Land of the Dunes

1: Can You Hear the Music

Papers rustle. People around can be seen placing all sorts of documents and files into drawers. The symphony of sand plays its airy music as the sounds of the office only grow louder and louder, waiting for something to happen.

And then, someone opened their mouth.

"I will need to register your identities first before we can start recording the criminal information. Can you please identify yourself?"

"My name is Akatsuki. Akatsuki Sakyu," the boy responded.

He sat, restlessly fidgeting in a chair in front of the table separating the woman questioning him, naturally uneasy about the circumstances that led to this.

"Alright then. Next one, please."

"H-Huh? M-Me?" the other boy stutters. The woman found him particularly girl-like and was fond of his appearance, so she relaxed the tense muscles on her grim face to calm him down.

"Yes, the one with the beanie, please."

"M-My name is Raya... Just Raya."

"Thank you, and for you..."

"The name's Montri. Montri Mayez. We can just forget about all of this and go for a drink if you'd like."

"Disgusting..."

The woman disparagingly stared at him while uttering something he couldn't really hear, so he kept his smile as if his trick had somehow worked.

"I've written down your names, so we can start the interrogation now," she announced to them, "We can start with you, Akatsuki. Why did you choose to illegally leave the grounds of the cities of Sdan and enter dangerous territory?"

"..." He pauses, "Is it okay if I don't answer that?"

"Sir, this is a mandatory question that will be evaluated heavily. This information will not be used against you, and will not affect the severity of your crime."

"O-Okay..." he nodded. He picks his words and gathers his thoughts for a while before he finally speaks his reasons.

"I've... been having dreams."

"Dreams that jolt me awake at night and get me thinking about it all night."

"In it, strong flows of energy unfathomable for humans to obtain circulate in front of my eyes. They have many colors... It's hard to even say that they're colors."

"Standing in endless corridors, I hear violins I've listened to when I snuck into the area where all the women live. It, the checkered floor, the grand windows that can only belong to royalty... it was all beautiful, just like the energy streams... "

"I figured out what they were. They were the vitality of the artifacts. The ones that give us the power to fight back against the monsters of day and night."

"I saw the capabilities of what they could do. The potency of every single minute particle swimming across the rivers made out of its own kind. I could see them release a power greater than anything this world could have ever needed."

"Even those corridors. Even they have thousands of hundreds of the artifacts' vigor running through them, like threads that I could touch and weave, like humanity utilizing these abilities previously thought to only be accessible to gods."

"Statues lined up as I walked down the middle. They must've all been warriors. Warriors of the past and maybe even warriors of the future. All of them seemingly pointing to whatever was on the other end of the hallway shrouded in the darkness of space."