"Wake up, Guardian."
His eyes snapped open, breath filling his lungs as his eyes focued on a vision that he would remember until the day of his last breath. A bright burning orb in the heavens above, shrouded in white light that hurt to stare at. Yet he could not look away; its beauty mesmerized him. He was lulled into a sense of wonder, yet the world came to drag him to reality. His bare form lightly sank into the burning hot sand and let out a hissing noise as he felt the second pain of his life. However, as the minutes passed the pain slowly faded as his body seemed to distribute the heat.
A tan colored thing of hard shapes and a glowing blue light in the center suddenly rushes up to his face. Floating in the air without any seen propulsion, it spoke calmly, with a steel twang ."Ah, you are awake Guardian. Good, I almost became concerned with how long you took." His hands tightened into fists impulsivly at the sight of this entity, his face twisting into fear. The strange entity seemed to notice, but did not lose its calm tone and affect.
"My name is Enkidu, a Ghost, your Ghost to be exact. Now, we need to move. If we don't find shelter soon, you may succumb to heat stroke." The Guardian scrambled to his feet, his feet bare upon the burning sand. Enkidu began to float in the direction of the sun. The affemine Guardian followed, scared of whatever "heat stroke" was.
For hours they walked under the baleful heat of the beautiful sun. Sweat fell down his body slowly but surely as they marched. After five hours of walking in the vast desert, they found a road as the sun started to set. The Ghost and the Guardian began to follow the road and as time passed, the sun descended further into the sky. The desert turned into an array of dusk filled colors that inspired awe in him and distracted from the sun's dissappearance.
A slow clopping noise was heard behind them before they could take notice of the sun's disappearence. The Guardian's head turned to look behind him at the source of the strange sound. A large creature with two large humps on it's back, and a long neck stared back at him. As the Guardian's eyes moved up from the creature, he noticed a man with sun-worn skin, white robes, a curved sword on one of his hips, a bulky hulster on the other, and headwrapping upon his head that shielded him from the sun. Enkidu vanished in a flurry of particles as the man on the creature noticed him finally, his eyes widening at seeing him.
Quickly he signaled for the now alone Guardian to wait and so he did. Once the man caught up, he looked him up and down with a stupidfied look on his worn face. He spoke with a gravely voice and a tone that showed tiredness. "What are you doing out here, in rags no less lass?" The Guardian looked down upon himself, now having a term for what he was wearing, before looking back up at the robed man speaking with a soft, confused voice. "I don't know, I woke up like this in the sand."
The man sighed, seeing that the rags were barely staying upon their body, and began to rummage through his bags, pulling out what seemed to be a cheap set of white robes and headwraps. He handed it to him and before he could say anything the Guardian stripped infront of him, quickly putting on the new clothes. "The hell are you doing la-?" He pauses and looks surprised before exhaling slowly and corrects himself. "lad..." The man sighed with exasperation at what was going to be the start of a long night. "What's your name boy?" He put on a thoughtful expression on his face before shaking his head defeated.
"I don't know. I don't know anything. Where am I?" The man's face switched from exasperation to concern and began to speak carefully. "We're in Jafaaf boy, you're lucky for that. It has one of the few remaining Oasises in Vacuo." He nodded to himself, coming to an unspoken descision before lifting up the Guardian by the scruff of his robes and placing him on the camel roughly. He let out an almost squaking noise at being lifted but didn't resist.
"I'll take you to where I'm heading lad, a small town that's contracted me for my work. Until then you can call me Emeric." The boy nods and then asked curiously. "What is your work Emeric?" Emeric smirked and said cooly as if it all made sense. "I'm a Hunter of course."