped the bleeding. “I think you are stable enough to travel, but we should take things slow.” She turned around and called out to Olivia, “If Johannes is ready for travel, then let’s see if we can get Lucullus to stand.” Olivia rushed over to them, with Johannes close behind.
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Lucullus fumbled around, trying to stand up. “If you think I am stable enough, I shall stand.” No sooner than he attempted to stand, he plummeted back into the sand. Just before he dropped completely Aela and Olivia broke some of his fall, catching him by the arms. He let out a yell of pain. After several more failed attempts on his own, he conceded, “This will be a long walk.”
Aela went over to help Johannes as he hobbled along. “Johannes is in no shape to help Lucullus walk, so it falls on one of us. Olivia, you’re closer to Lucullus’s height than I am.”
Olivia nodded and put one arm around Lucullus’s back, but he was still unable to stand. “Aela, this isn’t working.”
Johannes looked over to the wreckage. “If there was a long enough plank, he could use that to help himself up.”
Lucullus nodded. “I think I have enough strength for that.”
Olivia rushed over to find a long plank, and gave it to Lucullus. “Will that be long enough?”
“It should be.” Once more they tried to stand him up. With several grunts and groans, he pounded the plank into the sand, and supported himself on his right side with it. “I’ll try to keep from putting too much weight on your shoulders.”
“No,” she assured him. “I might not be able to handle your whole weight, but keeping you from falling to the left shall not be a problem. Though our walk shall be an arduous one, we will make it.”
“If you insist.” He took a few labored breaths. “Let Aela lead the way. I can hardly see anything.”
“Is it the desert sun?”
He shook his head. “Just the injuries.” He coughed a small amount of blood. “Too much blood. Head pounding.” He closed his eyes. “The sooner we start, the sooner it’ll be over.”
With the early morning sun behind them, they started in a northwest direction. To their right, behind them, and in front of them was nothing but sand. The only variety in the view was the shoreline with the crashing waves of the sea. With the injuries sustained by the group, traveling through the sand dunes was like wading through water. The sun seemed to move faster than they did. Only a couple miles into their walk, of which there were many breaks taken, it was already a little past midday. Each step Lucullus sluggishly took felt like a dagger in every part of his body. At a certain point, his movement was no longer measured in steps as he started dragging one foot in front of the other.
Aela looked with excitement as she saw a spot of brown in the distance. “Over there,” she pointed, “we shall take our rest for a while.”
They approached the spot she decided on, and Lucullus eagerly took his rest in a comfortable pile of sand. Johannes took a spot next to him.
“It seems that brown spot is a road sign,” Aela guessed.
“Can you read it?” Olivia asked.
“Somewhat. The college archives had some old scrolls about Mahjur, but I never learned the Dayiran language. But their script is similar to the ancient scripts in a lot of old Savronite scrolls.”
“Does it say anything useful?” Lucullus chimed in.
“It points to two different paths. One seems to be a less developed road that leads to ‘The Pit’.” She shrugged. “My translation might not be accurate, but that’s what it sounds like.”
“What about the other?” he inquired.
“It lists a place called Aintifakh Algharb.”
He sighed. “I don’t even want to know what that means. Is it a town we can stop at?”
“Probably.”
“Then we should go that way. ‘The Pit’ sounds somehow worse than our current situation.”
After some rest by the sign, they braced for another agonizing stretch of their trek.
The sun was beginning to set, but there was no sign of a town of any size. The road was not as loose as the sand in the dunes, likely from being traveled so much over the years, but each inch forward was becoming increasingly difficult for Lucullus to manage. The sky was changing to brilliant hues of orange and red around a yellow glow in the center, which was slowly fading behind distant hills. Since leaving the sign, they had barely made a mile.
Lucullus’s grip over his plank was weakening, and his balance, what little was left, was wavering with each passing second. His vision was just as blurry as it was that morning. “Our case is hopeless. I will never make it.”
A tear rolled down Olivia’s face. “Don’t surrender to despair, Lucullus. Your perseverance led to you freeing me, and overcoming insurmountable challenges. Why couldn’t it do the same now?”
“Because I have been in this situation before. Twice. Thwarted just before I reach the end. First, Tullius.” Tears rolled down his face. “I tried to find the murderer of a dear friend, but that snake had me arrested for murder, and left me to rot in that prison. Left a mother without her only son… Then he let me be taken by Sabina again… He stripped away everything from me. No torture can match what he has merited.”
“Aela, I think we may need another rest, perhaps some sleep this time. But I fear he may never get up again if we do.”
Aela sighed. “We should look for a place to rest in a few minutes. However, I would like to cover more ground before we end the day’s journey. We should take up the hike again before sunrise. The more we cover then, the less walking we’ll have to do in the heat of the desert sun.”
At that moment, Lucullus collapsed on the ground, and his plank broke in two.
Being dead is certainly nothing like the Magisters described. Lucullus looked around in the cold dark void. No greeting party coming from atop a mountain to welcome me. But I don’t see any Savra either.
“You are not dead, Lucullus.”
He looked behind him, but there was nothing. “If I’m not dead, then this must be another dream.”
“There is no reason to fear. No false lights from the Evil One shall haunt this dream.”
Lucullus’s voice trembled, “You sound familiar. Are you the one who visited me in prison?”
“You say that I am.”
“Your cryptic speech would indicate that you are. Then why have you visited me again?”
“I was sent to prepare you for your final chastisement.”
“The trial by fire?”
“Yes.”
“If the things I experienced in that desert were not part of the trial, I don’t think I want to know what the true test will be.”
“It was necessary that you be allowed to fall before being strengthened by Hikma’s grace.”
“Who is Hikma? I’ve prayed his name many times, not knowing who or what this word referred to, and I have never figured it out.”
“He is.”
“What?”
“You shall soon have all revealed to you. Soon, you shall know even my name. Soon, you shall understand your past errors. You have kept a distance from the ones who once were part of Hikma’s people. In this choice the grace was given to you, that you may avoid being guilty in the idolatry of their temples. For this reason, your mission was given to you, that you may do the will of Hikma, neither turning to the left hand, nor to the right.”
“I had no interest in the temples of Immergrun. Cicero’s curse made sure of that.”
“Your curses have become your blessings. For without them, your mind would turn to unclean things. But I can not stay with you for any longer this time.”
“But I have more questions.”
“There shall soon be one who will come to you, and give answers. Much time has passed already, and it is time for you to be purified.”
Lucullus reached out his hand in the direction of the voice, and cried out, “Wait!”