The Empty Quarter

"The desert does not argue. It does not bargain. It simply is. And if you are not, it does not care." —Travel Logs, Author Unknown

The Pack - The Crash Site

The airship died overextended—it was not designed for long-distance travel, and certainly not for the punishment of a collapsing mountain.

The starboard thruster finally gave up the ghost three miles out from the edge of the Great Sand Sea. There was no explosion, just a mournful, mechanical sigh as the engine seized. The barge listed heavily, then dropped like a stone.

Bolla wrestled the stick, cursing in three languages, aiming for the crest of a massive dune.

"Brace!"

The impact was a series of violent, bone-rattling crunches. The iron hull shrieked as it plowed through the sand, throwing up a golden spray fifty feet high. Cargo crates broke loose, smashing into the railings. The barge spun, digging in, and finally groaned to a halt, tilted at a precarious forty-five-degree angle.

Silence returned, heavier than before.

Aga uncurled himself from where he had wedged his body between two support struts. He checked his limbs. Bruised, sore, but whole.

He looked around the tilted deck. Elara was untangling herself from a net of rigging, coughing dust. Faren was clutching the railing, his knuckles white, eyes squeezed shut. Gaidan was slumped against the bulkhead, his face a sheen of unhealthy sweat, clutching his broken arm.

And the swordsman... he was exactly where Aga had left him. Sitting on the deck, staring at nothing. He hadn't even flinched during the crash.

"Everyone out," Aga rasped, his throat already dry. "Before the fuel catches."

They scrambled down the side of the hull, sliding onto the burning sand.

The heat hit them like a physical blow. This wasn't the warmth of a hearth; it was the aggression of a furnace. The sun was a white hammer in a bleached sky.

Aga scanned the horizon. Sand. Endless, shifting, undulating waves of orange and gold. No trees. No water. No cover.

"Where are we?" Faren whispered, shielding his eyes.

Bolla hopped down from the cockpit, kicking the dented hull of the ore transporter. "The Empty Quarter. The edge of the Taba-Taba wastes. We're about a hundred miles from the Glass City."

"We can't walk a hundred miles," Elara said, checking her wrist gauge. "Not in this. Thermal exposure will kill us in six hours."

"Then we walk at night," Aga said. He turned to the ship. "Salvage what we can. Water. Shade."

He took a step toward the cargo hold, and the world tilted.

It wasn't the heat. It was a sound. A high, ringing tone in his ears that drowned out the wind.

The scent of the Abyss—the one he had lost—suddenly flared in his nose. But it was wrong. It wasn't cold. It was burning.

Aga stumbled, falling to his knees in the sand.

"Aga?" Faren’s voice sounded miles away.

The desert vanished.

The Vision

He was back in the clearing of the Maw. But the trees were gone. The forest was on fire.

The black pool was boiling, steam rising in thick, choking clouds.

Kneeling at the edge of the water was Yaga. She looked ancient, her skin like parchment stretched over bone, as if the life force were being drained from her to feed the ward. She was weeping, but her tears sizzled as they hit the hot earth.

"Mother," Aga tried to say, but he had no voice.

Yaga looked up. Her eyes were terrified.

"He is burning, Aga," she whispered. Her voice cut through the roar of the fire. "The boy. He’s stopped sleeping, stopped eating."

She gestured to the pool.

Aga looked.

Luka was floating above the churning water, suspended by invisible currents. He was not screaming. He was unnaturally still, his small body rigid. His skin was not burned, but it was glowing with a fever so intense it radiated heat like a star. His violet eyes were wide open, fixed on a horizon that did not exist.

"The connection," Yaga cried. "When the mountain was cut, the shockwave traveled through the void. It is filling him, Aga. He is a cup overflowing."

Luka’s mouth opened. He chanted.

It was a language of hard, grinding consonants and sibilant hisses, sounds that defied the shape of a human throat. To Aga, it was just noise—a terrifying, rhythmic static that scraped against his skull.

"Krr-tzk sss-hraaa..." Luka chanted, his voice overlapping with a thousand others, a chorus trapped in a single throat. "Ghh-kkt... Sss-thhh... Zzz-krr..."

"He is the wick, Aga," Yaga warned, clutching her chest. "He feels what the planet feels. You must stop him. You must stop this flood. If the Burning Prince wakes... the fire will consume the boy's mind."

The fire roared, consuming the vision.

