Open Roads no one remembers

[Anira Verseheart]

Where the sun shines like a white ball during the day, the night was like a healing balm and darkness brought relief from the ruthless heat. But… when Anira opened her eyes, the heat was almost unbearable right away, and the night was far away. She lay on her side, her cheek against the rough sand.

The world was immersed in a blue light, but slowly other colors crept into her vision. After a few blinks, she saw the yellow-brown sea of sand in front of her as it was. The cloudless sky lay like a blue lid above. She sat up, straining to get up to a sitting position. She pushed her upper body up with her arms away from the scalding earth. Every nerve in her body ached, but was it because of the hangover or because she had been lying unprotected under the sun? How long she had been lying there under the zenit sun she did not know… Her head ached, throbbed, and screamed for water and shade.

In a way, she wished herself back to the bliss of unconsciousness, to sleep and breathe and know nothing… Being awake hurt so much that she clenched her fists tightly and screamed. But her throat was so dry that all that left her lips was a hoarse hiss. Anira did not like the taste of death. With eyes that were bluer than robin eggs, she looked around. Dunes everywhere, all the way to the horizon. No cliffs, no sea, no cities, nothing would break the horizon.

The pain dominates all her thoughts, somehow she gets to her feet and starts walking. Humans were like that. Holding on to hope, the only thing she had left. When she tried to remember what had happened, why she was here and above all where she was, she was met with an engulfing, terrifying darkness. A blackness in her mind where memories should live… The desert breeze that swept in didn't help, it was like the hot breath of the sun. The heat hit her like a violent, merciless kiss. Her fair skin was scorched, bright red.

Sand, scorpions, sand, sand, sand everywhere…

The sound of water, of birdsong, and wind in palm leaves struck her body like the vibrations of a drum. There lay a fertile oasis in the valley between two enormous sand dunes, high as mountains.

"Oh… thank the moons!"

As she walked into the oasis, the sand gave way to a floor of soft, lush moss. She knelt by the spring at the heart of the oasis and drank. The water was so cold that it cut like a sword as it ran down her hot, dry throat. The world began to spin again, stars danced before her eyes. Anira leaned forward on her hands, the long braid of golden blonde hair spilled down over one of her shoulders, and the end of it landed in the clear water.

How had she ended up here? One moment, she had been lounging in a tavern, sipping cold wine, stretching out on cool silks and listening to tales of a lost city; the next… sand, sun, and endless emptiness. She blinked, trying to make sense of it all. Then, something in her pocket caught her attention. A folded scrap of parchment, edges curled and stained. The letter! Quickly she unfolded it and quickly she realised she had made a very terrible and rash decision, drunk on fig wine.

"Fuck!"

---

“If you were to consult a map of Kaikias Desert, you would expect to travel across open, empty land as you travel between coasts. But just as you reach the part of the journey where you are about to leave the desert behind and enter the deadlands, just a few days ago, a mighty city stood in my way, right on the river. With walls that extend further than a few days’ work could create, walls made to keep out the most ferocious of forces and creatures.

I was convinced that thirst had driven me to an mirage, but soon enough the reality was confirmed for me when the large market outside the city gates filled my senses with impressions I lack the imagination to retell. As I stepped into the tents, I was greeted by wonderful smells of food I had never seen before. As I listened in hopes of understanding how any this was possible, I was met with a foreign dialect.

That's when it all went black, and I felt the ground against my cheek just before I couldn't feel anything at all. I woke up in the dark, and at first I thought it was simply evening. When I looked around, but walls of stone surrounded me. However, I had no time to do more than look around before the wooden door was thrown open and the city guards dragged me out into a square.

I was led to a black slab of stone on the ground with strange markings where I was forced to kneel, and all around me people of all kinds stared at me as if I were something terrifying. When what can only be described as a priest stepped up in front of me and began to speak in their language, I quickly realized that my life was going to be offered to something, without negotiation. So I ran. I stood up, pushed the priest away, and I ran.

During my travels I have encountered monsters, human as well as beasts, I have negotiated with madmen and traded with rogues, but never have I been so afraid as when I to escape the city that almost enchanted me with its beauty. How I escaped I have no answer, maybe they let me, maybe I was lucky, or maybe someone was watching over me, but I survived and I will never return there again.

