The Book of Zaldar

Chapter 4: Zaldar: The Forsaken Desert

We- being Mom, Baby Zeref, Me, and my Sprite Dragon: Percy- trekked into the Forsaken Desert without stopping to consider the facts. First, we had not gotten food, apart from Zeref, that is. Second, the sun was beginning to rise higher in the sky, and third- probably most importantly- we forgot that there was no trail. There was quite frankly, a run down, beat up fence that smelled of rust and looked as if it had been dumped there by accident, separating a massive forest from an even bigger desert. Very few could ever really go through and live to tell the tale. Most took the long way through the sea, or found other means. We were poor, rushed, and in a massive hurry. We couldn't go around because the desert actually covered the whole of one end of Fiore to the other and ended at the shore in the form of a beach. Much more pleasing than the sun dried dune wasteland that was in front of us.

Thus, through the desert it was. The first thing I can remember was the blistering heat. We were only several steps in before the sun seriously wiped me. I think I had a stroke, I could taste the blood on my lip from my nose and I don't remember falling or hitting the sand. For the rest of the journey, the smell of blood plagued my senses.

My Mom was able to nurse me back to full health, which is surprising, considering the fact we were in a huge desert plopped in the middle of nowhere. "Sorry for holding us back. This place really stinks." I commented while collecting my thoughts.

"That's probably just the blood from your nose." Percy snidely responded. He knew that no one else could hear him and so I couldn't do anything about it. The sweltering heat was beginning to get to him too, no matter how much he hated to admit it. The sand danced in front of my face as I got up. Beautifully terrifying pictures streamed across the desert in all directions and shapes. My face was covered in the hot sand because of my fall. The lack of wind made the blistering heat all the more painful.

As we were walking, I was able to get a look at the scenery. There were endless piles of nothing but sand going on for what seemed to be eternity in all directions. Even the entrance had faded from view and though there was no actual breeze, our footprints had mysteriously disappeared.

"Wasn't there a tribe living in the desert to see if they could brave the wild?" I asked my mother who was currently checking Zeref's body temperature.

"Yes, they were known as the Zengivus Nomads. It was said that you could never see the same tribe twice. That was just how fast they would move and how vast this place is. The Aloran Nomads stay in the mountains and the Nyxral Nomads live in the sky. Don't ask me how they got there, they just do." My mother replied. She took out a special solution she had concocted for Zeref to keep him from overheating. So far, it was working.

"Is everything alright?" I directed this question to Percy this time.

"Oh yes, just dandy." The sarcasm in his tone was even more clear than a sunny day. Mixed with the tiredness of his voice and you had one very grumpy dragon. Albeit, a weak, small dragon, but a grumpy dragon all the same.

The sand was beginning to swallow us up. I could feel my eyes getting droopier. It took all my energy to resist the urge to simply lie down and take a nap from which I would never wake up. I could tell that the rest of the party felt that way as well. This must be where the stories would come from. When people would go in and never come out. The desert would literally swallow them whole. I thought to myself.

It burned me out to even mutter the words, "Do we have any food?" My stomach began to rumble crazily as if the word food triggered a chain reaction of gurgles.

"Yes, but if we were to sit and eat, we would, without a doubt, fall asleep and die. This desert is designed to suck the life energy out of people. I guess that could reinforce the drive to eat." My mother was starting to have a harder time staying awake now. She was slumping and Zeref's dead weight- he was asleep- wasn't helping at all.

"If you would like-"

"No!" Mom cut me off, she sounded angry now. "I am his mother! Not you! I am! Let me take care of him!" She had found new energy, brought by her willpower as a mom. The renewed strength started to rub off onto me. There was no way that I was going to be fully energized by a few words, but it definitely helped. Even Percy seemed a little more awake.

Then, out of nowhere, the ground began to rumble which felt really weird because we were standing on sand. The ground was visibly shaking under our feet and a crack appeared in the sand. This  line got wider as more sand tumbled into the chasm. As we were running away from this streak in the sand, I could tell we were getting more tired. My steps were getting more and more sluggish. An apple fell out of one of the pouches in my bag but I was too tired to pick it up. The line, which was now the size of a canyon, stopped growing and instead began to shrink. When the line had disappeared completely from view a monster rose out of the dunes. A Wyrm had appeared with a massive crash! The thing was gigantic! Its body was thicker than any tree trunk I had ever seen. Its teeth gyrated faster than I could see. Comparing its target: my apple to it would be like comparing a sun with the planet. It was no wonder that the apple was eaten in one fluid motion along with a bunch of sand and anything else that could have possibly been in the sand at the time.

The monster made a noise, the noise that I could only interpret as a belch and sunk back beneath the sand. "Am I the only one that noticed that?" I asked my group.

"Nope, and now, I really want to get out of here." Percy replied only to me again.

"That was a Wyrm, they have no eyes or ears, but their sense of smell is simply off the charts which is bad news for us. The apple had your scent on it, it fell from your pack. It'll be back for the main dish. It can't see or hear us, but it can feel the vibrations of our feet and smell us. I assume that means that the Wyrm is trying to detect when a body falls onto the sand. All we have to do is keep from falling. It's lost the art of surprise, we know it's here now and so we must act cautiously. That also means that we can't get food until we're out of here. We should have eaten before we came." My mother was such a genius. She had said all those things in a matter of seconds without any form of doubt in her head. It was no wonder that she was such the shining star of the school she went to.

"Okay, but since the fissure incident, I get the feeling that we are way off course." I said somberly.

"Then could you ask your sprite dragon to fly into the sky and tell us where the other side is and what direction it's in?" She was the one to ask the questions and make the requests now.

I relayed the message to my dragon because he was too tired to notice what she said. "Okay, but don't let me touch the sand if I fall. If I get killed by that worm thing again, I will haunt you for the rest of your days." Percy had said back. Before I could correct him on the term Wyrm, he had already flown high into the sky and was checking out the area. He decided to come back down to us and landed on my shoulder. "No, I couldn't see anything. All there was, was sand. I did see some people making their way in our direction though. I guess that's kind of worth mentioning." Percy decided to shrug off the fact that these people could have been our only chance of survival. I told Mom what Percy had told me and her eyes got wider.

"What did these people look like?" She inquired of Percy. Her voice was sharper now and more refined, she was in an obvious hurry to find out more about them.

"They were kind of weird, they were riding on these whale- like things. They appeared to be surfing on the sand. They ought to be here in maybe a couple seconds." Percy said casually.

Unfortunately for us, he was right. By the time I had even relayed the message, the sound of oncoming traffic was well on its way. We had company and they did not appear to be very happy with us. It seemed as though we were the intruders, which, in a way we were. Unfortunately, I came to realize later on, that I would really regret not having lunch.