A/N: Alright! So, the story's picking up speed, I've discovered. I can't sit down with any other project than this right now.. so, you might get the next chapter pretty soon (since I've practically already finished it, I just need to do some finishing touches) and have to wait for a bit longer before the chapter after that. However, I can't promise anything. All of a sudden, I've written like five more chapters of this one before I can concentrate on anything else.

Oh well, time for me to stop babbling.

Enjoy!

The Sorceress and the Sharpshooter

Chapter Ten
Darkness Incarnate

Coldness. And darkness. The sun has not yet risen. Andrea sits by the docks, looking out over the moonlit water. Bernard sits down next to her and presses his nose against her shoulder.

"I know, boy," Andrea says. "I know."

"The Darkness is coming now," Bernard sighs.

"Mother was right all along," Andrea says. "First, it was my mother. Logan is next. And I'm after him."

"You think it's a family curse?"

"Worse," Andrea sighs and looks at her furry friend. "I think it's a regent's curse. I think that no matter who's ruling Albion, the curse will strike."

Bernard nods, and the scene suddenly changes. She is now sitting in the war room, flipping through the empty pages of a book, pretending to read all about Albion's history, but in truth, she knows there nothing to read. Logan paces back and forth, mumbling uneasily, whining and crying.

"Brother," Andrea calls. "Brother, what's the matter?"

He looks at her, his eyes darkened and sleepless. "The light inside me will die," he sobs. "The Children are hungry."

Andrea knits her brows. "Don't let them in, Logan. Shut them out!"

"Mother tried," Logan sighs, his tears hitting the floor. "See what that did to her." He opens a door. The familiar, hideous stench of illness and vomit hits Andrea in the face, and forces her take a step back. In the bed, a weak and puny creature lies, her hair white and her hands so emaciated, it looks as if only a thin layer of skin covers the bone.

"Andrea," her mother's weak, rasping voice calls. "Andrea, come… closer. I—I can't see you."

"I'm here, mother," Andrea says as she is standing right next to the bed. She reluctantly closes her hand around her mother's skinny, bony one and strokes her thumb across it.

"Is—is that you, Andrea?" the sick Queen says, her voice trembling. "I—I can't see."

"Yes," Andrea whispers. "Mother… mother, don't die."

"I am already dead, dear," Sparrow says and smiles, her voice now soft and sweet. "I have been dead a long time." With those words, Andrea's mother is no longer recognisable as her face has become a hollow cranium, and the rest of her skeletal body is so fragile, it is almost falling to pieces.

"I know, mother," Andrea sobs, "but please don't leave me!"

"I will never leave you," the skeletal form of her mother says. "I will always be with you. Just stay away from the Darkness."

"What is the Darkness?" Andrea asks, but the scene suddenly dissolves, and she is now standing in complete darkness. A chilling laugh echoes all around her, and she covers her ears with her hands. "Stop it!" she yells, but the laugh grows louder. "Stop!" The laugh is almost overwhelming, and Andrea begins to scream for it to be quiet. All of a sudden, the laugh fades away, and a strong light starts to penetrate the dark. The light grows stronger and stronger, and eventually, it becomes so strong, Andrea has to shut her eyes. Finally, the light is strong enough to even penetrate her eyelids, and it's warm… it's like… it's like the sun…

"Ben!" A booming voice brought her back to reality.

Andrea stirred and moved her arms. She was lying face down on something… something reminding her of wet sand. Perhaps it was sand? She dug her hand into her mattress, and indeed, it was wet sand. She opened her eyes, only slightly, and the bright sun blinded her. Her body was sore, and she felt how the sand on her back had dried and was itchy and uncomfortable. Where was she? What had happened? A flash of fire, chaos and water covered her eyes for a split second, and she sat up, even though her body wanted to disobey. Was everyone okay? Did everyone make it?

"Ben!" she recognised the voice as Walter's, and she was relieved that he seemed to be fine. "Ben?" Walter turned his head, and as he saw Andrea, he walked up to her and helped her to stand. "Andrea? Are you okay?"