I write this as a warning. Do not look for the city."

The letter was signed with the name Himma el-Mizra.

---

The letter had been discovered a week past, left beside a lone horse near a tent and a dead campfire. No sign of the writer, only the letter itself. In taverns and marketplaces, it had been read aloud with laughter, scoffed at as the ramblings of a mad person, or the clever ploy of someone chasing fame. Anira could still hear it in her memory, the booming voice of the barkeep, reading the lines between gulps.

Yet, despite the jest, the letter had a strange pull; its promises of a lost city, untouched and unknown, had lured some into the desert, chasing the flicker of a hope that the story might, against all reason, be true...

 

[Garrod Arlette]

"Of course its true!" The scholar, Netahn Til' Harcor, put forward. "The descriptions penned in Himma el-Mizra's script matched the ancient records of the old Devahni Empire!"

Garrod's eye narrowed beneath the shade of his linen shroud. Bouncing to the steady cadance of the buckskin mare he rode. "So long as we get paid per the agreement, Professor Harcor," which was not contingent upon any measure of success beyond keeping the jittery man alive. Easy enough.

"Of course, Cazadore! Of course! You and your..." his warm brown eyes fell to the young lady that rode just some lengths behind the ghost haired brute. Same streak of deathly white dashed across her bangs. "Ilk will be well compensated," smiled, all straight toothed and pearly.

"One would hope, Professor," Omari, bright eyed and draped in oasis blue robes said with his gap toothed smile. "Else, you'll have three malditos looking to collect," he winked.

The professor laughed nervously. "No no, my accounts are squared away, gentleman," he said between the easy pad pad of his camel's stride. "You received the advance, I take it? Enjoyed plenty of," remembered the young lady. Cleared his throat. "Moral boosters before we set out?"

"Malditos?" the youngest cazadore asked atop her black gelding. Looking to Garrod beneath the airy wraps that shielded her from the sun.

He huffed, something like a laugh. "Cazadores with a grudge," leaned his weight to bring the mare to halt. Squint. "Something up by the Oasis,"

Omari smiled. "Such is the nature of the Oasis, Garrod,"

The dramatic flailing looked too familiar. "Gods damn it," Garrod grumbled.

"Is that!"

---

Over the bray of horses and the shouts of the Cazadore racing behind her. A small voice called out over the sands.

"LADY LARK!" dust kicking up in a storm behind the race of her black gelding. Grinning, near standing in her stirrups, and waving the shortened arm of her right.

Garrod on the buckskin fast behind her.

Omari and the Professor Harcor not far behind him, albeit flustered and confused.

 

[Momoshiro Komori]

A few months before he left Aetochi to begin his journey of self discovery and healing...


​

Paper lanterns hung like tired sentinels over the street, their dim glow pooling into soft amber circles along the dirt road. Closed shopfronts and shuttered restaurants stood in still rows, their silhouettes warmed only faintly by the lantern-light. The night air carried a gentle chill, quiet and unbroken save for the rhythmic chirping of crickets and the occasional shuffle of a late traveler’s footsteps. Where the lanterns failed, moonlight took over—cool, silver, and serene—offering a small grace against the deepening veil of darkness that claimed the town in the twilight hours.

A lone woman moved beneath that patchwork of lantern glow and moonshine. Her face was painted a stark white, serene yet weary. Her robe was a work of art, patterned with peacock feathers in shifting hues of blue, purple, and white; the silk caught the light with the subtlest shimmer as she walked. She lifted the trailing ends of the garment just enough to spare them from the dirt, her steps careful, controlled, practiced.

Then she stopped—abruptly—her gaze snagging on something at the edge of her vision. She turned toward the alleyway, heart tightening, but saw nothing. Her breath hitched. Seeing something would have been preferable to that empty darkness. Maybe exhaustion was twisting her senses; it had been far too long since she’d rested. Truly rested. She shut her eyes, inhaled deeply, forced her shoulders to lower. A long, calming sigh left her, and with renewed resolve she opened her eyes.

And found it right there, inches from her face.

Her body seized. Every instinct begged her to scream, to run, to do something—but she was rooted to the spot. Her gaze locked with its obsidian eyes. Her limbs refused to obey. Fear wrapped tight around her slight frame.