The Waking

"Aga! Breathe!"

He gasped, sucking in hot, dry air. Elara was kneeling over him, pouring water from a canteen onto his face.

"He's back," she said, relieved.

Aga sat up, shoving her hand away. His heart was hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. The vision was gone, but the fear remained, a cold knot in his stomach that the desert sun couldn't touch. The alien sounds of Luka's voice still echoed in his ears.

"Krr-tzk... Sss-hraaa..." Aga whispered, the mimicry rough and guttural.

Faren, who had been checking the supplies, froze. He turned slowly, his face losing the last of its color. "What did you say?"

"My boy," Aga rasped, looking at his hands. "He spoke. It sounded like stones grinding together."

"That syntax," Faren murmured, stepping closer, his fear momentarily replaced by scholarly dread. "Those phonemes... Aga, that sounded like High Etheric. The language of binding. No human should be able to pronounce that without tearing their vocal cords."

Aga looked at the scholar. "He didn't choose to speak it. Luka is only a babe. It was speaking through him."

"Luka," Aga whispered, the name grounding him. "He feels it."

"Feels what?" Gaidan asked, leaning against the hull.

"The wound," Aga said, standing up. The dizziness passed, replaced by a singular, driving purpose. "Root... when he hurts the planet, he hurts my son. Luka is connected to them. If Root wakes the Fire God... Luka dies."

He looked East, toward the shimmering heat haze where Taba-Taba lay waiting.

"We move," Aga commanded. "Now."

"We can't," Bolla said, pointing at the swordsman. "The dead weight won't budge."

The desert warrior was still sitting in the sand, staring at his hands. He hadn't moved since the crash.

Aga marched over to him. He grabbed the man by the front of his silk tunic and hauled him to his feet.

"Walk," Aga ordered.

The man looked at him. His eyes, usually glass-like and serene, were red-rimmed and filled with a terrifying, hollow panic.

"I cannot," the man whispered.

"You are a warrior," Aga snarled, shaking him. "I saw you cut stone giants. I saw you move like water. You do not get to quit."

The man laughed. It was a brittle, dry sound.

"You saw Him," the man said. "You saw the Edge."

"It was your sword," Aga said. "You wielded it."

"No!" the man screamed, shoving Aga back with a sudden, desperate strength. "You do not understand! You think I am a man? You think I am a soldier like Gaidan?"

He ripped open his silk tunic.

Faren gasped. Elara leaned in, her eyes widening.

The man’s chest was not flesh. It was a smooth, porcelain-like carapace, etched with glowing blue runes that pulsed faintly. Where a heart should have been, there was a complex knot of Etheric circuitry, currently dim and stuttering.

"I am not a man," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I am a sheath. I am a cage made of earth and ether, built by the Envoy to the Empty King a thousand years ago."

He looked at his empty belt, tears streaming down his face.

"No mortal hand could hold Zalim. The blade is too hungry. It drinks the soul of anyone who touches it. So, I was made. A Twice-Born. A human soul bound to a Servitor's frame, tasked to carry the Edge until the end of time."

The group stared at him in silence. The wind howled over the dunes.

"Without Him," the Twice-Born said, "I cannot correctly. I do not have courage. I do not have skill. I am just... the box the weapon came in."

"What is your name?" Elara asked softly.

The man looked up at the burning sun.

"My name is Kira-Razel," he confessed. "And I am empty."

Aga looked at the broken construct. He saw the self-pity. He saw the despair.

And he didn't care.

"Empty," Aga repeated. He stepped forward, towering over Kira-Razel. "Good. Empty things can be filled."

"With what?" Kira-Razel wept.

"With rage," Aga said. "My son is burning. Your brother is being tortured. You say you are a box? Fine. Then be a fist."

Aga grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him toward the East.

"Zalim is gone. He is in the dark. He is waiting for you. Are you going to leave him there?"

Something flickered in the Twice-Born’s eyes. The runes on his chest flared, just for a second. A spark of shame? A spark of anger?

"No," Kira-Razel croaked.

"Then move," Aga shoved him toward the others.

He turned to the group. They were battered, broken, and terrified. They were in the middle of a wasteland, hunting a man who could kill cities.

"We walk until we drop," Aga said. "And then we crawl. No one stops. No one dies. Not until the Root is dead."

He turned and began to walk into the dunes, cutting a path through the sand.

One by one, the pack followed.