By midday they had reached the poisoned way-stop Litaelim had warned her about. Freyyala made wild gestures about not drinking from it before looking a bit surprised at Soren’s nonchalance, running past without a second glance. The Shukkar fruit pulsed wildly in Sorens veins, thirst and hunger were distant memories. They continued in a tight line after that, moving slower though, more consistently. A few hours later, they came across a low dip in the scenery. It was difficult for Soren to notice anything different than the rest of the scenery. Yet Freyyala turned and smiled broadly at them saying,

“Here we rest.” The she continued on directly over a small range of dunes. Soren's mind pulsed, she had no wish to rest, if anything they should be picking up the pace. After the third dune Freyyala disappeared from Soren’s view as the ground dropped dramatically. Looking below she saw down in a low crevasse between two long dunes, a length of trees had formed. Under the trees a small creek, no longer than a hundred feet sprouted up out of the ground then snaked around before disappearing again. Soren had trouble understanding how the water didn’t get swallowed by the heat of the suns around it though it was shaded. Soren hadn't noticed the loamy smell in the dry air. As she descended towards the smell of water though, she noticed something else growing along either side of the small creek. At least thirty bulbus Shukkar fruits lined the creek, though curiously only on one side. Soren suddenly realized how she was going to reach the canyon and litaelim. She also realized why Freyyala had smiled so broadly when they approached this place.

The robed woman was already picking the biggest of the pale green fruits as Soren neared the creek. She motioned for Coratel to bring the bag over to her where she put ten of the biggest ones into the pack. She had dug them out at the root and held them button down as she carefully avoided the protrusions around the fruits. Then she cupped her hand and dropped twelve large scoops of water onto the desert sands around her. They rested under the shade of a stumpy thick of trees growing around the water. It was a type of tree Soren had never seen before with wide red and green leaves and a fat trunk that was a still deeper red.

It had been hours before Soren realized just how much life had sprung up around the water source. Ants with bright red heads and black abdomens were climbing in a straight line up a tree next to her. A band of small spiders blew in the soft wind, webs billowing out between the short reeds lining the creek. Freyyala was collecting a number of the largest of the ants, taking their heads between her fingers and pinching them off. The mandibles would often close, those she would throw to the side. Every sixth or seventh ant however, kept their mandible open even after she pinched their head off. These she stored in a small bit of cloth she had ripped from her robe. By the time Coratel had awoken and they had all rested, the suns had set in earnest and the desert once again rapidly cooled in the starlight.

Coratel spent a long time by the water, letting his broken foot softly float in the shallows. Freyyala watched him for a long time before she moved off and disappeared behind a mess of tall reeds. Soren watched the woman for a moment then came and sat next to Coratel. He looked at where the woman had disappeared saying,

“She’s the reason I’m alive. We’re alive.” He corrected. Soren nodded looking at the mans foot. He had taken the bandage off and though it looked to be intact, the black and blue bruise of the thing looked terribly painful to Soren. She had a strange sensation of actually being able to physically feel the man’s pain. Not unlike she had felt it when he had struck the rock in the first place. Something about taking the Shukkar fruit as a group brought them closer together. It was almost as if part of their minds were shared. She had first made this realization yesterday as they ran. Soren had known the Yunadaya word for the a specific rock outcropping “Arc’e’cala’ without ever hearing it before. Somehow she knew the word because Freyyala knew the word. For her part, Freyyala’s mastery of the Central language seemed to develop overnight. This too, Soren intrinsically knew was from the Shukkar fruit. Other things too seemed to flood her mind in inconsistent waves. The type of tree she had seen in Coratel’s dream, A Fir, though she had never seen such a thing nor ever heard the word before. As she quietly considered this strange melding of their minds, Freyyala returned and sat next to Coratel. In her hand was another bandage and a different type of ointment, it seemed almost an oil to Soren. Again somehow she knew what it was, the oil from one of the red tree’s, a “Shualaya Tree”. She took the big mans leg from the water without asking. Somehow to Soren it felt as though she were taking her own foot from the water, and she knew both Freyyala and Coratel were feeling the same thing. Freyyala wasn’t helping Coratel, she was helping herself. She rubbed the oily ointment onto the foot and relief instantly flooded all three of them. It was as if a thorn Soren didn’t realize existed had just been removed from her toe. Afterwards she bandaged the foot and smiled not unkindly at Coratel who smiled back. Wordlessly, Freyyala handed them each a section of Shukkar fruit which they all ate in unison with deliberate mastication.