The cursed spirit crouched low to meet her at eye level. Stood at full height, it would have easily reached eight feet. Ash-white skin stretched over a muscular, four-armed body, mostly humanoid in shape. Its monk’s attire hung strangely over its form, and in one hand it gripped a ceremonial staff capped with six ringing loops. Its bald head held no nose, only six glossy black eyes and an unnaturally wide mouth—its grin a terrifying display of jagged, shark-like teeth. It tilted its head in an almost curious gesture as it stared at her.

BOOM!

The monk spirit was hurled aside, slammed out of her immediate view. The impact’s force pushed the woman back, sending her once-pristine silk robes fluttering, dust and mud speckling their bright pattern. When the dust finally drifted away, she lifted her gaze—and found herself staring into a pair of red eyes. But these were soft. Warm. A gentle smile followed.

“It’s going to be okay.”

The white-haired foxkin crouched beside her, offering a steadying hand. His fox ears perked, alert, while his tail flicked back and forth in controlled anticipation. Out in the street, the cursed monk spirit regained its balance and rose. Between it and the foxkin, another spirit took form—a massive centipede, its carapace an inky black segmented with sinuous red markings. It reared up, towering, ready to strike.

The woman took in this impossible tableau—and promptly fainted. Momo caught her before she hit the ground, lifted her with practiced ease, and moved her to safety before returning to the fray.

The monk spirit had plagued the town for some time now, one of the reasons why so many feared stepping outside after dusk. Momoshiro had been hired to exorcise it, and though he had finally tracked it down, doing so required patience... and a healthy dose of luck.

Now, while the monk spirit and the centipede clashed, Momo remained poised, ready to release another of his spirits at a moment’s notice. The monk’s ability to create portals—both as shields and as weapons—made it not only powerful, but dangerously clever. Still, Momo had been handling spirits longer than most and was relying on experience to carry him through.

Using his lesser thralls to distract the creature, he closed in from behind. His grip tightened on his katana as he soared forward, blade raised to strike—

A portal opened before him.

He barely had time to shout before he plunged straight through.

He hit sand. Hard. Rolled, skidded, and sprang back to his feet in one motion. The sudden blaze of sunlight stabbed at his eyes and he winced, blinking rapidly as his vision adjusted. Behind him, the portal snapped shut.

“No no no no!!!”

He launched himself toward the fading shimmer, catching nothing but empty air.

“Aww crumbs.”

With a weary sigh, he took in his surroundings. A desert. Fantastic. Just what he needed. But then—movement. He narrowed his eyes. People on horseback, not far off.

Well. At least he wasn’t alone in the middle of nowhere.

 

[Anira Verseheart]

The oasis itself seemed impossibly vivid against the endless dunes, it gleamed like a lie. Palms bending under the sun, water so still it mirrored the azure sky. The air smelled of wet moss and scorched earth, of life somehow against the cruelty of the desert. Anira blinked up from the letter, still kneeling by the spring, when the desert’s hush shattered. Hooves, shouting, the kind of chaos that did not belong in an oasis.

She turned her head as a familiar voice cut through the heat. “Lady Lark!”

Brinda burst into view first, her black gelding thundering toward the water’s edge, dust blooming behind her like a small sandstorm. The girl was grinning wildly, waving her shortened right arm like a banner of victory. Anira’s hand clutched the letter, its edges torn and curling, the ink smudged but still legible.

Anira let out a breath in both relief and disbelief. Blinking against the glittering mirage of sun and sand.
“Brinda? Oh, by the stars, I’m not hallucinating, am I?”

The minstrel pushed herself to her feet, still swaying a little, brushing moss from her knees. Anira’s relief collided with sharp self-consciousness. She was a wreck. She looked like a sun-baked corpse. Her once-tidy attire was streaked with sand and blood, sleeves torn, and the linnen of the shirt clinging to her sweat-streaked neck. Her flaxen hair matted, dust and blood crusting her skin, a braid hanging limp across her sunburned cheek. Knees and palms scraped from bracing herself on the sand.

“…Brinda? Garrod? You’re real… you’re really here?” Her voice cracked, hoarse and tight.

