Kingdom of Monsters - Empire of Sand Series

Chapter 6

The river slowed and widened.

Red mud filled the water so thickly that she couldn't see her own hand when her fingers brushed the surface.

Her pack was gone; her leggings dragged off by one of the jealous sprites that haunted river-bumps and rapids; her dress shredded and floated away.

Evening sun streaked the horizon with shards of yellow, and the river warmed unnaturally, baking to body temperature at the highest layer and sinking quickly into inky cold. Unfamiliar grasses shook heavy heads against the white sky, weeping trees dragged skeletal fingers through the shallows, and striped fish pecked the surface from beneath, consuming waterbugs.

A buzzing red sucker landed on Demian's flat brow, heavy as a filled seed. She flicked it away.

Along the edge of the grass-cloaked shore, legendary creatures gathered to drink.

White boars snorted challenges, rocs circled low overhead, long-horned aurochs ripped the weeping treetops and showered them with leaves as they passed underneath, and undulating long-worms as thick around as Demian uncoiled into the water and disappeared.

These unnamed creatures had hunted, eaten, and digested her forebears. They regarded her passing with primordial hunger, an interest tempered by effort for a now-unfamiliar flavor of prey.

She huddled against Demian's body in the center of the river, exposed and vulnerable, unsure to which god she owed her prayers.

The river eventually curved, and currents pushed them into the shallows of a sunset bank.

Her feet dragged along the mud, and she struggled for purchase against the thick sediment. The river clouded. Beneath her toes, water creatures shifted and fled, scraping against her skin with strange prickles and slick scales.

She pushed through the gummy muck, up to her knees, and crawled, hauling Demian's body behind her. She couldn't pull him out. His knees gouged the sludge, and the river lapped his legs. She collapsed beside him.

The sun fell below the horizon as the skies opened and released a cold, heavy rain.

Shivering, Lunsa crawled into the muck to gather thick basket reeds, which she wove into a rough child's shelter, with gaps so thick that the rain drizzled in. She carved a flop out of the cool clay and wove a mat, plugged the gaps, and hunkered in.

Soon, the deafening rain stopped, and so did her shivers.

Rain gave way to the first stars and the sounds of odd hooting and insect flapping, dying screams and too-near bellows. She couldn't sleep, and hugged the ghost of Asnul to her chest, wishing he were real and here with her.

Instead, her bone-exhaustion forced her into a waking dream. Memories appeared, perhaps, given by the ghosts of her ancestors. She dreamed of childhood, before the blood curse, when the world was a named place, and she still knew her place within it . . .