”What the fuck happened?! It was all sunny and stuff like ten minutes ago!” Anastacia screamed and wrapped her cloak tighter around herself.

When they had left their camp, the weather was more or less the same as it had been for a few days. But in less than twenty minutes, the clear, sunny skies had turned into a full-blown thunderstorm. Great gusts of wind knocked down trees in the forest around the party and whipped them with hail and rain. Anastacia almost fell over a few times and had to be dragged by King most of the way to not fall behind too much, but even then, they would have lost sight of Gilbert and Emilia in the downpour if Anastacia hadn’t kept track of them to the best of her abilities.

Between the falling trees and the possibility of getting hit with lightning, the forest wasn’t a great place to be during a storm; luckily, they only had a bit more to go before a less densely wooded and hopefully lower area where they could lay low until the storm passed over.

Anastacia wasn’t exactly scared of thunder, but this was the first time she was outside during a storm and instinctively huddled into a ball every time a lightning bolt struck somewhere nearby. After a particularly close hit, she stumbled and fell over. “I give up! No more adventuring or traveling! I’ll become a dwarf and live underground, so I don’t have to deal with this shit again! I’m short enough to pass as one anyway!” She screamed and refused to stand up again despite King’s best efforts to help her.

Gilbert had noticed that she was lagging behind and rushed over with Emilia to see what was wrong. “Dwarfs don’t live underground. You can’t really farm or raise cattle in a cave. So almost all of them live in regular houses like everyone else.” Gilbert explained and dragged the necromancer back up. “Let’s just go and we’ll be fine. The forest is already thinning out, so we’ll look for a low spot and stay there. Okay?”

The girl reluctantly got up and followed the rest of the group. It didn’t take long before they found an eroded hillside that didn’t have any tall trees near it. The bottom was only about three meters from the lowest point within sight; but to get there, they’d have to slide down the muddy hillside. Gilbert was the most surefooted of the group and got down without any trouble, Emilia started out alright, but lost her balance and had to jump off to avoid falling on her back. Her landing was less than stylish, but she only really dirtied her knees and hands.

Anastacia stood at the top of the slope and tried to calculate her chances of making it down without falling on her face and getting caked with mud. “Guys, I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m really bad with this kind of stuff…” She said and tested the slippery surface with her foot.

King peered at the sky above them while the necromancer hesitated. Suddenly he pushed the girl down the slope and threw the gear he carried after her. Anastacia screamed as she slid down and crashed into Gilbert, who grabbed the necromancer and saved her from a certain muddy demise. When she turned around the ask what the simulacrum’s problem was, King hoisted his ridiculously oversized sword towards the sky and caught a lightning bolt with it. An explosion of sparks and electricity engulfed him while the rest of the party took cover.

Horrified by what might have happened to her friend, Anastacia tried to see through the smoke while her ears were still ringing. To her relief, King didn’t seem to be bothered by the shock at all and waved his hand to show that he was okay. While it hadn’t caused any damage to him, the lightning had heated up King to a point where the raindrops sizzled and immediately evaporated as they hit him.

“Yeah! Screw you, sky!” Anastacia cheered and shook her fist at the clouds, but then cowered and screamed from the top of her lungs as a second lightning bolt hit King.

After making sure that the simulacrum still held after the second hit, Gilbert elected to move a bit further away from him. King seemed to attract any lightning that would have hit the nearby area, making them at least more predictable if not entirely safe for the rest of the group. He also appeared to have some ability to detect incoming strikes as well, as he lowered his sword every now and then to just watch the sky.

After three more hits, the storm seemed to have moved away and the simulacrum jumped down to join his party. Both the wind and rain started to subside, and the dark clouds disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared, making Anastacia think that the storm was some kind of divine joke on her and its sole purpose was to ruin her day in a less than an hour.

“Well this isn’t great… Most of our stuff is wet now, so we’ll have to make camp a bit earlier than I had planned and make sure they have time to dry. But that’s okay really, we’re almost in the area we came to check out and only a bit behind the schedule. Stuff like this happens all the time so I wouldn’t worry about it too much anyway.” Gilbert said and squeezed his backpack to drain out most of the water in it.

“Ugh… I hate trekking in wet gear.” Emilia complained. The clothes under her armor had a tendency to chafe when they got wet and it became a real problem on longer journeys, but that still wasn’t enough to get her to even really consider removing even some pieces of the uniform. While wringing out the water from her cloak, she noticed that Anastacia had climbed on king’s back. “Anna… what are you doing? He already has most of your gear to carry, he can’t ferry you on top of that. We’ve been over this already.”

“Shut up. I’m wet and cold and everything sucks, but he’s warm. So don’t judge me!” Anastacia defended herself and grabbed on tighter to the still steaming simulacrum.

Emilia put her hand on King’s shoulder. It was still pleasantly warm from the lightning strikes, so she grabbed onto the simulacrum as well. “Gil, why can’t you be useful like this? Why do we even keep you around?” The priestess joked.

The old adventurer sighed, picked up his stuff and left to continue the trip. Emilia and Anastacia quickly did the same and ran after him.

