The room was entirely white, the sense of sight violently coming back to him. He couldn’t even move, his eye scattering around the blank room, his eye rests upon two beings. They seem to be bickering amongst each other; he can’t hear a thing. One seems to be a simple pale blue orb off some feet away. The one much closer to him, is a skeleton, it was wearing some 80s stereotypical garb: the black oversized hoodie, jeans, some red shows with those dirty white laces, a hat worn sideways, and some violently yellow shades with some painted on blue eyes looking at him.

  The skeleton had a spray can in one hand and some sort of tool in the other, he thinks it might be a tool for clay, but he can’t remember. The skeleton then just blasts his face with the spray can, his sense of depth subtly returning to him, the clay sculpting tool in the other hand seemingly shaping or scraping something on the side of his, like the snap of a finger he can hear again. The sound muffled at first before coming to him more clearly, first hearing a female voice.

  “For the last time, you are still in violation of a majority of rules of the reinstatement of reincarnations!”

  The skeleton, once it spoke, its mandible rattles, producing its voice, “Shadupp! You keep ignoring all the poor souls that get dropped by here! Go bugger off already! I already started so I'm entitled to do my job!” The skeleton’s boney fingers started to work more quickly as it clearly looked rushed or slightly threatened by the orb.

  He felt that he had the ability to blink back, the sense of touch returning, his face feeling the dust fall on it, he notices he started breathing again, the stale air making breathe shallowly. The skeleton brings down a ceiling light and a mirror from nowhere.

  “Alright! Let's have a look!” The skeleton says as he takes out a set of paintbrushes, “I’ve been wantin’ to see a pair of pink or purple eyes for a while now! Now I get to do that” The skeleton says as he dabs the brushes on a palette, painting on a canvas next to it.

  “Hmm. Pink or purple, whatda think?” The skeleton says as it leans towards him, looking deep into those endless eye sockets,” Personally, I was thinkin’ a purple but at first, but I think they won’t show as great when in the light, but the pink on the other hand! I think It’d be nicer! Like a pink gemstone.” The skeleton says as it brushes some mockups on the canvas.

  The orb bashes into the canvas, breaking it in half and knocking the paint brush out of the skeleton’s hand. The orb quickly shoots into the skeleton’s eye socket rattling around and busts a hole through its forehead, “Augh! Headache!” The skeleton remarks as it grabs its head, looking for the piece of its skull.

  “Lemmey! I am reporting this unauthorized act of reinstatement and modification to the top of the ladder.” The orb says, seemingly pouting and infuriated.

  “UH? HELLO!? You keep shredding the documents for proper reincarnation! How am I supposed to get authorized if YOU keep getting in the way of my job!” The skeleton says as it packs up its piece of its skull and pointing it at the orb out of frustration, “Speaking of! Where is this guy’s crap anyway!? Did you already shred it!?” The skeleton says as it tries to grab the orb, but it just moves to the side a little.

  “It’s already in the shredder! You jerk!” the orb says as it gives off some sort of steam in anger.

  “How am I a jerk!? I’m just going above and beyond for my job!” The skeleton says as it runs just out of sight, the sound of a door being bashed open with the sound of its squeaky shoes running frantically, it muffles quickly and returns quickly all in the span of ten seconds. The skeleton comes back and sits right in front of him, on a stool that wasn’t there before.

  “OK, ok… got it.” The skeleton says, somehow terribly out of breath, he was combing through shreds of paper and one half shredded paper, “ Blah, blah, blah, basic goods, basic bads, basic, basic, basic… huh… You're just neutral, how in the world are you eligible for reincarnation?” The skeleton says, tapping his chin, making a clicky sound as it does.

  “See!" If the soul isn’t eligible, then my doing wasn’t even bad!” The orb says as it gets right up in the skeleton’s face, the skeleton slaps it away quickly.

  “UH, NO?! His papers are completely unreadable except this one page! And there's only a small amount of info that’s even applicable! We’re gonna get kicked out of this department cuz’ of you!” The skeleton gets up and quickly grabs the orb, throwing it out of the room and locking the door, the orb could make an “eep!” before it could retaliate.

  The skeleton seemingly sighs as it stares up at the ceiling, then its rubs its hands together like a scheming little fly, “Finally!” The skeleton says as it plops down on the stool, pulling up a tool box from nowhere, kicking it open as it bursts with art supplies, they just floating up and are suspended in the air.

  “Now, I can actually do my job.” The skeleton says as it puts the half-shredded paper on the stool,” Let's go with pink.” The skeleton dips a paintbrush with a vibrant pink, gently tapping it on his eyes, only now realizing that there were other colors he wasn’t seeing. Only now seeing the tarnish covering the skeleton’s bones.

  The skeleton continued to work, randomly toss and grabbing random tools; paint brushes, wires for clay, even a chisel and hammer. He can’t remember them all as the skeleton just tosses them behind out of sight, he never hears them make contact with the ground however.

  “Look-in-good!” The skeleton says with a satisfied little laugh, he pulls down the mirror again,”whatcha’ think, aye?”

  He looks at himself. He sees a pair of eyes with a mix of three pinks: bright, fluorescent, and foxy pink. His skin was an unbearably, deathly pale white. His lips were unnaturally gray, same with his hair, it was an ash-like color. His eyes readjusted, looking at his face, he was so caught off guard for the past few minutes, he’s only now seeing his face. It looked androgynous, he didn’t really know what to make of it, his skin looked like marble and his hair like ashes.

  “Yeah, sorry about that, I'm running out of paint. Our department is getting less funding so I’m running out of supplies, this is the best I could do. I probably missed some key features, so I don’t even know if your biology is even complete.” The skeleton says as he gets up, “You can talk right? I didn’t fudge up the voice box, did I?” The skeleton says as it leans over him, tapping its chin, hearing the shallow and weak breathing. “Aw, crap. I did! Man, this is gonna hurt butt loads. There’s probably so much dust in your lungs already!”

  The skeleton thrusts its hand right at his throat, of course there's blood, quite a lot of it too. The skeleton grabs the chair he was sitting on and just holds him upside down while shaking him, a small trickle of dust coming out of his throat, or, his trachea.

  “So how’s your day?” The skeleton asks, continuing to shake him up and down, “Mine’s been pretty grim, Arista smashed some of my shades this morning, don’t know what’s gotten into her lately, next thing you know she tosses most of my paint into the primordial soup, makes it 100% likely of me getting fired a few times today…”

  The skeleton flips him back to be right side up, rummaging around the tool box, the skeleton brings out a sewing needle and some thread, quickly patting his windpipe back into place, the skeleton’s finger seemingly pop off its joints extending right in the air so it can work on fixing his throat, each passing second it fells like his voice is coming back to him, like the strings of a harp being restrung, he’s pretty sure it wasn’t his original voice.

  “Welp, hate to break it to ya. But you are missing a bunch of things, so I took some liberties and had to do some reconstruction with unorthodox materials, basically I just went off script. Don’t be too mad? Pretty please?” The skeleton says while putting its hands together, “I made your voice nearly perfect pitch, Is that at least a small sorry?”

  The skeleton flips the chair up in the air, grabbing him by the shoulders, it sets him down, dusts him off, gives him a pat on the back and then rips the floor open like it was paper, he can see a clear image of the sky through the tear.

