Sand whipped up into Kayla’s face as she trekked over the slope. Gritty, coarse particles of smoldering dust attempted to force her down, tried to bury her in its sea. She merely pulled up her hood around her nose and pushed forward. Kayla didn’t mind it anymore. When she was young, she would hate the feeling of the grains in between her toes, burning the bottoms of her feet. The only problem was getting it in her hair. Normally, her people cut their hair short to avoid this very problem, but Kayla always opted to grow out her hair, against her mother’s wishes.
She drove the image of her scolding mother from her mind and focused on the sandhills that stretched before her. It was a therapeutic process. Step, pull, shake, step. An easy thing to do, simple. Something that she had done several times before. Following the crest of the dunes, Kayla followed markers left by her people thousands of years ago. The day was just beginning, so travel was easy, but the Shaking Reefs were renowned for their harsh summer. Any later, and it wouldn’t be safe to go as far as Kayla planned to.
Kayla passed by the last marker and stopped. She bent to rub away the dirt from the brilliant crystal laid into the marker. However long ago, the Bel Dais of old moved to the main island of the Shaking Reefs, and to find their way around they placed these stones here. With the mysterious crystal, the markers never sank beneath the ever-changing sea of sand. Kayla relied on these markers not just to find her way between her village and the capital, but to her secret hideout as well. The road seemed to be mostly clear of travelers, despite the nice morning. Just in case, Kayla looked up the crest and back the way she came. Confirming it was all clear, she slid down the dune, kicking up a large cloud behind her. At the bottom, Kayla used the cover to dust off a spot in the sand. Beneath, there was a hatch. Around the circular lock were several of the crystals, however many of them had faded, and some were completely blackened. Kayla spun the lock and pulled hard. With a rusted groan, the gaping maw of the beast was revealed, and Kayla lowered herself in, making sure to seal the hatch shut.
For a moment, there was complete darkness. It was tangible, thick. Kayla used her hand to search the wall for the switch, and when she found it, she flipped it up. Light-filled the space and revealed a metal bunker. The walls were covered with worn tapestries from different eras, displaying stories and maps. Various chairs and couches were crammed into the small area, and a doorway teased at the possibility of another part of the bunker. Kayla jumps down the few steps leading down from the bunker’s entrance and strode over to a terminal on the wall just to the left of the door. She typed in a quick code, and a whirring started up somewhere. Kayla then began to unwrap herself and placed the many layers of clothing onto the back of one of the chairs. Underneath her layers of clothing, she wore a linen shirt and cargo pants. Thanks to the cooling system of the bunker, she was able to relax and cool off while she waited for the others to arrive. The greatest pleasure was allowing her fluffy, curled hair out of the hairnet she used to keep it under control out on the dunes.
After a few minutes, the hatch of the bunker groaned open and two people climbed down the ladder, all dressed head to toe in layers of clothing. Kayla got up from the couch and quickly went over to them.
“Yo!” said the taller, named Marcus. “Sorry, we’re a little late.”
“At least you’re here,” Kayla said, helping the smaller of the two, Clara. “Where’s Xander?”
“Up here,” called a voice from above. The two newcomers cleared the way of the hatch and down dropped a third person, much taller and stronger built than the others. Xander had blonde hair, just like the rest of the Bel Dais, pulled up into a ponytail. He was the oldest of the group of four, but by far he was the most childish, always performing dangerous stunts. At least, that’s how Kayla saw him. The other two began to strip off their outer garments. Clara was the youngest, but not by much. Marcus and Kayla were only a year older, and Xander was already an adult. Why he hung out with a bunch of kids remained a mystery to the rest of the group. To an outsider, the four of them would probably look like siblings, with matching hair and green eye color, but that was a genetic trait all Bel Dais inherited. Well, except for Kayla. She had one brown eye, which she was quite proud of.
Finally, everyone had finished taking off their protective clothing and sat in the splendor of the cooled bunker for a few minutes.
“We don’t deserve this place,” Carla commented. She sat draped across the couch in a hardened leather vest and cargo shorts, goggles pushing up her long hair. Marcus hung from a steel beam above, dressed similarly. Kayla supposed their mother must have made the vests.
“True,” he said from his high perch “but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it, right? If Kayla hadn’t found it, it would have been buried for who knows how long?”
Xander, who was dressed in a loose linen shirt and capris-style pants, stood and stretched.
“Alright,” he announced “we’ve had our fun. Time to get started.”
Everyone reluctantly got up and began to head towards the door at the back of the bunker. Marcus swung down from the rafters and landed nimbly beside his sister. Using the only key to this room, Kayla unlocked the door and pushed it open. The door gave a small squeak of protest as the next room was revealed.
It was a hangar, a very large one. Marcus had researched the library back at Home, and found that their ancestors used this hangar back during a time called “The Great War.” When it was still used, it held a magnificent airship, most likely used to fight if the blueprints were anything to go off of. But now, it was out of commission, all but forgotten by the Bel Dais. The only thing that rested here was the Dragons.
