“Are you prepared for what happens next?” He asked as he grimaced in pain. It was a question that I’d been asked a million times. I wanted to yell at him, to curse him, to somehow make this experience as painful as possible for him, but instead I followed the same course of actions I always had, like a leaf floating down a river, powerless to change my destination. I ripped the sword from his chest and studied his face. There were no details, not that I could visualize any more, maybe he was young with a youthful arrogance, or perhaps he was old with a condescending air about him. It hardly mattered at this point.

I stood above him as he collapsed to the ground, I could feel the power fleeing from him, as if he was a sinking ship that would soon drag everything to the depths with him. I knew what was going to happen next, I tried to plead, to beg myself, to leave and let him spend his last moments alone. My pleading fell on deaf ears as I leaned in close and spoke. “What happens next is of no concern to you” I said with a stern expression. “Your time is done, none shall suffer by your hand ever again” The finality with which I made the statement would have made me laugh, considering the irony of it, if not for the fact that humor had long since abandoned me.

The man began to laugh. Starting as a whisper before growing into a bellowing, deafening, and thunderous roar, before abruptly cutting out. He paused, for just a moment and looked at me, blood pouring out from his wound, pooling around him, as he just sat there and smiled. My cheeks turned red with rage, how could he, after all he had done, just sit there and laugh. Stepping toward him I raised my sword and prepared to finish him off. Suddenly while I was mid step, he quick as lightning, shot from the ground and grabbed hold of my collar. Moving my arm quickly I grabbed his and tried to pry it off me, but his grip held firm. A white light burst from his eyes coating them and bathing me in his burning visage.

Though I knew it was coming, the shock of light startled me awake and I gasped as I tried to sit up. Immediately I regretted it. Instead of air filling my lungs it was sand. I had to force myself not to try and cough it up, instead keeping the sand in, even as the grains burned within my lungs. Forcing myself to pause for a moment and take in my surroundings, I could feel a crushing pressure on my body in every direction. Recalling where I was, I groaned inwardly.  Keeping my eyes closed and ignoring the pain in my chest I began to focus. Honing in on my mana reserves I called upon them to flow through my body. Steadily, I felt the mana make its way into the channels trained long ago to allow mana to flow seamlessly throughout my figure. I waited, for just a moment, as the mana built up pressure, until it felt as though I was about to explode. Then, in a manner of speaking, I did just that.

The mana violently burst forth from my skin. Pushing out and away all the sand that had covered me, cradling me deep within the ground. I continued to force my mana out, pushing away not just the sand above me, but below and surrounding me as well. Pushing, until I felt a foreign heat strike against my face. I could feel the power coursing from me. Radiating out, like a beacon, challenging anything and everything to try and dare to match its might. And then I fell.

Landing on my hands and knees I started to vigorously cough, wresting the sand from my lungs, and vomiting the grains out onto the ground beneath me. Once the sand was gone from my body I stood and slowly opened my eyes whilst filling my lungs with air anew. I had to squint as I looked upon my surroundings. The suns brilliance was in full swing as it lit the world around me. Not that there was much to see. Standing at the bottom of a crater of my own creation there was nothing but sand to keep me company. Shaking away memories of the dream that had woken me, I jumped from the crater and decided to continue my search. Landing at the ridge of the crater I attempted to look into the distance. However, as per usual, it would seem as though I was in the middle of a massive sandstorm. Glancing behind me, I noticed the crater was already beginning to fill with sand. Sighing I began walking in no direction in particular.

As the storm recovered from my earlier outburst, the sun became partially blocked by the sand coated winds that surrounded me. Feeling too lazy to shield myself from the winds properly, I just let the sand bounce harmlessly of off my body. Maybe, at one point in time, these sandstorms had been threatening to me, but that time had long passed. My body had grown tough in the time since I started my search, nowadays the stinging sands were no more a nuisance to me, than they would be to a slab of iron. I walked through the sands as easily as I would a field on a clear summer day. Slowly the day grew darker as I continued my walk, but I paid no mind to the changing time, and instead continued to move, step-by-step, scanning my surroundings for any sign of what I was looking for.

Before too long, day became night, but the storm continued to rage on, and I continued to search. Eventually the night gave break to sun, and it became day again, but still, I carried on with my task. The cycle of the stars repeated itself more times than I could be bothered to count, and even the sandstorm subsided a few times. Yet, with each passing day, I grew no closer to finding what I was looking for. Eventually, I came to accept that there was no use in continuing my search for the time being and I stopped walking. As it so happened, the storm had recently died down, and I could see up into the night sky.

