I’m exhausted, Arthur thought as soon as he realized he had spent every sliver of energy remaining in his body after trudging through the golden sands of the desert for what felt like three days. It was probably more like three hours or he would have died of dehydration long before reaching half a day of slow travel.

As he reached this conclusion, Arthur tried to voice out loud his thoughts but found his throat and mouth completely dried, and even if they weren't in that condition, he would have been too tired to talk, so he just nodded. Then, he decided to take a page out of his latest mount's book and collapsed face-first in the sand. Just a quick nap, no more than five minutes.

But as the sun burned his skin and he felt the almost imperceptible tingling spreading through his body that he had finally realized was associated with one of his skills levelling up, [Sun Tolerance] in this case, he pulled himself up to his feet using his good arm and started walking once again. He had to find a shaded place before he collapsed from a heat stroke, and he had to do it fast.

A few minutes more of walking later, he squinted his eyes at the haze created in the distance by the sun, wondering if what he was seeing was an illusion created by his mind or the bending of the terrain caused by the heat. Another hundred of steps and Arthur had to discard the latter, and as the distance between himself and the dozen or so of openings in the ground lessened, he started to move faster to reach the first sign of shade he had seen since leaving the shadow produced by the Nightmayak.

He almost threw himself bodily in the round-shaped split in the sand, which was barely big enough for him to walk into standing, but then decided to take things slowly as he peered into the opening to make sure it was empty and not filled by creepy crawlies.

After squinting at the darkness deeper into the tunnel for almost a full minute, he could not take it anymore; he stepped inside, breathing a sigh of relief at the slightly cooler environment, and sat down, his trusty Mantis-arm turned spear laid on the ground beside him.

When Arthur woke up, he realized he was dying. He had been in even worse shape than he had thought, and the only thing that kept him walking through the heat of the desert and his weariness was the haze placed on his mind placed by those same things.

Now, after resting for who knew how long, he could no longer fool himself, and he knew he was well and truly fucked. He wanted to cry, his mind verging on the edge of breaking down, but his body would not spare him the energy or water to shed tears or cry out his misery, so he simply mumbled in pain.

He was covered from head to toe in a cold sweat, which made him feel even more pain as it streamed down his scorched skin. As he laid there, a feverish mess, he became fully aware of the truth he had been keeping from himself. Ever so slowly, he used his right hand to peel off the makeshift bandage from his left upper arm, and as the stank of an infected wound was released from below the cloth and the wound itself came in Arthur’s view, he started to gag.

He could not believe what he was seeing was the result of a cut as small as his index finger, but then again they do always tell you to carefully clean wounds and keep them dry if you don't want them to get infected for a reason. Considering how he had gotten this wound and how much sweat and dirt had been pouring inside of it, he should not have been surprised.

As he recovered from his disgust and the weakness of his body started to come fully in perspective, Arthur once more realized that, if he stayed here, he would surely die. Even now, a part of his body called and screamed at him to lay down once more, this time to never wake up.

He shuddered, and as carefully as he could to try and not collapse again, stood up on his feet; his head felt dizzy, but he steeled himself to go on. Looking outside, he realized the sun was still high in the sky, even though he felt sundown should have been approaching by now, and decided that going outside would be a sure death sentence.

Turning around, Arthur unwinded the shirt he was still wearing around his head, and after giving it some thought, he used it to clean his infection as best as he could, before ripping a more-or-less clean strip of cloth from it and using it to bandage himself once more. It hurt and stung as if a hive of angry hornets lived under the fabric, but he ignored the sensation and started walking down the tunnel, into the bowels of the earth.

Arthur was still the weakest he had ever been in his life, so rather than walking the most he could do was slowly shuffle his way in the dark, one hand using his spear as a walking stick while the other helped him find his way by following the sandy wall.

The tunnel was mostly straight, with a turn or intersection once every three hundred steps or so, but Arthur kept to the leftmost every time to make sure he could find his way back if he found whatever he was searching for and was still alive by that time.

It hadn’t taken long for him to calm down after waking up in mind-wrecking pain, and realize that this tunnel, and probably all the others he had seen before falling asleep, were not natural, not by a long shot. The walls felt too smooth and regular, divided into sections as if something had taken a big chomp to dig them out.

He shivered as he imagined a massive worm with jaws that could chew through steel slithering up the tunnel like a train, eating him up or simply squishing him against a wall without it even noticing. He shook his head, as far as he had seen nothing was living in these tunnels anymore, and even if there were, not like he could do anything about it.

Just as those thoughts mixed with the pain spreading through his body and the fever made him more and more delusional and mentally lost, he felt his right foot sink down as he stepped forward in the dark once again. He had no time to react as his leg and the rest of his body followed and fell in the darkness, before impacting with the cold water below.

Arthur gasped as he regained control of his body after a flash of unconsciousness, desperately struggling in the frigid waters to keep himself afloat. His hand hit something hard, which he desperately gripped it and tried to pull himself out of the water.