  “Through here is the new world you’ll be dropped in, don’t worry, you won’t actually fall through the sky…” The skeleton pulls him close with a hand on his shoulder, waving its other boney hand like a salesman showing off a product, “Blah, blah, magic crap. Can’t tell you a thing because that’s cheating. Do try not to die too quickly. If you do, I’m definitely fired! Now if you’ll excuse me, I probably have a meeting with god to explain my actions!”

  The skeleton gives him a gentle shove, shooing him into the hole, “Go on!” It says with a little whisper, “wait! Do you remember your name? The paper was shredded so I couldn’t read all too well. I could make out your last name but not your first. Last name’s Harsguard, First name started with an R.” It says still whispering

  “Why are you whispering?” He says realizing he could actually talk, the simple urge to continue the unnecessary joke coming to the surface of his mind.

  “I don’t know! What’s your name, man!?” The skeleton says, going with it as well.

  “Royce, I think…”

  The skeleton quickly leans forwards, basically leaping towards him, gripping the tears in the ground and ripping them further to be under his feet, he falls between the tears, feeling the wind rush past him as he instantly starts tumbling. The tears that he feel through now look more like streaks of clouds, however, his first thought about being dropped from the shelf of god’s attic to a probably, very, incredibly, painful transition of terminal velocity to mortal man turned pancake, is… “oh god, am I even wearing clothes? It’d be pretty embarrassing to die again, but naked. Actually, how did I even die?” He says as he scratches his chin, feeling how, unnaturally smooth his skin is, it really felt like marble.

  As he tries to grapple with the possibility of dying without dignity, he tumbles around for a few minutes. Passing clouds of all types, he guesses he’ll live, since, he would probably be suffering adverse effects from falling so high, his ears have yet to pop from pressure changes, so maybe he’s fine. He groans, still stroking his chin, stabilizing to put a leg over the other like he was leaning forward on a chair. He sees a continent, it was an ever expanding, wavy band of land.

  The land had a distinct serpentine shape, so did the band off in the horizon, though he isn’t sure, since the land looks more like a wall of mountains so he can’t see beyond it. He leans his head back and sees another continent, this time it looked more grim and gloomy, giant thunderclouds and the whole sea in front of it looked sickly, contaminated is the word he first thought of.

  He then quickly notices that the land was coming to say hi. He just sees sand, he’s pretty sure he saw a big river and a pyramid on this continent, but he honestly was getting over his possible lack of dignity, but he was clearly getting the rough welcome to the world. He could barely blink before he realizes he crashes into the sand. Completely unharmed; but after a few seconds, he feels the heat of the sun, or star, he’ll figure out what the locals call it.

  He stands up, a little hesitant to look down, but to his relief, he seems to be already wearing a thwab and tagelmust. However, there is a pair of pesky, yellow shades that he’s staring out of, with “ur welcom” scratched into the plastic lenses. Probably from the skeleton. He waves off the sand cloud he just made, seeing nothing but more sand, already expecting it to be everywhere, coarse, and rough, a bit of it already between his toes as he finds out he’s wearing sandals. He groans a little as he tries to wiggle the fine sand out of his sandals.

  He gives up after a minute and looks around, his lips pursed up in disappointment as he has his arms crossed, just turning around in circles.

  “Sand, sand, hey look! More sand!” He says with fake enthusiasm, he gets over it pretty quickly. He could be dead right now, after all.

  He stops spinning and just points off into the distance, “that way!” He says as he starts marching in that direction, whistling colonel bogey to pass the time, thinking of those special lyrics the whole time as he does, that boyish maturity making him chuckle and snicker as he struggles to whistle at first. His whistling seeming to get the attention of some camels, but he doesn’t even dare to approach them, after all, he has no clue if their “normal”

  However, he doesn’t remember him being able to whistle so loudly, yet so clearly before, either the flat dunes carrying it out for him, or his new body doing the heavy lifting, either way, he must be quite the ear sore. The camels already seem to wander away from him.

  He almost runs into a cactus. His eyes closed as he whistles and matches, his foot luckily stubbing into a part of the cactus that didn’t have any needles. He almost flails at the contact, opening his eyes, which he should have done to begin with. He looks around, scratching the back of his, “man, i’m really lost…” he thinks, making another astute observation of his surroundings. Sand. Check. He groans with great frustration, already aggravated that he has to deal with something like this, he crosses his arms again, absentmindedly blowing raspberries as he begins to march again.

  About an hour later, Royce is being a little groaning annoyance in the middle of the desert, he is definitely dehydrated at this point, his tongue dry and his face having the sheer essence of “unentertained” written all over it, his teeth tingle because he’s been whistling for forty minutes straight, he sighs sitting down on the sand, his leg already shaking impatiently. He doesn’t know what to do, let alone has he ever been in a desert.

  However, he hears the crunch of sand behind him, he looks over to see somebody riding a camel, “Okay… at least the animal looks normal” he says as he also notice the person has a spear in one hand, “Okay… at least the weapons looks normal-wait-weapon, bad.” He immediately gets up, obviously not really wanting any sort of confrontation of any kind at the moment.

  “Pardon me…” the man on the camel says, his voice sounding young, if not a little agitated. “Have you happen to know if anyone was whistling rather loudly around here?”

  “Huh?” Royce most certainly didn’t want to answer, since the one who gave the question has a weapon, and he has yet to know the lengths of pettiness the people of this world might go too, “I-uh… I did hear it, yes, but I don’t know where this person might be.” Royce says as he fiddles with his fingers

  “Oh, really? Where did you first hear it?”

  “Well, uh…” Royce is really fiddling with hands thinking of some sort of excuse, “I don’t exactly have a compose or sorts to pin point it, nor the skills.” Royce says with a small, confident smile with his eyes closed and fingers interlocked

  The man just pokes Royce on the forehead with the other end of the spear instead of the tip, making him flinch.

  “Ah, so it was you. Fine, since guys like you get lost all the damn time. Just get on, I’ll drop you off at the first town we get to!” The man says as he scratches his face in irritation.

  Royce quickly complies, though he struggles to get on the camel as he’s never mounted anything before, animal or in bed. So not only was it awkward for him, both the man and camel just shift awkwardly as Royce kicks his legs, huffing and puffing before becoming winded as he gets on the back of the camel.

  “So how did you hear me?” Royce says with a small cough to break up the silence… his body felt so frail.

  “For one, you just told me.” Royce flinches, classic hand reveal of information, “Secondly, it matches your pitch. Third, you are incredibly loud. No one bothers to remember the path out here, so, you're the only one around, usually.” The man sighs, one hand still clutching the spear.

  However, Royce seems to be more interested in the protrusions under the man’s garb; he can’t help but notice the small lump right above his butt. With a quick glance and a few itchy fingers wanting him to get a good grab at it. Royce slowly positions his hand over it, and clenches…

  The feeling was very faint, since he grabbed it with the cloth. But it felt like a little tail. The man elbows him hard on the cheek, making Royce fall off the camel.

  “What is wrong with you!?” He said as he points the tip of the spear at Royce this time, right at Royce’s chin as half of his face was planted in the sand.

  “Oh you know, not much, just lost in a desert and fell out the sky, after having existence half erased, how ‘bout you?” Royce says as he tucks his chin in as to not get so much as a nick on his face.

  “Did you seriously just grab my tail for that kind of reasoning!?”

  “I mean, yeah. I was curious.” Royce says, not even sounding slightly ashamed.