If I was being honest, the cloudless night sky was beautiful. The sky was filled with more stars than I could even count, I should know, I had tried to count them once. As it turns out, the sky shifts ever so slightly during the day, so unless you can remember exactly what the sky had looked like the night before, you’ll simply not be able to pick up counting where you had left off. And there were far too many stars to count them all in one night. Once, when I was bored, I had used mana to enhance my vision to look more deeply into the blank space between the stars. To my surprise, it turned out that in that blank space, was countless more stars, after realizing that I gave up on my goal of counting all of the stars.

I don’t know why, but my gaze still wondered up to the sky. I hoped, that somewhere up in that endless sky, there was another world, filled with life and happiness. A world where no one wandered throughout an endless desert, cursed to live forever, unable to die, yet with nothing left to live for. Shaking my head and clearing it of those pointless thoughts I focused in on my task. If I could find no signs of life above the ground, then I shall search for life below it. Looking down at the sand beneath my feet I fell to my knees, interlocking my hands together and raising them above my head I channeled a vast amount of mana into my fists.  With a massive surge of energy, I brought my fists down, smashing into the endless desert beneath me.

The ground cracked and shattered, as sand shot up all around me, without waiting for the sand to fall back into place I smashed my fists into the earth again and again. Each time strengthening them with mana, and each time, digging deeper into the ground beneath me. I kept swinging until it mattered not what time of day it was, as no light could reach the depths of the hole I had dug. Then, I simply sat down onto the coarse sand, that had been hardened by the force of my impacts and closed my eyes. I focused my thoughts inwards towards my mana reserves and commanded my mana to materialize into the world surrounding me. Like roots sprouting from a seed my mana spread throughout the ground. Covering vast distances, branching out, and spiderwebbing across the ground it combed the earth, following my commands, searching for any sign of life, water, vegetation, anything at all.

Every pocket in the sands was scoured, any gaps in the earth were searched. My reserves strained under the monumental task that was placed upon my mana and I felt the energy draining from my body at a rapid pace. Yet I persisted, forcing my reserves to continuously draw forth more and more mana, to expand my search radius by even mere inches if necessary. When I had first started my search, my mana could only produce a root system a few miles long, now however, my roots could expand across a large portion of the world. Through my mana I could feel the curvature of the world I resided in; I could feel the vast endless desert shifting in the winds, like an ocean during a storm. 

I. Could. Feel. Everything. Except, of course, the one thing I was looking for. No matter how far I stretched my power, or how long I searched, there was no indication, no signs, not even a hint, of life anywhere other than myself.  

My reserves abruptly gave in as I ran out of mana, and I collapsed backwards until I was laying flat on my back covered in sweat and out of breath. I kept my eyes closed, as I felt my mana roots fall apart around me closing me off from the world until I couldn’t feel anything other than the pulse of my heart, and the rise and fall of my chest. And then, I just laid there, catching my breath, as one moment turned into another, unmoving…until finally I broke.

The power that resided within me, normally suppressed by my mana bubbled to the surface as darkness clouded my mind. I screamed out into the endless darkness above me. The strength of my power coating my body as I shot up from the ground and collided into the wall of sand surrounding me. My frustration exploded like water bursting from a dam and combined itself with my power, forming a dark wall of rage and desperation annihilating everything around me reducing warping the sand into glass, and the glass into dust. I let my power run rampant, after all, ‘why not’ I thought to myself, ‘its not like it can hurt anything.’ And so, I let my temper run wild. Sending out wave after wave of energy, vaporizing the sand around me. However, time moves ever onward, and as time marched on, my mana reserves steadily began to fill up once again. And as my mana returned, so too did my mind.

I groaned as I realized what had happened and utilizing my mana, I began the process of suppressing my power. However, like usual, it didn’t go down quietly. The moment I began recalling it, the voices started to speak. Screaming out in my mind, countless voices, all trying to talk over one another, all saying the something similar. Condemning me, cursing me, questioning my right to try and control them. Demanding justice, demanding I set them free.  Growing weary of the voices I urged my mana to work quicker, condensing my power pulling it into my core, and finally sealing it within my reserves, quieting it for the time being.

Once all was quiet again, I allowed myself to fall to the ground and take in my surroundings, not that there was much to see. The result of my rampage was nothing more than me creating a nice cave for myself.  Although nice might have been an exaggeration as even in complete darkness I could feel the sand starting to fall as the cavern began to cave in. I sat back as I prepared to sleep, who knows, maybe this time the cave-in will kill me I thought as I began to drift off.