The night followed much like the previous day. Soren’s body was becoming acclimated to her new life of flight. She stopped feeling aches and pains when they took rests at regular intervals. In fact, she had stopped feeling any exhaustion by the second day of running and Shukkar fruit. She felt the fruit permeating every part of not just her body but Coratel and Freyyala’s as well. She could smell its sweet spicy scent on her sweat as they ran. She tasted it when she drank her small sips of water that shouldn’t be nearly adequate to quench her thirst or replace the fluids she was giving to the desert. Yet somehow a few small sips was all she needed for half a day of running. The fruit eseemed to course through her blood and at times she could feel it like vines, growing through her veins and capillaries, down into her legs with an ancient power. Her mind was also permanently clouded with the alien information and experience provided by her two companions. Things that should have terrified her barely registered. They had encountered an entire Labour of the giant moles on the second day. To Soren’s surprise she easily outpaced the creatures. What had been a terror beyond her imagining only a few days ago was now a slow-moving inconvenience.

By their third day of running, Coratel no longer ran with any limp. That night Freyyala had done her best to explain how it was the running, not the fruit that was healing him. Coratel only laughed at the woman and with a belligerent hand, waved her away good naturedly. The big man had also taken quickly to the new pace of life. Though he no longer spoke as much and his breathing had changed to long and deep breaths, his laugh came easy and rumbled in the desert night. Soren had watched him tumble, almost dangerously fast, down one of the larger dunes she had seen. He had fallen head over feet into the soft sand, kicking up huge plumes of sand and laughing all the way down. He had almost immediately begun losing his belly and now began to look more and more a desert creature. It seemed to shrink with each day, his large shirt becoming more and more roomy. By the sixth day of running he no longer resembled the man who had started with them. His gaunt face and sunken sunburnt eyes gave him a wild look. The man’s skin had become taught over his face and his pale white skin had turned a dirty shade of gray, though it still refused to tan like Freyyala and Soren’s. The huge arms he had started with had turned lean and veiny. Soren realized her own scrawny arms had turned an odd sort of sinewy, she could watch the muscles twist and wrap over one another as she moved. The same was true of her legs.

At night the group would rest for a while, watching the stars as their night vision grew. It would take a few hours, though none of them slept, nor had they slept in the past week. Soren was dimly aware of this and felt the lack of dreams a strange amputation. After midnight they would begin running again, partly because they could and partly to stave off the cold of the desert night. They often ran into the morning. Pausing at midday to take some water or eat a bit more Shukkar fruit. None of them ate it ceremoniously anymore. Though Freyyala still insisted she be the only one to remove the barbs of the fruit. By the late afternoon the world became a pyrotechnic blur as they travelled long stretches in the blaze of desert. The size of the dunes, still rapidly increasing in shocking size, no longer mystified Soren. Once she had spent an entire day running in the shadow of one single dune. She estimated it to take about three days to walk without the Shukkar fruit.

Her muscles became bands wrapping her body in a lithe blanket. Her body finally acclimating to the marathon running sessions, Soren found something beyond the pure joy of running. She began to allow her mind to sit still, truly still. Even in the strange turbulence that Coratel and Freyyala’s thoughts created, she was able to start quieting her mind if only for moments. It was the first time she’d ever allowed her mind any kind of rest and it felt like a strange power in its possibility. These moments of stillness in the constant racing came rarely and briefly. Still they came, and the moments of peace gave Soren something to chase as they ran ceaselessly through an endless desert.

She had no idea how far they traveled. She only knew she never would have made it on her own. Soren tried not to think of each step forward as a step away from home. More than once she began to feel sick about leaving her parents. She knew she’d probably have quit and turned back long ago if she could. Still they ran on, day after day after day, and before long Soren forgot how long she’d been in the desert. Day bled into night then back into day in a passing of suns and stars and cloudless skies.

Each pause to rest or pause for water was only an intermission between long stretches of a pace of running Soren imagined she’d never slow from. She no longer thought about her dreams or sleeping and the effects of the Shukkar fruit never really wore off anymore. Her whole body was possessed by the fruit and she wondered vaguely at one point how long her body would allow this type of endurance. She was vaguely away of the inherent power of the Shukkar fruit but still couldn't conceive of its limits. Each time she looked at Coratel she thought she saw the man becoming dangerously thinner and thinner. Freyyala unsurprisingly, looked almost exactly the same. Each muscle taught and accented by lack of water and the extreme endurance running. They all breathed in a unison of slow temper now, and not running was now the exercise. Running had become their equilibrium.

