Once I finally met up with the others, I was out of breath and sweaty from hauling the supplies in as much of a jog as I could manage. Larina could tell something was wrong before I even spoke, and quickly took the supplies from me and divided them up so that they would be easier to carry. I gasped out what had happened to me in the town between heaving breaths. Silden and Lyre glanced at each other, frowning. “If it’s caused a panic at the base here, maybe the patrols will be called back. We should move into the desert now,” Silden said.

“It has to be now anyway,” Larina said, sounding exasperated. “Do you think they’re not looking for her this very moment? We’ve just poked an ant’s nest!”

“Yes, we need to go,” Lyre said, pulling on the moccasins I had bought for them. I pulled my own on, a little tight over the foot coverings I already wore, but the extra cushioning was nice for once. I took the pack that Larina offered me. I was still out of breath, but we needed to keep moving. We looped away from town, as far as we could manage before pushing into the desert. Maybe it wasn’t far enough, but we were desperate to get to where no one would want to follow us.

The hard packed dirt and scrubby brush was just giving way to softer sand dunes when I heard a shout behind me and the soft whoosh of an arrow narrowly missing my head, burying into the dirt in front of me. I gasped as I turned to see more arrows loosed at us, could hear Larina cry out and shout and wave a hand through the air, a sudden gust rising and knocking them off target. Lyre and Silden both turned, inexpertly pulling the rapiers from their belts, a glow surrounding them as they began readying their own spells, and I raised both of my hands, preparing to summon the lightning that came most naturally to me.

The soldiers were almost on us – a small patrol group, five men dressed in the blue and grey tabards, riding on horses. Just as the glow sprung up around each of us, something burst from the sand of the nearest dune, rearing up as an ominous shadow before snapping down on the hind legs of the nearest horse, lifting it bodily into the air and sending its rider sprawling as the poor creature screamed in pain and terror.

“Dunslyth!” I heard one of the soldiers yell, as they turned their bows toward the giant snake-like creature that had pulled back again, hissing loudly.

It looked almost like a cobra with spikes along the edge of its frill, only larger – much larger. When it pulled back it loomed at least 15 feet above the ground, a menacing hissing shadow. It screamed as the soldiers’ arrows pierced its skin. It moved to strike, almost lightning quick, but something about its movement must have telegraphed where because the soldiers moved expertly out of the way despite its speed.

That was a Dunslyth? “You could make so many shoes from that thing!” I said out loud, my brain hardly able to process my shock at its size. Lyre and Silden glanced at each other, then both turned, Lyre grabbing my arm to pull me along as we all began to run into the desert. One of the soldiers cried out and a stray arrow whooshed harmlessly past us, but then they were too preoccupied with the giant snake to follow.

---

Even though it was fall, the sun overhead was brutal. Larina summoned water as a constant drizzling mist over each of our heads, keeping us damp and hydrated. I glanced up when she had started the spell, almost expecting a cartoonish cloud to be hovering over my head, but there was no cloud – just droplets of water forming out of the sky in a hovering spritz.  It occurred to me that we should have also invested in better covering – I’m dark enough to tan nicely before I burn, but by the end of the day my skin felt like it was radiating its own heat and was splotchy and red.

It was also the first time that we traveled through the entire day, so we were all very tired when we settled down for the night. It was still early evening and quite warm, but I suspected that it would be nearly freezing once the sun set. “Could you dry us off?” I asked Larina. She seemed a bit confused until I explained why, but then quickly set about expelling the water. I set about performing the healing spell for the others – even if I couldn’t benefit from it, there was no reason for them to suffer from sunburns.

Although I had remembered the basic fact about deserts, I had never actually been in a desert at night. Knowing a fact is one thing, and experiencing the reality of the freezing cold is something else completely. Lyre decided to chance summoning a fire for us to huddle near, and we bundled together under the blanket I had brought, very similarly to how we had slept after that first night of running.

I had trouble sleeping at first, wondering about the Hunter that had followed us to the border. It didn’t sound like the soldiers were devoted to chasing us down, and I hadn’t killed anyone in my escape, so I didn’t think they would help him further. But would he continue to follow us into the desert alone? I thought about his mismatched eyes and the scar, about leaving Junel behind to fight him. At some point I must’ve fallen asleep, because I felt Larina grip my shoulder and shake me awake very gently. “It’s your turn for watch,” she said.

Nodding, I shifted a little apart from the group to let her slide into place between me and Silden. The fire had been put out at some point. I didn’t move far, not wanting to lose the warmth of the blanket, and stared out at the landscape around us. I heard something that sounded like a normal pack of coyotes, something I had heard a million times at home, and it was almost comforting until one of their calls was cut short in a series of frightened, pained yips. The night filled with growls and thrashing sounds, and I tensed, trying to gauge how close it was.

I stood carefully and moved toward the top of a nearby dune, keeping low to avoid being seen, and strained my eyes against the darkness. The light from the moons was enough to illuminate some of the desert in soft light, and I could see the shadows of the remaining coyote pack running off to the south. Something large shifted on the ground, and I ducked low, listening to the sound of ripping, a wet visceral sound of tearing flesh. I watched the shadowy silhouette of giant wings raise into the air after a moment, could hear the feathers fluttering against the ground, and watched the figure rise into the air.

Whatever kind of bird it was, it was larger than a coyote. I watched it easily lifting the remains of its kill in one large, taloned claw. I pressed myself close to the sand, feeling my heart thump wildly in my chest, wondering if it was loud enough to be heard. But it either didn’t notice me or was already satisfied with its catch – once in the air, it silently drifted away.