  “It hasn't even been half an hour yet and you’ve already on my nerve!” Royce can get a pretty good look of the man from the spot on the ground he has.

  Royce has his hands rise slowly in surrender as he gazes between the man’s face and the tip of the spear. Royce was busy looking at the man’s face rather than the weapon. The man had rabbit-like features; his nose rapidly twitching, his ears were combed back so they could fit a bit more snugly in his turban, his fur pale white. Now that he was looking up at him, his feet were also gigantic. He was surprised he didn’t see them at first, he just thought they were some sort of sandals you’d wear for the sand, kind of like snow shoes. Even his hands were covered, but they did seem a little more plump on the underside.

  “Oh, so furries are a real thing here?” Royce blurts out as he doesn’t completely register the information.

  “I am SO close to stabbing you right now!” The man says as he looks a little flustered, one of his legs twitch a bit

  The leg twitch makes it look like he’s trying to thump on the ground with it, “oh yeah…” Royce thinks,” Don’t Rabbits thump the ground when they're angry, or something?” He rubs his chin in thought, completely tuning him out as he picks his nose with his pinky. “Hmm… what other stuff is there here? More animal people? Should I try to remember some facts of that nature?” He gets up, dusting the sand off, which wasn’t as scorching as he was expecting, still hot however.

  “Are you seriously ignoring me right now!?” The man says with small, irritated growl

  “Ah! Is that the town over there?” Royce says as he peers over a dune, ignoring the guy again.

  Royce looks over the dune again, this time on his toes to see better, he can certainly see a few shoddy houses and very few trees. The outskirts of town are probably a little less welcoming than the center, but it looks highly populated.

  “Ok!” Royce says as he brings his hands together to make one loud clap, “Thanks for the short ride, bunny guy!” Royce says as he immediately sprints off.

  The man just stares as Royce sprints off, he swears he hears a tumble wind go by with the wind, “Why did I even bother to help…?” He says as he just turns his camel around to ride off into the nearby dunes.

  Royce gets to the edge of town, out of breath as he leans on a building, his hand instantly hot as he touches the stone, he takes his hand off just as fast as he put it on, waving it around as he blows on it to cool it off. As he cools off his hand, he only finally notices that basically everyone there was a rabbit person, which Royce thinks is pretty stupid. Not the fact that their rabbit people, but the fact that they would even live in the desert.

  He just tries to remain as casual as possible as he walks the streets, just watching them build and tinker. Most of them are forced to basically work in their undergarments due to the heat. Quite frankly, he sees enough shedded fur on the ground to start a business. Their all quite quick to notice him, but too busy with their work to really care.

  Royce just fidget with his hands, he has a bunch of thoughts going through his head, “what's the currency here, do they barter? How big of a role does magic have in this world? Is it possible to go back home? Should he go back home? Does he have magic to begin with?” He rubs his chin in thought as he walks, his eyes absentmindedly looking at the small, stone buildings, “did my junk get bigger? This is a new body after all. How much of my body has stayed the same? Ugh… a ship of Theseus…”

  Well he knows his voice has changed, in fact, he remembers that the skeleton told him he had perfect pitch, and the fact he knows in relation to his voice. So maybe he can actually sing now? He guesses he can open any magic door that requires a karaoke session to open now.

  He bumps into a wall of a house as he mindlessly walked, he rubs his nose and hears a few locals giggling at the act. He doesn't pay them too much thought as he changes directions. He honestly has no clue where he is, he doesn't even know of he'd be able to understand the language, though he did understand the guy who pointed a spear at him, after he grabbed the man's tail of course.

  He rounds a few street corners before coming to what looks like a town square, or at least some place important. There's a big stone statue in the middle of it, the stone made of something clearly foreign. The stone was a tar black compared to the brown and yellow of the stones all the houses were made out of. The statue was about seven meters tall, give or take. Since the statue was of a rabbit person, he didn't know if they take the measurements of the ears into height or not.

  The statue was clearly of someone important. Royce gets closer to it, hearing the sounds of water coming from it. He immediately stubbed his toe on the slab that held the statue up, while in pain he looks down to see that it was a fountain, it was added to the statue however many years later, since the foundation was made of a polished stone that was of the same brown and yellow color found around here. He looks up again at the statue.

  The first thing he sees is the eyes. Seven in total. Two where eyes would normally be, a third on its forehead, and two underneath each ear, one eye directly under the ear, and the adjacent eye next to it outward. The tufts of fur on its cheeks were extremely pronounced, almost sticking straight out from its face. It's hand clasped together in front of it calmly, its face tired looking yet awake, unrushed and unbothered

  Royce notices people sometimes flipping coins into the foundation, but they give no prayer or word, it was actually a little strange that they kind of hurry away once the act was done. He sees one man toss a coin in and before he could turn away, Royce taps him on the shoulder.

  “E-excuse me!” *he says as, feeling a little embarrassed, “could you tell me who that person is?” Royce says as he points a shaky finger at the statue.

  “God. Supposedly.” the man says as he turns away and leaves.

  “Supposedly!?” Royce says to himself. What does that mean? Does he exist or not!?

  He hesitates to bother someone else, so he grabs the man by the shoulder again, we'll, a bit more because he was a faster walker than expected, probably the product of being a rabbit person.

  “Umm… do you think you could point me in a direction that I may find more information?” He cringes a little and feels embarrassed, like a kid lost in a supermarket

  “About god?” The man asks

  “About more general information, which god probably falls under.” Royce says with a forced nervous laugh.

  “You could probably keep walking until you reach Sunveil river. Should be all sorts of foreigners there.” The man says as he points to a road behind the statue, “following the best constructed roads should be the quickest path.”

  “Thank you very much!” Royce says as he grabs the man's hand with both of his own.

  The man was surprised, enough to shed a bit of fur about it. Before he says another word, he just sees Royce run off into the direction he pointed.

  “I don't remember humans being that nice…”

  Royce sprints down the road, he feels much faster, maybe because he's running on a relatively flat piece of land. However his enthusiasm is slowly disappearing as he quickly realized that running is not a sustainable option. The river is probably a few days of walking away. He stops to catch his breath, almost putting his hand on another stone wall, but he saves himself from scorching the same palm.

  He wipes the sweat away from his face as he looks up, he sees the man with the camel slowly riding by. He gets an idea immediately and starts to catch up with him, slowly sneaking up on him until he was walking beside the camel.

  “Hey.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?!”

  “NO.”

  “If you help me, the quicker I get away from you.”

  “Shut up and get on.”

  Royce quickly gets on, mentally cackling in success. This time, he does not grab him by the tail.

  “Let me guess, Sunveil river?” He the man sighs, clearly irritated

  “Yes! Please and thank you! And now that we're acquainted-”

  “I am NOT telling you my name.” He says quickly.

  “Why not?” Royce says with a small pout.

  “Why should I?” He said with a small growl.

  “Becuuuuse it would be rude of me not to know the name of the person who is charitable enough to help me.”

  “Stop. Talking.” He says as his head hangs low, his turban almost falling off.

  “That's a strange name.” Royce said smugly

  “I still have my spear.”

  “Understood.”

  Royce just sits there, bored out of his mind. For minutes at a time, he'll see another person ride on by on the street, also on a camel, sometimes with supplies or cargo. He notices that most people look utterly miserable, the rest terribly sick or just terrible.

