Their wagon ride was long but comfortable. There were no other passengers, meaning they had the entire back to themselves.

  Their transport reached a slow stop in a little town, right beside an old trickling fountain.

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to go on foot from here,” Edward said gracefully stepping off the cart with his long, elven limbs.

  Using his unbandaged hand, Edward helped Chloe get down.

  Before he could do the same for the alchemist, Simon already climbed and subsequently fell off the side of the wagon.

  “Careful!” Chloe called out, setting down her numerous bags and hurrying to the recovering alchemist’s side.

  “Are you alright?”

  “I think so,” he replied with mock sincerity.

  “Let me try again.”

  The plague-seeker let out an exasperated sigh and moved along, only mustering a weary shake of her head in response.

  While Chloe handled her luggage, Simon scanned their surroundings.

  Even in a place as remote as Farstone, people were still celebrating the festival of blood.

  It wasn’t anything to write home about in comparison to a town like Malacro, or a city like the Continental Capital, but the windows were painted with cartoonish imagery of skulls and pests, as well as more elaborate murals depicting battles – some historical, most very fictional.

  Simon, as an archaeologist, couldn’t help but groan at the image of a militant dwarf drawing back the string of a bow.

  As though he was the only one chosen not to carry a firearm to battle.

  “Is something the matter?” Asked the elf.

  Simon gestured to the mural with a disdainful jerk of his head.

  “They gave the dwarf a bow,” he said disbelievingly.

  “Indeed…” Edward confirmed levelly.

  “As I recall, dwarves used bows in the past.”

  “Sure!” Simon erupted insincerely and stormed over to the decorated window.

  To Edwards’ shock and Chloe’s embarrassment, Simon began viciously jabbing a different figure. This one was a fishman carrying a crossbow.

  He turned to look back at them.

  “But that was three hundred years before the invention of the crossbow!” he said through clench teeth.

  “Shown here, MYSTERIOUSLY held by a FISHMAN - who’s weapons would have had to work UNDERWATER!”

  Simon waited for a reply.

  Before it came, the shutters on the window snapped shut.

  The alchemist briefly glanced at the blinds and scoffed.

  “Typical artist, can’t even take critique…” he grumbled defensively.

  Edward and Chloe both pitied the unseen painted.

  Behind Chloe, the cart that brought them here departed.

  Edward led the group.

  He spoke after a moment of thoughtful silence.

  “I suppose Simon is right,” Edward admitted easily, to Chloe’s chagrin. She didn’t want to encourage him.

  “It all just felt like it happened so fast at the time.”

  The alchemists’ face lit up and his shoulders which were inexplicably tense began to unwind.

  “Mmhmm,” he nodded.

  Setting aside intellectual pride for curiosity, Simon looked out at the hills and valley stretching into the horizon.

  “So, where’s the desert?”

  “Northwest, up to the Druids’ Mountains.” Edward answered, pointing to the small, sharp range of dark silhouettes sawing at the base of the horizon.

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  “That’s where the fairy forest used to be.”

  “In the middle of a desert…” Chloe remarked sullenly.

  “I am sure that she can manage the sand.”

  “I don’t believe anything lives out there,” Edward said reassuringly.

  “Exactly…” Simon squinted.

  He clicked his tongue.

  “It’s not sand.”

  “Sand is just rock powder.”

  “The Mauve Desert sand is pure industrial desiccant.”

  Chloe nodded along gravely while Edward curiously cocked his head.

  “Yes, we used it to protect books from moisture in the great library before it all fell,” Edward elaborated.

  “I never considered what it was…” he muttered to himself.

  “We have to hurry before she gets hurt,” Chloe said before setting off at twice their speed.

  Simon and Edward exchanged a glance.

  One confused, the other very reluctant.

  The rest of the trip took them over an hour, and brought them to a missing link in a chain of mountains isolating the spill from the remaining world.

  It was a gaping passage into the lilac dunes of the Mauve Desert.

  Inside the intermontane basin, the Druids’ Mountains’ deliberate design lulled the winds into a gentle breeze that minimized the spread of the desiccant.

  Before the passage ran a mighty river, roaring with the youthful energy of water still in sight of where its tributaries merged upstream.

  Linking the two sides was the only visible remainder of civilization besides the road itself.

  It was an old stone bridge, wide enough to let four wagons cross side by side.

  It was covered in weathered warning signs.

  “DANGER: desiccating dust” read a couple.

  Those without masks could smell the bookish aroma in the air.

  The particles suspended in the atmosphere contributed to a hazy sky and a slight purple tint.

  Without stopping, Chloe reached into her smaller bag and pulled out a small tube labelled ‘sunscreen’.

  Simon’s expression darkened as soon as he made out the text.

  “No,” He declared fiercely.

  Chloe gave a weary shrug.

  “I didn’t even say anything.”

  “Well, I can’t imagine you’re worried about getting a tan on your eyelids,” Simon gestured to her near total coverage angrily.

  “Suit yourself,” she acquiesced and offered the sunscreen to the elf who curiously accepted it.

  Simon expected the plague-seeker to put up more of a fight.

  They stepped off the bridge and still had about fifteen minutes of progressively thinner foliage before the desert began in earnest.

  Before long, they were knee deep in the loose, chalky powder.

  Wherever the dust touched their skin, it clung to it.

  And while Chloe’s mask spared her from inhaling much of the desiccant, it didn’t change that the air she was breathing was bone dry.

  The further they travelled, the more ruins they began to encounter. Smothered spires protruding from meters of ancient dust.

  Only the largest ruins were tall enough to be even partially exposed.

  Every now and then, Simon noticed a brittle scrap of paper or the odd torn-up book cover slowly crumbling in the wind.

  The thought of the countless tomes slowly turning to dust beneath his feet upset him greatly.

  Without warning, Edward’s arms shot out to stop the others.

  “Look!” he said in a hushed voice, “Footprints!”

  He slinked ahead just as a gust of wind came in to erase a couple faint steps.

  “She’s definitely going to the fairy forest!”

  “Rather, where it used to be…” Chloe said, looking over the footprints for any signs of dizziness or injury. There didn’t appear to be any.

  “You’d think she’d turn back by now,” Simon remarked reasonably.

  “To what?” Chloe asked, stumping Simon.

  “Okay, fair…” he groaned reluctantly.

  “What’s she going to do when she gets there and it’s all sand?”

  “Not sand,” Edward interjected.

  “Right,” Simon concurred.

  “When all she’s met with is dust?” he rephrased.

  “How should I know?” Answered Chloe.

  “We just have to get to her before she gets any other ideas!”

  “If she expected a forest then she probably didn’t pack for a desert…” Chloe realized anxiously.

  “Going off the ruins, we’re not far from the forest,” Edward said to the others.

  “Aren’t there too many ruins for a forest…?” Chloe questioned.

  Simon jumped in with an answer before Edward could form a single syllable.

  “The forest was cut down before the empire even fell.”

  “So, this wouldn’t have been a forest even without the s- the dust…” she remarked, mostly to herself.

  “Hey, if you ask me, having a bit of dust lying about beats having a giant evil empire doing more evil things,” he shrugged.

  Edward hung his head and sighed, “I hate history…”