I can’t hold on any longer.
My feet leave the ground again.
Out of nowhere, an arm reaches out and secures me.
It’s Cyrus!
He anchors us in the sand as he struggles to fight the wind. But the storm is too strong. It lifts us both from the ground pulling us into the mouth of chaos.
The sand-splintered wind clashes against my skin, gnawing, grinding at my flesh as the storm drags me through the sky. It rips my armor from me, slinging it in every direction. Sand blinds me, as
I feel myself being torn apart. It seeps into my mouth and nose, filling my lungs with every breath I try to take. I’m suffocating..
Wrapping my arms over my head, I slam my eyes closed, and wish for this nightmare to end.
Being jerked through the skin, I collide with a stranger. Her hands grab me. I fight the sand to look down. Her long brown hair covers her face. I can barely see her crimson eyes. “Kalli?”
She claws at me as I desperately try to hold on to her.
It’s no use. The storm is too powerful.
I can’t hold on any longer.
Her terrified eyes, begging for her life, wound the deepest parts of me as she is taken by the storm, taken from me again.
Moments later I crash shoulder first on the floor of the Outlands as my body is flung down a hill that never ends.
The dark clouds above me dissolve. The wind dies down as the sun begins to duck behind the tallest dune to the west. Just as quickly as it came, it’s gone.
I’m sure I broke something. My right arm is numb. I can’t move it at all without a sharp pain shooting through me. Despite the ringing in my ears, I hear her haunting voice again, “Save them.”
I rise, choking, as sand falls from my half-buried body. Every attempt to stand results in my immediate plummet back to the ground. My body flinches at the pain in my shoulder as I brace it
grabbing my wrist with my other hand keeping it close to my chest. I look around me. Lifeless bodies litter an ocean of black sand.
“Help me!” cries a stranger.
Limping over to him I flop down and begin digging him out. One of his legs is twisted behind him as he cries out in agony. His breaths are rapid. His eyes, frantic.
“Help me, please! Help me!” he begs.
I.. I don’t know what to do.
I freeze looking for something – anything to help.
“Take my hand,” I order as I extend my good arm above his chest and wedge my feet in the sand.
Sobbing, he holds on for dear life as I use my weight to lift him off his twisted leg. He collapses back into the sand cringing from the pain. His grateful eyes continue to cry as he lies there holding his bleeding and broken leg with the most confused look on his face.
My eyes continue to search the aftermath. The realness of this horror sets in.
There. That’s her. I rush over to the body of a woman bleeding from her nose and ears.
I push my finger to her neck.
I’m.. I’m too late.
I move her curls from her face.
It’s not her. Only another stranger.
The warmth of someone’s hand is felt on my shoulder, consoling me. Like a chain reaction, the hair on the back of my neck stretches as streams of tears break my internal levee, flooding from my eyes. I turn to see Cyrus behind me. He’s bleeding from a cut on his forehead. His wide eyes are blank as they stare straight ahead. His trembling lips do not speak.
After a few minutes, three foreigners appear over the mound in front of us. They make their way down the rocky hill and stumble over as we move to greet them halfway. Their bones push against their skin. The rags they wear are just barely hanging on. Bruised and battered, they look as if they haven’t eaten in days.
“Who are you?” asks the oldest of the three men. He looks deathly with sunken cheeks and hollow, black-ringed eyes. He has a hole embedded on the inside of his right forearm, looks infected.
“I am Palin.. of Elysium,” I reply firmly, wiping away the tears.
His face reveals his confusion as if my words are unfamiliar to him. He looks down and apologizes as he nervously introduces himself as Jason of Argo.
“We’ve run out of food,” he says after a minute of staring into the sand in silence.
He adjusts the yellow frayed scarf around his neck as he mumbles, “We used all of our supplies… We had no place to go... We couldn’t stay in the ark.”
I glance over to Cyrus. He’s still in shock. I’m not sure if he knows where he’s at right now.
“I.. I didn’t know. I didn’t know the storm would…” The old man’s guilt-stricken eyes bounce from left to right rapidly as he raises his palms to them. The other two strangers stare silently into the desert in disbelief.
“The ark?” I keenly ask.
Jason’s crazy eyes snap to me as if I said something I shouldn’t have.
“What do you know about Argo??” he asks as he hastily takes a few steps back. His eyes growing wilder under his accusing brow. Puzzled he demands again, “Who dare tell you about the ark?”
“You… just did,” I cautiously reply.
He cocks his head to the side and walks around me continuing in the direction of the setting sun, whispering something to himself.
Cyrus looks at me bewilderedly.
This man is mad.
After just a couple of steps, he shouts in the direction of his two peculiar followers still awkwardly standing beside us, “Hurry now! You’re gonna miss dinner.”
With their heads down they silently comply, following their master clumsily in the sand. Their emotionless faces do not give me happy thoughts.
Cyrus and I cautiously trail from a distance as they stumble through the consequence of the storm. Bodies in every direction speckle the black sand like a ghastly reflection of the
