Terrible Purpose (Dune Fanfiction)

Chapter Fourteen

This chapter is brought to you by: Citizen Erased by Muse.

I'm going to add a symbol of "~~~" once the new content starts, that wasn't part of the "Chapter Preview" I published earlier. Enjoy!!

"Now Harkonnen shall kill Harkonnen," Paul whispered.

Nyla had awoken shortly before her brother's words, on the cusp of nightfall. She sat up in the sealed and darkened stilltent. She heard the vague stirrings of their mother where she slept against the tent's opposite wall.

Nyla glanced at the proximity detector on the floor, studying the dials illuminated in the blackness by phosphor tubes.

"It should be night soon," Jessica said. "Why don't you lift the tent shades?"

Nyla failed to notice that her mother's breathing had been different for some time, that she must have lain silent in the darkness until certain her children were awake.

"Lifting the shades wouldn't help," Paul said. "There's been a storm. The tent's covered by sand. I'll dig us out soon."

"No sign of Duncan yet?" Jessica asked.

"None." Came his aloof reply.

Nyla watched Paul rub absently at the ducal signet on his thumb.

A sudden rage against the very substance of this planet which had helped kill their father set Nyla trembling.

"I heard the storm begin," Jessica said.

The undemanding emptiness of her words helped restore some of Nyla's calm. Her mind focused on the sounds of the storm - cold dribbles of sand had funneled into their basin and shadowed the sky with dull curry, then blotted out all light as the tent was covered.

"Try the receiver again," Jessica said.

"No use," Nyla whispered.

She found her stillsuit's watertube in its clip at her neck, drew a warm swallow into her mouth, and she thought that here she truly began an Arrakeen existence - living on reclaimed moisture from her own breath and body. It was flat and tasteless water, but it soothed her throat.

Nyla heard Paul drinking in a similar fashion, but it seemed as though Jessica refused to accept her clearly present thirst.

Part of Nyla believed it so much easier to drift back down into sleep.

But there had been a dream in this day's sleep, and she shivered at memory of it. She had held dreaming hands beneath sandflow where a name had been written: Duke Leto Atreides . The name had blurred with the sand and she had moved to restore it, but the first letter filled before the last was begun.

The sand would not stop.

Her dream had became wailing: louder and louder.

"The place to hit them is in the spice," Paul said.

"An entire planet full of spice," Jessica replied, incredulity present in her voice, questioning her son's focus on attack. "How can you hit them there?"

Paul stirred, Nyla hearing the sound of their pack being dragged across the tent floor.

"It is just as Father said," Nyla replied. "It was sea and air power on Caladan. Here, it is desert power."

"The Fremen are the key." Paul added.

His voice came from the vicinity of the tent's sphincter. Nyla sensed in his tone an unresolved bitterness towards Jessica.