Chapter 38

It had been an hour since they left, and every step was tiring. His feet sunk into the sand with every shuffle, and the heat sucked the life out of him. He had wrapped his cloak around him tightly, and its color blended to a flawless white and azure blue. The light colors kept a little bit of the heat away.

Noticing something through the dune they were intent on gaining, he stopped. A Fallen soul was somewhere on the other side of the high dune. It was moving toward them steadily. His eyes flashed with cold anger and suspicion, but he wiped it away and turned to Flynn.

"What do you feel?" he asked.

Flynn stayed silent for a moment. "Danger all around, but as long as we stick to this path, I think we'll be fine."

Dane clenched his jaw. He wanted to rush back to the cavern. And if they escaped it successfully, he would separate Flynn from a finger or two in the name of honesty. The creature was right there, yet he lied through his teeth!

A sudden cry caught him off guard, and he turned back around, the Basket Blade already in his hand. Through the dune, he saw a Corrupted Monster swoop in from the sky and pick the Fallen one with its beak, and it soared away. Dane shivered as he tensely watched the souls fly away.

Flynn had been right…the path was safe. He coughed and continued up the high dune as he chastised himself for the thought he had earlier. From the encounter, Dane gleaned that the man from the outskirts didn't know the exact details of the 'dangers' or 'safeties.'

He could only vaguely feel the result.

When they gained the ridge and began to descend its other side, Jeanne put her hand on his shoulder. "Flynn's asking to stop," she said. The Sleeper seemed alarmed suddenly, and his carefree attitude was gone.

"Something changed," he said grimly.

He waited for him to continue, summoning the Myriad Vial.

"The path has not changed but it has become more dangerous."

Jeanne let out an exasperated sigh and kicked the sand. Dane covered his nose and grimaced as it jumped up. "What do you sense?" he asked when the sand settled.

"I think…if we leave this dune any time soon, we're going to die," he said.

***

Dane wished the sun wasn't so high up above his head and behind him instead. A tall dune such as this was wasted if it provided no shade. The sand was torrid, so he had set up a large tent for them to spend their time in. But not all was bad.

The sand was so hot that he could cook on it. It seemed that his appetite had finally caught up to him, and he was eagerly rubbing his hands as a delicious noodle soup boiled inside a pot. Jeanne almost couldn't believe he was cooking without a fire.

She lifted the lid, peeked inside, and after nodding, she lifted it nonchalantly and brought it into the tent. Dane grimaced as he imagined lifting the boiling vessel with his bare hands.

They left the pot on the ground with a ladle to serve themselves. It was filling and nutritious with a generous amount of veg and meat.

"How long must we stay here?" asked Jeanne.

Flynn stroked his chin. "Maybe an hour more."

It had been an hour since they settled on the dune, and time was running out. If they didn't make it before the sunset, it would be the end of them. Dane was beside himself with fear, but Flynn had assured them that there was enough time.

The tent's flaps billowed open, letting cold air into the tent. They stood instantly, weapons in hand.

"Flynn, I thought you said we'd be safe here…" Dane said, suddenly shivering. How did it get so cold? With a deep breath of soothing cool air, he walked forward to the flowing flaps. Jeanne was beside him, turned into a humanoid cluster of blue rock as deep as sapphire.

Dane stepped past the flaps, ready to metamorphose at a moment's notice. Outside, the world was the same, aside from the sun seemingly lacking heat. Something, or someone, was whistling. It was eerily melodic, dropping and rising rhythmically…it seemed to be coming from right beside him.

Dane felt frozen, and his neck turned slowly as if rusted. To his left, far away from the dune, a creature as large as a house lay dead. The whistle was closer now and came from his right. His head snapped in its direction now, no longer petrified.

There, another creature crested a dune. A scorpion with a tail as long as a bus, with three revolting Corrupted cores spinning in the depths of its soul. Then, the darkness of its soul was snuffed out, and it was pitch black, simply dead. 

The whistle came again, and a Fallen Devil fell from the sky in a lifeless heap. Another whistle and a Corrupted shivered before breathing its last breath. It was as if the creatures were coming to the whistle of their own accord, inching to their deaths willingly.

Dane did not see what had killed them. They just fell. Every hair on his body stood like raised hackles. His feet were tingling, and his throat was dry. His instincts screamed at him to run. His legs moved, but Flynn put a hand on his shoulder.

Looking at him, the Sleeper said, "Leave this dune, and we all die."