"Yes," Andrea said hoarsely, realising how dry her throat was. She looked around. "Ben's not here?"

Walter sighed heavily. "No… looks like—looks like we didn't all make it."

It was as if the world swayed. Andrea had to grip a nearby rock to not fall. Ben was dead? No. No, it couldn't be. He couldn't be dead. She shook her head. "No," she mumbled. "No."

"I only hope…" Walter tried. "Well, maybe he washed up somewhere else. I'm sure that's it!"

Andrea nodded, afraid to admit anything else; he simply couldn't be dead. Not now. "Yes," she said. "Yes, he washed up somewhere else. He has to—he's alive. I know he is!"

Walter nodded. "Yes."

Andrea looked around. "Where's Bernard?"

Walter looked away.

"Walter!" Andrea demanded. "Where's Bernard?"

"I haven't found him," Walter said lowly.

Again, the ground swayed beneath her feet. Ben might have survived, washed up on some other shore, but Bernard… her sweet Bernard… he was defenceless! No one to feed him, no one to encourage him? He wouldn't last! And, what if he hadn't made it out of the water? The bare thought of her life companion sinking to the bottom of the ocean brought tears to her eyes.

Walter sighed. "Come here, darling." He pulled her close, and Andrea couldn't hold the tears back and sobbed against his chest, just as she did when she was a child. "Don't cry. Maybe he's with Ben?"

"And—and what if not?" Andrea sobbed.

"Then he died a fighter," Walter said and caressed her hair.

Andrea let her tears fall. She knew she would break someday, anyway, so why not now?

Walter held her for another moment before he sighed. "Alright, come on, Andrea. We have to get going."

Andrea dried her eyes and nodded. "Right. You're right."

"Well, the only way forwards seems to be through a rather ominous cave…" Walter said and looked towards the opening further down the beach. As they started walking along the dreary beach, and as the enormous cave towered before them, Walter decided to try to lighten things up. "Before we go any further, I'd just like to say one thing," he said. Then he took a deep breath and bellowed from the pit of his stomach; "BALLS!" His booming voice echoed in the giant cave opening, and Andrea tried to hide a giggle, but failed. Oh Walter… he would always be Walter. He laughed too. "Maybe we'll find something. You never know; it might be a luxurious inn." But as he said it, a colony of bats came flying towards them. "Bats," he said bitterly, "we found bats. That's great. Bats are exactly what we need right now." He sighed as they ducked and then continued into the cave. "What do you think happened to Ben? He's a strong swimmer. Probably reached a sandy beach somewhere. Palm trees… beautiful women… coconut cocktails… jammy bastard!"

Andrea didn't want to think about that now. If Ben was alive, then she didn't have to worry, but how could she possibly be certain? What if he had drowned? What if Bernard had drowned? She tried to push that thought away. It would do no good worrying about them now. It would only get her distracted. As they proceeded further into the cave, decayed buildings started to appear. Both Andrea and Walter looked around, amazed by what they saw.

"Is this it?" she asked. "Is this Aurora?"

Walter shook his head. "It… it couldn't be! Could it?"

"Page said it was a dead land," Andrea said.

"Well, Swift said it wasn't," Walter sighed.

As they walked further in, they realised they were standing on an enormous balcony. As they looked out over the railing, they saw a purple, glowing circle in the middle of the floor.

"What in the hopping Hobbes is that?" Walter cried.

Andrea shook her head. "I have no idea… it looks like a—like a barrier or something."

"Yes," Walter said. "It must be protecting something. Like the way out, most likely." They looked at each other, both with worry in their eyes, before they sceptically walked towards the staircase. "Well, I'll tell you one thing," Walter muttered, "we haven't got this far, haven't got this many people behind us, to end up dying on some forsaken, far-off whole in the ground!" They walked down the stairs, and a strange, buzzing sound escaped the glowing barrier. Walter walked ahead. Some feet away from Andrea, he sighed. "Wherever we are, we aren't the only ones who got stuck in this damn place." He nodded towards a skeleton, half buried in the dirt.

