"Gah, it's hot in here!" Issei remarked.
"We're in a desert, of course it is." Freddy added.
"And what a desert it is." Juavez smirked, "This is one heckuva tourist spot, amigos."
"Yeah, I can see why they call it a World Wonder now..." Sandy too admired the historic sights.
We landed just recently, though our landing spot this time differed greatly from the standard, urban parking we would usually get in past destinations. Indeed, it's as Freddy said, this is a desert after all. One would be in quite the pickle if he found himself lost here... Or not, because it seems that tour guides circle these areas daily.
"Alright, so what do we need to touch this time?" Issei looked around.
"Ah, you can't see the place from here." Freddy smiled innocently at everyone, "Since Petra is, well, a city, it's a pretty vast site."
"So we gotta hike a bit?" I smirked, "Right then, how many...?"
"Hundreds of square kilometers in size, Luneski." He said without batting an Eyelid, "The ancient Rose City is massive."
Gulping upon realizing he wasn't kidding just now, we had glanced at the ever expanding visage in front of us before steadily resigning our fates to today's, or maybe even this week's hike. A desert city, I've seen those before in the form of quiks, but something tells me this is gonna be way different than that. The main difference one can immediately point out is the obvious...
"This place really is deathly abandoned." I commented.
"Looks like England already went crazy from heatstroke." Sandy huffed and puffed behind me.
"No, I know it is, it's just..." I looked at the giant sandstone buildings that almost perfectly meshed into the surrounding terrain, "It's way more beautiful than the desert architecture I've seen..."
"You talking about the desert from back home?" Issei spoke discreetly, "Yeah, back when Othelia and I went there, it was quite boring. Nothing like what you would expect a modern desert civilization to look like."
"What are you two...?" Juavez asked.
"Mn, not sure when you guys visited the place, but back when I lived in Oden with Meil, it was quite nice in its own way." I reminisced, "The quik wasn't as grandly decorated as Petra over here, but Havana had some similarities."
"Now I'm really interested in where all these two have been to..." Sandy muttered.
"Heh, the only things those three have in common is the ruined aspect." Issei chuckled.
"Ruined? Ah." I realized, "Yeah, I forgot that happened..."
"Mind if we ask for some context?" Freddy seemed interested too.
"Oden and Havana, a homely and a grand desert settlement respectively." I sighed, "I lived in Oden for a bit, and it quickly started to feel kind of like a second home to me, but..."
"It got completely destroyed by a group of baddies." Issei tried to remain as vague as possible as he completed my sentence, "Unlike Lune though, I never got to visit them before they got attacked."
"Terrorists?" Juavez surmised.
"No, they had nothing against the country." I danced around the fact they did it to spite me and Meil, "Rather, it was like... a personal agenda."
"How cruel... But when did that happen?" Sandy asked, "I'm sure it would've made the news and then some if not one but two whole places got attacked."
"...No." I sighed, "Those places are quite far from this world's radar. I doubt anything that happened there could have made it to this society's ears."
Meil's home, his neighbors, friends and family, they had all been killed off by Silvia's entourage. Her and her father were horrible people, not at all dissimilar from the Carmens in that regard. They killed and toyed with innocent lives all the time, and as misfortune would have it, we were pitted against them back during the Mobius Awards. After evading them and killing Shawn Quartz, Silvia was all too quick to go after our homelands, stirring a war in Entropa... and completely wiping out most of the quiks in Abyssus Solis.
"Lune." Issei ran up to whisper near me, "You're crying."
"Sniff. Gah." I feigned wiping the sweat off my brow as I instead removed the tears, "Sorry, talking about the group of people whose actions led to your death kind of got to me, heh."
"...Watch those moisture levels." He patted me on the back reassuringly, "We don't have an infinite supply of water, after all."
"We don't?" I Materialized a simple flask of water before taking a few sips.
"Hey, where'd you get that!?" Sandy snatched it away from me the moment she saw it, "England, you've got this poor woman dying of thirst in front of you, and you're just gonna stash away water all for yourself? For shame!"
"Sorry, I didn't know you wanted some." I then reached into my back pockets before Materializing some more flasks, "I packed a couple more in advance though, so if anyone else is interested..."
"Gimme!" Both Freddy and Juavez immediately snatched them from my hands as well, "Gulp, gulp...! Fuahh! That's some clear water! Woo!"
"Yep, 100% H2O." Issei smirked as he took one for himself, "Though how good zero mineral water is for rehydration is another question entirely."
"Eh, if it's not enough..." I pulled out a bunch more again, "I always have more."
"You were this well-prepared, amigo!?"
"Woohoo! England, our savior!"
Heheh, I guess I might've gone a bit overboard with the water. Still, it should be obvious to at least Issei and Freddy that as long as they have me, they won't be facing any difficulties on this journey. Besides, it seems that now, in one way or another, Sandy and Juavez feel the same way. It's good to be reliable, and that sense of reliability is only emphasized when the thing you're bringing to the table is the essential stuff, like food and water. Ah, speaking of food, I wonder how they'd react if I Materialized some bread for us? Heh, maybe later.
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"Hey, there're people here." Sandy noticed a pretty fair amount of tourists all following a safer route, "What the heck? I thought we were gonna be walking in the scorching hot Sun for the remainder of the trip!"
"Of course not, we were walking to the Siq Trail this entire time." Freddy explained.
"Siq Trail?" I asked.
"Yep, apparently one of the best and most tourist friendly ways to explore the ruins." He elaborated, "You get to see a ton of the main attractions on the 2 hour long trail, such as the Al Siq, Treasury and the Street of Facades."
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"Ooh, Al Siq sounds sick!" Issei punned.
