The sandstorm has ended. You have time now, continue south, your destination isn’t far. Don’t think you can remain where you are forever.

Alice’s eyes opened, and Felix let himself fall on his chair.

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”. Because he had something to do;

“You seemed tired”;

“I’m fine”. She returned to Colin, still alive, and caressed the skin of his neck, making Felix’s heart jump.

“It’s very sweaty”, she said, “That’s the first time it happens”;

“You’ve covered it too much”, he said, “It’s too hot in here”;

“You may be right”, she said. He saved himself this time.

The Giant rose from his bed, yawning. “Just when I was in my right time”. He walked towards Alice, “Is he still with us?”;

“Shut up”, she said, “We need to pick up our things. We’re going”;

“Already?”, said Felix.

“Have you heard the message”, said the Giant, “We’ve got to move”;

“It’s strange that a person like you trusts her so much”;

“She saved my ass two times. That’s the people I like to trust”.

They packed water, some of the food, but left some for the ones who will come afterwards. Both Felix and Alice were carrying Colin in a kind of stretcher, made with a bed sheet and two legs of the table. There was a red beacon rising with the lights this time, and there were even distant sounds.

He had to keep an eye on him. Maybe the transformation was already at an advanced step and that was why he wasn’t able to kill him easily.

“Why your eyes are glowing?”, said the Giant, welding a torch, “Are you an owl?”;

“I was wondering about it too”, said Alice, “That’s a bit creepy”

“It’s a surgery to have night vision. They required it after They arrived, without it you wouldn’t even last a minute in combat”. You would last five minutes with it. They both looked at him in awe, “Why only you people in the army can have it?”, said the Giant;

“Well, if something goes wrong, it can make you blind for starters”.

Colin’s eyes opened, “W-where am I?”, his voice was weak. Alice stopping in her tracks made Felix nearly drop the stretcher. “How are you feeling, Colin?”, her arms were shaking as she raised his back up. That was unexpected, and Felix lowered his gaze to hide the shock. He never imagined that once things could differently, or at least not in a better way than it was supposed to.

“My bones, they hurt, but I can think clearly now”. His eyes went for Felix, making him swallow a lot of guilt. “Who is he? And why his eyes are glowing?”;

“He’s Felix, he’s a friend, don’t worry”;

“Is he?”. Colin was still glaring at him, “There’s something I should know about him”, his head fell on the stretcher again, “But I can’t remember”;

“Don’t strain yourself. You’ve been suffering for a long time”;

“I think so”. The Giant turned towards them, “We should get going”.

It could have been one of the worst mistakes he ever made.

“I can move”, Colin said, “I don’t need this, it’s only slowing us down”;

“Are you sure?”;

“Yes, I can limp”. Alice turned towards Felix, “What are we going to do?”;

“I said to let me walk”. The Giant grunted, “Let him walk, then! Just stop wasting our time”.

They both put the stretcher down, and Alice raised Colin from the ground, and put his arm on her shoulders. Felix went for help, but Colin put his hand forward, “We can do it ourselves”, he said. Alice gave him a look, but didn’t say anything, neither did Felix, and he went on.

The Giant was in front of the group, he in the middle, and the other two limping at some distance behind. Felix stopped sometimes to let them catch up, but the Giant never changed his pace, and after some time, he disappeared to be never seen again.

Alice stopped in the dark, “Felix!”, she called, “We can’t see a thing!”. He didn’t remember that other people couldn’t see in the dark like him, and the one who had the torch had vanished. “I’m here!”, said Felix. She lit a match and walked towards him.

“Where did he go?”, said Alice, “Can you see him?”;

Felix shook his head, “He’s gone past one of the rocks”;

“But why?”;

“I don’t know”, maybe he was fed up by how slowly they were going, and he didn’t have a suit which kept his body warm.

“He didn’t even take his part of the food”;

“Who cares?”. She blinked, “I will pretend I didn’t hear that”. She made a new torch by ripping and wrapping a part of her sleeve around a stick, and she lighted it with a match. The journey had been even slower than before, but Felix couldn’t leave them because his guilt prevented him from doing so.

The sky cleared, and when the sun appeared behind the snowy peaks of the mountains, they arrived at a wide strip of land. Small wooden pickets marked the edges, and a post was in front of him. To civilization, said the arrow pointing at the mountains; To the Shrine of the One and Only said the one in the opposite direction. He had no idea what that shrine was, but he sure wanted to be the farthest from it.

“What’s this?”, said Alice, illuminating the post with the torch and squinting her eyes, “Shrine of the One and Only…”;

“It doesn’t make sense to build a shrine in the desert”, said Felix;

“It really doesn’t”, she said;

“Well, we don’t have to go there. It’s better to move on”.

When he was at some distance from them, he could hear them whispering to each other, but when he let them catch up, they fell silent. He didn't know if it was better to leave them after what he had done, but he knew that without help they weren't going to survive: an attack from the wolves was enough to kill them both. Maybe they knew this themselves, as he made pretty clear to her what were his intentions.

But if they died, or not, the most important thing was to discover the truth of this world, and they weren't of much use to him for reaching it.

The climate from cold became chilly, then warm, but it lasted only an hour during dawn. Now that the sun was perpendicular to the ground, with no sort of wind, it so hot it was like he was breathing fire. His hands were dry, and the skin was cracking because the sweat evaporated faster than it was being produced.

The air was dense, and the ground appeared distorted like the one around the engines of an airplane on land. “We can’t go on like this”, he said, stopping when his hamstrings muscles stiffened in a cramp. Colin couldn’t walk anymore, and Alice was princess-carrying him, as she was bigger than him.

He noticed later the wooden bed at the side of the road, covered by a white sheet, and the silhouette of a person beneath it. “Hey, I found something!”, he said, waving his hands to the two behind.

A head was poking out of the sheet. A white dust with a strong smell of chemicals had been poured on the skin and around his combed and parted to the right blonde hair. It was covering blotches of coagulated blood, while his lips were devoid of color, and two round gold pieces were covering the eyes. “Why?”, he shuddered, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw another bed beyond this one, and another one on the other side of the road.

“What happened?”, said Alice;

“These people”, he pointed at the rocks, “They’re dead”.