Finally on the last day, Soren saw something shinning off in the distance with a strange pale green brilliance that stood out in the darkening reds of the late afternoon. It took them four more hours before they reached the massive obelisk. It was shimmering black and impossibly tall in the dying red light. The obelisk had geometric designs down all three of its sides. Soren couldn’t help but put her hand out to touch the stone. Freyyala quickly slapped her hand down and motioned for them to continue on without speaking. An hour later they reached another massive obelisk toppled onto its side. Its segments had split in the fall and some of them had cracked. Still the size of the blocks shocked Soren. How could anyone move such a thing, how could it have fallen? She thought. The bottom few segments were easily as big around as her barn back home, much larger than her home.

They jogged a bit further, finally reaching the beginning of what looked like a huge canyon system. Soren could make out massive arches of natural rock much further ahead. She thought she could see things hanging from the arch but it was dark now and the distance much too far. Freyyala stopped before the entrance of the canyons. She looked at Soren and nodded then looked at Coratel and frowned. Some days ago, he had taken a large part of his billowing shirt and fashioned a makeshift mask out of the material to protect his face and lips from the fierce desert winds. The effect however gave him the look of a desperate man, willing to do anything to survive.

He looked as though he could drop dead, or kill someone at any moment. Freyyala sighed as she turned and led them into the maze of slots.

“What?” Coratel said looking at Soren who shook her head and followed the woman.

“What?” he repeated to no response. They walked carefully through the canyonlands, walking with a measured pace for hours through the natural labyrinth. After a while Soren began to see small signs of life. First, she saw a scratch on the pristine wall, then a track left in the sand. Before long she was seeing the melted remains of candles and the black soot of once lit passageways. Hours passed as they continued through the night. By dawn, they saw their first person. A scout had nearly speared Freyyala as she surprised him around a corner.

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The man spoke to Freyyala in a clipped voice. They squatted down and spoke for a long time in low tones. They spoke a language Soren recognized as the Yunadaya's but the dialect was strange and she grasped little else. Even with her newfound understanding of the language, the vast majority of what they said was senseless to her. Soren realized she didn’t even know what the language was called, and made a mental note to ask as soon as she could. Finally, the scout and Freyyala stood and looked back at Soren and Coratel. Freyyala said,

“Let’s go. He will take us from here.”

“Where?” Coratel asked, motioning by pointing his fingers up down and back and forth.

“Home.” was all Freyyala said before turning and disappearing with the scout into the dark catacombs.

The two quickly followed and they walked on for the rest of the night and well into the next day. At what Soren guessed was around midday they caught up with a larger party of scouts. Soren realized the scout they had found was easily the youngest of the group, though he was still older than her by a few years. All the scouts wore a similar cloak with varying lines of red and tan. When they stood still for any length of time, Soren found herself unsure how many there were and couldn’t seem to keep an eye on all of them at once. Their hair was all shortly cropped and their tan faces were almost completely covered by a tan and red bandana.

Most had a spear that seemed to come apart on the center. A few of the scouts had the two pieces attached at either hip and they rested their hands on the hilts. A few of the scouts also carried bows and arrows across their backs. They all stood looking at Soren and Coratel out of the side of their hoods as they listened to Freyyala tell whatever story she would about them.

Eventually, one of them came out of the group, speaking and gesturing towards Soren and Coratel. The big man moved instinctively between Soren and the scout. Noticing his movement, the scout lifted his hood and dipped down the bandana. He was smiling broadly at Coratel and the effect seemed to disarm the big man at once. Coratel shuffled to the side and then Soren was looking into the man’s pale tan eyes without realizing what she was doing. They had deep creases in them that grew as his broad smile widened even further. Soren tried to smile back but couldn’t help feel incredibly discomforted by the man. He said nothing and no one seemed to move for a long time. Eventually Freyyala came up to Soren, lightly shoving the scout out of the way and taking Soren gently by the arm. As Soren walked past him, the scout didn’t break eye contact. He never lost the deep creases along his eyes, even as the smile faded from his face. As soon as Freyyala pushed the scout, Coratel seemed to come to his own senses. He moved with the backpack behind Soren in a protective posture that instantly comforted Soren somehow.

After a while, the party eventually moved on. The scouts led them through the endless slot canyons. The group poured into contracting tunnels, then out into open sky and sandy empty waterbeds. More than once the scouts took bandana’s and blindfolded both Soren and Coratel, before leading them on. After varying distances, they’d take the blindfolds off and continue silently forward. At one point, Soren had felt a fierce wind to her right and a cool stone on her left. Freyyala had to hold on to her and she told Soren,

“Hold onto wall. Walk very straight.”

