Deep in the heart of the desert, on a hill surrounded by ruins, lay the fairy.

  In the hours since she arrived, a quiet breeze gradually deposited a layer of fine desiccant over her.

  She stared up at the sky motionless.

  The inside of her mouth was dry and sticky.

  Her nose stung and her lungs burned.

  Her lips were cracked.

  With a dry, broken whimper, the fairy reached out for the empty resin bottle lying discarded at her side.

  As if to rub salt in her wound, the vessel deformed in her hand, softened by the blazing sun into an organic goo.

  With a defeated noise, Tinder let her arm fall limply.

  Half-closed, her eyes glazed over deliriously as she imagined the towering canopies swaying overhead. The sun peeking through little ephemeral fissures between shifting leaves.

  She envisioned her home, a tree-hollow high-up in the trees with a resin puck transforming a portion of the bark into a suitably small window.

  The smell of meat smoking over a fire, of juices fermenting in the shade, and of herbs drying in the sun while her friends and family busied themselves with their everyday chores.

  She felt another slow gust of wind roll over her, soothing the ever-present heat even if only briefly.

  It made her think of her wings, the same ones that she hadn’t felt in who know how long.

  Just as Tinder imagined herself about to take flight to join her kin, she was ripped from her idyllic dream by a vicious screech from a fiend overheard.

  Gone was the forest and back was the insufferable inferno.

  Her wings lay crumpled behind her impotently.

  “Bird…” she observed, slowly glancing at her spear, stabbed into the sand a few feet away.

  She would never make it.

  She watched the creature circle above her critically.

  It staked its claim to its morsel with the occasional screech.

  While the scavenger waited patiently, Tinder’s tenuous grasp on reality began to slip once more.

  It was her home again, but this time the smells were different.

  Smoke – yes, but different. Foul, ashy.

  The sound of friendly chatter was replaced by the glacial groans of bowing trees, the roar of trees lit up like torches.

  A suffocating smog hung in the air, burning the fairy’s lungs and stringing her eyes.

  She looked around for the others, for her parents, her friends, her siblings, but the only figures she could make out were giant, smoky silhouettes with long, pointy ears.

  She couldn’t scream – maybe it was her mind’s way of squeezing a little extra terror from her, or maybe it was because her real throat was dry enough to strike a match off of.

  Just as a gloved arm shot out from the smoke and grabbed a hold of her, crushing her wings like over-baked parchment paper.

  With a gravelly gasp, the fairy’s eyes focused on the small cloud of dust rising up from where the bird had just landed.

  It offered a smaller croak, as if not wanting to announce that the buffet was about to open.

  As the dust settled, the curious carnivore cocked its head and took a small, clawed step forward.

  It circled the withering woman.

  With a surprisingly dexterous claw, the feathered fiend snapped Tinder’s spear and kicked it even further away.

  It cooed mockingly as it’s trajectory spiralled towards Tinder.

  Tinder tried to throw her fist at the bird but failed miserably, only managing to get more dust on herself.

  From one side of its head, the avian’s blood-red eye loomed over her, appraisingly.

  Satisfied with her weakened state, the bird spread its wings and lunged at the fairy.

  With a thwarted squawk, the bird tumbled away and into the dust from the impact of Simon’s improved projectile: his boot.

  Tinder didn’t know what was going on.

  She tried to turn her head and see, but all she could make out were the sounds.

  The sounds of dry, sandy footsteps and an exchange of words.

  “I got him!” Gloated the alchemist as he stumbled past the fairy and over to his dusty boot.

  The fairy’s heart stopped.

  It was them.

  They finally caught her.

  Tinder closed her eyes and resigned herself to her immediate fate.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Instead of the group grab that she mentally prepared for, Tinder felt herself be delicately lifted off the ground and onto a gloved palm.

  “Hang in there, please…!" Chloe said, rummaging around her pouch with her free hand.

  At the gentle touch, the fairy timidly cracked an eye open to see a masked figure clad in black up to her neck.

  Her white porcelain mask was tipped with a crow-like beak that she consciously avoided bumping into anything.

  She pulled out a soft-bristled brush and gently swept any remaining dust off the fairy.

  Next, Chloe pulled out a small, clear bottle of liquid clearly labelled ‘saline’.

  She soaked a clean cloth in the fluid before dabbing the fairy’s dehydrated body with it until it was damp.

  The salty liquid immediately quelled the brunt of her discomfort.

  “Can you understand what I’m saying?” Chloe asked anxiously.

  After a long and thoroughly thought-through silence, Tinder uttered a meek response.

  “Yes…” she whispered hoarsely.

  "Good", Chloe said, breathing a sigh of relief.

  The plague-seeker looked at the parched creature lying in the palm of her hand and down at her comparably huge water flask.

  In a bit of quick thinking, Chloe pipetted some water out of her flask and into a bottle cap.

