Into the Fire
Heat.
It was hot. Lethally hot… a mundane human would not have lasted in this suffocating heat for long. Even as a Master, Sunny was struggling to breathe. His skin was burning.
Sitting on the sand, hunched, he covered his eyes and looked up at the merciless white sun.
The sun was like a small silver coin that hung high in the cloudless azure sky.
White sand. Azure sky.
This was indeed the desert Nephis had once tried to cross. The one that lay east of the Forgotten Shore, stretching far and wide along the Hollow Mountains.
He couldn't see the dreadful black peaks, though. Either this part of the Nightmare Desert was much further north than the small fragment Nephis had traversed, or much further east, where the Hollow Mountains were no more.
In either case, Sunny was in big trouble. Nephis had told them that the further one went into the desert, the more dangerous it became. Eventually, she could not advance anymore, and chose to take her chances in the mountains instead…
Just how deadly was this desert, for Nephis to decide that venturing into a known Death Zone was a better choice?
There was one more thing, too… if it was the same desert, then he had to find shelter before the night came. Failing to do so meant death.
Death...
Sunny sighed.
He was sitting on the white sand, casting five stark shadows. A few dozen seconds had already passed since his arrival in this cursed land, and very soon, something was bound to find and attack him.
He had to move, but his mind was plagued by too many thoughts.
'It's useless… it's all useless…'
Just a few minutes ago, Sunny had been full of a sense of triumph. He had defeated a Saint. He had won. His desperate plan had come so close to fruition…
With Dire Fang's death, the balance on the battlefield had been bound to shift. Mordret's reflections would have been destroyed… the remaining two enemy Saints would have been either killed or forced into retreat.
Clan Valor would have achieved a sweeping victory. None of its key figures would have perished, and plenty of Awakened would have remained alive to continue defending East Antarctica until the winter solstice.
…None of that had happened, of course. Everything had ended in ruin.
He had lost. Once again, he had been utterly defeated.
It was so tiring, to always have victory slip through his fingers at the last moment.
'Curse it all…'
Sunny was being crushed by the weight of failure.
Two great clans had clashed with each other, but the only victor was the Nightmare Spell. These three Category Four Gates… it wasn't hard to imagine what was going to happen next in the Southern Quadrant.
Both armies were either already annihilated or would be soon… oh, and more than a few government elites, too. All the Awakened of Valor and all the Awakened of Song were as good as dead. The only ones who had a chance to survive were the Masters, the Saints, and a handful of people those Saints could drag with them into the Dream Realm.
Even then, it was not a guarantee that they would have had enough time to escape.
And those who had would still have to survive the Nightmare Desert.
…The siege capitals would be left without the most powerful defenders. And much worse still, there would be swarms of Corrupted and Great abominations roaming the continent now.
Everyone was going to die.
'Don't think about it. Don't think about it yet.'
Sunny gritted his teeth.
There was a lot on his mind… but if he continued thinking about it, he would drown in anger and despair. For now, he couldn't allow himself to lose focus — he had to survive first.
Sunny was lost in a region of the Dream Realm that was much more harrowing than the Forgotten Shore, without any way to get back to the waking world. His friends could be lost somewhere between the white dunes, too.
He had to find them… if they were still alive… and figure out a way to escape this hell.
Well… it was not his first time escaping hell, was it?
Where there was a will, there was a way…
'What a bunch of crap…'
He felt a slight tremor run through the sand beneath him and grimaced.
Escape… how could he escape the Nightmare Desert?
There were four ways.
The first one was to cross the desert and find a path through the Hollow Mountains. Needless to say, surviving a journey through two entire Death Zones was highly improbable.
The second way was to find one of the Saints who had survived the Nightmare Gates and successfully escaped into the desert. Saints could travel back to the waking world without the help of a Gateway, and they could even bring a person or two with them. Sunny was not sure that he could convince anyone except for Saint Tyris to save him instead of all others… and there were still Nephis, Cassie, Effie, Kai, and Jet to think about.
Any Saint that left would not be coming back to this corner of the desert, since that would require returning to the proximity of the gargantuan Nightmare Gates.
So… that way would most likely not work, either.
The third way was to become a Saint himself. That was, of course, even more suicidal than trying to traverse both the Nightmare Desert and the Hollow Mountains. Sunny had barely survived the Second Nightmare. He had been beheaded, had his heart ripped out of his chest, barely survived thanks to stumbling on Noctis by pure luck, almost lost himself in the endless sea of nightmares, fought against an entire army of Awakened, and even faced Mordret at the end.
The Third Nightmare would be much more harrowing… and even if he somehow Transcended, there was a high possibility that the Sovereigns would make him disappear as a result.
Which left only the fourth way. The only plausible one.
Sunny had to find the Black Skull Citadel, and use its Gateway to return to the waking world.
That, too, was more easily said than done. The Nightmare Desert, after all, was vast. And full of all kinds of horrors.
The main problem, though, was that only two people knew the location of the Citadel.
One of them was Morgan, and the other one was Mordret.
…So, he had to find one of them first.
'Either one will do.'
Sunny closed his eyes for a moment, and then suddenly jumped back.
A split second after he did, the sand under him exploded, and countless hands rose from beneath it, clawing at the air.
'Here we go. It's starting...'
