Sally smiled at the restoked ambition. There was the woman she admired.

  Then, she broke the silence. “Soooo, do you like it?” Sally asked, smiling.

  Lucy looked down at the head, then donned it on her head. A great big smile and sparkling green eyes. That was everything Sally needed to know.

  16. Roadside Travel – August 13, Year 216

  Sally didn’t sleep the night before they left.

  She didn’t think anything of it at the time. She rarely got tired anymore, and apart from buying the necessary supply and going gift-shopping, she’d not done anything strenuous. Besides, they were about to travel the most dangerous road on the Grand Circuit. She figured it was simply a case of the nerves getting to her.

  But now, after a full day of – thankfully uneventful – travel and the night’s first six-hour watch, she still couldn’t find any sleep.

  Lucy’s turn to be on the lookout had come and gone nearly two hours ago by now. While the sun had yet to come out, the sky was slowly starting to brighten from its reflected light. And yet, despite the forty-eighth hour of being awake approaching, despite closing her eyes and laying still all the while, Sally remained awake, body full of energy.

  Unfortunately, so was her mind; overactive and spiraling.

  Was this another unexpected ‘gift’? Would she be able to sleep if she got tired, like she did after a fight? Or would she simply be able to sleep after going a couple of days without rest? Would fatigue begin to pile on or would she be able to remain active, feeling rested without resting?

  Will I ever sleep again?

  That last thought filled her with more dread than it maybe should. She could already die without consequence, had more stamina and vigor than her body could hold, was stronger than she should be, and was on par with a Demon in terms of speed and reflexes. So what if she didn’t have to sleep anymore? Already her blessings made her feel disconnected, what’s one more to the pile?

  But Sally felt there was something different about never needing, never being able to sleep again. Every person might share the same characteristics, but they were all on different points of the skill. They differed in strength, in speed, in intelligence, in skill; any characteristic you could think off, people possessed them in degrees, their uniqueness stemming from the varying levels rather than possession of these characteristic. That she was on the high-end of some of them, well, so what? That, too, was normal, even if it was caused by some magic or miracle.

  As for her refusing to stay dead? Her mentor had survived a punctured lung, her father a heart attack, and she’d seen who knows how many near-death experiences. Everyone in the world struggled to survive, and everyone knew of or heard stories about people who defied the odds, surviving where no one else could. Survival was the norm everywhere, doubly so in the Circuits.

  So what if her method differed from the rest? The Evergraced have been around since the end of the Old World, and they were still human – even their Church agreed with that. Besides, she’d heard tales of southern sorcerer-lords living for nearly a hundred years.

  Her ability to survive wasn’t that special in the grand scheme of things.

  But she’d never met nor heard of someone who doesn’t sleep, who can go on infinitely without rest. Not even the Evergraced did that, despite their fantastic feats. If there was someone that could, Sally figured it’d be the Hilaynites, but being compared to a man of metal didn’t comfort her in the slightest. Worse, she didn’t even know for sure if they could.

  These thoughts had plagued her throughout the night, another path to depression she could file away with the others.

  Thankfully, her resting period was short by design, and once the sun rose, she grabbed her belt and bandolier, put them on and got out of the tent, ready to leave her thoughts behind.

  They had camped in a small divot a few yards from the road of the Red Circuit, on the southern side rather than the northern. Lucy had wanted to set up camp inside the Red Wastes, which Sally agreed they should do further into the journey, but for now she thought it was better to keep to the outside of the Circuit. They were not that far from Southwall and cannibals were much less active on this part of the road, so they could take the risk.

  Lucy stood up a small elevation from where their tent sat, sticking close to the road. Once Sally was out of the tent, Lucy spotted her and gave a playful salute.

  “That time already?” The pilgrim asked, turning toward the horizon and the not-yet-visible sun, then back at Sally. “Seems a bit early.”

  “Thereabouts,” Sally said, performing some stretches. “Besides, better to start early and travel as long and far as possible. The sooner we get this part behind us, the better.”

