As soon as the sarcophagus’ lid is pushed aside, light streams into Ren’s eyes. He squints, forcing himself to keep his head up, as Penny hauls herself out of the sarcophagus and back into the pyramid. Ren hasn’t seen this place in forever—not since they found their way underground.

Not to mention that the candles have now melted, leaving nothing but puddles of cream-coloured wax on the ground—Af’rik must have been the one who lit them when they first arrived, Ren surmises. He hoists himself over the edge of the sarcophagus, boots thumping hard against the hard ground. He gives the place a good once-over, trying to recall just what the world aboveground looked like.

The lava rivers that ran down the dunes beside the dual entrances are now gone, hardened and blanketing the sand. They’re an ash grey colour, a stark contrast against the sand’s light brown. The skeletal creatures have returned, prowling the lands just outside the temple. However, they don’t seem to be in as big numbers as they had the last time they were here.

“Where is he?” Shih’van asks, as Grandmother flits out from the sarcophagus. She lands with a light tap, black eyes squinted as she peers out of the entrances. Her All-Seeing Eye wobbles in her skull, a sharp glint reflecting off it.

“This way.” Grandmother extends her wings and flaps them frantically, taking to the skies. Shih’van unfolds her wings as well and follows her. Her flight is a little clumsier, compared to Grandmother’s, but the both of them soar high into the air, and certainly way out of Ren and his company’s speed range.

“Quick! Come on!” Penny shouts, beckoning them forth. She sprints after the Batlings, out onto the lava river, and then to the sand dunes. Gridel and Vane quickly follow. With little choice, Ren does as well.

Despite having flown so high into the sky, that they may as well be weaving through the clouds, Ren can still see Grandmother and Shih’van. They are but mere black dots against the backdrop of crimson. And, looking at the way they’re flying, their destination is obvious.

They’re headed to the ruined city of Heliola.

Ren forces his muscles to pump harder, forces his legs to run faster, as he and his companions make for the fallen island. He still remembers the way the Earth Worm chased them there, finding an abandoned house and making it their home. Penny had still been pretty adamant that it would have been their base of operations, this city without its residents, and without any resources whatsoever.

Whatever could be so special there that Af’rik would risk his life for? Or was that not the case, and that he simply met with an accident?

Most importantly, would the Horseman be there? Grandmother hadn’t elaborated much on the danger that Af’rik was in. She sprung out of the house, announced to the rest of the village that she was leaving for a rescue mission, and proceeded through the dark tunnel, with the rest of them hurrying behind.

It kind of makes Ren wonder if they’re fast enough to reach Af’rik before it’s too late.

The city of Heliola grows in size, getting bigger and bigger the nearer they get. Ren pricks his ears up for any signs of a struggle—shouting, screaming, roaring, or the like. The possibility remains that Af’rik could also be screaming on an ultrasonic level, that only Shih’van or Grandmother can hear.

Well, maybe it’s because they seem to know where they’re going. Grandmother descends, towards the centre of the slanted city. Penny leaps onto the diagonal floor of the island, barely maintaining her balance. Ren and the others follow suit, landing with dull thuds on the sandy floor.

They’ve never been far enough in the city before to notice, but the houses are arranged like a maze. Broad roads devolve into smaller, narrower ones, branching off into side streets and alleyways. The farther in they go, the harder it is for Ren to tell which way they came from, and which way they should be headed.

Soon, everything begins to look the same.

Stones and bricks the colour of straw soon infect Ren’s vision with a tinge of ochre. Everywhere he looks, all he sees is yellow, or shades of brown. The only way to tell where they’re going is by following the rattling of bones, or the clash of metal against metal in the distance.

Vane is the one who takes the lead, his sense of direction the best out of all of them, as is his sense of hearing. He darts down an alley between two buildings, the collapsed ruins so close to each other that it makes for a tight squeeze. Ren barely manages to duck under a low-hanging arc formed of debris, sidestepping a jagged chunk of concrete, before sprinting after Vane and Penny.

The sounds of combat have finally risen to a crescendo. Ren draws Ifrit, its orb glowing a bright crimson. Vane screeches to a halt upon reaching the mouth of the alley, one which delivers them through a hole carved in a grand wall, tipped with golden spikes. In the middle of what looks to be a courtyard are several combatants currently engaged in battle.

One of them is unmistakably Grandmother, with her flurry of kicks and punches, deflecting attacks thrown her way by skeleton warriors. These skeletons are humanoid in shape, one armed with a pair of chakrams, and the other with nunchakus. Standing off to the side are Shih’van and Af’rik, the latter with his arm tossed around the former’s shoulders, looking right beat up, with a black eye and everything.

Gridel rushes over to him immediately, skirting the invisible borders of the arena in which Grandmother and the assailants fight. Vane draws his sword, and Penny, her dirk. Ren weaves ribbons of flames around Ignis, prepared to launch it at the skeletons.

But he hesitates. For a single reason: that he cannot see who is who in the heat of the battle. The combatants are nothing but blurs of movement—black against white. If he shoots the fireball now, he wouldn’t know who he’d strike.

The skeletons, or Grandmother?

