Story:Kings of Strife/Part 17

Part Seventeen
The desert was swelteringly hot.

Vikcent should have expected that, he figured, but it was amazingly more hot than he could seem to imagine. Unlike the wet and humid heat of Nneoh, the Inusian desert was dry and its heat was everywhere. The sand that sometimes got into his boots was hot and irritated his mood and his skin. There was no wind and the heat was left to stagnate into Vik's skin. Even his sweat began to warm up and cause him irritation. Wearing just his ragged blue shirt, now sporting a ripped and deep v-neck, his stained cargo trousers, and boots, the only new ensemble to his outfit was the red scarf he wore around his face to keep the sand out of his face. It originally hung on his belt as his own personal form of decoration, but it actually served a purpose now. He was pleased to be able to use it.

At some point, Vik realized that he actually missed the freezing cold of Mount Gulg. "At least there was always some noise there and a pretty landscape to look down on." The wind and the snow it brought, the beauty of the sunset a few thousand feet above ground, even the crunch of the rocks and soil beneath his winter boots had proved sufficient to keep his attention on the task at hand. Not only that, there were times when he had to climb or even slide along the mountain trail. "But here," he mumbled to himself, "is just hills and more hills of sand. Fucking sand." He hadn't quite quit his habit of talking to himself yet, but it was perhaps more crucial than ever in this truly flat landscape he found himself traveling in.

"I'm just chasing myths. Legends, even." He breathlessly talked to himself while wiping off some sweat from his forehead. He squinted into the horizon, staring the sun down as it hung high in the sky. The atmosphere seemed to undulate underneath the heat of the massive sphere. "A Tower in the middle of the desert. Yeah, right." Vikcent Hyusei was a fool and he knew it. A fool who was simply walking towards his death.

No, that was false. No matter how he put himself down, there was still a hope within him that, once again, he would be right. "I'll deliver my retribution right to their doorstep. Hasey's, that Black Knight's, the whole damned lot of them." The sun continued to frown down on him and burn itself into his back. "I was right before and I can be right again." He didn't want to die, not yet; there was still so much for him to live for! His family back in Nneoh, the chance of obtaining a high and respectable rank in the government, pleasing his father, having a happy marriage, and destroying Ouroboros. He couldn't die yet.

"I didn't let that Knight kill me then and some stupid desert won't kill me now. Hasey couldn't do it, that mercenary couldn't do it... There's no way this stupid fucking sand can do it."

Despite his increasingly self-confident words, however, Vik's situation only continued to grow more and more desperate. After the third day of walking, he lost all markings and bearings around himself and began to just wander around the dunes. After the fourth night, his food had ran out, and it took the water another two days to go. Now it was beginning to be the seventh night as the sun started to set slightly south of due west. He had been walking almost constantly the entire week and by the seventh night his feet had lost all feeling. He was completely sure they were blistering and the skin was gone and so he was afraid to remove his boots. If he did, he probably wouldn't be able to put them back on without being immobilized by the pain.

When he slept, he curled up into holes of sand that he made himself and shivered himself to sleep. No matter how impossibly hot it was during the day, the Inusian desert was extraordinarily cold when the sun set. He regretted missing Gulg for every moment that the icy chill laughed and taunted at his agony. By the fifth day he began to sniff to himself and itch in various places and he realized that he was growing sick. Vik could not let it affect him and so he ignored it to the best of his ability. By the noon of the seventh day most of his cold was gone but he still felt the shivers deep in his bones at night. He repressed them even harder and relented back to his mantra, stubbornly accusing his harsh conditions as being symbols for his weakness and his failures. He acted to himself as if he were bull-headed and focused but truly it was more as if he stubbornly went against the harsh elements because he knew just what they were to him and he wanted to prove that he could overcome them. There was nothing left for him out in the sands except himself and so he walked alone.

He did not miss Hasey, he realized, and he had known long ago that he did not truly miss his comrades. What he missed was his confidence with them, his self-empowerment with Hasey, the feelings that he was both being taken care of and that he could take care of someone else. He did not like being self-dependent or alone, but he slowly began to realize that this might have been what fate had in store for him. Vik rubbed his beard, now fully grown and probably quite savage, and thought of his father. His father used to have a full beard and it pained Vik to think that he was becoming more and more like his father every day. He thus did not let himself think of his family any longer.