A bad feeling hit Andrea. A very bad feeling. Further ahead, there were even more skeletons.

"Not the most encouraging sight in the world, is it?" Walter sighed. "Still, they might have something useful on them." He walked up to the first skeleton and kneeled to search through it. "Why don't you check the second lot over there?" He nodded towards another skeleton, and Andrea reluctantly walked over to it.

She crouched down over it, and a knot tied in her stomach. She didn't like skeletons, for a bunch of reasons. She decided she didn't want to touch it all too much and let her eyes scan over it instead. In the dead, bony hand, there was a book, and around it, several torn out pages. She picked up one of the pages and looked at it. She knitted her eyebrows as she read through it. "Walter, I found something. A note; 'It speaks to us still. Darkness incarnate. We know now we can never escape it'."

"Well," Walter sighed. "That doesn't sound good." He continued digging around in his own pile, and then he picked something up, "Hey! I've got something, too! One of these poor sods left a journal. Most of the pages have disintegrated, but… well, you… you can still see plenty of weird symbols. It's mostly gobbledygook anyway." He held a book in his hand as he rose and walked up to the barrier. He laughed darkly. "I mean, listen to this nonsense; 'Luminous spirits of the sands; impart daybreak and gleam under a quiet moon'." He laughed again. "Oh… what's that supposed to—" Before he could finish his sentence a beam of light shot out from the book and the glowing barrier suddenly dissolved. Both Walter and Andrea gasped. "Look at that!" he said. He laughed, astonished. "Can you believe I did that?"¨

Slowly, Andrea made her way towards Walter. They looked down on the winding staircase leading down into total darkness. Andrea suddenly found it hard to breath. She was not that very fond of the dark, and this… well, this was very dark. And as soon as that barrier was broken, there was this strange heaviness surrounding them, weighing them down.

Walter moaned discontentedly. "It does look somewhat dark though."

"You don't say?" Andrea muttered.

Walter huffed and turned to her. "Maybe going down isn't such a good idea?"

Andrea sighed. "I hate it as much as you do, but this might be the only way out of here. It's either this, or the freezing water."

.:*Ö*:.

There was a whining noise somewhere around him that he didn't exactly recognise. And there was a smell he didn't recognise… it smelled of… incense? Could it be—was he in Samarkand? He stirred, but as he did, he heard a panting sound and something wet touched his hand, continuously. He waved his had to get whatever was on him, away from him, but as he felt the warm, soft feeling of a fur under his fingertips, he slowly opened his eyes. At first, everything was a blur. Someone was looking down upon him, and he squinted his eyes to see better. "Whe—what—" As his vision gradually became clearer, he tilted his head and saw a dog by his side. "Bernard?"

"You need to lay still, mister," a voice ordered him and he rolled back his head and looked up. An elderly woman was gazing down upon him. "Kalin, he's coming around."

Another woman joined the older one, and this one was bald with a thick, white stripe across her face, and he thought he could see blue tattoos on her head, too. "Are you strong enough to sit?" she asked, and he nodded.

"Yeah," he breathed. His throat was dry, and he was thirsty. The two women helped him to sit up, and he found himself in an unknown room. Or, it was more of a… more of a temple of some sort. He tried to remember what had happened. He remembered cannons, and he remembered the ship sinking, and he remembered him searching for Walter and the Princess, but he hadn't found them. He remembered shouting his lungs out after them, but there had been no answer. He had then started swimming, and he swam, and he swam… and that was it. That was all he could remember. He looked around. "Where am I?"

"You are in Aurora," the tattooed woman, Kalin, said. "My name is Kalin, and I am the leader of the Auroran people. Who are you?"

"I'm…" His head hurt. It made it difficult to think. "I'm… Captain Benjamin Finn of the…" He put his hand on his forehead. "…of the Albion Royal Army."

"Are you one of Logan's soldiers?" she asked, her eyes filled with contempt.

Ben shook his head. "No… I'm not."