  “Did the plague pass by or something?” Royce says out loud, he covers his mouth, since he probably just said something incredibly rude, and everyone nearby probably just heard him with perfect clarity.

  “No, just the humans, so yes.”

  “Let me guess. Immediate prejudice and some sort of conqueror trying to get all the rabbit people under his or her boot?”

  “Close, a few more factors than that, but that's the summary.”

  “So are you human or not?” Royce asks, he looked annoyed that he'd already have to deal with something that probably shouldn't exist to begin with.

  “Depends on who you ask.”

  “Do you think you're human?”

  “Yes?”

  “So you are human. Case closed.”

  “It's not that simple.”

  “But everyone involved wishes it was.”

  “Technically we're all humanoid. You guys are just basic.” He says as he gently pats his camel's head, making him walk a little faster to keep pace.

  “Is there really that big of a difference? I quite frankly don't know a single thing about! it” Royce says with a small, strategic laugh. He's got him talking now and wants allllll the info.

  “Yes?” He says with an eyebrow raised, “did you skip school? Or were you unable to go to school?”

  “Something along those lines.” Royce says as he looks behind him, noticing the cargo of small boxes, one box clearly more important than the rest.

  “Can you spot the obvious difference between me and you?”

  “Easily?” Royce said slowly, not completely sure as he knows there might be more to it than looks.

  “For starters, yes. I obviously look different, but our leg strength is completely disproportionate, if I was really feeling it, I could probably jump a good ten meters in the air.”

  “Seriously!? That high?” Royce says in slight disbelief, unfortunately, he doesn't know metric too well.

  “That's actually not that high at all for us, I could theoretically jump higher if I trained, but I don't have time for that.”

  “Then do you guys have anything else? Magic perhaps?” Royce says as he fiddles with his fingers, really hoping to get an answer for this one.

  “Everyone can use magic, technically, but it's really only useful if you have the resources. So no, most people here can barely afford their own food, myself included.”

  “Then how do you guys even survive if its that much of a problem?”

  “I deliver cargo across the desert, I’m the only one who is bothered with remembering all the locations of the nameless towns. Right now, you’re in Oscri, basically the only named place around.”

  “For the only place with a name around here, it looks pretty shabby.” Royce says as he looks at the houses, the stones all seemed damaged to some degree, but always noticeable.

  “We don’t really have much going on around here, the humans like their coins, we can’t really make coins, but we do have the holy light pyramid.” He points to the big pyramid, honestly, it was hard to look at because the top of it reflected absurd amounts of light.

  “I thought that was the sun!” Royce shields his eyes as he looks at the pyramid.

  “Yes… it does occasionally confuse the local animals, kind of a problem.”

  They stop suddenly, Royce almost planting his head into the man’s shoulder but pulls back before that happens. The man dismounts his camel, the building they stopped by seems to be a store house of some kind. Royce hesitantly gets off the camel as he watches him take his cargo off of the camel, leaving only a small, red, bamboo like box on the camel. Royce falls flat on his butt as he dismounts poorly.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Don’t say anything stupid if you're coming in.” he says as he pushes the curtain aside with all of his cargo on his back

  “I’m obviously going to.” Royce gets up quickly, brushing the sand off of him, following behind quickly.

  The inside was more likely a trader hub, the people inside were much better dressed than those outside, if they were dressed at all. Even then, their fabrics looked like they were blasted with sand for years, even from across the room, Royce could see the rough texture of their clothes, they all wore roughly the same thing: a turban of some kind, and a tight yet long robe, and a few bags of whatever it is they might personally carry.

  Royce looks over to the reception area, a large amount of boxes behind it, all with tags and rope to hold it all together. The man just drops all of the boxes he had on his back on the counter, one hand already reaching for a paper, writing on it.

  “Hey, Kuroi!” The man behind the counter whispers, “Did you drag a human in here on purpose?”

  “No. I don’t even know where he’s from, but he's going in a direction away from here.”

  “I hope you guys know I can hear you, right?” Royce cuts in beside him, one elbow on the counter.

  “Shit.” both men say as they avoid eye contact.

  “Kuroi? Was it?” Royce says as he looks at the man, “I have a very strong feeling that name is very foreign.”

  “It is.” The man behind the counter says, before getting a chop to the head by Kuroi.

  “Don’t confirm it, moron!” Kuroi exhaled with a defeated sigh.

  “Who are you, human, you an alchemist or something?” the man behind the counter says as he rubs his head where he was hit.

  “Yessssss…” Royce lies

  “Makes sense, you probably did something wrong and turned your skin to marble, right? it ‘s very reflective and my eyes hurt looking at you a little.” The man squints a little as he looks at Royce.

  “Absoutly.” Royce lies again.

  “Well don’t touch anything in here, I’d rather not get some kind of exotic poisoning in any of my furniture. Kuroi, take your payment, please.” The man dumps a big sack on the counter, which sounded like food

  “Gladly.” Kuroi nabs the sack of food and starts to walk off.

  Royce claps his hands together, hands rubbing together like a scheming fly.

  “Actually… Mayhaps you could, lend, me some information. Perhaps something any other alchemists would be missing out on.” Royce says with a smile just brimming with hidden toxicity.

  “How much is it to you?” The man says as he crosses his arms.

  “Do you have any problems bestirring you? Mayhaps… the issue of coin?” Royce says as his grin gets wider.

  “And if my coin issues are bestirring me?” the man says with an eyebrow raised, slightly apprehensive of what Royce will tell him to do.

  “Maybe, just for something interesting, I could give you a theorem on how to… transmute… some gold.” Royce says as he drums his fingers on the counter.

  The man’s face contorts and scrunches, thinking hard. Royce’s small whistles of Colonel Bogey going through his ears as he thinks of some sort of deal. After all, he thought Royce was an alchemist.

  “Alright, alright! Stop the whistling, it hurts my ears. Ok, a few pals I know in the mining crews think there's a giant stockpile in the tomb of the pyramid, mana pearls and orange crystals, the kind you alchemists love and all that, probably right next to the scholar of light. Now, this theorem of yours?” The man sighs a little, feeling cheated somehow.

  “Yes, I’ll accept this information.” Royce reaches over for the paper, turning it over. He yanks a pen from the counter.

  As he draws this "theorem" he wonders if they can even read English. A few others notice the “alchemist” drawing and writing something on what was a paper meant to keep track of couriers and cargos, napkin math, thats what they think thats what Royce was thinking. They huddle around him, he feels a little uncomfortable, it got hot due to all the fur and ambient heat.

  He was just writing down the basics of electroplating. He didn’t even know if they knew anything on this paper. However, as he continues to remember to the best of his abilities about electroplating, he writes his name on it, as proof he wrote it. “Royce Harsguard” written in the corner of the paper, simply titled “Electroplating”

  The man takes the paper when Royce was clearly done, he looks over the paper, he doesn’t really understand what he’s seeing, but he can tell its not complete hocus pocus, he slowly pockets it before the others get a glance at it.

  “Don’t forget to pay royalties.” Royce says with a smug grin as he backs off with finger guns. But he almost gets tangled in the curtain on the way out.

  After Royce is done with his phonebooth boxing match with the curtain he bumps into the camel face first, gently placing his hands on the camel to not be rude and mount it.

  “Are you actually an alchemist?” Kuroi says as he gently taps the camel with his foot and it starts walking.

