The Heat That Hunts
848 Words
The Sunscorch Barrens didn’t sleep—not even at night.
The wind howled like it remembered every scream it ever carried. Tavian pressed his bruised ribs, exhaling through grit-caked teeth as he ducked behind a broken stone wall.
The bar behind him was half-collapsed from the fight. Bottles shattered. Men roared. Wood splintered.
“Where you going, pretty boy?” one of the raiders barked, stomping through the rubble.
Tavian rolled his neck with a sigh. “Honestly? Anywhere you three aren’t.”
A punch grazed his face—another cracked against his gut. He twisted and dodged like the wind, ducking one raider’s wild swing and letting the other accidentally sock his friend in the eye.
“Oops,” Tavian muttered, grinning, blood on his lip. “You guys should choreograph better.”
They lunged again, but Tavian spun toward the door, diving through the beads and smoke, boots hammering the desert floor as he vaulted onto the back of a Dune Strider—a long-legged, feathered beast bred to surf sand like sea.
“Hyah!” he yelled, slapping the reins. The beast squawked and bolted into the dark dunes.
---
The wind bit colder the further he rode.
Behind him, three more Striders rode hard, kicking up starlit dust.
“Come on, come on…” Tavian muttered. “Lose ‘em. Lose ‘em. Be the sand. Be the breeze.”
The Strider beneath him screamed and buckled, throwing Tavian off its back in a violent lurch.
He hit the sand hard—rolled, cursed—and watched as his mount vanished into the shadows.
“Great. Just... great.” He coughed, pulling himself up. Ribs screamed in protest.
He limped toward a sunken dune and made camp, building a fire with dried thorn brush. The heat stung his face. He held his arms close.
“I really gotta stop making bad deals in shady bars,” he muttered to himself.
---
But sleep didn’t last.
The hiss of leather. The snap of rope.
He awoke with a boot on his back and sand in his mouth.
“Well, well,” one raider laughed. “Still got that pretty face, even all busted up.”
“You guys ever think about taking up chess or knitting?” Tavian asked, spitting grit.
They tied his wrists. One of them took turns kicking his side. The other stole his satchel.
“That humming crystal you sold us?” another growled. “Worthless. You scammin’ desert brat.”
“I said it hums,” Tavian shrugged. “I never said what song it sings.”
They didn’t find it funny.
---
Later that night, as the raiders snored, Tavian wiggled loose from the ropes using a shard of bone hidden in his boot heel. Silent, breath measured, he crept over to the Striders, sliced their reins, and took the last full canteen of water.
“Fair trade,” he whispered. “You get to keep your boots.”
He disappeared into the dunes.
---
By midday, the sun was a blade.
He was half-dead, sand-blind, and dehydrated when he heard it—the faintest sound of a birds screech.
“They’re back,” he rasped. “Unbelievable.”
They were gaining.
But then the wind shifted. Hard. Angry.
A wall of sand roared up out of nowhere, swallowing the world in gold and gray.
Tavian dropped low, covering his mouth. He squinted through the storm... and saw her.
A shape gliding on sand like water—small, wrapped in desert cloth, hair white as bone, sand swirling at her command.
“Is this real,” he breathed.
He followed from a distance, slinking behind a jagged dune ridge until he saw the Mirage Spires, what seemed to be her hidden village, nestled in cracked stone and sand.
She disappeared behind the walls.
He crouched, watching. Waiting.
---
Morning broke.
The village stirred—but no sign of the woman.
Tavian rose slowly from his hiding place, aching and starved. “Maybe I should just ask for some water and a ‘thank you for not being dead’—”
Cold blade kissed his throat.
He froze.
A voice like crushed pearls cut through the silence:
“Who are you?”
He turned slowly. Her silver eyes locked onto his, her face wrapped in a veil.
“Speak,” she said again, sharper this time.
The moment they touched—her blade against his skin—a jolt shot through them both.
His eyes widened.
“It’s you,” he said, barely a whisper.
“I asked who you are.”
He swallowed hard. “The sand storm? That was you. I thought…”
He shook his head. “I thought I made it up for a second.”
She didn’t answer. Just stared. Eyes narrowed.
He gave a crooked smile. “I’m Tavian. I make bad deals. Run from fights. Apparently hallucinate powerful women who ride storms.”
Her grip tightened on the blade.
“I’m not a hallucination.”
“Yeah, I got that." He chuckled slightly.
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