Kalin sighed relieved. "Then, welcome, Captain," she said. She then looked at the older woman. "Please, give him some water."

"How did I get here?" he asked and looked into the woman's luminous crystal blue eyes.

"You washed up on our shores," Kalin replied. "You must have been swimming quite a distance."

Ben sighed, feeling how his chest tightened. "Did you find anyone else?"

Kalin nodded towards Bernard. "Only the dog. Smart creature, by the way. He was the one who came looking for help."

Ben sighed again, feeling how he became somehow agitated. The older woman reached out a cup of water for him, and he took it, but didn't drink. He kept eye contact with Kalin. "Are you sure? Have you been looking?"

"I have had all of our shores searched, as well as any possible place for a body washed up from the sea to be lying," Kalin assured him.

"Is the anywhere else that someone could possibly have ended up?"

"The bottom of the ocean," Kalin said, and sighed heavily, "or…"

"Or what?"

She looked at him, her eyes sorrowful and horrified. "Or the Dark Shores."

Ben's eyes widened. "Is it far from here?" he asked. "Can we get to that place from here?"

Kalin shook her head. "No one goes there."

"But is it possible?" Ben asked and stood up, forcing Kalin to take a step back. His body was sore and his head hurt, but he didn't care.

"Captain," Kalin sighed, "if you enter the place where the Darkness dwells, you will die."

"So it is possible, then!" he said and felt how his chest was released. He hoped – oh, how he hoped! – that they had ended up on that shore! He couldn't bear the thought of losing two more friends. He started pacing back and forth, not knowing where to go or where to even begin. A good start would be to get properly dressed, though, since he was only wearing his trousers and his dirty, bloodstained shirt. "Where are the rest of my clothes?"

Kalin contracted her brows. "Captain Finn, you can't possibly go there."

"Why not?"

"The place is evil." Kalin's voice was sincere.

Ben stopped and looked at her. He sighed. "Is there any way of finding out if they possibly washed up there?"

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, Captain, but the only way is through the Darkness, and very few survive that."

"Would a Hero survive it?" he asked.

She was bewildered. "Heroes? There haven't been any Heroes here since the old Hero Queen."

"Don't be so sure," Ben said. "Her daughter could be here."

Kalin gasped. "The Princess? Wha—what is she doing here?"

Ben sighed and sat down again. "She is the leader of a revolution. The Princess, Sir Walter and myself were on our way here to ask for you alleigances when Logan's soldiers sunk our ship, and we were separated."

Kalin looked horrified.

"Kalin, if the Princess reached that beach, we have to find her," Ben said, locking his blue eyes on hers. "This kingdom's future depends on it. Your future depends on it."

Kalin was silent for a second or two before she nodded. "I will get a search party out. If she truly is a Hero, she would be able to make it through, but I'm not so sure she would be able to make all the way here. I'll tell my men to search the Shifting Sands."

Ben rose again. "I'll come with them."

"No, Captain," Kalin said. "You have to rest."

"I have plenty of time for rest when I'm dead," Ben smirked. "Now, where are my clothes?"

.:*Ö*:.

She could hardly breathe. The dark was pressing from every direction, almost shoving itself inside of her. Her whole body was shaking. Walter stood next to her. The shadows were gone, but the Darkness was still there, threatening with its absoluteness.

"You're tainted." The disembodied voice mused, and Andrea felt the familiar sting of panic and hopelessness in her chest. "The stain will never wash out. The sun will never shine upon you again. Tainted broken little toys."

"What is this?" Andrea hissed terrifyingly. The words kept repeating in her head, and it was as if the voice had penetrated her darkest memories and brought them back to life.

"We're—we're alright!" Walter stammered. "We're going to be alright… come on Walter! Just hold it together!"

"Walter?" Andrea gasped. She knew the old warrior had his fears and his phobias, but she had never seen the man this frightened.

"Le—let's just keep going," he mumbled. "We—we have to keep going."