  “Nope!” Royce grunts before finally getting on the camel fully, “Don’t even know what they do. Or where they're from.”

  Kuroi just face palms as his hand drags across his face in disbelief, “so did you lie?”

  “No, I honor my deals, what I gave to the man was real information. Now I hope he gave me my end of the bargain.”

  “He did, somewhat, the pyramid is well known to have a tomb, containing the scholar of light, kind of obvious it would have all sorts of goods in it, especially magic related. I think you probably got cheated.”

  “Then I’ll get more than he was expecting.” Royce declares confidently.

  Kuroi slouches forward as he sighs, feeling like he’s aged a few years fro having to interact with a human. He suddenly points to the pyramid.

  “Do you know of anything of what's in there?”

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “It is the national monument of Oscri, just going near the entrance is a crime, entering it is a crime, taking anything from inside of it is a crime.”

  “Is breathing near it a crime?”

  “Nearly, most people near it aren’t there for good intentions. But I doubt you have good intentions either.”

  Royce notices the sun dipping, yet the pyramid is still ridiculously bright, but he can also see ships, he’s either closer to the coast or it’s a river. Given the size of the boats, it might be a river. Their sails were enormous, but the body of the boat itself was almost smaller than the sails and masts. It was faint, but he could hear all of the shouting of orders to unload and load cargo. But the camel stops, maybe just a few more hours of riding could have got him closer. But they stopped.

  Right next to a house, most likely Kuroi’s house, looked completely identical to the rest. Just seemingly full of cargo, or at least, empty boxes. Kuroi gets off and grabs the little red box still on the back of the camel, quickly pacing off into his house before coming back out to tie up his camel to a wooden post in his abysmally small yard of dry grass, about a square meter in size. The edges burnt and dying, the camel only eats a few bites of the grass before spitting it out.

  “Your hobble of dry spit and sand?” Royce steps around the sad sobbing spit in the ground

  “Complain elsewhere, you clearly have some better things to say, so say them.” Kuroi grunts back from inside the house.

  Royce enters past the dirty curtain acting as the only sort of privacy, aside from what he’s seen from the windows, the entire house was filled with cargo, from top to bottom, ropes holding it all together, stacked tightly, so tightly that there's a big ram-dao next to the stacks, the whole blade has the small scraps of rope from cutting rope and sliding underneath boxes like a spatula.

  Royce jumps on the big sand stump acting as a stool, right in front of a big rock with a flat top, leaning way off to the side while also leaning on his elbow.

  “Ok look. I gotta ask, did you use the sword for other uses?”

  “No, I got it from a graveyard before I was doing cargo.” Kuroi sits down across from him on another sandstone stump.

  “Graverobbing?” Royce rudely picks his nose as he says it

  “Not really, just stabbed into a lump of sand.” Kuroi’s face has a look of slight disgust at such lack of respect.

  “That's still probably graverobbing.” Royce says with a noseful of finger

  “No, it was just kind of left there–and stop doing that so aggressively!”

  “My nose is dry, man…”

  “I don’t care.”

  Royce rolls his eyes as he stops digging for gold. He flicks the dry nasal mucus off as he fakes an irritated groan. He puts hand on the table, his face suddenly serious.

  “I would like to know everything you know about magic.”

  “Why? Hit your head or something?” Kuroi crosses his arms, skeptical to teach Royce anything

  “Just a single spell or theory! Anything! Even its name!” Royce says as jumps a bit, both hands on the table hastily and almost said in a panic.

  “I have no idea what your clue is… But stop being so jumpy and intrusive.” Kuroi is puzzled by Royce, he can’t figure him out at all.

  “Please?” Royce says as he claps his hands together with a plea.

  “Just–fine! Hold out your hand.” Kuroi pinches the small bridge of his tiny little black nose in defeat.

  Royce almost stabs Kuroi with his hand, his palm up and as ridged as a spear. Royce simply ignores the face Kuroi gives him, Kuroi puts out his hand the same as Royce. Just not as quickly or violently.

  “It's called manifest. It has a few steps involved in using it, by the bare minimum is just knowing what elements exist and being… I’m gonna say about within a third of a ring of its respective scholar. You know which scholar that is, right?”

  “No, but I have a feeling you’ll tell me if I ask nicely.” Royce says with a smile on his face, his teeth less white than his skin.

  “You forgot already? It's light. Scholar of light.” A small yellow ring appears in his hand. Giving off a dim light.

  “Just like that? Just think of it?” Royce tries not to clench his fingers, thinking of light sources.

  “Well, there's more to it, you both need the stamina and the mana to do so, sometimes you need to get closer to the scholar in some cases, I’ve passed the pyramid countless times, so I just eventually figured out how to do it, also, in case you do activate it… just have some constraint-”

  All Royce was doing was channeling his inner moth, thinking of light bulbs, lamps, and streetlights, the electrical hum constant in his mind as he looks at the flat, yellow ring in Kuroi’s hand. It feels like a wire brushing up against a live circuit, violently sparking to life.

  In a split second, obviously, it's light after all… A bright light flashbangs Kuroi’s; illuminating his entire house and shooting out of his windows. He winces and grunts, grabbing Royce by the wrist and slamming it palm down, shattering the very bright ring and stopping the light. His eyes shrunken and his pupils as small as needle points.

  After The ring fully scatters into nothingness in the air, Royce flicks his hand in pain. Kuroi covers his eyes, he had felt the sharp pain of such a bright light more than a handful of times before. He still isn’t used to it. His other hand covering his face.

  “Sudden use of manifest will result in a large burst of the element.” Kuroi explains

  “Makes sense.” Royce says, half blind as his eyes are also shrunk.

  “It’ll get easier to use the light element the more you use it, but if you were thinking of using spells, forget it. They're just about impossible to learn.” Kuroi gets up, hobbling around with a hand out to make sure he doesn’t bump into the many stacks of boxes around.

  “Why? If they're well known, shouldn’t there be info about how to learn them?” Royce gets up as well, stumbling about.

  “Doesn’t mean they are well used! It's more of a monopoly.” Kuroi says as he continues to shuffle around, hitting a wall.

  “Oh, that's just unfair!” Royce and Kuroi bump into each other head first.

  “Urk! Yeah, well, the resources needed to even learn a single spell takes a small fortune.” Kuroi finds a wall to lean on.

  “Then doesn't anybody else knows light magic i could possibly learn from? Or at least tell me about it?” Royce just stumbles and trips and a bit of rope on the ground, falling face first

  “Still no. Light magic is basically unable to be learned. You have to directly interact with the scholar of light, and he’s kinda dead.” Kuroi stifles a chuckle from hearing Royce hit the floor.

  “That is incredibly unfair!” Royce gets up with his arms flailing about for a moment.

  “Then I guess you’ll go from a kiddie tantrum to angry baby noises, since it gets worse.” Kuroi crosses his arms.

  “IT GETS WORSE!?” Royce feels a little faint, not that anyone would be able to tell.

  “In order to learn magic, a scholar has to give you a little pamphlet, funnily enough. Probably because the contents don’t warrant a book sized thing to haul around, cool right? Once you even get a pamphlet, that is. Apparently scholars can choose to stay dead when killed, so… good luck with waking up a dead guy who wants to stay dead? Oh, and there's more.”

  “Oh, you sonnava- just tell me…” Royce just collapses weakly on the floor, defeated. Sighing his shattered magic filled dreams away.