Far up on the sun-baked dunes, the sand itself seemed to quiver. A pulse ran over it, faint at first, like the subtle vibration of distant drums, then swelling, thrumming with an unreal cadence. The heat shimmer of the Kaikias Desert warped around it, bending light into impossible shapes. The grains of sand rose and fell, stirred by a wind that didn’t exist, a ripple of raw magic over the dunes.

Colors bloomed where they should not exist, amber streaks curling into turquoise, shadows shifting unnaturally. And then, just as suddenly as it appeared, it shuddered and coalesced, a portal a jagged cut into the air itself. A figure tumbled from the air itself, screaming, rolling, skidding across the sand in a cloud of gold-yellow dust.

"D-d-did any of you see that?" The minstrel lifted her finger and pointed to one of the dunes.

 

[Garrod Arlette]

A shift of the legs, and a pull on the reins saw Brinda veer her horse to a hard stop. Dust and sand all kicked up as the beast groaned beneath her. The ripples and shifts still in the air as her eyes blown wide as they stared at the dustcloud, and the... man who had fallen out of the air itself.

Garrod already had his steel drawn, riding down on whatever had fallen out of the very fabric of the world. Mad grin split across his face.

He only knew of one thing that could rip through the shroud with such disregard. And he could smell it on the wyrd wind.

Shroudfiend.

And he could feel the one in his mind laughing. Would make for a tasty meal. It whispered between the pounding beat of horse hooves on the charge. Buckskin mare blew past Brinda and the stunned Lark.

He would swipe at the strange thing wearing a man's skin. Only cursed himself for being so terrible on horseback.

Having only one eye, didn't help things much either.

On the dune theyh had ridden down from Omari readied his bow, and Scholar Til' Harcor looked on with paradoxical excitement. Made himself as small as he could on the saddle atop his camel's back. While being too clung to the leather. Eyes huge and whole body worked forward.

"My, what horrendous fortune we have," he said with a horrible grin on his face. "The very firmament has torn itself asunder, and we were here," his eyes wider. "To witness it," whisper to himself. As if to hoard the sounds, too precious off his tongue.

 

[Momoshiro Komori]

At first, the sudden brightness was the worst part of being spat into this new place. The desert sun hit him like a hammer, so sharp and blinding that he winced and threw up an arm to shield his eyes. But the light was only the beginning.

Within seconds, the heat wrapped around him like a suffocating cloak. Sweat gathered at his brow and trickled down his temples. The sheer intensity of it pressed against him from all sides, a physical weight on his body. Momo immediately regretted choosing the heavy cotton haori instead of the silk one he’d admired earlier.

He blinked hard, ruby eyes adjusting as he peered across the waves of distorted heat rising off the sand. A small group of riders moved in the distance—horses, he thought… and maybe a camel? Hard to say with the shimmering air and his vision still recovering.

His white fox ears twitched. His tail bristled. One of the riders suddenly broke from the group, urging his mount into a direct charge toward him. And—was that a sword raised in the man’s hand? The blade caught the sunlight, flashing dangerously as it bounced with the horse’s stride.

Momo narrowed his eyes, taking a reflexive step back as his sandal sank awkwardly into the hot sand. He was not used to this terrain. This was—unfortunately—his first time in a desert.

Still, he forced optimism into his voice. He lifted his other hand to wave, hoping desperately this was some kind of misunderstanding and not a man galloping at full speed to kill him.

“Hellooo there! I think I mi—ahh!”

Before he could finish, the sand shifted beneath him again. He slipped backward just as the rider swept past, the blade hissing through the air where his head had been. A few strands of his long white hair sheared clean off, shimmering as they drifted down to the sand.

Momoshiro tumbled down the dune in a chaotic mess of robes, limbs, and white fluff, coming to a graceless stop at the bottom. He scrambled upright with surprising speed, katana drawn, tail fluffed to twice its size in alarm.

He searched for the horseman, breath quick, heart pounding—yet even then, he held one hand out defensively but non-aggressively.

“I don’t know if you can understand me,” he called out, voice strained but earnest, “but I mean you no harm! I don’t even know where I am!”

