After about ten minutes, Hadjar closed his eyes and smiled. A dry, but pleasant wind blew across his face. The surface was already close.
In another ten minutes, the platform stopped and the runes went out.
“Come on,” Ramukhan said.
He pushed forward, past the shutters made of translucent mica that let light come through. The wind immediately rushed into the elevator. It played with the Bedouin amulets hanging in Hadjar’s hair, which had grown slightly over the past two months.
This time, Hadjar didn’t feel the same enthusiasm as before while standing atop the mountain hidden by the clouds. He saw white, motionless, fluffy clouds, nearby mountains piercing through the clouds as well, and the blue-black sky and the stars, both of which seemed like they were so close... Due to the new atmosphere, he felt slightly dizzy, but that was it. The inhabitants of Underworld City felt a lot worse. Ramukhan handed out wide, red strips of fabric to everyone. Once they’d covered their noses with them, the underworld dwellers started breathing much more freely. To Einen, what was happening was quite logical, but Hadjar once again found he had a poor understanding of things.
“Apparently, you don’t know about the true path of cultivation either,” Glen said, standing next to him.
“Do you want to tell me anything about it?”
His former enemy, and now a member of the squad he was on, arched his eyebrow and grunted arrogantly. “The knowledge I gained cost me too much to share with you. But I believe this supposedly ‘true path’ wouldn’t have been forgotten in our kingdoms if it had actually been true.”
Hadjar looked at the witches and sorcerers who were trying to catch their breath. Indeed, while he couldn’t do what they could, and while he didn’t understand Shakar’s and the others’ Techniques, he was, at the very least, in harmony with his own body, which they clearly weren’t.
“I wonder,” Einen went over to the edge of the cliff and peered through the bottomless abyss of clouds, “how are we supposed to get down from here?”
Karissa just smiled. She approached the entrance to Underworld City and touched the stone ledge. With a dull echo, a part of the wall moved aside, exposing a niche filled with balls of some kind. Ramukhan helped the witch pull enough out. The balls turned out to be multicolored rags, each three feet in diameter.
“Are you kidding me?” Hadjar was unable to hide his shock at what he was expecting to happen next.
“Are you afraid of heights?” Tilis’ lips stretched into a bloodthirsty grin.
Ramukhan handed everyone a ball.
“Direct a stream of your energy into it and hold on tight.”
Leading by example, Ramukhan wrapped one of the rags around his wrist. After making sure that everything was firmly in place, he released a stream of reddish energy. Like water to a jug, it flowed into the ball, making it bigger and bigger, until Ramukhan was lifted off the ground and the wind carried him toward the clouds.
“Hurry up!” His voice came from underneath the clouds.
With the same bloodthirsty grin, Tilis grabbed her ball and jumped off the cliff, bumping Hadjar with her shoulder as she passed by him. Karissa followed after her. She took the boy along with her, as he simply didn’t have enough energy to power the artifact.
Salif took a nervous Glen with him, since he also had no problems flying among the clouds using the rag ball.
“You know,” Einen unwound his turban and wrapped it around his belt, clutching it as tightly as a drowning man might clutch floating debris. “I sometimes think that it would’ve been better if I’d spent all of my savings and just bought a ticket to join a noble caravan.”
Hadjar looked at the bottomless abyss again and swallowed noisily. He kicked a pebble off the cliff, not to hear the echo, but just to calm his nerves. That had been Nero’s advice on the day they’d climbed the Blue Wind pass.
“W-wait for me,” Hadjar asked, stuttering a little.
He didn’t make a whole show of it like Einen had, but simply wrapped the rag around his wrist. It cut into his wrist, but this pain was a welcome one. It soothed him and allowed him to distract himself from his other frightening thoughts.
“On three,” Einen suggested.
Hadjar nodded and shouted, “Three!”
Grabbing his friend by the shoulder, he jumped down. Expecting the usual pull of gravity, Hadjar was very surprised when he ‘went’ through the clouds. There was no shaking, or a howling wind in his ears, nothing that would indicate that they were falling rapidly.
The ball of fabric was handling its task quite well. It lowered them slowly.
Cold, moist clouds licked his heels. This sensation was much more realistic than the dream in which Hadjar had fought against either Traves’ shadow, or his own Self… Or his Dragon Self? It was still a bit confusing.
Soon, the dampness of the clouds gave way to a hot wind. Even at such a height, a scorching, hellish heat still reigned in the Sea of Sand, but, of course, it wasn’t as unbearable as the heat on the ground was.
In addition, the view that Hadjar was now seeing had been worth spending two months beneath the ground for. The vast expanses of the desert really looked like a shimmering, golden sea from above. The dunes were like waves. The beautiful sight could’ve deceived anyone not familiar with the place with its veneer of serenity. However, Hadjar was all too aware of the perils of this region.
Turning to Einen, Hadjar started to ask him something, but realized that, at the moment, it was better not to annoy the islander. He was clutching his rag with both hands and whispering softly. Apparently, he was praying to the Great Tortoise, or his forefathers.
They descended the mountain in about fifteen minutes. The artifacts weren’t as simple as they’d seemed at first glance.