They stayed close as they moved through the darkness, with the torch as the only light. They moved rather swiftly, both wanting to get out of this place as quick as possible. The creature following them was like something straight out of a nightmare, and the shadows that were attacking them were like the spawn of Skorm himself. "Damn this book and whoever wrote it!" Walter growled. "The bastards! Why didn't they tell us what was down here? 'Darkness incarnate'… like we're supposed to know what that means?" He breathed even heavier, and Andrea feared he was having a heart attack. But he kept on mumbling. "It won't stop… it won't stop 'til it kills us…"

His words didn't exactly calm Andrea, and she reached out to hold his arm, to let him know that he wasn't alone down there. They approached a stair, and Walter gasped.

"Wait… I think we must be close to an exit!" he said, his voice filled with desperate longing. "There's a cold breeze… can you feel it?" He ran up the stairs, and Andrea followed, her heart racing. But once they were up the stairs, and a bit further down the path, Walter slowed down. "There's that sound again," he said and walked up to a large archway. "It's almost like—" Before he could finish, a massive breeze came from the archway and put out the torch, and the darkness devoured them. "No!" Walter gasped, and Andrea let out a small shriek. "Not the light! Not the bloody light!" He fiddled with his tinderbox as he muttered panicked to himself; "Come on, work, dammit! Those things are all around us! Come on, come on, come on!" And with that, the torch caught fire once more, and the light, though quite small, was more than welcomed. But as Walter made sure nothing had come close, he suddenly gasped in fear and battered the torch through the air as if he was fighting something.

But Andrea saw nothing. She breathed heavily and pressed herself against the wall. This was not something she had expected in going out on such a quest!

When he stopped, he looked around, fear playing all over his face. "Balls…"

"What was it?" Andrea breathed. "What did you see?"

But he only shook his head and backed away into the archway. "No, no, no, no, no… no, no, we have to get out of here!" he mumbled terrified. "You hear me?" He looked at Andrea who followed him further beyond the archway. "You hear me? We have to get out of here!" He breathed rapidly. "As long as we have fire we'll be alright. We'll have to keep walking and—and we'll get out of here… and we'll—we'll be alright."

Then, again like straight from one of Andrea's darkest nightmares, the voice was back. It boomed chillingly through the air, and every hair on Andrea's body was standing. "We are coming."

"It's here!" Walter shouted and started running.

"We will devour your kingdom!" it growled. "There will be no bargains!" As it suddenly appeared in front of them, as a mutilated, crouching creature with a deformed head wearing three faces, Andrea shrieked. But it disappeared as fast as it had appeared, leaving those bloody shadows attacking. But the voice still lingered; "There will be only darkness. The Children command it!"

Andrea tried to push her fear away so that she could let her magic through. She released a wave of fire, and another one, and another one. One after another, the shadows disappeared. If they died or if they simply disappeared, Andrea didn't know.

"Come on!" Walter shouted. "Let's go!"

"It doesn't matter if you leave," the voice mused. "We are inside you. Your heart, your lungs, your thoughts will all be blackened."

"Andrea!" Walter growled and grabbed her to run.

"Watch as your skin withers and falls leaving you exposed and hollow!"

"Walter!"

"Now do you realise how worthless you are?" the voice laughed darkly as Walter and Andrea, panicked and terrified, made their way deeper into the unknown. "How you've earned the shadows?"

They were running for their lives through that darkness. Their hands were tightly locked around each other, and suddenly they both came to an abrupt halt as the creature once again stood in front of them.

"Did the blind seer not tell you about us?" it asked, though its mouth wasn't moving. "Did she not warn you?"

Andrea lost her breath. Theresa knew about this? Or was it all just a mean trick? Had it seen Theresa in her mind, as it had seen everything else?

The voice starting laughing, loudly and morbidly, and Walter covered his ears.

"QUIET!" he shouted as he threw the torch towards the creature, and as it hit it, the creature blasted backwards and landed on another ledge as it blazed up in flames and screamed and squealed as it sizzled and burned, and finally, it was quiet. "It's gone…" Walter breathed. "The bastard's dead and gone! And we're getting out of here!" He tugged at Andrea's sleeve. "We're going to be alright."