  “You need two materials. The thing you need to even get started are called manifestation diamonds, you need a hill of it to make your body able to learn the magic. Then Orange fiber quartz, which does the same thing as manifestation diamonds, but you need like, thousands more than the diamonds.”

  “How do you even know about this?” Royce says squints at Kuroi, he can kind of see him now.

  “The other humans at the river port never shut up about it, rather annoying actually. They’d be more willing to tell you if they're there in the morning.”

  “You say it like a slur, you know that?” Royce rolls around on the ground

  “Of course I do, their jerks, all of them.” kuroi gives a dismissive wave, his sight mostly returned, “Find a spot to sleep, don’t freeze to death.”

  “Oh, yeah… forgot deserts do that at night.” Royce rolls around, the floor wasn’t too cold.

  Royce notices Kuroi going up a small staircase, Royce was surprised that he had a second floor, or more accurately, roof access. He quickly scrambled to his feet but Kuroi held out a hand that stopped him as he was mid breath in anticipation to be nosy.

  “You stay here, I don’t need you breathing down my neck while I sleep.” Kuroi turns back around and disappears upstairs.

  “Ok, ok…” Royce stays on the ground, rolling and slithering around like a snake, bumping into the corner of the room constantly.

  After about roughly thirty minutes, Royce gets up, he can see his breath now, the floor has gotten dramatically colder, it feels like he's walking on ice. He holds out his hand, his fingers twitch as he struggles to recall on how to use light magic.

  He sits down, regretting it instantly as his butt touches the stone stool. His free hand scratching to distract himself from the cold; His clothes aren’t too great at keeping the heat in. He persisted with his practice, he’s honestly a little desperate, using the magic didn’t have effects on him he could feel, that or it was because he blinded himself the first time; A tiny ring sputters to life in his palm, like golden embers igniting then quickly getting out of control again. This time, Royce closes his eyes before he goes blind for the second time today.

  He clenches his hand in reflex, crushing the small, yellow ring. The light immediately dies off. His hand felt off, his hand felt sore, but he also felt like his hand was sweating internally. It didn’t feel too good, but he wasn’t faint or tired, so he continued to make small puffs of light.

  He’s been at it for maybe two hours. His head’s falling forward as his right hand holds him up by the chin, hunched over the table. His left hand is now bleeding, and it turns out the magic ring has enough power to cut and stab when it shatters, like powered glass or bone dust. But his understanding has gotten way better, then again, he didn’t know anything, so anything other than nothing is better- but finally, he falls asleep from exhaustion, face first into the table with a thump!

  Royce jolts up awake, gasping for breath and falling off the stool as result, hitting the back of his head on the stone floor. He grumbles in frustrated agony as he gets up, a hand on the back of his head while his other hand feels his nose, it was the last thing he felt before he was unwillingly put to sleep from his rushed magic practice.

  Before he could stomp around in annoyance and disgruntled pain of minor inconvenience, Kuroi comes walking down the stairs, already fully dressed. He just stops at the bottom of the stairs as he sees Royce stopped mid hunch, a mad face with lip up and foot up and angry clawed fingers.

  “The fuck are you doing?” Kuroi says as his head slightly tilts to the side.

  “Being mad that your house nearly killed me!” Royce huffs as he decides to start his stomping.

  Kuroi doesn’t respond, he just walks past him and out the front of his house, untying his camel. He hears Royce still stomping around, however that's the least of his worries, since it seems somebody decided to steal his spear, he probably left it tied to his camel or right outside his house, he facepalms in annoyance while groaning. Walking back into the house, walking on by Royce who was still venting his frustrations by stomping around and grunting; Kuroi picks up the ram dao near the stack of boxes.

  Royce notices Kuroi’s ears perk up through his turban, seemingly had just remembered something, he quickly pivots around to walk back upstairs, his fast walk rather stiff. Royce stops his angryness, feeling only slightly satisfied; Royce then gets immediately spooked by Kuroi tapping his shoulder.

  “Gah! How!? How did I not see you?” Royce says with a hand over his chest.

  “You… You were facing the wall?” Kuroi says as he has the small red box in his hands, almost cradling it, even.

  “I was?” Royce says confused.

  “I can’t believe I’m helping you.” Kuroi tugs at his shoulder, dragging him outside, “Come on, before the roads get cluttered, I need to clean the human stench out of my house anyway.”

  “Do I smell that bad?” Royce is almost tempted to give himself a smell test, but decides not to when he was dragged out in the open.

  “Just get on the damn camel.” Kuroi mounts his camel, placing the red box on his lap.

  Royce grunts as he gets on the back of the camel, trying his best not to get nicked by the ram dao hanging from Kuroi’s hip, his knee nearly getting a small cut when he’s fully up and seated.

  Royce jolts forward when the camel starts moving. Its footsteps the only thing he can hear on the road, there's barely anyone else up, maybe because it’s still freezing outside; ice was actually starting to melt, he only noticed it now, but there's a bunch of stones on string outside most people’s houses, icicles forming one the undersides of each rock, typically some sort of bucket or container there to collect the melting ice.

  Anybody who was out, was sitting next to those buckets, usually holding a weapon to deter others from stealing water. But Royce averts his gaze to look ahead; there’s two big ships he could see on the river, both having the same crest, it looked like a chisel with streaks of lightning across its front.

  “Boa empire boats. Trade boats most likely.” Kuroi says quickly, sensing the upcoming question.

  “Thank you.” Royce responds, but all he gets back is a grunt from Kuroi.

  Royce ignores the cold shoulder he was given, his shoulders are already freezing in this weather. The sun starts rising behind them, much quicker than he was expecting as well. But when he follows the rising sunshine illuminating the ground, his eyes quickly lay on the pyramid, quite frankly- he’s disappointed.

  It wasn’t all too big, but it was probably still impressive to build, maybe as tall as a seven story building, he doesn’t know how much it stretches on, but the only thing impressive about it is the big cap of gold it had on it. He doesn’t have a real good look at it yet, but he thinks he sees small bits of the cap had been chipped away at. There seems to be a bunch of stalls all around it, making it the de facto market district, using the monument to attract customers.

  Finally, Royce starts seeing some colors pop in, fresh grass, flowers, even a few trees. He can peer over to each side of the camel to see some spots next to the river are farmland for crops. He has yet to see any animals, but people are certainly selling fruits and vegetables. Maybe they have spices? Royce is scratching his chin, his brain is remembering something… something about food… but he just can’t quite put his finger on it, its trying so hard to spark, but at the same time he also remembers when he was writing down the basics of electro plating, he doesn’t quite know why he remembers it.

  The stopping of the camel jolts him back, seeing that they stopped just a few hundred feet away from the river, a few shoddy ports there with workers unloading cargo. Kuroi gets off and ties his camel to a post, a punch of wooden posts just stuck in the ground nearby. Royce reluctantly gets off, he wanted to squeeze a few more feet of the ride so he didn’t have to walk much.

  “So do I just walk up to somebody?”

  “Well, do you intend to get on a boat and go where there are other humans?”

  “Not entirely, I kind of wanted to get closer to the pyramid, I won’t get stabbed for getting too close, right?”

  “Depends if anyone wants to be highly patriotic today, higher chances since you're a human.”