Soon the hours began to mix together and Vik thought only of his mantra. "No hesitation, no hesitation, no hesitation..." He began to take less and less breaks and his thoughts became less and less coherent. The numbness in his feet, the blistering heat and freezing chill, his painful shivers, and the growing hopelessness of his journey began to wear thin on Vik and he could almost feel his strength failing him. When he started, he fondly remembered his strength and fervor and enthusiasm, but now it was all he could do to put one foot in front of the other and not fall over.

Dawn of the eighth day was a mere hour or so away and Vik began to lose himself. His stubbornness only began to fool himself as it finally buckled to the pure despair that wriggled around him, as if moss and terrible erosion at the hands of a fort's building, and without warning he fell to his knees and looked straight into the rising sun far into the horizon. A solitary tear slipped out of his eye and down his cheek, not sorrowful or angry or mournful at all, just disappointed at himself and his final failure. He fell on his face, the cold sand mixing and welcoming his shivering body, but his bullheadedness only ensured his pacification in his mind. Feeding on the images of his success and his imaginary deeds, Vik let his eyes slowly close and he waited patiently for the reaper to erase his sins and return him to a blank state of oblivion that he could be proud in, one that brought through his craved loneliness as well as the companionship he so needed to enjoy and project.

He didn't know how long he lay there on the sands but he could feel it getting hot. His lips, after three days of not having any water, were cracked and dry, and his fingers couldn't grasp firmly his rifle nor rest comfortably in his pockets. Just when things were becoming uncomfortably hot with the sun a few hours away from directly above him Vik felt a breeze. The wind startled him, for it was almost unfamiliar at this state of his mind, and he stood up with a frenzy that searched for this new sensation. It did not come again, mocking at his naive excitement, and his now almost crazed eyes scanned the orange and yellow expanse for something that explained the relent of his peaceful sleep.

What grabbed at Vik's attention was a hallucination, he knew it from the start. The image that he saw shimmering in the light was fragile, impossible even, painful to hope at and slyly easy to stare at. He saw trees, not very far from him at all, and behind that he saw a tower. What excited him was not only the fact that there was a tree, which surely meant water, nor even the fact that the tower was behind it, finally open for him to reach; rather, he was overjoyed at the idea that he was wrong in giving up, that he was not inert, and that he was immensely right once again.

He was awake now, renewed and filled with a strength that betrayed his body's weakness. He stood up and began to full-out sprint towards the shimmering tree, knowing that he was running closer to the reaper but refusing to listen to the reason beneath him. He fell because of his awkward and numb feet, not once or twice but three times, and each time he felt his face smash into the hot sand. The second time he came up with a nosebleed and it was running profusely by the time he fell the third time, but by now the tree was close and Vik could see a small hole next to it that was undoubtedly filled with water. "I win. No hesitation, no hesitation, ..." So mysterious was the boon before him that it completely allowed him to elude the sinking feeling of despair and hopelessness that he had felt before.

That brief run that Vikcent took, despite being the most painful he had felt yet, was especially liberating to the man. With a mouth full of sand, he spoke his mantra to himself, tasting the blood from his nose and enjoying it. When finally he landed at the tree, amazed that it was indeed real and incredulous at how he could have missed it before, Vik allowed himself to fall face-first into the cool water of the oasis. It was amazingly cold despite the heat and shocked Vik's body into a jerk. At once he lost his energy and lay there for hours, slipping in and out of consciousness, drinking and breathing in the cool water that had proved his salvation. He rested like this for much of the eighth day, allowing the water to rest up his various injuries and recuperate. He very strongly thought of removing his boots and soaking his feet into the water, but decided against the idea when he realized that it would taint the water beyond repair and had nothing to clean his skin with once washed.

Halfway through the eighth day, Vik pushed himself up from the oasis water and felt within him new strength. He glanced at the tree and ripped off a ripe apple from the branch, biting into it without mercy and glaring at the tower that was now a mile or so ahead of him. Now that he was replenished and revitalized, the spirit of rebellion had entered Vik's blood again and he would not allow himself to be beaten by the infernal desert around him. He set one foot in front of the other again towards the mirage, throwing behind him the hesitation and brief forfeit he had harbored just hours before, relishing in his imperfect perfections that allowed his existence.

It would take him a mere ten minutes to speed walk to the Tower, refreshed and alive with bursting energy again, and with his luck he found what looked to be an entrance not far off to his right. What he didn't expect was for the entrance to be open, its tall and ornately ornamented gates dented and forcibly ripped off to the side, as if a person had burst into the Tower with a gigantic weapon and an even larger ambition.

He was not the first one to arrive.

...End of Part Seventeen.

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