  Sally fished the burner, pan, canteen and some breakfast food out of her bag. Lucy descended from the hill, approaching her own bag and pulling foodstuffs and water from it as well. Sally started to setup the burner, but Lucy quickly scooted beside her.

  “Let me,” the pilgrim said, taking the burner before Sally could object. Not that she was about to, her fiddling with the burner had simply become a part of their routine, a performance more than anything.

  Sally didn’t even know why she still did it instead of just letting Lucy do it immediately, without all the pretense. Maybe old habits from her time as a warden? Stubbornness, maybe? Or were both of them doing it simply to appease her pride?

  Either way, it didn’t matter. Soon, breakfast was prepared – a stew with hardtack, onion, potato and fatty salted pork mixed together. Lucy served her up a bowl, which Sally fixed between her legs before she began spooning it out.

  “Spotted anything special?” Sally asked between bites.

  Lucy swallowed her own bite before speaking. “Yeah, there was something in the Wastes, half buried in the sand. Looked like a weird sort of stick? A rodent or a lizard or something – couldn’t get a good look at it, dark and distant and all – went to investigate, but then something whipped out from underneath the sand and grabbed it! Couldn’t even get close!” Lucy mimicked the motion with her hand, smile on her face. The pilgrim was always quickly excited when seeing something new.

  “Then, it just disappeared. Any idea what it was?” Lucy finished, a questioning look to Sally.

  Sally didn’t have to think long. “Probably a snaptongue, one of the sandfish in the Wastes. The name tells you what it does. Doesn’t bother people, though. Despite its size, it’s just an animal.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “And that stick was part of his body?” Lucy asked, contemplative. “How large is it if the tongue is that long? And how does it know when something is near it?” A far-off look settled into her eyes as she asked whatever question came to mind.

  Sally snorted at the sight. “That ‘stick’ is a third eye, has an orb on top that can see all around,” Sally explained. “Acts as a lure, too. Probably looks like a plant or a worm to other animals or something.”

  Lucy nodded. “And their body?”

  “Buried in the sand,” Sally replied. “It’s quite long, or so I’ve been told. Anywhere between ten and twenty yards, though I’ve never seen one unearthed personally.”

  “Are they rare, then?” Lucy asked, getting a bit excited.

  “Maybe, no-one really knows,” Sally said. “There are plenty of stories about them, but I don’t know how many have actually encountered one, so who knows?” Sally shrugged. “Besides, how would you count them? Why would you even try? It’s not like people farm or hunt them or anything.”

  “Huh,” was Lucy’s simple reply before staring into her bowl, ruminating in silence. Always so inquisitive, Sally thought.

  Sally shook her head and returned to her own bowl of mush, quickly finishing up. She thought about filling another, but she didn’t feel hungry, not before nor after the first bowl. So, she ran her finger through the bowl to get the last scraps before rubbing it with copious amounts of sand, cleaning it as best she could before storing it again.

  She stood up. “I’ll be on the lookout,” Sally said, breaking Lucy out of her thoughts temporarily. The woman simply nodded and Sally went to the road.

  The familiar oily, glassy looking road greeted her, stretching into the distance both east and west. The road cut through the landscape like wall, separating the reds of the Wastes from the dusty browns of the Cannibal Mountains. The rising morning sun gave it an odd glisten. Combined with a coat of red from sand carried out from the Wastes, it gave the road an imposing and almost ethereal look in the early morning gloom, much more so than during the bright of day.

  She could spot no prints or trail on the road, not of man, demon or animal – which was good. Made it just that bit less likely that something had walked these roads in the recent past.

  Sally took her gaze from the road and surveyed her surroundings, but there was not much to see. Which, again, was good.

  With nothing to occupy herself with, Sally’s mind tried once more to wander about her condition, about her lack of a need to sleep, but she forcibly steered it away to another topic, that of the journey ahead.

  She suspected they’d gotten a good fifteen miles or so yesterday, which made for a good pace. If they kept that pace, they could reach the Redwater river by noon tomorrow, and Lake Majestic by the end of the fifteenth of August.

