Although there were no monsters in this stretch of desert, we all needed lots of water if we wanted to make it make it to the Puppeteer’s Grove in one piece.
And so, we took small sips from our water pouches as the hot sun continued to beat down on us.
After walking for more than twelve hours, we noticed that the sun didn’t seem to move from its position in the sky. Which meant that the concept of day and night did not exist here. It was just hot, suffocating day throughout.
The person who suffered the most was Evelyn. After all, she was a dominant of the water element and so, after the unrelenting hours in the unmoving sun, she was already feeling really weakened. Her skin had also completely dried up and begun to crack.
"How... far... are we?" She asked, her voice sounding thin and parched as she struggled to keep her pace alongside the rest of us.
Ino halted and wiped sweat from her face with her sleeve, then she looked at the whisper globe for a moment before turning behind to Evelyn.
"If we keep walking onward at this pace without stopping, we should be able to get out of this desert within the next... twenty four hours."
Ino paused to catch her breath, then she raised her pouch of water and drank a measured gulp before turning forward to continue on.
The rest of us continued on too behind her.
Except for Evelyn who spoke from time to time asking, "Are we there yet?" the rest of us trudged on in silence, as we didn’t have any spare energy to waste on conversation.
The hours went by painfully slowly.
Then, all of a sudden, Celeste stiffened and reached out to grab my hand.
Everyone tensed at first, thinking an unexpected monster had showed up, but when we followed the direction of Celeste’s gaze, that was when we saw the body of a cadet lying in the sand.
The moment my gaze caught onto the body of the young girl on the floor, my eyes widened.
’Huh?’
My brain felt like it buffered for a moment.
’What?!’
"I don’t know her." Ino muttered, then turned tiredly to the rest of us. "Do you guys know her?"
Evelyn bent over and held her knees for a few long seconds, then shook her head tiredly. Meanwhile, Celeste looked to me, who was still staring at the fallen cadet in disbelief. She knew that I knew about the cadet.
’How did she die?’ I thought as I took a step closer to the corpse.
Because of the extreme heat, the corpse did not decay but rather, it looked like it was made of old parchment.
Her face was sunken and her skin had turned a deep, burnt bronze, but the shape of her jaw and the way her hair fell over her forehead was unmistakable.
I was looking at the body of Audrey, my friend.
After a few seconds, I muttered somberly, "I know her."
The others all turned to look at me, but I ignored them and crouched down beside the body. ’What could have killed her out here?’
Seeing her lifeless body here, even though she was closer to the original Cedric than she was to me, I couldn’t help but feel a really cold ache in my chest. I suddenly remembered our last conversation at the dance ball and her expression then.
At that moment, Celeste’s hand rested gently on my shoulder. She was probably trying to comfort me or something.
Without looking at Celeste, I raised my hand over Audrey’s corpse and activated my inventory, then I muttered to the rest of the party. "I’m bringing her with me."
Audrey’s body was enveloped in a faint, green shimmering light before it vanished entirely, leaving nothing behind but a shallow indentation in the parched sand.
Raising my water pouch, I took a few long gulps, sighed deeply and straightened up.
’I wish this was alcohol.’
Then I turned to Ino and nodded stiffly, "Let’s keep going."
Everyone turned and we all continued our slow trek through the dunes.
As we walked on under the oppressive, unchanging light, Aika’s voice echoed in my mind. ’Are you okay?’~~
I gave a small, almost imperceptible nod, ’Yeah.’~
I didn’t really feel like talking after that, and the silence of the desert seemed to agree with me. The hours began to stretch and bleed into one another until the concept of time felt as distorted as the heat waves on the horizon.
Our clothes were all stiff with dried sweat and layered in a fine, gritty coating of dust, and we were all reaching a level of exhaustion that made every breath feel like a chore. But because we could not make camp, we had no choice than to keep walking on until we could finally see the small river that signaled that we had reached the end of the desert.
It was a shallow wading river that was crystal clear and probably ankle-to-knee deep. The moment we saw it, Evelyn bolted with a sudden, desperate burst of energy that I didn’t think she had left. She went past the mud and green reeds at the bank, leaping straight into the coldness of the river with a splash before collapsing onto her knees in the center of the stream.
"Ahhh... it’s so cold," Evelyn moaned softly as she completely submerged herself into the flow.
By the time we all finally reached the stream, the boys immediately had to look away. During the fight with Yami’s hollow dominants, most of Evelyn’s clothes had been shredded, especially the part around her cleavage and thighs, and with her fully wet, the thin, tattered fabric had become almost entirely translucent, clinging to her skin in a way that left very little to the imagination.
"My lady! Dignity! Dignity!" Julius yelled with a face that was turning a deep, frantic shade of crimson. He looked like he was caught between a desire to drag her out of the water and the sheer panic of seeing way more than he was supposed to, his hands hovering awkwardly for a second before he spun around. He ended up with his back facing her, squeezing his eyes shut as if that could somehow undo what he’d already seen.
Ino was standing really close to Dion, her face practically inches from his to make sure the perverted bastard wouldn’t even think about trying to turn around.
As for me, well, I was just standing there, intently admiring the beautiful desert we had just left behind. I found myself very interested in the way the sand met the horizon and how the distant dunes seemed to shimmer in that unmoving sun: basically anything that wasn’t the river.
"Aisssh! How lewd..." I muttered under my breath, my eyes still fixed firmly on the wasteland as the sound of splashing continued behind me.