  “Do people really hate humans around here that much?” Royce asks as he looks around wearily, like he should be aware if any rabbit folk were going to stab him in the back.

  “Yes.” Kuroi answers instantly, he points up to the pyramid, “The entrance to the tomb, if you’re still insane, is on the other face that you can’t see. Should be some sort of stairs going up, have fun, I guess.”

  Royce sulks a little as he starts his walk, still wondering if he should go up to the boats or to the pyramid. He quickly turns and grabs Kuroi before he actually gets the chance to walk.

  “Wait! Two things! How long will those boats be there for, and could you spare a weapon?” Royce says in a panic, he’s got to get some properties straight.

  “The boats will be there for most of the day, and no, I'm not giving you a weapon. I only have the sword for now, and I don’t want to give you one anyway.” Kuroi shrugs off Royce’s hand from his shoulder, his face going from tolerant to disgusted.

  Royce just has his hand up after it got shrugged off, “sorry” he responded softly before starting to walk off towards the pyramid. It quickly got crowded, and Royce felt heavily isolated, he was the only human there, he honestly felt like he was going to get heat stroke with all of the ambient heat due to fur rather than the sun.

  Ignoring the potential heat stroke, he just kind of pushed around in the crowd, he couldn’t really see, since, all he could see was a sea of rabbit ears whenever he got to be on the tip of his toes. Trying his hardest to not paint a target on his back as he gently shoves back on the wave of people, finally, he pops off into an alleyway. Kind of skidding off the ground as he trips and makes a small puff of dust and sand. Quickly getting up and still stumbling back, his eyes trained on the crown of the pyramid shining in the distance.

  Pushing back into the crowd, maybe a few minutes of getting used to the jostling of people, he gets the hang of it, nearly surfing through and slipping past people with minimal contact or embarrassment.

  Surprisingly, Royce almost trips again due to the lack of push back; no one was anywhere near the entrance face of the pyramid, maybe a person or two, but a lot of people seem to be very adamant of keeping away from this side of the pyramid.

  The pyramid is utterly blank, just a golden, chipped cap. The entrance has a long, deathly exhausting staircase. Two flat, ash covered pyres rest near the entrance, long since extinguished.

  Royce scoots up to the base of the staircase. He inhales as he looks up along the stair case, groaning as he’s still looking up, his groaning getting louder as he finally sees the entrance for another time, he knows he’ll get his cardio in at this rate.

  Royce inches up to the start of the staircase, right before he puts his foot down on the first step, he sees a few humans, actual humans! He gets a little giddy, not that he was uncomfortable with the rabbit people, he was just unfamiliar and the whole thing has been complete whiplash for him.

  Despite his eagerness, he creeps up to be around them, they seemed to be a trio, they were well dressed: One man was clearly more important than the other two, they were possibly servants to him, he was wearing a wig, or some rather well kept hair, but still powered white, that or his hair was white naturally; Royce’s hair was white as well, after all.

  Leaning up on a post to be relatively out of sight, Royce sees the man drinking heavily, the whole space around them was empty, none of the rabbit people seemed to even want to get close to them, probably because the vendor was beaten half to death behind the counter of his little wine stall. Still bleeding fresh blood on the sand and rocks, several bottles smashed around him.

  Royce collects himself, breathing in as he pinches the bridge of his nose. Quite frankly, he wants to strangle the life out of the douche, but he knows he’d probably get beaten to death by the two men behind the noble looking guy. He lets the anger clench into his fists and saves it for later. He gives the vendor on the ground one last look before wiping the sweat off his head to go back to climbing back up the stairs.

  Unfortunately, as Royce starts walking up, people start noticing. A few glances, then whispers and murmurs, he can start hearing people talking about him, which makes him feel incredibly embarrassed as he slows his ascent, trying not to let people see the red hue on his face.

  But that immediately fades when he hears the drunken shouting of the man below, Royce turns around, immediately seeing one of the other men standing right behind him, his eyes go wide as he didn’t hear him sneak up, but before he could say anything, the bodyguard hands him a little bag, it sounded like coins. Royce is just confused but the bodyguard starts speaking to him.

  “Duke Koffman wishes to give you a commission, since you already took the money, I’ll assume your up for it.” The man says abruptly and coldly, with zero room for argument

  “T-That! That's dirty! You just dropped it in my hand!” Royce thinks to himself as he looks at the man still confused. But he lets him continue speaking.

  “Since only humans are worthy of such money or commission, the duke has deemed you capable enough to do something in his honor. He wants you to plunder artifacts from the pyramid.”

  “HUH?” Royce says under his breath, utterly confused, sure, he wanted to go in, but he didn’t really want to take anything of national value, maybe a coin or something like that, maybe some more magic or something, but not plunder a monument.

  “Now go, as you were” The bodyguard pivots on the spot, calmly walking back down the stairs.

  Royce looks back down, seeing this “duke” continue his drinking, and shouting too, maybe he’ll choke if he keeps doing it, Royce would like that. The duke is still blatantly abusing the vendor, throwing the empty wine bottle at him while he was still on the ground. Royce uses most of his will power to turn his head around to ignore it.

  His feet feel like lead as he grinds his teeth a little as he climbs up, he remembers he still has a lot to learn, he doesn’t even know what he really wants to do, he just wants to get some valuable survival tools under his belt, he’s in a completely unknown world at the moment. He’ll get back at the sentient stacks of feces later, he’s got some cardio to do.

  “Mister Koffman, was it alright to entrust a random vagabond such cash?” the bodyguard says as he stands next to the duke, who’s swaying side to side on a stool.

  “N-naturally! Only a human would actually be able to… to…” The duke leans forward, eyelids heavy before he slams into the counter, jolting him back wake, “only a human could understand such potential in that dirty tomb!” He says as he jumps up from the stool, grabbing another bottle and just throwing it at the vendor, “T-these! These….” he starts dozing off again, the other bodyguard taps his shoulder lightly,” These stupid animals could never grow even if they tried! Its nearly an insult that a manifest scholar is one of them! It should’ve been a human!” he starts kicking around the stools, he grabs one of the bodyguards’ sword from its sheathe, walking around and yanking the vendor by the ears.

  This action now gets all the surrounding rabbit people’s attention, the bodyguard with his sword still steps in front to discourage any action.

  The duke holds up one ear and cuts it off with the sword, he immediately throws the cut ear on the ground.

  “I would’ve worn my gloves sooner, but this needed immediate action!” The duke gives the vendor a kick to the head, for good measure, of course.

  “That alchemist vagabond, Sir, what should we do afterwards with him?” The bodyguard says as steps on the vendor’s waist.

  “If he lives, he lives. I’ll invite him to the house, or something. Come on, I need to get back to the city to see actual civilization!" The duke says as he hands the guard his sword back.

  The trio start to walk to the river port, getting all sorts of glares from the rabbit folk now, not that the duke notices in his delirious drunkenness. They make way for him, the ones with weapons all seem to be missing, no longer perching atop their houses or watching their water buckets.

  The two bodyguards feel something is off, but there isn’t a direct threat, they only get the cold shoulder or glares from the rabbit people.

  “The next ship will be here right before sun down, sir.” One bodyguard says, feeling uneasy suddenly.

  “Tsk. Those boats always take their damn time! Can’t they hurry it up from time to time!?” As the duke says it, he suddenly gags, barfing all the rotten contents of his vile stomach all over a fresh fruit stall, he continues his stride right after he spits on the stall as well.