Through the bottom of her blind fold, a gut-wrenching drop to her right peeked through the bottom. Soren closed her eyes voluntarily after that. For his part, Coratel had resisted the blindfolds at first. With rapidly increasing hostility, he had fended off the other scouts before Freyyala came up and tried to explain the need for the blindfolds. Coratel had immediately tore the blindfold off when she had put it on. Freyyala sighed and called the strange lead scout over. The uncanny smile formed on his face and again those strange creases formed across his eyes. He looked deeply into Coratel’s eyes and Coratel stared back with an odd sag to his expression. After that, he complied without question to the blindfolds.

As evening approached the group paused for a couple hours in a large room open to the sky. By this point the slick rock and sandstone canyons had begun to change to limestone and even flecks of marble in places. There was a small pool of water towards the center of the space that maintained during summer droughts. Its bottom was a pale green that reflected the sun Ahriman’s light. Around the water, reeds and a few small Creosote bushes grew in abundance. The scouts started a small watch fire with a few of the dead limbs around them and the smoke smelled of rain to Soren. Not long after they had the fire started, she began to truly feel the weight of the Shukkar fruit leaving her body. She could tell Coratel was well into a similar situation. The scouts whispered to one another in low voices as their bodies slowly began the convulsing rhythms. With dark expressions they huddled around their fire pointedly ignoring the convulsing bodies that twitched in the starlight.

Through the protestations of her body, Soren realized the scouts must understand what was happening. To a man, each scout regarded them with deliberate indifference even as the tremors reached a fevered crescendo. The scouts seemed to know the seizures would pass and never actually left the canyon room. Still, the dark looks they exchanged with Freyyala made Soren inwardly shudder as well. Hours and hours later, the convulsions lessened and Soren was able to finally calm the smallest of her twitching muscles. Her calve and thigh muscles still twitched with uncontrollable agony but her feet had stopped cramping and her hands were no longer claws of white-hot pain.

After it all came to a reasonable end, Soren sat up rubbing at her sides. She was able to sip some water and felt her body had transformed. Where once she had been light as a feather on the wind, she now felt like a stone. Her sternum ached as if she’d been sick and her forearm and bicep muscles were dead weight only able to move for the bones and sinew underneath. She felt eloquent agony in each muscle she had develop through endless running.

By the look Coratel gave her, he was feeling the same thing. Yet now, Soren felt a succinct separation with the two of them. She could no longer hear their minds in her own, her mind seemed to finally be her own again. Freyyala seemed to have taken it in easy stride. In fact, she wasn’t shaking at all. Soren wondered at how the woman had faired so well. Had she more Shukkar fruit? Was she keeping it from the rest of them? She wondered dimly through her aching muscles.

One of the scouts, the young one who’d first found their group, said something loudly Soren didn’t understand. Whatever it was, made a few scouts chuckle darkly, others backed slightly away from the young man. Freyyala’s face reddened with rage and she rose with purpose. For some reason, Soren too felt rage at the man, though she couldn’t place why. The woman stormed towards the scout with fire in her eyes. As she walked over, Soren saw her movement was fluid as water. She never saw the daggers in Freyyala’s hand. She had been too busy watching the satisfied smirk on the young man’s face and wondering at the woman’s movements.

The young scout put up his hand to grab her by the chest as Freyyala moved sinuously towards him. She approached with uncanny speed, twisting oddly it seemed to Soren from behind. The light thump-thump, sound of the man’s two fingers falling to the ground was deafening for an instant. Then screams. Two of the bowmen who had been nearest the young man were still knocking arrows as two daggers pressed to their throats. Freyyala spoke with fury in what sounded to Soren a blatant taunt. She had picked up a few of the words the woman had so dangerously whispered. Soren thought she heard her say Sersur or “Oath”, a number of times, followed by the word Shuk or “Family”. Or perhaps they were talking about the fruit. Or perhaps the weather. It was hard for Soren to distinguish, as fast as she was talking.

Soren could see the scouts had retribution on their minds, yet they waited. Finally the leader with the strange smile spoke with his mouth and mind and his creased eyes. Soren noted Freyyala watched the man’s lips move, avoiding his piercing eyes. Though she had no idea what either were saying, she saw Freyyala release just a hairs breath of tension from her outstretched hand. She said something fast and spat on the ground near the fingers. Then before Soren realized what had happened, Freyyala had her daggers hidden again and was walking back over to them.