“Get out of here!” Grandmother shouts, her voice just barely audible over the clinking of metal and claws against bone. “You are no match for them!”

“But we can’t just leave you here!” Penny cries. “Let us help!”

Grandmother does not respond. Instead, she turns around and hollers at them, “What part of ‘no’ do you not understand?”

But Penny doesn’t listen. Instead, she makes a clumsy whack at one of the skeleton figures. Her dirk aims for the white of bone, of calcium. She catches one of the warriors off guard, blade slicing into its spine, and the warrior slumps forward and crashes onto its knees. Grandmother is still fixated with the other one, barely able to keep up with its quick and frenetic slashes.

“Your fight is with us!” Penny shouts, her voice ringing out in the echoey courtyard, bouncing off the greyed, dead trees, and the castle just beyond it. The skeletal warrior turns its head to her, its ruby eyes glinting menacingly under the light. Its teeth chatter, grinding hard.

It’s as painful to watch as it is to listen. Ren fights the urge to jam his fingers into his ears, and instead chooses to cast the flames forward in a searing jet. The skeletal warrior has stopped, and so, it is vulnerable, and Ren has no fear of hitting Grandmother.

Unfortunately, the warrior dissipates the stream of fire in an instant, throwing up its chakrams and deflecting the flames. The inferno blazes by it, splashing the trees’ corpses and setting them on fire, roaring as it blackens the sandy walls of the nearby buildings and archways. Ren gapes, jaw dropping open. The last time someone managed to counter his fire blast so easily was…

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Despite that setback, the flames acted as a distraction enough for Vane to skewer it through with a spear of earth. The skeleton falls apart, bones scattering to the ground, its chakrams clattering. That was easy. And here, Grandmother believed that it would be difficult. Ren turns his attention to the other warrior—

“Don’t let your guard down, you fools!” Grandmother yells.

The rattling of bones has Ren glancing over, eyes widening when he sees the skeleton reassembling itself. First, the humerus and the femur, then the patella, and then the pelvic bone, and then the spine and the ribcage. The skull is the last to float up, after the scapula and the radius and ulna. It fixes itself atop the spine, red eyes glowing and glaring down at them.

Boy, does it look mad.

The skeleton lifts the chakrams with its foot and kicks them into the air. It snatches the rings of metal, clutching them tight between its stiff fingers. Then, it charges.

Ren doesn’t even see it, but it aims for Penny first. Penny blocks the attack with her dirk, barely in time for Mira to meet one of the chakrams. But the skeleton has two hands. And so, the other chakram slices across Penny’s stomach, blade digging into her flesh and drawing blood.

Her blood splatters to the ground, pooling in red puddles. Penny gasps, and she lurches backwards, falling and knocking her head on the cracked cobblestone. The warrior looms over her, chakrams raised.

A spike of fear courses through Ren’s veins, as he conjures a ball of fire and flings it at the skeleton. The skeleton leaps backwards, and the fireball soars past its head. Instead, it hits something else—the other skeleton warrior recoils from the blow, body flying back and smashing into the wall behind it.

It screeches as it bursts into flames, its arms falling to its sides. The other skeleton warrior rushes to its side, its own body a blur of white. Grandmother hops away from her adversary, and she turns to them.

“Get the girl and run!” she hollers.

Ren dives towards his friend, grabbing her by her shoulders and heaving her to her feet. Penny hardly responds, Mira slipping from her fingers and landing in her own blood. Vane scoops it up, whilst Ren hobbles towards where Shih’van, Af’rik, and Gridel are fleeing to, Penny leaning her entire weight on him.

He isn’t even sure if she’s conscious. And he wishes he can piggyback her, but the torrent of blood gushing from the slice wound is enough to convince him that she’d black out from the pain, if she hasn’t already. The thought of innards falling out…

Ren decides not to go there.

From the howl of the skeleton warriors, Ren knows that they’ve still got some time till they catch up to them. It’s unlikely that fire will raze bone, but he’s not staying to find out. They leave the courtyard, Ren struggling to ensure that he does not stumble down the slope, especially with Penny hanging off his shoulder.

It’s Af’rik who leads them down the streets, past twisting alleyways, and away from the royal courtyard. The others follow diligently behind, ducking under the wooden beams of awnings and the stalls of marketplaces. They don’t manage to go far, though, because of Penny’s condition, her barely-audible breaths against Ren’s ear, and her unresponsiveness.

They end up hiding out in a nondescript house, one made entirely of stone and coloured yellow, just like the rest of the buildings in the city. Ren rests Penny against the wall, her back to the stone. Her eyes are dull and unfocussed, her limbs limp. The bleeding is still going at full force, staining the front of her shirt and even her leggings.

Gridel works fast, tearing off a length of bandage from her stock and wrapping it tight around Penny’s middle. Penny screams in pain, the first sign of consciousness they manage to get out of her. She clutches onto Ren’s arm in a death grip, holding on so tight that she may has well have cut off his blood circulation.

Ren wishes he can take the pain away, wishes that he could have had acquired healing powers instead of his offensive fire skills, as they wait for Gridel’s anaesthetic-slathered bandages do their trick. Seeing his best friend in utter pain, clinging on to him like that with tears gathered in her eyes, is nothing short of both heart-wrenching and terrifying.