  The fruit vender just has a defeated look on his face, his hands nearly reaching out in a late, tired attempt to save his fruits. They slump to his sides as he sighs, falling onto his stool slumped over as well.

  The duke nudges one of his guards, he points to a camel, a little red box catching his attention. His bodyguard simply nods, casually walking past the camel and snatching the box, turning around smoothly and handing the duke the red box.

  The duke’s eyes widen, he knows the craftsmanship of the Boa empire when he sees it, after all, he’s a duke of Boa, too. And this wasn’t carved by some amateur. The duke seemingly snaps out of it, sobering up in seconds, wiping the drool from his face, his eyes focused on the little red box. His finger tapping his chin as starts to aimlessly walk forward, the box in his hand in front of him.

  It wasn't the same style as the Boa empire. It was too smooth, and it was painted, the Boa empire would never paint their wood, simply let the texture and patterns of the wood speak for themselves. The only chips in the paint were at the bottom, the legs of the little box were rough, but all the sand and wind clearly didn't affect the box. The top of the box had four tree sculptures going inward from the corners, the leaves and branches coming together in the middle to make a ring to pull the top off. The longer sides of the box had sculpted warriors he had never seen before, not their armor, or weapons. There were two on each side, seemingly dueling each other, their long, slightly curved swords clashing in the middle. A forest of bamboo around them. On one end of the box, was a broken hour glass, on the other half, it was of a man's face. His hair is spiky and up right like it's constantly being pushed back by some unseen wind. One eye closed his other eye focused and sharp, a scowl with an aged and wrinkly fake, but not an elder.

  The duke is dumbfounded, bumping into people as he pays them no mind. This was getting infuriating, he wasn't the best carpenter or wood sculptor in the empire, but he was better than the rest of the dukes. He puts his hand on the top and looks under it, spotting a humming bird with a barbed beak carved into it. He huffs and he cuffs, agitated even more.

  It was made by some outcast, he's pretty sure the fool was dead. He's still a bit drunk but he still can't call out such a prestigious sculptor in bad faith.

  One of his bodyguards has to put his hand out to stop the duke from walking off into the river. The duke almost raises his voice, but refrain. Instead he sits on a barrel, still appraising the box. Finally, he opens the box.

  Lifting the lid and letting the sunlight filter in, he sees a colorful bunch of cloth. Like it was ripped right from canvas, it was just flexible enough but he could see the age of the paint or ink, he's not sure, he's a wood sculptor, not a painter. But it was the most colorful thing he'd ever seen. It was of the man's face that was sculpted on the side of the box. The duke can't help but snicker for a moment, the man looked like he was wearing some sort of woman's night gown.

  But he was on a tide of sand. The sky is painted green. He's never seen the way something was painted like this, he thinks it was colored ink. It was such pale colors, yet distinctly intense. The man's robes were a light gray, the scabbard of his slightly curved sword in one hand, and his sword in the other, the blade had a small shiny glint of purple on its edge. The duke had never seen such a small guard on a sword before, he thought it was pitiful.

  However, the duke feels unsettled but the sheer detail on the man. He was thin, maybe malnourished with his hollow cheeks and stern, hard gaze. He could nearly see the texture on his skin, his veins, his filth.

  The duke was so engrossed by the meticulously crafted piece in his hands, that he didn't even recognize the fact that there were pills inside the box, covered with gold dust. This was an outrage! Who of these animals would even be able to afford such a luxury!?

  The duke gets up, to his delight, he finally sees a ship coming from the horizon. But that just means he still has to suffer in this blindingly bright desert full of animals and loose fur. Pacing around in an uncomfortable pace.

  “What did I do in my drunken stupor?” He says as he anxiously scratches his head.

  “You ordered me to give a purse full of coins so he would go into the pyramid, he looked like an alchemist.” The bodyguard says quickly.

  “So is he dead already?” The duke asks as he feels nauseous now, starting to have a splitting headache.

  The bodyguard looks over his shoulder, unable to see the staircase now that they were at the river.

  “At his pace, he might not even be at the entrance yet.”

  Royce falls face first into the step in front of him, he now has a throbbing head as he lays there, exhausted, he might be three fourths up the stairs. He's too exhausted to check, but he knows that going down is actually the worst part. He's finally feeling the heat of the sun, the pyramid's cap reflecting light and blinding him, he might accidentally step off the stairs if he gets any more blinded.

  One hand at a time, he starts to crawl up the steps, the surface hot, but not scorching. He grunts and pants, he might wheeze if he was feeling fancy, but that would waste more time. So, hoping he isn't being watched, he spreads up, one half up one half down, and he starts to push and kick, he probably looks like some sort of roach scurrying up the stairs right now.

  He holds his breath as he feels very embarrassed to do something so ridiculous. Yet he can feel that it's working, so it isn't stupid, it's working better because he can feel the steps aren't as weathered like the ones at the bottom, so he's getting much more grip. He can actually feel more heat coming, but there's a spot where it's less intense, right in the middle part of the stairs.

  After a few more minutes of scurrying up the stairs, he flops over, feeling that he reached just the top of the staircase, a little off stops light from blinding him, so he can see the two pyres at the entrance, at first when he first saw them, he thought they were smoldering, maybe even a few embers, but they weren't, they were these little balls just about bigger than an ember, white and yellowish in color, they just hover there, sometimes bob up and down.

  Getting to his feet, or knees, since he is still exhausted, Royce just makes a bunch of exhausted garbled noise as he shuffled over to the entrance. It was all dim inside, his face half stretched on the floor as he looked up, his view skewed; there’s a hallway stretching off into the pyramid, torches unlit on the walls. He thinks there’s some sort of carvings on the walls, but he can’t quite make out what it is.

  Finally getting up despite his exhausted body, he starts to stumble as his ankles ache. But right before he makes another step, he holds his hands out in a small, panicked breath, remembering that there was the possibility of traps inside. He holds his breath as he scans the area. His eyes wide to make sure he doesn’t skip out on a detail.

  His feet shift forwards slowly, grinding on loose dust and sand, the scraping sound echoing in the hall, the shadows provide shade that gives him a chill from the contrast of the harsh heat from outside. The cold was a better feeling on his aching muscles.

  Royce relaxes a bit, taking one step forward his foot makes the stone it settled upon sink about three inches. He immediately freezes, blood running cold as he holds his hands up as if he felt like something was going to hit him in the face.

  But nothing happens. He’s still holding his hands up, one eye squinting and the other closed has he reluctantly moves his hands, the empty, dusty, derelict hallway is still the same empty, dusty, derelict hallway. Royce then takes another step, the stone he steps on was more circular, having a painted yellow ring on it, this time, it makes a loud, very much audible click.

  The entire hallway shakes, dust falls from the ceiling. A few stones falling out of the walls. It suddenly stops for a second. Long enough to let Royce get a false sense of security nothing will happen; A giant wall nearly decapitates Royce as it shoots out from the ceiling, he ducks way faster than he thought he could to avoid getting another crappy restart. The wall slams into the floor and shuts the pyramid tight, a giant wave of dust blowing over the hallway, and covering Royce.

  Royce just stares at the slanted wall that just nearly killed him, more annoyed that it trapped him in than anything, his eyebrow twitches a little before he inhales.

  “ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW?!” Royce says as he kicks the wall, stubbing his toe.