As they walked, the terrain slowly became dryer and dryer, until nearly all vegetation had disappeared. Only a few tufts of dry grass grew here and there. The ground was sandy and didn’t hold any moisture, so even after rain, it’d be quick to dry and thus inhabitable for most flora. Of course, with no plant life around, most fauna had left the area as well. This meant hunting for meat wasn’t going to happen and the party had to rely on the rations they had left. Anastacia could spot some small rodents running around every now and then, but really didn’t want to eat them either.

“Why is there a desert here anyway? We’re less than a day away from a lake and a swamp.” The necromancer asked and grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground.

“You might not have noticed, but we’ve been walking slightly uphill all this time. So by now we’re pretty far above the water table and the dirt here just lets the water through it.” Gilbert explained. “That means there will be no streams or lakes to refill our canteens. So only drink what you have to, and we’ll have enough to last at least three days. Which is more than enough for our stay.”

Anastacia had already emptied out her first canteen but didn’t feel like Gilbert needed that information. “Oh yay… I’ve always wanted to die in a desert.” She remarked snidely.

“Don’t be like that. We won’t die here. Worst case scenario is that we get lost and run out of water, but then the locals will come to our aid. They probably know we’re here already.” Gilbert said as he stared off into the horizon, almost like he was looking for something.

Hearing that made Emilia perk up. “Locals? There are people here? Can we meet them?” She asked excitedly and started peering into the horizon as well. “What are they like?”

Gilbert laughed. He had guessed that at least one of the girls would be interested in meeting the desert dwellers when he originally planned the trip. “They call themselves The Children of The Sun. They believe that they were made from the sand by some sun god and have a pretty interesting culture that’s based on never staying out of direct sunshine or moonlight, whenever it can be avoided of course. Generally, they’re friendly to everyone who wishes to cross the deserts or plains they live on.” He explained. “If we see any, they’re likely to know if there’s been any weird creatures around.”

They continued walking across the wasteland for a couple more hours, until they came across a massive canyon. Reaching far into the distance, the canyon was a welcome sight for Anastacia, who had already gotten tired of the endless desert. Without going too close to the edge, the necromancer peeked down the gorge and quickly jumped back after realizing how deep it really was. The bottom was at least five hundred meters down from the spot they were in, if not six or seven hundred in some other places. The edges were so steep that a small hop from the edge would result in a freefall almost all the way to the bottom. Which was an idea Anastacia wasn’t too keen on, so she decided to keep her distance from it.

“We might as well camp here, so we can enjoy the view.” Gilbert declared and started laying out everything in his backpack to make sure they’d get to dry properly. “There isn’t much here that we can use as a fuel for a fire, so we’ll have to do without for a night. It’s a bit unfortunate since the nights can get pretty cold, but nothing we can’t handle.”

The rest of the party spread out their gear as well. The sun had already done most of the drying, but some clothes at the bottom of the backpacks would have still taken days to dry completely. Emilia pointed out that they should go through the clothes carefully when repacking, since there was a good chance that some insects would seek shelter from the scorching sun in them.

“Interesting…” Gilbert muttered and stared into the distance. “That bird there… Something’s odd about it.” He said and pointed at what seemed like a dot in the sky to Anastacia. “I think it’s been following us for a while now.”

“Is it a vulture that’s thinking we might be a possible meal?” Emilia asked.

“No, it’d follow us more closely and have others with it…” Gilbert pointed out.

Anastacia tried her best to see any kind of detail on it, but then it dawned on her. “It’s Amaranth, she’s keeping an eye on me. The bird looks weird because it’s dead.” She said.

The undead bird flew back and forth in the distance, playing it safe and not getting anywhere near Anastacia’s range.

Gilbert frowned and looked concerned. “Do we need to prepare for an attack?” He asked.

“Anna already killed one of their dragons, with some help of course. So what could they possibly throw at us that was worse than that?” Emilia said and laughed, but then quickly went silent and turned to Anastacia. “Please don’t say they have something worse?”

Anastacia shrugged. “Last time I heard, there was at least twenty or so dragon skeletons in the castle grounds, among other things.” The necromancer said. “But with Auburn dead, they lost like a ton of their undead army; or at best it’s controlled by some shitheel nobles that can’t use them properly. So Amaranth and her collection is probably busy with Coquelicot’s bull crap. They just want to make sure I’m not heading their way as well.”

Anastacia’s guess provided some peace of mind to the rest of the party, but they all kept an eye on the bird for as long as there was enough sunlight to do so. As the sun set, they lost the sight of it and gave up since the necromancer seemed to have guessed correctly.

After the sunset, the temperature began to drop quickly. Gilbert was used to it and wasn’t bothered by the cold in the slightest. He huddled under his cloak and fell asleep without much trouble. Emilia wasn’t quite as hardy, but an extra layer of clothes did the trick for her. She watched as Anastacia tossed and turned, looking extremely uncomfortable. The priestess wondered if she should just invite her friend to share the warm white cloak, when Anastacia suddenly got up and took King a bit further away from the camp. After bombarding the poor simulacrum with fire magic for a while, they returned and Anastacia told King to lie down next to her. The necromancer curled up next to her newly heated simulacrum and was finally at ease.