I lay very still and realized I wasn’t breathing. I forced myself to take a breath, shivering in the freezing night as I strained my eyes at the sky, searching for any other shadows. As my panic lessened, I realized that out here, the stars were quite beautiful, vivid and clear and unfamiliar. I hadn’t wanted to wander the ship abovedeck at night, not feeling particularly safe with the crew. And during our travel to the desert, I had been so focused on reaching our destination that I hadn’t spent much time looking up.

But now, here, terrified that something might swoop down on me from above, I was really studying the sky. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to tell one night sky from the other – the only two constellations I knew back home were Orion’s Belt and the Big Dipper, and it always took me some minutes of searching to find them. Despite that, I somehow knew that this wasn’t the sky I had been raised under.

I had noticed the three moons before. Two were smaller, misshapen lumps, floating close together, with a small ring drifting around the two of them, like a loose infinity symbol in the sky. The third was larger, rounder, and almost like our moon, though the craters and plains of it were different, the coloration just a little more coppery gold than silvery blue. Beyond the moons, I could even make out the dusty, sprawling loop of the galaxy we were in, realized that some of the stars were the far side of that loop – and there, small but still particularly bright, was what I realized was the center of the galaxy, a bright star set in a strange darkness separated from the ring of stars that surrounded it. It was hard to see, because the stars on the opposite side of it still filled the night sky, but on this clear night in the desert, the shape of it was just barely visible.

I gaped in wonder at the alienness of it and was finally struck by how completely separated from home I was. I studied the sky some more, but when the cold became too much to bear, I slid back down the dune and settled under the blanket again. For the rest of my watch, I kept a watchful eye on the sky above for any ominous shadows.

I warned Silden about the giant bird when I woke him for his turn at watch, and we let the others know about the danger when they woke in the morning.

As Silden began casting the water spell to keep us cool and hydrated, I shaded my eyes to look up at the sky, already bright and promising another blistering day. “We should have bought some head coverings to keep the sun off of us,” I mused out loud, knowing it was too late to really do anything about it. My face still felt warm to the touch from the sunburn I was just beginning to feel. Lyre frowned for a moment, looking at my reddened skin, and then pulled off his billowy yellow shirt, pulling it over my head and using the sleeves to tie it in place. I laughed, and tried pulling it off, shaking my head in protest. “You’re paler than me, you’re going to burn faster,” I said.

He grabbed my hands to stop me from yanking the shirt off. “You’re the one that can heal these burns. The rest of us won’t have to worry about what the elements do to us thanks to you, but you can’t heal yourself, so you should take any extra precaution you can think of.” I stared into his very blue eyes for a moment, and couldn’t think of an argument. He smiled, pulling my hands down away from the tied shirt sleeves, and then let go.

I rubbed my hands together briefly, frowning, then readjusted the shirt to offer better face covering and gathered my own supplies.

There was no sign that anyone was following us amid the shifting sands and dunes. We kept a wary eye out for anything unusual, and could see large shapes out far on the horizon, but for most of the day nothing approached us. Our pace to the desert had been set by our need to escape, to reach a place that we wouldn’t be caught and enslaved. We were still wary of the dangers of the desert and kept a good pace, wanting to pass through as quickly as possible. Still, the stress and tension seemed to have released – my companions talked very openly now, laughing and telling jokes and stories, and talking about what we might find in the Empire. From my understanding, the human kingdoms had very little contact with them.

Late in the afternoon, we were approaching a stationary dark blot on the horizon. We debated looping around, but since it was similar to the other shapes we had seen in the distance before, we decided to investigate. “At least we’ll have a better idea of whether we should avoid these places or not,” Silden noted. As we got closer, we could see that it was a forest of cacti – larger than any I had seen before, clumped together and on top of each other, a strange misshapen mass of fleshy green bulbs and spines. Closer now, we also realized there was movement, and dropped low to the ground to avoid being spotted. A large beast of some kind walked amongst the succulents, looking almost like a brontosaurus, except the legs were planted too far apart and it had feathers or fur covering it. It had a flat head and extended brow ridge that looked dense and bony. It stretched its long neck up and bit off the top corner of one cacti, chewing despite the spines.

“What is it?” I asked. Larina glanced at Silden and Lyre for the answer, but Lyre only shook his head and Silden shrugged. I watched it eat some more of the cactus. “Maybe it’s not carnivorous? Could be a safe spot to take shelter on occasion.”

Larina pointed suddenly off into the distance. We all turned to see what had caught her attention – a strange shadow was rushing in toward the giant animal. It was also large, though not as large as the creature we were watching. It had the lithe form of a lion, with little to no fur – in fact, it appeared to be covered in spines. It pounced forward, letting loose a growling scream that instantly gave me goosebumps.

For a moment I felt sorry for the large fuzzy lizard, until it turned to meet the spiny cat head first, letting loose a rumbling roar. It swung its armored head around and slammed the cat into the sand, then began using its large hind legs to thump down repeatedly, rapidly, faster than I had expected for a creature of its size, apparently not bothered at all by the spines. The stomping and thrashing raised the sand around it in a cloud. When the sand settled down, we could see that the spiny cat was a dark misshapen lump, could just make out the creeping shadow of its blood soaked into the sand.

Then the lizard bent its neck low to the ground, lapping at the carcass with a long green tongue. We watched in silence for a moment. “Maybe we should loop around…” Larina said in a loud whisper, gesturing for us to stay low behind the dunes. When we were well past the cactus forest, she spoke in a more normal tone to say, “We should avoid those areas, if they attract more creatures like that.”

“Plants could mean water,” I said, automatically voicing a survival concern that had always been ingrained in me back home. She gestured to the drizzling mist above her head and I grinned sheepishly. “Point taken,” I conceded, and we decided to avoid the cactus forests.