.:*Ö*:.

"Captain Finn!" Kalin sighed. "Captain Finn, you have to wait! You don't know what's out there!"

But Ben didn't listen to the woman in the small crowd behind him. He kept on wading over the thick dunes of sand. The sun was scorching and the air was dry, but Ben pushed onwards. He wouldn't stop until he had found them. Until he had found her. Bernard seemed just as eager as he was, and kept his nose on the ground, even though the sand was hot enough to burn him.

"Captain!" Kalin barked, and this time Ben stopped and turned.

"I don't mean to sound rude, but what is it?" he asked. When he saw the woman's worried eyes, he sighed and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I—I just want to find her—them! I just want to find them."

Kalin shook her head, too. "Well, you want to be alive when you find the Royal Highness, I presume? Here, have some water."

Ben clenched his jaw in agreement and joined Kalin and her men. He took a sip of the water Kalin had brought, and then he dried his forehead with his sleeve. "How far is it?" He looked at her.

"Another ten miles," she said and looked out over the desert.

Ben sighed heavily. The heat was so intense, a haze blurred the sky together with the sand, and dissolved any possible sign of a horizon. The desert just seemed never-ending. He took one last sip before he kneeled and cupped his hand to pour some water into it and let Bernard lap the liquid. After another two handfuls, he stood up and gave the vessel back to Kalin. "Right," he said. "Come on, let's move."

Kalin commanded her men to follow, and they were on their way. None of them spoke, and the only sounds heard, except for the eerie and ghostly breezes that played along the dunes, were the shuffling feet of five men, one woman and one dog as they all waded through the blazing hot sand.

It was an exhausting walk, and Ben started feeling a bit dizzy from the heat. He had been forced to take his shirt and wrap it around his head. The others had hats, for Avo's sake! Why hadn't they offered him one? Well, they probably had, he just hadn't listened. But it wasn't only the sun that was taking its toll on him; the hot, slow sand made his legs burn, and he had never experienced having this poor stamina since he was a boy. He considered himself to be a very fit man, just as his choice of career required, but this was embarrassing. The Aurorans pushed through the desert as if they hadn't done anything else in their entire lives, barely breaking any sweat at all, while Ben was killing himself in this deadly, sandy hell. To his comfort, Bernard seemed just as exhausted as he was.

"Right," Kalin said with a sigh, and the party stopped. "There's a small shadow over there." She nodded towards a lonely rock standing a couple of yard away. "I suggest we sit down for a while, to gather strength."

"No," Ben said hoarsely and shook his head. "We need to continue. If the Princess and Sir Walter are out there, they might die in this heat if we don't find them in time!"

"If we continue now, we might die as well." Her voice was calm, but her piercing eyes was demanding, and he sighed.

"Fine," he muttered as they all headed towards the shade. And what a bliss it was. The cool sand felt like heaven as he lay down, and he felt how his body was still sore from his little swim. He sat up, leaning his back against the rock. The Aurorans were talking and laughing as they passed around another water vessel, and Ben drank greedily. After giving Bernard some, he passed the vessel on and sighed heavily. He wanted to find them. He wanted to make sure they were alive. What would he do if they weren't? Would he go back without Kalin and her people, and without Walter… without Andrea? As he thought about the young woman, the knot of guilt returned to his stomach. He had kissed her, unfairly and wrongly, and he had been awfully close to taking advantage of a drunken girl. And in Reaver's Manor… the way he felt as he touched her and as he held her, was impossible to describe. All he knew was that the feelings were forbidden. She was the Princess. She was not a common peasant girl he could have his way with whenever it pleased him. And if she ever learned about his dark, dishonourable past, she would find him even more repellent that she already did. If that was possible, so to speak. But if he found her, if he saved her one more time, then perhaps… then perhaps she would change her mind. She seemed interested enough that night in Industrial, if he was allowed to count that time. But what did all this make him? A completely normal man, or a sad and perverted bastard?