At the foot of the mountain, the rest of the squad was already waiting for Hadjar and Einen. They were loading up camels at the Alpha Stage, which had been prepared in advance. The animals were tall, strong, and capable of crossing the entire desert several times over without breaking a sweat. There were fourteen of them. Tied together in a long row, they were calmly grazing... sand. It was amazing.
“Choose whichever one you like,” Ramukhan threw a rag saddle to Hadjar and returned to his business.
Hadjar would’ve preferred to use his own legs, but he realized that that would’ve made things take an impossibly long time. Finally, he chose the smallest and frailest camel. He did so because Hadjar felt like he could deal with it easily.
“Hello.” Hadjar stroked the animal’s hard, rough nostrils.
The camel head-butted Hadjar in the shoulder so hard that he barely stayed upright.
“Let’s go!” Ramukhan commanded, mounting the mighty beast walking at the forefront of the column.
Hadjar cursed, quickly threw his saddle between the unruly beast’s humps, and climbed up onto the camel’s broad back. The sun was just beginning to set when their group set off to search for the mythical library.
Chapter 355
Nothing significant happened during the first week of their journey. Well, apart from the fact that they’d stopped wearing the glasses and Hadjar could now sort of look at the sandy expanses surrounding him. The white bandage around his face didn’t allow him to see much. It covered his nose, mouth, and even went down under his caftan’s collar.
The sandstorms had become more frequent, kicking up waves of dust. They couldn’t harm a practitioner’s strong body, but having to constantly cough wasn’t exactly a prospect anyone relished.
The squad traveled in almost complete silence. Each of them was lost in their own thoughts. Only occasionally would Glen consult with Salif, and then they’d talk to Ramukhan, and then the unofficial, but obvious leader of the squad would either keep them going in the same direction or tell them where to turn.
The desert responded to their silence with its own. They saw hundreds of magnificent, huge dunes, and even small oases sometimes, ones that were no bigger than a village square. They encoun
tered neither caravans nor Bedouins around them. That was because oases like these could succor a traveler with cold water and vegetation one day, and then another sand dune would appear in its place tomorrow. The desert was truly unpredictable. And so was Einen.
“By the Great Turtle, I already miss Underworld City,” the islander sighed.
“Until recently, you were missing the desert.”
Einen was riding ahead of him and so Hadjar didn’t get to see his reaction, but he was sure that the islander rolled his eyes in response.
“A man always misses what he doesn’t have at the moment,” Einen answered and then fell silent.
The whole squad stayed silent until nightfall. Ramukhan and Glen consulted the map drawn by Salif. The boy was talking to Tilis about something. They had quickly found common ground. Judging by their sidelong glances, they were united by a common hatred for the same pair of people.
Karissa sunbathed. The witch, who had come up to the surface for the first time in her life, had almost stripped naked, wearing only a light loincloth made from a translucent fabric. Leaning against the hump of her camel, she reveled in the sunlight. Despite the merciless, scorching sun, her skin was only bronzed, tanning evenly and not burning at all. Surely, this was due to her closeness with the Fire Spirit or something like that.
At first, everyone had stared at her, even Ramukhan and Salif, but no one was paying her any attention now.
To Hadjar’s and Einen’s delight, since they felt like they would soon die of boredom, by the end of the eighth day, the squad reached the most dangerous region of the Sea of Sand. According to Salif, who’d lived long enough to be considered wise, this place was called the Demon’s Heart. It was a very droll name, but it fit the area perfectly.
Hadjar, who’d already witnessed several wonders of nature, once again couldn’t hold back his exclamation of surprise. They stood on the crest of a dune and looked ahead.
Behind them, the desert seemed to go on forever. The waves of dunes overflew around them. Bathed in the light of the stars and moon, they flickered slightly and created the illusion of mountains of treasure.
Ahead of them, the same types of dunes were visible, but they didn’t shine or flicker. It was as if they’d completely absorbed what little light the night could provide, and as a result, they were pitch black. Lightning bolts flashed in the sky, unceasing. Red, like blood, they snaked around the sky, leaving behind an unpleasant smell of something getting singed, as if they were burning something in the sky.
“What a-”
The boy, who had been leaning down to pick up a bit of black sand, was stopped by Ramukhan’s kick. The boy flew through the air from the force of the kick, even spinning a few times. A clear separation between the white and black sand served as an indicator of where the Sea of Sand ended and the Demon’s Heart began.
“Do you want to die?” Ramukhan growled out, looming over the prone boy.
No one, not even Salif, was going to hold the head of the squad back.
“No, I don’t!” The boy gritted through clenched teeth.
“You almost left Salif without an assistant!” Ramukhan shouted. “Or do you think that we should be the ones to carry the old man’s bag and help him relieve himself?”
The mention of his ignoble duties left the boy’s cheeks red, not with shame, but with impotent anger.
“Ramukhan,” Tilis jumped off her camel and went over to man. “I don’t think he understands what you mean. And neither do the others.”
She gave Hadjar a look full of contempt and anger.
“I’ll provide a demonstration, then.” Ramukhan pulled the boy’s turban off and threw it toward the black sand.