 

[Garrod Arlette]

Garrod rounded atop the buckskin mare, its long dark legs short stepping to better cut the angle as the swirl of sand swept across him.

"I don't know if you can understand me..."​

Grit stung the hunter's eye. Sword came up to guard likely angle of attack as tears flooded clean his lone eye. Blinked them away quick. World a watery distortion amidst the burning glow of so much sun bounced off the dune walls. Distance would keep him alive for seconds, but what was distance to a demon fall from the sky?

"But I mean you no harm! I don't even know where I am!"
​

Click of teeth. Chuff of breath. No words meant to be-

"Hail, stranger!" Came Brinda's voice over the stream of bloodborne thoughts that roiled up in Garrod's head. Stirred by the hurried trot-gallop pound of Brinda's beast. A flap of breath from the black gelding's mouth as she willed it to stop. Small sounds to comfort it. Her eyes cut up to the man with the ears. "You, you fell out of the sky!" she said it like it explained everything. "You'll have to excuse my master, he's, well, very mistrusting of things he can't make sense of!" she grinned to the stranger.

Sword still clutched in hand, buckskin mare's breath high, blood hot. Garrod grumbled. "You smell like a fucking demon!" he called out to the stranger with the Aetochin lilt to his bright and overly friendly candor.

"Might be!" Omari called out from beneath his bundles of airy cloth. "He's a Djinn!" he laughed, cool as the midnight. Bow and arrow lowered. "Still, not one I would trifle with!"

Something greedy, and far too interested passed over Scholar Til' Harcor's eyes.

Garrod huffed. Naked right arm trembling. Fingers twitching. Hungry. Could swear he heard the chains of seashells rattle against the ashwood box. An ache behind his missing eye.

He lowered his sword, but still kept it naked to the air.

Brinda glared at him. The one armed girl looked back down to the stranger with animal ears and a big bushy tail that looked all too soft. Cleared her throat. "Well, do you have a name, stranger?" she said with a big smile that crinkled up all the jagged little scars about her eyes, bolts of pink-silver lightning each about her hazel eyes.

 

[Momoshiro Komori]

A pause followed, along with a few quick blinks.

Momo stood planted in a wide stance, one arm still extended, fox ears pricked high and his tail puffed out to an almost comical size. His katana remained drawn, held ready but restrained. He hoped—very much so—that he wouldn’t need to use it. He had no desire to hurt anyone, and even less confidence in his swordsmanship. Fighting people wasn’t what he’d been trained for, and it certainly wasn’t what he preferred.

When the man with the eye patch finally lowered his blade, Momo felt the tension ease out of his shoulders. The others appeared relaxed as well, none of them reaching for weapons. That was enough to convince him he wasn’t about to be attacked.

With a bit of habitual Aetochin flair, he gave his katana a quick twirl before sliding it back into its sheath. Then he bowed politely. A small cascade of sand slipped from his hair and shoulders. He noticed mid-bow and straightened, brushing at himself with an awkward smile as he dusted off. As he did, his eyes flicked between the three of them, gauging their reactions.

“Heh… I’m just glad you can understand me,” he said. “Common isn’t my first language, and between the two I know, I figured this one had the better odds out here.”

He chuckled softly, brushing what he hoped was the last of the sand from his hair. He’d heard enough stories to know it probably wasn’t.

“My name is Momoshiro Komori,” he continued. “And I’m not a demon. Well—at least, not that I’m aware of.”

He grinned, eyes narrowing into slits as a hint of fang showed.

“I don’t know what a djinn is either, but I don’t think I’m one of those. Though… I suppose from your point of view, I did sort of appear out of nowhere.”

His ears slowly relaxed, and his tail shrank back down to its usual size, swaying calmly behind him.

“I’m something of an exorcist,” he went on. “I deal with unruly spirits. I was in the middle of doing exactly that when I ended up here, actually. The spirit I was fighting could open portals.”

His expression shifted briefly as something tugged at his senses. Something in the air felt… familiar. Not quite the same as his spirits, but close enough to raise his hackles. He frowned, then shook it off and looked back to the group.

“Sorry. Still a little out of sorts.”

He scratched the back of his head and glanced around at the unfamiliar terrain, finally voicing the question that had been nagging him since he arrived.

“So… where exactly is here?”