The sun kept on scorching the masses of sand around them, and they could almost hear it sizzle. Despite this, Ben sighed in relief as the party rose and readied themselves for another long, hot walk in their search for Albion's saviour.

.:*Ö*:.

"This land is ours! Darkness shall spread across the world!"

"WALTER!" Andrea screamed as she ran up to her mentor, her rock, and he was standing on his knees and hands, panting violently, the dark masses dripping off him.

"I can't see," he breathed. "That thing… it blinded me! I can't see!"

Andrea didn't even fight the tears and she threw herself on the ground next to him. "It's okay, Walter," she sobbed, "I'm here!" Using all of her strength, she managed to get the big man on his feet, and she gasped as she saw the blackened area around his eyes.

He put his hands in front of him. "We have to get out!" He croaked. "Quickly!"

Andrea nodded, even though she knew he wouldn't see it, and grabbed his hand and hurried down the steps.

That sound starting to fly around the enormous spaces around them again. "It's still out there!" Walter cried. "We need to leave!"

Andrea felt how her panic all of a sudden became worse, if possible, and her lungs were almost exploding of her rapid breathing as she hurried along the path.

"You can hear it too, can't you?" Walter asked. "It is there. I'm not going mad!"

"I can hear it," Andrea breathed, trying to sound calm. "You're not mad."

"I can't see anything!" he cried. "Take me to the light, please!"

His pleading voice hit like a dagger in her heart, and she held on tighter to his hand. She wouldn't let him down. And there it was; the light. A large archway towered in front of them, filling the long, dark corridor with light, and Andrea could cry of relief. She hurried even more, and the further into the light they came, the further away seemed the darkness to drift. They would make it. They would make it.

As they finally made it out of the cavern, they were hit by a hot, dry air, and the sun, that was very much welcomed, even though it was scorching hot.

"Are we out?" Walter asked, sounding calmer. "Did we get away?"

"Yes," Andrea smiled. "We're safe now."

"What can you see?" Walter asked.

Andrea looked around; sand covered everything, and the never-ending sight of it was not exactly encouraging. At least, it was light. "A desert…"

"I can feel the heat of the sand, but," Walter said, "whatever that thing did to me, it's like it—it sucked all of the light from inside me. I still can't see anything. Just… don't let go."

"Careful," Andrea said. "There's steps up ahead."

"Alright. Okay," Walter said. "I'm not sure—I don't know how far I can walk. Are there no signs of civilisation?"

Andrea let her eyes scan across the desert. "There's something in the distance... it looks like an enormous statue."

"How far?"

"It's going to take us a few hours." She tugged him along, but all of a sudden, he stopped.

"No, stop. Stop. I can't do this."

Andrea gasped. "Of course you can! Come on!"

Walter sighed. "I'm... I'm too weak. You have to leave me. Listen to me; I can't see. I can barely stand! I—I—I won't just slow you down, I'll get you killed. You have to go on without me." But she tugged him harder. "I'm no use, you can't save me! I'm dead weight now!"

"Stop talking like that!" Andrea growled, devastated. "We're going to make it through this."

"Why won't you listen to me?" Walter growled back. "You have to leave me behind! That thing left you weak too! Don't you think I could tell; what you have to do is too important to risk for an old wreck like me? Listen; you have to go on without me."

Andrea tuned to glare at him, even though he wouldn't see it. "I won't leave you here!"

"You have to!" Walter groaned. He panted. "I can't! I—I can't!"

Walter's weight became too much for Andrea, and as he fell, he dragged her with him. "Walter!"

"It's alright," he breathed. "It's all going to be alright. You have to be strong. Find—help."

"No!" Andrea sobbed as the old man closed his eyes. "Walter!" But he didn't respond. "Walter!" She rose and grabbed his arm. "Come on! Get up! Get up! Walter!" She tried to drag him with her, but he was all too heavy. As she released his arm, Andrea fell in tears and collapsed next to him, leaning over his chest. They were so close. So close… but she wouldn't leave him. She couldn't. So now instead of being devoured by the Darkness, the light would strike the fatal blow. How ironic.