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The mechanical constructs sat in the middle of the hangar. The closest one’s plating was painted a deep red, which was what inspired the name. The Dragons were a type of vehicle salvaged from ruins like the Bunker and were used to travel across the desert Shaking Reefs at blinding speeds. Kayla and her group had found three down in the Bunker, but the Ruby Dragon was by far their favorite. It was fast, too. After Kayla and Marcus had figured out the controls, they had taken it for a spin and promptly crashed. Luckily, it hadn’t hurt the vehicle. They had been made during wartime, after all.
The design of the Dragons was similar to the bipedal vehicles used in the mainland of Yudrosil but had a distinctly Bel Dais look. Sleeker, faster, and instead of a front wheel, they used the same stones used to hold up the Bunker. The Ruby was the groups' favorite. It looked like it was meant for speed, with sleeker panels, a see-through panel meant to block the incoming sand from the control panel, and the magnets were placed in such a way that they naturally propelled it forward. Xander liked to theorize that it could have been a scouting vehicle, but the bright crimson of the hull said otherwise.
Xander lovingly stroked the red plating as he passed by the other Dragons. As was said, the group had two others. The Emerald Serpent and the Chicken Hawk. The Emerald Serpent was Xander’s, and the whole group knew that. After finding out about the Bunker, the younger ones of the group offered it to him to keep him quiet. He gladly accepted and decided to stick around. The names of the first two were courtesy of their color, but the Hawk was dubbed such because of how strangely different it was from the others. Bigger, clunkier, and bigger fins that made it look like it would start flapping.
“The race is in a week, my friends,” Xander said as he opened up a toolbox next to the Emerald. “7 days. We have seven days to get good enough to stand a chance in that race.”
“Stop nagging, Xander, you're worse than my mother,” Kayla complained. The group gathered around the Ruby and fiddled with different parts, while Kayla sat watching. She never got the hang out of engineering and mechanics, another thing for her mother to nag about. She could practically hear her.
“The Bel Dais were an ancient people,” she would say, “spanning hundreds of generations, with each having an innate ability to manipulate machinery. Your grandmother was one of the best of her day, able to make ancient machinery work once more. Why can’t you figure out how to turn on a gaslight?”
For the record, Kayla could indeed turn on a gaslight. Just because she wasn’t as good as her mother or father, she was a disappointment.
“Alright Kayla,” Marcus said, wiping his hands, “time to fire her up.”
Kayla mounted the Ruby and kicked down the lever on the side. There was a short burst of energy that shook the Ruby, which was then replaced by a low hum. Kayla ran her hand across the circular disk inlaid into the top hump of the Dragon, and a holographic display was brought up. Kayla pressed the symbol in the middle, which through experimentation she knew opened the hangar doors. Another metallic sound roared to life as the large steel doors of the Bunker rolled upwards, revealing the desert beyond. Kayla strapped on her goggles, revved the engine, and released the brake.
The Dragon surged forward. When Kayla first rode the Ruby, the force had knocked her off, but this time she was ready. In seconds she was back outside, the Dragon practically gliding over the sand. Her goggles shaded her eyes from the sun as she sped across the dunes. She was ready for each bump, turn and dip.
As Kayla and the Dragon crested over another dune, something white caught her attention in the distance. There were several large sails. Kayla veered towards the coastline to get a better look. A crackling sound joined the hum of the Dragon.
“Kayla, where are you going?” came Xander’s voice.
“There are ships coming in from the mainland. I’m going to go check it out.”
“The mainland? What do they want?”
“That’s what I’m finding out.”
The bunker wasn’t far from the northwest coastline and offered a very strategic view of all vessels coming into the harbor. Kayla slid the Dragon right up next to the cliffside and left it floating at the ready. Despite there being no way for the ship to see her, Kayla bent over and crawled along the coarse sand until she could peer over the edge, entertaining the brief idea that she was gathering intel. She flipped a switch on her goggles and they extended into binoculars.
“What do you see?” came Xander’s voice from the Dragon. Kayla took a moment to mourn the loss of her fantasy before replying.
“They’re big, whatever they are. I’ve never seen ships like those.”
“What do they look like?”
Kayla twisted a dial and the goggles stretched to give her a better look. There were two massive ships, both towering over the houses around the docks. The material they were made of resembled wood, but Kayla couldn’t think of wood that could look so blue. The sails of ships could easily cover the small harbor in their embrace.
“They’re big,” Kayla called to the Dragon. “Even from here, I can tell. The crew looks like ants on the deck.”
“Where are they from?” Asked Xander’s static voice.
“I can’t see any emblem or anything. The whole ship is blue, though. Even the crew have blue uniforms.”
“Wait, as in painted blue?”
Kayla lifted her goggles to let her eyes rest. “No, I don’t think so. It’s almost as if the wood it’s made of was blue. Sound familiar, Marcus?”
Marcus spent a large portion of his time in the Shaking Reefs’ only official library located in Home. Kayla was never interested, as there were few books that were written in Bel Dais and fewer that weren’t historical texts.
“It could be from a forest I read about on the mainland. It’s supposedly full of blue trees. But it’s, like, really far inland, and the forest is still inhabited by fiends.”
Xander’s voice came back on “Kayla, I think you should head on back. The whole Island has to have seen the ships by now, and your parents will worry about where you kids are.”
“Roger that, Xee”
Kayla pushed herself up and swept away the sand that clung to her clothes before mounting the Dragon and tearing away.