As soon as the fabric crossed the invisible border separating the two areas, a red lightning bolt descended from the sky. It turned the turban into a handful of ash in less than a moment.
Hadjar was more amazed by the fact that the sand it had struck didn’t even melt. On the contrary, like a hungry beast, it had ‘opened its mouth’ and absorbed the lightning, becoming a little bit darker.
“What the fuck?” Glen swore in Baliumian.
Hadjar couldn’t blame him. He was also mentally cursing in almost all the languages he knew.
“We’ll be camping here, at the foot of the dune,” Ramukhan commanded. “Salif, you’ll go with me, the others can rest up. By morning, I’ll have made us a passage, and we’ll be able to begin our assignment. I hope everyone is ready for what awaits us on the other side of the veil.”
“The veil,” Einen repeated.
Hadjar looked at his friend curiously. Einen shook his head.
Following the man’s order, they set up camp. The boy, who, in addition to helping the old man, was their collective squire, cook, and fire tender, first made a fire, then began to cook. Even the common soldiers of the Moon Army would’ve refused to eat the porridge that he made, and they’d sometimes eaten cooked grass. The hunters had left the city almost empty-handed and therefore didn’t have a lot of provisions.
When everyone settled down on their sleeping bags and started eating dinner, Hadjar whispered to Einen: “What do you know about these veils?”
The islander blew on his spoon, tried the porridge, grimaced, but still swallowed it. It’s not like he had a choice.
“I only know that they aren’t a natural occurrence.”
“What do you mean?”
Einen glanced at his friend.
“I mean,” he answered, “That someone conjures these veils, and they’re usually meant to protect treasuries or secret libraries. To enter one, you must either understand the art of seals and break the veil, or have a key.”
Hadjar looked at the top of the dune. Strong disturbances in the flows of the World River could be felt coming from there. Multicolored flashes were visible and Ramukhan’s cursing could sometimes be heard as well. Apparently, their hacking wasn’t producing the best results.
“Wait,” it suddenly dawned on Hadjar. “In order to cover such a large area with a veil...”
“Exactly,” Einen nodded. “I don’t know who did it, but the veil encompasses a huge territory. And the fact that Ramukhan is getting through it...”
“Means that he has special artifacts,” Hadjar nodded, “like everyone else who’s already inside. It would hardly be possible to break through such a defense on your own.”
“Well, that, or your cultivation would need to be at least one level higher than a Spirit Knight’s,” Einen confirmed.
For a while, they looked at the top of the dune together. For some reason, it seemed like they were being deceived.
Damned intrigues!
“What are you two chatting about?”
Tilis sat down between Einen and Hadjar. She was smiling, but her eyes were as sharp as daggers.
“Maybe you want to kill us all while we sleep?”
Tilis had a new theory about how Hadjar had killed Serra. She believed that her sister had foolishly trusted the northerner, who had then treacherously killed her in her sleep to steal her pass to Underworld City.
“Tilis,” Hadjar sighed wearily, “I’ve already told you that I’m not responsible for your sister’s death. I loved her like my own sister.”
The witch jerked back and looked into Hadjar’s eyes. Her green eyes flashed.
“Can you swear it on your blood?”
Hadjar remained silent.
“What? Can you swear it or not?”
She didn’t notice she was crying. Everyone was quiet. All eyes were turned toward them. Tilis was still screaming, and Hadjar was staring blankly at the fire.
“Tilis!” Karissa rose to her feet sharply when Tilis’ rod started burning with bright, white energy.
For a couple of seconds, the witches stared each other down, until Tilis got up and went back to her sleeping bag.
“That’s what I thought,” she muttered. “I swear, northerner, even if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll kill you one day.”
Hadjar just kept looking into the fire. He hadn’t been able to swear that he was a human once, and now he couldn’t swear that he wasn’t to blame for Serra’s death. He didn’t even believe it himself...
Looking at the fire, Hadjar remembered the day when the three of them had sat around and chatted about something. The next day, their final battle had awaited them.
It was almost similar to what was going on right now...
Touching the wallet the bracelets were in, Hadjar sighed, poured his porridge out on the sand, wrapped himself in his blanket, and plunged into deep meditation. It was the only thing that could give him some peace these days.
Chapter 356
After five hours of meditation, Hadjar opened his eyes and looked around. Everyone was asleep. They didn’t need to take turns guarding the camp, Karissa’s spells surrounding it were enough to warn them about any surprise attacks.
Wrapped in his blanket, Hadjar stood up and climbed to the top of the dune. Ramukhan and Salif had already finished their work. A slightly flickering arch was visible in the air, and he spotted it without even needing to view it through the World River. A wind blew out from it. It was alien and evil. It promised danger. Hadjar met it with a childish joy. His heart yearned for adventure, and his body ached for a fight.
“I have one question for you, Northerner,” someone nearby spoke.
Einen stepped out of the shadows. He did it casually, like someone stepping over the threshold of their home. The Technique had used to unnerve Hadjar once, but now he’d even learned to anticipate his friend’s arrival.
“What?”
The islander sat down next to him. He held out his hand and Azrea jumped on it with a joyful meow. She really liked the bald lover of philosophy and mysteries.
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