  She flexed her palm slightly to push the fairy into a sitting position before offering the water to her.

  With a dry gulp, the fairy leaned down and took a small sip that didn’t end until the water ran out.

  By the time Tinder pulled back from the empty vessel, she had to gasp for air.

  Chloe gave the small woman a patient smile and pipetted some more water.

  “My name is Chloe,” she introduced herself.

  “I’m a plague seeker from the continental capital,” she introduced herself.

  “What is your name?”

  The fairy didn’t immediately go for the replenished water.

  Hesitantly she answered, “M-my name is Tinder…” she whispered plainly.

  The plague-seeker nodded.

  “What are you going to do with me now…?” she asked, continuously confused by the treatment she was receiving.

  “Nothing bad,” Chloe promised benignly.

  “For now just try to save your strength and recover quickly,” she advised.

  Dumbfounded by the concerned suggestion, the fairy mustered only a small nod.

  Edward stood to the side, not looking at the fairy and not lingering in her field of view either.

  He was frozen, unsure of what to say or do.

  Surely, he thought, throwing out some rushed apology would serve only to quell his own suffocating guilt, and not the fairy’s.

  Simon hopped into view, negotiating his dusty foot inside his dusty boot.

  “Is it in one piece?” he asked, his face red and sunburnt.

  “She’ll be alright,” Chloe answered, glancing over her shoulder.

  “She’s very dehydrated and pretty sunburnt too.”

  Simon wiped his chalky hands on his crimson robe and regarded the fairy from a distance.

  “Nice, we can finally go back,” she said exhaustedly.

  “Where are you going to take me…?" Tinder squeaked out hesitantly.

  “We’re going to be heading back to the continental capital,” Chloe explained patiently, but the fairy just looked at her with a blank expression.

  “The continental capital was only established ten thousand years ago,” Simon interjected.

  He looked at the fairy again.

  “The continental capital is the largest city on the warring continent,” he explained. “It’s like a capital city but for the entire continent.”

  The fairy gave a small, scared nod.

  “S-so who’s in power now…?” she asked, looking between the two humans and the elf standing around nearby.

  Chloe looked at Simon, who considered the question briefly.

  “The continental congress…” he eventually answered. “There are no more kingdoms.”

  The fairy processed the archologist’s testimony, never able to fully rid herself of the dread swimming in her stomach.

  “Where are the others…?”

  “Where are the rest of the fairies…?”

  Usually actions make noise, but the way Edward stumbled in the dust as he came to a momentary stop caught everybody’s attention.

  Stewing in the horrific silence, the fairy turned to Chloe with the same question in her eyes.

  The plague-seeker didn’t want to drop the harsh reality on the fairy in this fragile state.

  “We can talk about that once you’re at the continental capital,” she proposed.

  “Please…! ” Tinder insisted, almost begged as she turned to face her most reliable source of information yet.

  She looked at the alchemist with wide eyes and a small, hunched posture.

  “Where did the others go…?”

  Simon sighed slowly and shrugged his eyebrows in a show of reluctant compliance.

  “They’re dead.”

  “Simon!” Chloe gasped.

  “Wording!”

  The alchemist made a perplexed gesture as he momentarily struggled to articulate his indignant response.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he drawled sarcastically.

  “They’re gone,” she said towards the fairy but at the plague-seeker.

  While the duo continued to bicker, Tinder stared straight ahead with a vacant expression.

  She lay limp in Chloe’s concerned palm.

  “It’s going to be alright,” Chloe insisted softly.

  Right then, the ground under them began to shake.

  A deep, seismic rumble reverberated through the dunes.

  The tips of some ruins moved or broke off entirely, as if something massive was stirring the ruins from underneath.

  “What’s happening?!” Edward shouted as Chloe and Simon both looked around frantically, trying to understand what was happening for entirely different purposes.

  “Earthquake?!” Chloe asked, cupping a hand over Tinder to shield her from the falling dust.

  “We’re nowhere near any fault lines…!" Simon shouted over the noise with a fast shake of his head.

  Clouds of dust rose in the distance.

  The dust bulged outwards, a sandy spire cascading streams of fine particles until the structure became visible.

  It was an arm.

  The giant, and anatomically questionable, limb began to pull the rest of its monstrous form up from the smothered warehouse district below.

  “The clay fighters…!” Simon and Chloe exclaimed in unison as the cross-eyed caricature of a fishman burst to the surface of the sand.

  One by one, more giants followed.

  As soon as one clay colossus saw another, they began duking it out.

  Around them, the clay giants fell and rose, choking the air with dust.

  Making a split-second decision, Simon grabbed Chloe by the shoulder and began dragging her towards what he bet was the structurally soundest ruin near them.

  “INSIDE THE WAREHOUSE!” Simon shouted to the elf as he shoved Chloe inside and dove in after her.