But now, her pain has eased, and Penny slumps back against the wall, expression tired, her energy spent. Ren glances out the window, and he can only hope that their enemies aren’t coming for them. In any case, they can’t stay here forever. They have to head back down underground, and back into the village. There, Penny and Af’rik can rest.

Unfortunately, it appears that they need to navigate their way out of this maze of a city, whilst avoiding those skeletons first. They relied on the sounds of battle to reach Af’rik’s location, but now, they’re trapped, with nothing to follow.

Vane carries Penny on his back, her arms limp over his shoulders, her head resting against the hilt of his sheathed sword. She doesn’t stir—probably knocked out by the anaesthetic, or the shock of the pain—to respond. It’s time they get out of here, before Penny’s scream attracted the skeletons.

“This way,” Af’rik whispers, standing at the entrance of the building. “Come on!”

He darts off down the alleyway, his feet light against the cobblestone path. Grandmother takes off after him, followed by Shih’van, then the others. Ren keeps a lookout for the warriors overhead, whipping his head about from left to right, afraid that if he takes his gaze away from the sky, then they’d come swooping in and assault them.

But throughout the whole run, he does not see them. Not even a flash of white. And besides, Af’rik never once stops. He sprints with a speed that even Usain Bolt would admire, clawed feet very well adapted to running on rough cobblestone. Grandmother is no different, though she augments her running with short glides, carrying her farther and faster than just pure running.

Shih’van, on the other hand, is not used to it. Fleeing, that is, either by foot or by wing. She stumbles a lot, tripping over random chunks of ruins on the ground, or almost slamming her shoulder into buildings. Same as Ren, then.

Despite their clumsiness, the group manages to tear free of the city, throwing themselves out onto the scorched earth. But even so, they don’t stop running, soles pounding hard against the soil, as Af’rik leads them back to the pyramid.

The skeleton warriors aren’t chasing them—of that, Ren is certain now. He glances back, only to find empty ground. They wouldn’t pursue them out here into the open desert, where there’s nothing for them to use. No walls, no buildings, no nothing. Just pure, unadulterated sand.

They reach the pyramid in record time, and Ren has never been so relieved to see one of these structures ever in his life. Af’rik throws open the sarcophagus lid, letting it fall to the ground with a thump. Shih’van is the first through, followed by Grandmother, then Vane, Gridel, Ren, and Af’rik comes in last, lugging the lid back onto the coffin.

They descend the ladder, down into the dark depths, which the Batlings definitely have no problems navigating. However, Ren and the others stumble along, though Grandmother waits for them at regular intervals. Soon, they reach the village, and it is only then that Ren finally breathes.

No more skeletons chasing them, back into the warmth of safety. But they cannot celebrate just yet. Penny’s life is still in danger, and Vane rushes her back to their borrowed house. Ren can feel the curious gazes on them, wondering what in the world happened. Wondering how the Sun people had gotten themselves into this mess. Or perhaps why they haven’t made a move and saved them from the eternal crimson sky yet.

Ren shoves those thoughts away, and he focusses on saving Penny’s life. Vane lays her down on the ground, by the table, and Gridel undoes her sachets from her belt. She rifles through them, finding a bottle of some kind of green paste. She kneels by Penny’s side. She undoes the initial bandage, revealing Penny’s ugly wound, most of the blood kept at bay.

Gridel changes the bandage, discarding the soiled bandages on the ground, curling on the ground like a coil of rope. Ren can only watch on, squatting on Penny’s other side. They’ve suffered immense injuries before, but never before has something ever looked so severe, like something that she will be unable to recover from.

Soon, the tense moments are over, and Gridel leans back against her heels, letting out a breath of relief. Ren mirrors her, and he sits back onto the ground, bumping his butt against the rugged floor. That was close. If Gridel is no longer stressed, then Ren doesn’t see any reason to be either.

“Is she going to be okay?” Shih’van’s voice cuts through the silence, barely above a whisper. It’s the first time she spoke since they rushed out of the village in search of Af’rik.

“She seems to be doing stable for now,” Grandmother says, from the entrance of the house. Behind her are the other Batlings, busybodies who are eager to see what happened. “All she needs now is rest. And that means you lot should give her some space.”

“Can I stay beside her, at least?” Ren asks. “Like, in case she wakes up or something.” Ever since they were children, they never did leave each other, no matter how dire the situation—even a fever felt like a tragedy to a child. And now, even with her near-disembowelment, nothing has changed.

Grandmother shrugs. “One person should be fine.”

With that, she turns her back to them, and she wades through the crowd of Batlings clambering to catch a glimpse of the injured Sun person. Gridel retreats to the kitchen, claiming that she’d cook something for when Penny awakens. Vane, along with Shih’van and Af’rik, help to disperse the crowd, with both the powers of intimidation and persuasion.

Ren settles back against the wall, beside Penny’s motionless form. He wraps an arm around her neck and allows her head to rest against his shoulder. Now, he would most definitely wake up with a crick in his neck, but at least he’d get to stick close to her and know that she’s alive.