  Not that she expected they could keep. Since they couldn’t walk the roads of the Red Circuit, they had to walk off-road on either the mountain side or the desert side. The mountain side was preferable for keeping up speed, and they would continue to wander it for as long as possible, but inevitably they would have to veer into the Red Wastes.

  The reason why was simple. The road would start to turn toward the Cannibal Mountains a few miles from here. But before those mountains was a sizeable plain without any cover to hide them. In other words, for anyone living in or near the mountains, they could spot anyone travelling near the roads with ease, while the other way around was a bit harder.

  The dunes of the Red Wastes would provide some cover, even if it wasn’t foolproof. Unfortunately, while this close to the road the dunes of the Red Wastes weren’t as clingy or shifting as further in, it would still likely slow them down significantly.

  Still, one could always hope.

  It took Lucy about thirty more minutes to finish breakfast and break up the camp. As per silent agreement, Lucy had packed most of the stuff into Sally’s backpack, which Lucy handed to her as she joined her on the road.

  “Ready to go?” Sally asked the pilgrim.

  Lucy gave a nod and they were off.

  X

  They travelled beside the road for a few hours, sun climbing and heat rising all the while. Unfortunately, while the road might be cool to the touch, it had no such effects on the winds blowing across it. The winds from the Wastes were still hot and sandy, scalding and scouring at the same time.

  Nor could they risk setting foot on it all willy-nilly; you can never predict when its oddities would strike. A fact that was reinforced about five hours into their journey.

  Sally spotted it first, marching as she was at the head of their two-woman column. A slight raise in the road, almost completely obscured by the heat haze coming from the road. She first thought it a mirage, but as they came closer it didn’t fade, becoming more pronounced instead.

  Whatever it was, it lay on the road and while she wasn’t a hundred percent sure, seemed to be unmoving. It was likely completely stuck or had already frozen to death.

  “Something on the road,” Sally said, taking her Guardsman out of its holster.

  “What?” Came Lucy’s distracted reply.

  “Something on the road,” Sally repeated slightly louder.

  It sounded as if she’d been in a travel-trance. Or simply deep in thought. Either way, it was a bad habit, but not one Sally cared too much about; it was Sally’s job to watch out for threats, not the pilgrim’s.

  She heard some shuffling and rustling coming from behind, likely Lucy getting her Scarab ready.

  “Can you see what it is?” The pilgrim asked.

  “Nope, but it doesn’t seem to be moving,” Sally replied. “But better-”

  “‘Safe than sorry’, yes, yes,” Sally interrupted with a sigh, sounding much put-upon.

  They approached the thing cautiously but steadily, ready for it to jump and charge them, but it thankfully remained still.

  As they got closer and closer, the picture became clearer. A corpse savaged beyond recognition, rib or rib-like bones rising up from its chest unnaturally, pieces of torn flesh or something still hanging from them. All of it completely still, frozen physically and in time by the road’s magical properties.

  “A person?” Lucy said, half-whispering.

  Sally didn’t see it, but Lucy’s comment made sense. Not that it made it any clearer to see, but the ribs looked human enough, and she could see a set of hollowed-out limbs that could’ve been arms glued to the pavement.

  When they moved next to it, Sally saw Lucy was right. There was a body of a person, splayed open with brute force and their insides missing. There wasn’t much left of the figure’s limbs, only the part of its skin and flesh that was frozen to the road remained, lying upon what remained of their clothes. Strewn about here and there were the cracked remains of the figure’s arm and leg bones, broken open with purpose to suck the insides out. Their skull was caved in from the face down and the top of it was removed. Of the brain and eyes there was nothing, leaving only torn skin, shards of skull-bone and hair as identifiable parts of a person’s head.

  All of it was covered in a layer of red frost, with pinkish icicles rising from where the bloody frost melted, fell off the body and was refrozen by the road.

  Something had likely come and eaten them after they’d gotten stuck. Whether they’d done so before or after they died was anyone’s guess.