"Treasury? It's got treasure in it, so this up-and-coming geocache treasure hunter is all in!" Sandy proclaimed.
"The Street of Facades sounds like a very profound place." Juavez gave his own two cents, "It sounds like the perfect place to dance in."
Well, it's a given that all these sites are gonna be interesting, but if I had to pick purely based on the names, I guess I'd agree with Juavez. Like, come on, the Street of Facades? Who came up with such a banger name thousands of years ago? They must have been super creative, I see...
"Well, we're gonna be visiting all of them during our little walk, so no need to fight over which is the best." Freddy added, "Besides, I think we should leave our impressions for AFTER we see for ourselves just what they have to offer."
"Good point."
Walking through the Siq until we had finally reached the exit, we were astounded by the first building we had seen - The Treasury, or at least that's what Freddy called it. It was an intricate sandstone building that apparently served as a mausoleum for the civilization that had created it. Sadly for our treasure hunter though, it seems that there wasn't any treasure to be found here, and even if it was, she'd have to switch jobs from treasure hunter to grave robber in order to reach it. The other bad news is that touching it didn't give out any Green light, so we kept moving forward.
"It's a shame we couldn't see the interior, too." Issei sighed.
"There's nothing we can do about that." I replied, "While we aren't in a rush exactly, we did come here for the light and the light only."
"Hrm..." Juavez disliked that we brought the topic up again, "Still not gonna tell us what that light means?"
"Nope~!" Issei stuck his tongue out.
Soon after the Treasury came the Street of Facades, and oh boy is the name misleading. From its nomenclature, one would expect to see a bunch of houses and apartment buildings aligned in rows one after the other, with dark alleyways in between inside of which only lived the most prestige top hat and cloak wearing, moustache sporting gentlemen, but in reality it was actually a burial grounds. Yep, you heard that right, the Street of Facades is just a bunch of Nabatean tombs, with the Nabateans being the name of the civilization that created Petra. It was interesting though, and while we didn't exactly feel comfortable touching all the gravestones to check for the light, we had to awkwardly move on after we saw nothing of the sort pop up.
"Whoa! This thing is huge!" Freddy hastily checked his phone for more info, "Ah, no wonder - It's the Theater!"
"Theater? These guys watched movies back in ye olden days?" Issei tilted his head.
"A theater for plays, nephew!" Freddy laughed, "Apparently it could hold over 8000 spectators."
"You gonna check this one as well?" Sandy rolled her Eyes, "Though you guys really do look stupid, just going around the place touching everything and anything worthy of note."
"Sadly we don't have a choice." I sighed, "We need to touch all the World Wonders until we see the Green light appear from all of them."
"Well, it's at least interesting to see a World Wonder that isn't just one single attraction, but an entire city." Issei shrugged, "Unlike back in the Vast World, where..."
"Vast World?" Sandy and Juavez raised an Eyebrow each.
"T-This vast world of ours that holds all kinds of attractions!" He hastily corrected himself, "I'm talking about the other World Wonders, you know!"
"Hmm..."
Thus, we had left the necropolis and moved on to the next area - The shopping district of Colonnaded Street. Going off of what Freddy had told us, this place used to be a commercial hub for locals and travelers alike, but it didn't look nearly as good as the sites that came before it. Well, given how old Petra is, it would be pretty improbable for ALL these places to be well preserved.
"And so, we reach the end of our trail." Issei narrated, "We came out of it empty handed, but it was not for naught. Yes, the destination was empty, but the journey itself was golden-"
"Nephew, what're you talking about? We still have tons more to see." Freddy corrected him.
"But it's nearly sundown. We should call it a day and continue tomorrow." I suggested.
"We can still fit one more attraction." He pointed to the giant hill in front of us, "Just a mere 800 steps from here is the Monastery. It's said to be THE place to visit when you go down the Siq Trail. If the Wonder light shows up anywhere, then it's gotta be there."
"800 steps!?" Sandy almost fainted just from hearing the large number.
"Yeah, what of it?" Freddy pointed behind himself as he spoke, "We traveled much more than that just to get here, so what's a measly 800 more?"
Following his logic, we had saw the glint in his Eyes and just couldn't bear to decline, so we begrudgingly set off to the Monastery above. Ironically enough, it seems he was the first to realize the flaw in his own thought process. Indeed, 800 steps is way less than the amount of steps we took to get here, but the path we took was mostly flat, unlike this one which is pure elevation. He broke down nearly 150 steps in, panting and wobbling up the steps until we had somehow pushed him to continue to the very top. Who knows, maybe the Sun fogged up his reliability factor, cause this Freddy really had a nasty lapse of judgment on this one.
"Gasp, sigh..." Issei could barely look up at the marvelous architecture in front of us before frowning, "Gah! All this just to run in circles! We were here hours ago!"
"Wrong, nephew... That was... the Treasury." Freddy explained in between ragged breaths, "Whilst similar in structure... They're... worlds apart."
"Then what're you waiting for?" Sandy used the last of her strength for the day to push the three of us towards the building, "Go... touch it!"
Fixing ourselves up as we had made our way to the Nabatean tomb, we couldn't help but notice the thumping in our hearts start to creep its way back into our bodies. Was it exhaustion, anxiety, or perchance a mix of the two? No one knows, but I think one thing is for certain - When we touch this World Wonder and check it off the list, we'll finally be able to go to the next place, where hopefully the conditions will be way better.
"I want to eat some real nice food when we go to India~!" Issei whined.
"Yeah, and go sleep in a hotel room for once~!" Freddy too cried out for the distant luxury.
"Ah." I felt tears start to form in my Eyes as we all touched the Monastery, only for no Green light to show up, "Not yet, I guess... S-Sniffle... Uwahhh~!"