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“We’re pressing on, Aznai,” I told him. “Really,” I added. “How can you be so afraid of a littlefog?”
To anyone else, they would have seen a mask with little expression, but I was so used to it that I could discern the tiny telltale signs of what he was really thinking.
He was scared.
And if Aznai was afraid, it was wise for me to be so too.
But we had ridden for ten hours, my ass hurt like I’d given birth to a full-grown gholak, and I was not about to turn around when our destination was so near.
As we plunged into the fog, I couldn’t help but feel a shiver of excitement mingling with my fear.
Was I riding into danger or towards the solution to the crisis back home?
Only time will tell.
Yet, even with the uncertainty hanging over me, I couldn’t help but feel a glimmer of hope.
The fog, as dense and ominous as it was, felt somehow cleansing — like the universe’s way of wiping the slate clean before presenting a new canvas.
And who better than a prince turned adventurer and his loyal Aznai to paint the first strokes on it?
The fog had thickenedinto a haunting shroud around us, a seemingly endless expanse of gray that swallowed up the desert and everything in it.
It gave the arid landscape of Enchor’s Heart a surreal quality, like something out of a holo-novel.
Straddling my Hiika, I felt the creature’s muscles tense beneath me.
The fog was making it nervous.
Its rough hide prickled against my gloved hands, reminding me of the wild energy that pulsed beneath its calm exterior.
Its mane, a bright tangle of bioluminescent fibers, dimmed as if reacting to the fog’s oppressive presence.
Through the muffled silence that the fog brought with it, I heard it first.
A soft, pitiful moan echoed across the desert.
It sent chills running down my spine, the sound twisting and coiling like a serpent in my gut.
I strained my ears, trying to figure out the direction from which the sound had come.
The fog played tricks on the senses, bending and distorting reality until all bearings were lost.
I tasted the metallic tang of anxiety in my mouth as the noise rang out again, louder and more insistent this time.
“Shhh, easy,” I murmured, patting the Hiika’s neck in a futile attempt to calm both it and myself.
Its hide was warm against my palm and offered some relief against the cool fog that enveloped us.
Suddenly, monstrous figures began to appear within the fog, vague and shadowy but unmistakably terrifying.
They shifted and morphed, their forms twisting with each gust of wind that whipped through the desert.
Their dark silhouettes looming ominously were like the nightmarish phantoms from a childhood story come alive.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt a shiver snake down my spine.
I could smell the acrid scent of my own fear now, sharp and heavy in the otherwise sterile desert air.