Struggling to push down the pain as he put leverage on both of his arms, he slowly dragged the upper portion of his body out of the water, breathing shallowly and quickly after the panic and exertion. He was drenched in water, which was honestly the best thing that had happened to him in the last day.

After a quick rest, he pulled the rest of his body out of the water, but rather to take a nap then and there, he forced his body to move for a few more minutes so that he could take all of the precautions needed to prevent his death.

First of all, he greedily drank as much water as his body would take, and then some more, before taking his second bandage off and using the water to clean the puss-filled wound as much as he could endure the pain of touching it. He then dried his pants and underwear as best as he could, using them, in turn, to dry himself off.

Finally, he laid down on a patch of damp rock and almost immediately collapsed in a dreamless void.

For what felt like too many times in a single day, Arthur woke up once again, only this time he was grateful to those sick bastards watching over him that the pain from the… day? Hours? … he was grateful that the pain from before had lessened, replaced by a stiff soreness in his whole body and a ravenous hunger and parched.

Thankfully, he could sate his thirst immediately, since he had an almost unlimited form of water in the form of an underground lake, which, as far as he knew, appeared to be drinkable.

Immersed in almost complete darkness and no longer completely out of fluids from his trek in the desert, he tried to orientate himself in the cavern, looking for either food or an exit.

Although he’d said ‘almost complete darkness’, his eyes had still adapted enough to the dark that he could see around himself for three meters or so, meaning he could navigate the place and also that there had to be some kind of light source around.

As Arthur walked around the cave slowly, trying not to bump his head on a pointy rock or fall into the water and getting drenched again, he managed to assess the dimensions of the slab he found himself on, which seemed to be an oval many meters wide and tall, completely surrounded by water.

There was absolutely nothing of interest both around himself or hanging from the ceiling, so he could only turn to look into the waters, hoping to, if not find fish or subterranean crabs to eat, at least get back his only weapon and mean of self-defence.

As should have been obvious by now, he had no such luck, if luck was even a thing he could have any more, since even after finding water he only managed to get himself stuck underground without any hope for escape.

He sat down and started having depressed thoughts, as a person completely lost in a foreign, dangerous land should once in a while, before a glimpse of light escaping from a rift deep underwater caught his eyes and broke him out of his gloomy musings.

He hesitated slightly, because he had never been a great swimmer or any good at keeping his breath for a long time, and neither was he in good shape for it after his years of teenage sedentary life, but then cut his thoughts before he could get cold feet and threw himself into the water. And he had just managed to get as dry as one could in a dark, damp place.

Arthur swam down towards the light, mainly using his uninjured arm and doing his best to keep his eyes open under the water, ignoring the stinging sensation coming both from them and his infected wound.

Reaching the bottom of the lake after a few moments, he was relieved to find he had been right and that there was in fact light coming from a fissure in the floor, but he still froze for a couple of seconds, hesitating once again.

While the tunnel opening up under him was big enough for him to swim comfortably, he didn’t know if his lungs would endure swimming without air for much longer, as the burning from lack of oxygen was already starting to make itself known.

Still, while he knew he could always turn back and try again another time, he also knew himself enough to know that if he did, there was no way to know how long he would delay, and if there was a chance this could be a way out, he had to take it sooner rather than later.

Having reached his decision, Arthur thrust forward and into the gap opening up below, hoping there would be air at the end of the tunnel, from where the light was coming from.

Arthur emerged, breaking the still surface of the water and taking in huge gasps of air, doing his best to calm his breathing down as soon as he assessed he wouldn’t drown and hoping he hadn’t punched a hole through his lungs.

It had been a close thing, but he had managed to reach a pocket of air after swimming underwater for the longest time he could remember ever doing. It was a couple of days packed full of first times for Arthur, and he feared it wouldn’t stop for quite some time.

As if to prove his thoughts, his breath caught as he looked up from laying prone on the cavern floor, and he beheld for the first time the source from which the light he had been following had come from. A few meters in front of him, a sapphire gem as big as his head floated lazily in the air above an overflowing pool of water, spreading greenish light all around which in turn bounced on the walls, floor and ceiling.

It made him think of another gem he had been in contact with for the last few days, or however long had passed since he had arrived in this world, which he had started to accept was probably no longer his own.

As soon as Arthur thought of the gem residing in the back of his hand, he felt a strong compulsion, a push to move towards the bigger gem, which was still floating there without a care in the world.

He had no idea where this push was coming from, but he was incredibly curious as to what would happen if he followed it, and since he had honestly nothing better to do, he moved forward and then placed his right hand on the sapphire.

The world exploded in a rainbow of colours, although green remained the most predominant, and the gem shattered under his touch, which prompted the shallow pool of water above which it had floated to rise and smack him in the face, throwing him on the floor before returning to being just normal water.

Something dinged, and the light disappeared. Arthur was once again thrown into inky darkness.