CHAPTER I
"It glittered in the twilit night, but it was only for a fleeting moment. An attosecond of time made all the difference between blissful peace and a cataclysmic mind. I watched, and I saw; it glimmered. Glimmered.
Like the sun was approaching the hemispheric gem, like it had blessed the red with warmth and infused it with light.
Because the gem was Coruscant."
-Solipsis, Destian Theoretician
Dest spoke in riddles to Aln. The sand looked like fog. The fog looked like grain. All of them looked like hell.
There were only two devils here; sand and wind. There was an old Destian rhyme about it. Aln couldn't remember it if he tried, but he didn't. He let the words flow into his brain, a little melody to the desert around him.
Sand and wind,
Dest's a sin,
Sand and wind and rest and rim!
He wanted to keep replaying it in his head; to find comfort in the words and remember that there were people in the world. But Aln knew that common meant cheap. He had to keep the rhyme rare, a reward.
Cautiously, Aln lifted a thatched door off its weak hinge. The horizon was an orange glow - twilight in the desert. He would have loved to mock the sun, to scorn it as it was forced to descend below the sluggish sand. But other things in Dest called.
It was twilight; that would mean that the valley would not be as sandy, or as hot. So Aln picked up a strong stick, hollowed out and worn from use, and began the six mile trek to the village.
It was no longer sweltering, but it was freezing cold. Dest and its climate extremes were a mystery to Aln, but mysteries were not much pondered on in this plane. Could one afford to ponder on anything but survival?
Aln scooped up a handful of the Destian sand, still hot but not enough to blister, and roughly rubbed it between his palms. The sand embedded itself into his skin, the temperature almost instantaneously warming his hands, and Aln went on. A few times he had to pause and lie down and breathe the hot sand, simply to make sure that his lungs still worked. He imagined that the vesicles that held his breath were streaked in hoarfrost now; the cold would have constricted the passage. The valley would be warmer.
He soon came to the path leading down to the valley; from the cliff that overlooked it. The heat that radiated from the sand here was stronger, and he was grateful for the extra warmth. It gave him an opportunity to watch the valley, to witness the candlelit homes that cut through the darkness of the valley. It seemed to Aln, though, that it was more that the light encroached on the darkness than it was the other way around. Strange, he thought. Strange.
He had never liked the valley. Both because of the people and the climate.
In the daytime, the Dest Valley was hot and sandy, with temperatures exceeding that even of the Destian desert that Aln resided in. The villagers there could be described as sandy as well - fiery and gritty, with a temper rivaling that of the sun. But at least Aln was well-acquainted with the sun.
Feet pounding on the barren rock, he descended into Krakos Valley.