I could hear her crying. Picture her arms reaching out to me. If only I could open my eyes and finally see her clearly. I needed to tell her she didn’t need to worry any longer, that I would come back. That I’d never leave her again.
That would be a lie. Even if I could stretch my hand out far enough to touch her, it would slip from her grasp. I was doomed, and only one fate awaited me, the one I’d found here.
A low, blood-red light pierced the horizon, chasing away the vast blackness overhead, leaving only murky desolation behind. It wasn’t a sun. I didn’t believe such a thing existed in this realm, but the light did make it easier to see where I placed my feet.
Things . . . shifted beneath me as I walked. They coiled as if they’d strike, but so far, nothing had. How long before I couldn’t keep going? How long before I gave up and let the ground absorb me?
Then, I’d become one of the lights peppering the heavens overhead.
Never. Giving up wasn’t in me, or I would’ve sunk into that void long ago.
I kept walking. I’d do it forever. The wall would end. I’d find my way around it and to her and then—
I spied something ahead and to my left, pinched on the edge of the wasteland far enough away it could be a mirage. It might be something sent to blind or confuse me. Yet itcouldbe real. I sensed this.
I also sensed I needed to travel there if only to satisfy my curiosity.
Leaving the wall wasn’t drawing me away from my need to reach her. No force ruling this realm compelled me, but I followed a call fromwithinme. Pacing out into the sand, aiming for it, was the reward for my persistence.
With each step, the ground pulled me down to my ankles, and the things waiting below touched me, their claws raking across my soles, their muffled shrieks pummeling my mind.
Turn back before it’s too late,they whispered in a voice meant to lull.
If I stopped, they’d consume the only part of me left. My body was not here. Only my soul.
These things craved it.
Nothing but pain waits for you in this direction.
“Shut up,” I muttered, tugging my feet from the drowning soil and striding faster.
I walked forever, long enough to lose track of time. Or therewas no time in this realm. Only sorrow and pain and endless desolation. I didn’t turn back; I kept going, my pace picking up to a jog and then to a full-out run.
Sand, jagged with tiny blades, cut the bottoms of my feet. One more thing determined to slow me down, to make me return to the wall where I would walk until I fell in defeat. Then, they would take me.
The mirage did not get closer, but I did not falter. I kept running, bellowing out the name of my love like it was a spell that could chase away darkness.
As I ran, the world lightened with blood-red streaks clawing their way up into the sky.
My breathing raged in my chest, and my heart beat much too fast, but I did not falter.
Finally, the images grew larger. I was close. I could almost smell, taste, and hear whatever awaited me on the horizon.
The soil erupted around me, snake-like limbs snapping up into the air before falling to strike the ground. A creature roared and snapped its long fangs, gobbling up the sand and rocks and dirt as it scrambled toward me.
Something struck the bottom of my foot, and I gaped down as I raced faster, snarling as an endless maw sucked at the sand beneath me.
Pillars and smooth stone loomed ahead, a two-story, a crumbling structure that should not be here.
As the beast flung its limbs around by legs and bit down on my foot, I sent out my threads, snapping them at the pillars. They encircled one . ..
. . . and I used it to rip me from the creature’s grasp, yanking my body up onto the smooth slabs of marble scattered with sand sparkling red and orange.
I lay with my face pressed against the cold stone while the beast roared out its frustrated rage in the wasteland behind me.
6
TEMPEST