Coratel was still tensed as Freyyala approached and looked behind her before saying,

“An insult to Shukkar fruit is an insult to life, an insult to us all.” and sat back down silently. Coratel and Soren looked at each other behind her before coming up to either side and sitting with their backs to the rock wall. The scout who’d lost his fingers sobbed quietly in the shadows. Soren was surprised to see one of the scouts had taken the fingers and wrapped them in cloth before giving them back to the man. She wondered at what use they could be to him. She knew you couldn’t grow back fingers, even with the help of a Kekera healer, but perhaps he wanted them as a memento. After an hour or so, the scouts all stood and the young man left with a terse expression on his teary face. His arm had been bound to his chest and another scout left with him. Soren tried to watch the young man as he disappeared in a halfhearted jog in front of them.

After that, no one spoke. They walked in silence for hours before the suns finally began their rise. Though she couldn’t actually see the suns rise, the tops of the marbling canyons brightened with the deep reds of early morning. Though tired, she was thankful for the walk as it helped unknot her cramped muscled. As she walked, Soren was struck by the sheer size of the canyon. It went on for what seemed an eternity. Would she travel just as far as they had in the desert? she worried. Soren didn’t think she could walk much further, even with more Shukkar fruit. She also doubted she could eat any more of the fruit even if she had to. Yet, something deep inside her longed to taste the strange cactus fruit again like a gust of wind inside her. Just the thought of its taste made her heart flutter even as her stomach turned at the thought.

The canyon continued on in a gradating slope. Their path had been slowly bending downward for some time. Now however the descent became steep and unevenly treacherous. Soren followed the roughly cut stairs down a marbled tunnel of partially clear white stone. The middle of the steps had worn away with the weight of pilgrims. Her foot slipped more than once before Soren learned to walk on the sides of the stairs where the wear was less. The tunnel descended for a long time, winding toward the left in a meandering spiral. There was very little light in the tunnels as they left the limestone canyons in earnest. Yet in what light she had, Soren saw the stone changing. Though the stone was laced with impurities, much of it had a strange clarity. Soren noticed the light that was in the tunnel came from strange and inconsistent flickers. It was sunslight racing through the stone like lightning in the dark tunnel. The changing light source made the tunnel disorienting and she had to focus on the next step down to keep from falling.

Soren could smell the city long before she saw it. Raucous smells of cooking, pack animals and tanneries mixed with the melodious delicacy of Jasmine, Acacia and spice vendors. After the astringency of the desert Soren realized her sense of smell had been greatly heightened. Or had that been the Shukkar fruit? She thought. Bending low and descended the last couple steps she saw bright orange sunslight peeking through the tunnel in a thin line.

As she turned the corner, a large room was cut into the marble. Large pillars lined the massive walls. The lightning shots of light coursed through them in strange consistencies that could have been patterns or just her exhausted mind. Soren noticed two other tunnels funneled into this larger room, though it appeared to be mostly empty. As they approached, Soren saw a couple in dark robes talking quietly. They were silent as the party approached. To their left of them a group of tall thin figures caught Soren’s attention. They too quieted as the party approached. As they approached Soren stared openly.

From what she could see in the dark room, the creatures seemed to float slightly and as she got closer, she was sure she looked through them or they blended in perfectly with the marbled wall behind them. They continued past and into the light coming through a doorway that thinned the large room into a narrow passageway at the end. The party had to single file through the passage of marble. The scouts passed first, chatting amiably with one another as they walked. Freyyala followed after them, then Soren and Coratel made up the back.

The narrow passage opened into a wide room with a fountain of pure white marble in the center. As she got her bearings Soren realized it was a large ramp at least fifty feet wide. The floor gracefully sloped upwards on Soren’s right and downwards to the left. She saw small groups of Yunadaya walking both up and down the huge ramp and small vendors stationed around the ramps entrance. The other side of the ramp was open and in front of Soren a massive city lay out in front of her. Her eye’s, unused to the distance blinked uncontrollably with tears. Finally, her eyes adjusted and she peered out into the tidal wave of technicolor motion. Freyyala turned back and looked at Soren with a glint in her eyes and said,

“Home.”

“It’s… It’s incredible!” Soren replied her mouth open. She paused then asked,

“What is its name? I’ve never heard of a Yunadaya City before!” Freyyala looked at the scouts who were heading down the ramp, before bending to Soren’s ear and whispering,

“It is secret. We name it Susura.”