  “Did a cannibal do this?” Lucy asked, looking at the body with clear-eyed curiosity rather than horror or disgust.

  “Could be,” Sally replied, scanning the body. Any animal or demon could’ve cracked open the body, the bones and the skull to get everything out of the corpse. Still, most demons left some specific sign of their doing – like a bloodfiend leaving an intact if exsanguinated corpse, or a stonegroll leaving a more fully minced and ground-to-dust corpse than this – and most animals didn’t pick apart a body as thoroughly as happened here. “No way to know for sure, though.”

  Then Sally looked at everything but the corpse. Although there wasn’t much left of them, the clothes looked somewhat rough and simple, a cloth covering rather than normal clothes. More importantly, however, was the lack of shoes, bag or other carriables.

  While some of those might’ve been looted by others – including cannibals, if it were them that did this – it did open one possibility.

  “At least, this guy was probably a cannibal,” Sally said. “No shoes, shoddily made clothes, no sign of weapons or shots being fired.” Most cannibals were unarmed, preferring to do their deeds by hand. Which made sense, since they couldn’t produce anything advanced, and their unnatural strength made up for their lack of weapons.

  Lucy hummed at that. “Maybe they were running from another cannibal and got unlucky?”

  Sally imagined it, one cannibal running from another, trying to get into the Wastes only to end up being frozen when crossing the road. But if that were the case, they would’ve landed face first on the floor, not on their back. Unless they somehow twisted when they fell? But that seemed unlikely; they would’ve had to do it with such force to completely snap their ankle. Could be they simply stumbled and gotten unlucky only after they fell or crawled onto their back.

  Sally shrugged. “Maybe.” Again, there was no way to tell with the scant evidence they had.

  “Could they still be around?” Lucy asked.

  Sally took a moment to think. “Probably not. This corpse has already re-frozen since its, ah, dismemberment? The icicles are already pretty large, see,” Sally said pointing at the rose-colored crystals. “Must be long gone by now.”

  They stood for a moment, Lucy taking in the sight while Sally kept an eye on their surroundings until her curiosity was satisfied.

  “Still, better to eat lunch away from it. Who knows what kind of scavenger it could attract?” Unlikely as it is, Sally thought but didn’t say. The point was more to put some distance before the sun reached its apex, rather than any real worry.

  The point was not as subtly made as she’d thought, because Lucy rolled her eyes in response. However, the pilgrim didn’t argue and they continued their journey.

  X

  By the time the heat got to Lucy, the road of the Red Circuit had curved back to be closer to the Cannibal Mountains, so they set up camp between the dunes of the Red Wastes. Sally once more dug a hole for added cooling and Lucy pitched the familiar canopy for herself.

  Lunch was a simple affair and decidedly less hot than breakfast – bread, a thick slice of cheese and ham. It didn’t really taste good; the cheese was hard, the bread stale – they were what remained of the caravans they’d encountered a week ago by now – and the ham was tough. All in all, nothing special.

  Despite this, Sally was in a good mood. They’d walked almost ten miles already! Maybe it was because Lucy had gotten used to the travel, or maybe it was just a good day, but even though they would now need to walk on the inside of the Red Circuit, they’d likely make the fifteen miles today. As long as nothing happened of course.

  Sally took a bite from her lunch and watched the desert from atop the sandhill. Not that there was much to see, the combination of the heat, the glare of the sun and the numerous dunes meant creature made themselves scarce or were obscured by their surroundings.

  Still, there was something nice about looking at the desolate wastes, something calming. It should’ve been boring and she remembered that in the past, in her time as junior Warden, she did find it boring to be on the lookout. Back then, it felt like they were doing nothing, remaining passive and reactionary when they should actively seek out threats instead.

  Nowadays, despite her never-ending font of energy, she preferred the calm scenery. She could take a guess as to why that was the case, what had changed since the old days… but she’d rather not.

  It was better to enjoy and embrace this tranquility, in environment as well as in her own mind.