Once upon an orbit of planet Fait, a playful young girl and her flustered yet resourceful single father must endure sickness, encounter exotic creatures, escape a predatory government, and outwit a wicked wizard to survive just one more day. Having...
Seemingly so far away in the distance loomed Mount Veda. How would they get there? Flying across the Western Wilds would have been so easy, and walking, all the harder, of course. But to swim? That would be impossible. They were exhausted.
High above their heads Fait's weird sun was lowering, casting the sky to evening. Rene knew it would be red-black night soon, and to be neck-deep in the Western Wilds after dark would prove infamously perilous. They needed to find something, anything, to hold onto. Rene looked all around. Various cacti stuck scattered about in strange formations across the black dunes of the Western Wilds, with even one cactus tree reasonably near.
"That cactus. There. You see it? We'll swim to it. Aim our bodies, chop with our arms, and Quick-Kick-Keep-Up toward it. The 'keep up' part is we can't let our chins touch the sand, so we have to keep up our heads up. Right?"
They kicked and the black sand gave way before them, but it was so heavy, so much pressure dragging down and against them. Rene kept his arm around his daughter's body and reached, kept reaching, big strokes, with his left arm and hand.
"Quick-Kick-Keep-Up, Quick-Kick-Keep-Up," Rene kept panting in a funny voice, and Nariah laughed as they went.
At last, with great effort, they made it to the cactus. "We made it. We win," Nariah proclaimed. Rene reached for it, but Nariah could see the spikes on the cactus.
"Daddy, don't touch it. It's all spiky."
"Ooh, good point. Spikes bad. Smart girl. Smart, smart girl. All right, now we haven't won quite yet..."
Rene unfastened Shadowslider from around his neck and, with fumbling difficulty, flung it up and draped the cloak of black feathers over the top of the cactus. Then, Rene boosted Nariah out of the black sand. "All right, get on the branch. Just like a pipe from our hovel. Sit on top."
Nariah climbed onto the branch and sat there, the dainty little lady. She reached down to her father. "I'll pull you up next."
Rene reached for her hand, but missed. He reached again, clenching his teeth. He was still having to kick in order to keep from sinking down into the sand.
"Silly Daddy, just take my hand. Come on, you can do it. We've almost won. Quick-Kick-Keep-Up! Quick-Kick-Keep-Up! Come onnnn, Daddy!"
Rene reached again, but then, slowly at first, the black sand started to move around the cactus, as if the ground was an ocean awaking from slumber. The weird sun set behind the horizon, just as Mount Veda rumbled and erupted its first blue lava blast of the night into the sky, and with that signal, the whole desert set to moving like a sandy black sea. The problem was that the current was pushing Rene away from the cactus tree, away from Nariah's outstretched hand.
"Daddy?"
"Don't worry, daughter, not a problem, we're still playing, it's just a bonus round! Daddy versus desert! I can do this! I'm smarter than sand!"
Refusing to resign himself to panic, Rene took a deep breath and let the current take him, direct him, while with his legs beneath the sand he kept turning himself around, trying to conserve energy, and looking for another cactus nearby onto which to grab.
"Daddy!" Nariah's rainbow braid was glowing, her hand reaching out. Rene cast his eyes to the sky, to the stars overhead. "Sylvas," he whispered, "hear our pra----"
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