Chapter four

Into the desert, the King brought as little supplies as he could survive with. She brought none. They passed over the dunes with the sun looming behind them. The middle distance was clear in the morning air, but in the horizons lurked shadows that the King hoped were mirages. Of course, he knew much better than that, and he purposefully ignored them.

She didn't lead, but neither did he. They walked together, separated by worlds. The wind caressed their heads, and the glinting red silk caressed it back. The king turned for one last look at his receding kingdom, feeling deep melancholy as he did so. He refused to acknowledge the feeling, but he could sense some ungraspable pressure in the air, as if this was the last time he would pass this way.

Tradition demanded some sort of nostalgic thought, and he entertained many memories before Gabrielle caught his attention with a wide gesture. She seemed to be indicating the hazy western horizon, where dunes steamed quietly to themselves and mountain ranges lurked on the edge of infinity.

"There?"

Lucifer's raw voice shocked him into clearing his throat, and he didn't catch the entirety of her utterance:

"- nestled at the base."

"What is?"

"Your destiny."

She smiled slyly at him, shaping the air with her hand motions.

"Your life, your purpose, your ultimate goal. I am here to help you, and you will in turn help me."

"Your dreams?"

"Perhaps. And yet, maybe you are a separate element from the ingredients of my visions."

He mulled this over, thought for many more paces, but turned up nothing. Yes, he was something to her, but what it was specifically, she didn't know? He could be a separate set of occurrences than those she foresaw?

The old tales had acknowledged that They were often ambiguous in their speech and purposes, but he had never imagined it could be to such a degree.

From behind the haze, on the edge of the vast desert, something took to flight and smoothly glided on the steaming currents. Lucifer froze immediately, and hissed as Gabrielle kept strolling serenely on.

"Stop! Do you want to get us killed?"

She gazed over her shoulder, honouring him with an ironic stare. He huffed and allowed himself to be drawn into movement once more, yet he kept a wary eye on the cruising dot in the distance.

"It's coming straight toward us, if we don't find cover…"

"It is no trouble to us, the cruisers are stupid and easy to fool if the need be."

He seemed about to object, but fell silent. Even at this distance, if the cruiser heard them it could mean the end – the end for him at least, he doubted that something as simple as a bomb could bring death to the creature he walked with.

"I think it's seen us." He whispered a short time later, when the cruiser made an abrupt turn and headed in their direction. Gabrielle studied the approaching dot briefly, then shook her glossy hair.

"Turn away, think not of it."

Fighting the urge to resist, he turned his eyes from the self-propelled bomb and stared at his feet, making a conscious effort to blank the cruiser and the shadows from his mind. In his deep concentration he closed his eyes, and it was only when he heard a slight jingling and felt a rough spray of sand in his face that he looked.

He couldn't see anything.

The desert appeared to have reared up and swallowed the entire world, leaving only a bright blue shred of sky hanging in the air directly above him. It took a few moments for him to realise that he was actually in the middle of a fantastic sandstorm. The banks of wind-driven sand were sheer and impenetrable. He could no longer see the shadows on the horizon, the cruising bomb of Gabrielle. A small bubble of panic welled up in his mind until he decided that the sandstorm must have been created by her. The noise of bare feet pattered around him, running circles with the sand and wind. Gabrielle materialised from the sand and took his elbow.

"If we want to stay on course, it's best to go this way –"

She gently turned him in the opposite direction and propelled him with a firm grip.

"- But what if it floats over the exposed part? And wouldn't it have noticed the storm appearing out of nowhere?"

Gabrielle glanced up, and pointed a finger. Lucifer watched as she drew a simple pattern in the air. Around him, the sand thrummed with the ghostly footsteps. He waited.

"In a few more moments I'll close us in. It should pass by without suspecting a thing,"

She finally announced.

True to her predictions, Lucifer could hear the humming of the approaching drone, even over the soft rustling of the sands. It sang across the desert and put the hair of his nape at attention, drilled into his teeth. He wanted to pull at his hair and shriek as it neared, its buzz driving him mad… and then all noise was drowned by the sands closing about them like a globe.

He stood shivering as the desert swallowed their existence and held them, hid them, in its belly. Gabrielle stood attentive, one ear cocked toward what used to be the sky. She muttered briefly, and then motioned for him to commence walking again.

----

Overhead, the drone hung in the air, confused by the sudden disappearance of all landscape and marks. It's dull, dented black body gleamed greasily in the blazing sun as it analysed the situation. It had been headed for two moving targets, but they had been swept away. His sensors did not detect the movements of the sands, and it could only see a smooth red landscape.

Uncertain, it dropped a few metres lower and tried all it's lenses. Infrared or radar didn't work, and neither did the other ones; conventional or not. It measured radiation, magnetism and air opacity to see if something was causing his senses to become obscured. Nothing.

It pondered over the though of descending upon where it had thought the targets were and detonating itself, just for the sake of it. It cleared that thought out o fits processing units – what's the point of blowing up if there were no targets?

Confused and disappointed, the cruising bomb buzzed away to find something more interesting.